Rules Liar

"My name's John Constantine. I'm not the nicest bloke you've ever met. But I do me best."


In Fallout 2, you come from a tribal society. Before you leave on your holy quest, you can do a favor for Hakunin, the village shaman. Clear out the monsters in his garden and he'll make healing powders for you, a super important early game healing item for just one xander root and one broc flower. When he gives them to you, he says "May this be of no use.". I was a kid when I played Fallout 2, so it took me a while to understand what he meant. He meant, "I hope you're never in such a poor situation that you have to use this."

Well, guys? May today's post be of no use.

I didn't typo in the title. Everyone knows what a rules lawyer is, someone who doesn't just want to stick to the rules, but someone who's disruptive with his insistence. Maybe he's even doing it to make sure he gets ahead. Most of the time, though, I find they do it because they're like me, and feel like the rules are very important to the game, that playing "fast and loose" with what's truly the only fair arbiter in your game means you've got a shitty arbiter. They lose sight of how irritating they're being because they themselves are irritated at the situation they're in.

No, there's something else, an opposite extreme. For every ten ridiculous alt-right fascists ruining the good name of conservatives everywhere, there's at least one idiotic leftist doing the exact same for the liberals. We're talking about that person and their related habits today, the Rules Liar. It's a term I made up this week, because this isn't as widespread a problem as its conservative cousin the Rules Lawyer. Rather, it's a more insidious, less obvious one that a lot of people tend to overlook or accept.

Before I go any further, I've got to give you another(yes, another) boilerplate. Yeah, this is inspired by people I've met. No, it's not inspired by one person. Hell, it's not even inspired by a half dozen. If this post starts to sound familiar to you...don't take it so personally. This stuff is everywhere.

If a Rules Lawyer is someone whose insistence on strict adherence to the rules disrupts the game, the Rules Liar is someone who's always seeking to warp them to their own purposes. The Rules Liar is the kind of person who's seeking to constantly change the rules or add house rules, usually in the name of improving the game but often simply to improve their own situation. They often use (sometimes deliberately) faulty logic to interpret or re-interpret the rules. I've touched on this a lot before, but now I'm going to get into the tactics and bad habits used, the meat of why this is bad thinking. Things to watch out for and spot. Honestly, like Lawyers, sometimes these people don't even really know how disruptive they're being. Other times, it CAN be motivated by trying to get ahead or manipulate the "balance standing" to put a favorite person above others. If you run into someone with this sort of problem, I insist you try to talk it out, but have your plan B ready when you show up. This is because the root of the problem is something far worse than just fucking with the rules of a pen and paper game. I doubt you're going to get far. However, I want you to try because while sometimes people know they're doing this sort of thing, but sometimes...they don't. To protect those people who simply have bad habits, this is (almost) the last time I'm gonna judge or even bring up intentions.


Association Fallacy - People will often mishandle and mangle basic logic. An association fallacy is defined as using often irrelevant associations to assert the qualities of one thing are also the qualities of another. A bluntly dumb and obvious example is as follows.

My cat has four legs.
A table has four legs.
Therefore, my cat is a table.

Obviously nobody would ever believe something like that, but pretty often people seem to think insisting two rules should work similarly is okay, even though it's usually an oversimplification. It's very easy to assume pen and paper creators have made some sort of oversight or didn't care to logically balance the system very well, but this idea is a fallacy I could(slash should) probably write a whole post on. No, when you're reading and understanding rules, look for the reasons something is different than a seemingly similar rule. You can't sub out an attack roll for Dirty Trick but you can for Disarm or Trip. This might seem unfair or illogical at first, but if you read how Dirty Trick works and scales, I'm sure you'd find it's a more powerful and versatile option than the other two. When two rules work differently, there's almost always a reason somewhere beyond laziness or oversight. Rules that are just weird or bad DO happen. They do. It's just not as common as people seem to believe.

