The Lantern Hall
Painting: an ancient lexicon open on a carved lectern in a dark chapel of books, glowing runes and symbols lifting off its pages like fireflies.
TermTabletop term

Rules lawyer

A player who argues the letter of the rules, often to their own advantage, and treats the rulebook as a legal code. Every table has one; sometimes it is the Game Master.

A player who argues the letter of the rules, often to their own advantage, and treats the rulebook as a legal code. Every table has one; sometimes it is the Game Master.

Quick answers

What does "Rules lawyer" mean?
A player who argues the letter of the rules, often to their own advantage, and treats the rulebook as a legal code. Every table has one; sometimes it is the Game Master.

Nearby in the archive

Rules as written

Tabletop term

Reading a rule strictly by its text (RAW), as opposed to what its designers meant (RAI, rules as intended). D&D designer Jeremy Crawford has written that ideally the two align, but the words on the page do not always communicate the designers' intent.

Min-maxing

General term

Building a character to maximize strengths and minimize whatever the rules let you neglect, sometimes to absurd effect. Admired as system mastery by some players and derided as munchkinism by others, it applies equally to tabletop builds and online games.

Rule zero

Tabletop term

The unwritten first rule of many roleplaying games: the Game Master has final say and may change any rule for the good of the game. It underwrites Homebrew and ends many rules arguments.

Game Master

Tabletop term

The player who runs the game: describing the world, voicing every Non-player character, adjudicating rules and deciding what the dice mean. Different games give the role different names, such as Dungeon Master in D&D, Storyteller in Vampire: The Masquerade and Keeper in Call of Cthulhu. The role descends from the neutral umpire of refereed wargames.

Mentioned in 6 other exhibits