House Rules, Rulings, and Sage Advice

[KorvinStarmast]

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.

Bob Dylan had a neat song lyric about justice being a game ... but I think he meant "the criminal justice system" by that.

The main flaw of postmodernists is their inability to understand relativity. Postmodernism started with the observation that there are an infinite number of ways to interpret a thing. That's true. Anything can be interpreted an infinite number of ways. They then concluded that all interpretations are valid. That conclusion is false.

I have a few ideas on who might want to leap on that hand grenade you just tossed there, but I am with you.

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.

Yep. Dave Arneson identified rules lawyers as the enemy. Over 40 years ago. I think he was on to something. The enemy of fun.

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.

I might sig that.

5e encourages and enables more rules lawyering with its unclear rules.

I'll argue that it includes more rulings, and that you can remove rules lawyering at your table by not putting up with it during play. (Both players and DM's get involved in this decision is a good way) Discuss/argue, and resolve rules interpretations before or after play - not during. We figured this out 40 years ago in college, after we'd all taken our turn as the rules lawyer of the moment. And all of us felt that fun suffered for it. So we adopted that convention: any rule you wanted to argue about you presented before, or after, play. During play you got one warning (usually from a peer) and after that you were asked to leave that session. And guess what? We had a lot of fun and the games moved a lot more smoothely.

Sage Advice is just a House Rule that you copied from a tweet.

Nope, the published ones on the WoTC site are couched as official rulings. A ruling is not a house rule, it's a DM doing what a DM is supposed to do. That's in my sig as well, and it's clearly consistent with what's written in the text of the rules in PHB, MM, and DMG.

The rulings that come from tweets that don't get folded into the SA at WoTC are basically assistance to GM's and players. Anyone can choose to adopt that ruling, or choose not to, without being accused of homebrew.