You should also be wary of using another rule's function as a way to help understand another rule, ESPECIALLY if this is another rule in a different but related system. This happens a lot in D20 and with grappling. That said, even if all you're doing is comparing two rules in the same system that seem to be related, they aren't necessarily going to work the same way. As I said before, there are often deliberate differences placed in a system, and uniformity of any kind can't be assumed.


Fluff Extrapolation - Oh, MAN do I hate this one. In nearly every game I've ever played, the "fluff" descriptions are separate from the mechanics. There will be a pretty prose description of an ability to let you know how it's supposed to look and feel, and then later they'll tell you how the ability functions. Here's the thing. The fluff in a game is mutable. You're intended to alter it to your whim, within reason. That "reason" is usually defined by the mechanics and a basic ability to convey what's actually going on. More on fluff in a different post, but here's what it CAN'T do: It can't inform you of the rules in any way. It's meaningless in this situation. If it contradicts a rule, the fluff is simply wrong. Period.

Let me give you a little story as an example. I've had this argument many, many times over the years, and it's about how the class Monk worked in third edition and its 3.5 update. Flurry of blows is an ability that seemingly mimics Two Weapon Fighting in the way it functions, giving you extra attacks for a -2 to all of your attack rolls. Because the rules description of flurry of blows never states it doesn't stack with Two Weapon Fighting...it does. You can use both, take a -4 to your attack rolls, and basically get a metric ton of attacks by your later levels.

However, arguments abounded because the monk's fluff description states they fight with their whole body, and that meant your "off hand" was already occupied. This may seem an incredibly flimsy and illogical argument to make, but they were emboldened by the idea that the two couldn't possibly work together, because they're the same thing. See "Association Fallacy" above for my answer to that bit. Luckily, when Pathfinder, the objectively better system came out, they solved this argument by directly stating the two do not function together, right there in the mechanical description of flurry of blows.


Example Confusion - I've done a whole post on this one, so I'll be brief. The example does not inform you of the rules. It's to assist your understanding. You have to read the rules. You can't just go right to the example and think you know how it works. In addition to that, sometimes the example is wrong, because they're often an afterthought to developers. In this case, there's still no confusion. The rule is right in every situation.


System Comparison - This is sort of just association fallacy, but I wanted to briefly go over this specific example. Similar systems sometimes work differently. There's a million reasons for this, but usually it's to convey feel and tone. Mutants and Masterminds has no rules for Attacks of Opportunity, partly because you're superheroes and intended to feel highly mobile and free to act without fear. Sometimes even games seemingly using the exact same ruleset like the World of Darkness games have rules that work differently. Before insisting one game should work like another, consider why they are different. In addition, it goes without saying that this is no leg to stand on when talking about how rules work. If you're playing Vampire, bringing up how grappling works in Werewolf is hardly a logical thing to do.


Blatant Lying - I saved the accusatory, non-logical one for last. Sometimes someone trying to manipulate the rules to their favor will state what it is confidently, and when proven wrong will back up to a seemingly understandable excuse like "I must be thinking of an earlier edition". This can also come with a "We've been doing something wrong" preface. Often we accept lying because humans naturally avoid conflict, and an "oops" excuse is an easy out. I can't help you other than to say, if you know someone who's doing this a lot, don't game with them. If you're forced to, counter them bluntly and rapidly by looking up rules in the book the moment they run their mouth. Yes, this makes you a rules lawyer, technically, but proving this person is being manipulative is important to get people they've swayed to their side to realize what happened.


I sincerely hope none of you have to deal with someone deliberately trying to manipulate your understanding of the rules by using false or faulty logic. Using these methods to cheat is still cheating. I also hope you never have to have an argument where someone's unknowingly doing some of this stuff. Some systems are confusing, and we're all probably guilty of misunderstanding something like this at least once. And finally, to reiterate what I've said before? If you have someone in your game using underhanded tactics for any reason, even if it's to "properly balance the game as they see it", you have bigger problems.