Quote Originally Posted by Easy_Lee View Post
The existence of rules lawyers, in real life or in games, doesn't make a law unclear. It just means that people will twist things however they can in order to win. If we're honest with ourselves, we all pretty much understand the law. Lawyers and politicians often twist the law, which is why those professions catch so much heat.

Lol.
Quote Originally Posted by Easy_Lee View Post
Regardless, whether perfect rules exist or not is irrelevant. Even if we can't make a rule perfectly clear, we can make it more clear. 3.5e had clearer rules than 5e. And 4e had much clearer rules, in spite of them being too gamey and taking too long.
I agree. 3.5 had clearer rules than 5e. I think the flexibility provided by 5e is a worthwhile tradeoff for the loss of clarity.

Quote Originally Posted by Easy_Lee View Post
Applying this to D&D, we can all think of situations where a rules lawyer tried to interpret a rule in a way that didn't make sense. He argued that his interpretation is valid. He was right, too. But where he was wrong was in thinking that his interpretation was equally valid. We all knew the best interpretation, as did he. He just didn't want to accept it.

And that's what postmodernism and rules lawyering has in common. It's not an epistemological method. It's a debate tactic used to distract and try to get what you want. And that's all it is.

5e encourages and enables more rules lawyering with its unclear rules.
That all depends what you mean by "rules lawyering."

In 3.5, my image of the rules lawyer was the guy who opened the book whenever the DM did something he didn't like. Lawyers love to cite authority, afterall.

In 5e, the smaller ruleset disempowers this sort of rules lawyer. There is simply less to cite. I can argue what I think a vague rule means, but the DM is left with more flexibility to resolve things. So long as you have a good DM, that's not a problem.

In some ways, 5e is more like your idea of how the law really should work: you think we all have some idea of what murder means, and should simply get on with it. This is not an argument for precise codification!!!