Exact Words / Tabletop Games

• BattleTech:
  • Hanse Davion pulls this in the course of the Clan Invasion. Promising his ancient enemies of House Kurita that "No Federated Commonwealth units would cross their borders" until the Clan invasion was dealt with, he found out soon after that House Kurita was on the verge of a catastrophic defeat. For a moment, it looks like Hanse, a man known as "The Fox", is up to something, and he is. He sends mercenary units across the border straight to the Combine homeworld. At first, several Combine high officers are furious, thinking they have been betrayed. This is quickly inverted when the mercenaries reveal that Davion has hired them to defend Luthien, not attack it as the Combine officers expected from Davion's Exact Words. By employing mercenaries rather than his own Federated Commonwealth forces, he stays true to his promise while also keeping the Combine from falling...so that he can use the Combine as a buffer zone between his realm and the invading Clans. There's a reason Hanse Davion is considered a Magnificent Bastard.
  • This is done against the Federated Commonwealth as well, when their long-time enemy, the Capellan Confederation, sends an agent to deal with the Northwind Highlanders, a mercenary unit that had been long loyal to the Confederation until an offer was made during the Fourth Succession War to grant them their ancestral home world of Northwind in exchange for defecting to the then-Federated Suns. Thirty years later, the Confederation's current ruler, Sun-Tzu Liao, sends a member of his elite special forces with Highlander ancestry on a mission to 'neutralize the Northwind Highlanders'. The agent, at first, believes that his orders mean for him to cause the destruction of the mercenaries. However, the Highlanders are struggling to fend off the Federated Commonwealth's liasons, who are trying to ensnare the Highlanders using company store tactics. The agent ends up defecting to the Highlanders, but the mistreatment from the Commonwealth's liasons cause the Highlanders to declare independence, thus 'neutralizing' them, as Sun-Tzu ordered.
• Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine: A key plot point is that Chuubo, a fairly ordinary boy, has gained the ability to create Imperial Miracles but can't really do anything useful with them due to wording problems (unless they come from his heart, in which case they work as intended). There is a running joke that he has yet to discover the correct wording to obtain an ice cream: "I wish I had an ice cream" makes "Chuubo has an ice cream" a law of reality, meaning that he can't eat the ice cream, because he would then no longer have it.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • This is often considered the real reason players avoid casting Wish, as many DMs invoke this trope with its use. This is partially averted by kinder DMs and in the computer adaptation, Baldur's Gate II, by allowing characters with high wisdom and intelligence scores to close the more obvious loopholes if the wish is otherwise reasonable. Some sources indicate this as one of the advantages the clerical counterpart Miracle has over Wish — because it is not so much a wish as a requested miracle, it can be vetoed by your deity... but it also means that it will tend to be interpreted in your favour, whereas Wish includes a little comment about, if one goes beyond the list it has and requests a greater effect, there is danger of a literal but undesired fulfillment (that is, this trope) or partial fulfillment.
  • One sourcebook suggests this as a way The Paladin can be Lawful Good without being Lawful Stupid. In the specific example given, The Paladin is honor-bound to follow the requests of the Big Bad: When the villain says "Bring me the head of the king", the paladin brings him the head... along with the rest of the king, and his entire army.
  • This can be a way to beat truth-telling magic, depending on the edition and the spell — one book has a fallen paladin observe that very few truth-telling spells can tell a lie fashioned by putting two truthful sentences next to one another (in the case that prompted this observation, he had managed to give the impression that his dead niece had been responsible for summoning a fiend by saying there'd been a summoning gone awry by a foolish mage, and then adding that fortunately his (dead in the incident) niece had taken precautions in case something went awry like that. Not his fault if the one he was speaking to thought the foolish mage was the niece rather than the paladin himself).
  • In the adventure book Three Days to Kill, the players are hired to wipe out the head of a thieves' guild, and assured that the town watch would be very grateful to have the guild become disorganized. This is quite true, but the person hiring them didn't say he worked for the town watch.. he works for an opposing thieves' guild. Technically, the players are still doing something good, and the person hiring them doesn't backstab them (as they might expect), so it's just an additional secret they might find.
  • The Plane Shift spell allows you to specify a location you wish to arrive at on the plane you're travelling to. The rules note that if you wanted to go to a certain city, for example, the spell might deposit you outside its gates, right in the middle of its high street, or on top of a cliff gazing out at it from fifty miles away.
  • While most constructs treat their orders as this, a Helmed Horror is intelligent enough to understand the difference between an order's intent and its exact wording, seeking to fulfill the former instead of following the latter. For example, if a Helmed Horror was ordered to not let a treasure chest leave a room, it would understand that this includes the chest's contents and fight to prevent said contents from being taken.
  • In The Wild Beyond The Witchlight, Granny Nightshade will pull this on anyone accepting her posted services offered for a favor. "Win the heart of the one you love?" You get the heart, torn out, in a box. "Be buried up to your neck in silver?" You get literally encased in a silver nugget which disappears if you are freed. "No sword will ever break your skin?" Petrified. "I'll make you as strong as an octopus?" A regular, non-giant, non-magical octopus. But some of her service offers actually are genuine, like "I'll curse anyone you choose,"; she actually will, as cursing people is kind of her jam. This allows the PCs to pull a revenge Exact Words on her — by choosing for her to curse herself!
• Eberron: This is how multiple conspiracies can exist in a world with multiple methods of magical lie detection. The example given is for a Riedran ambassador asked about the Adaran kalashtar. The kalashtar are a race that has bound extraplanar entities inside themselves, and those spirits drive them to attack Riedra in an attempt to topple the legitimate government. The Inspired gained power in Riedra by bringing an end to a period of historic war and unrest. All of which is completely true... but glosses over the fact that the Inspired are controlled by demons, they caused the period of unrest that they heroically stopped, and the kalashtar are being advised by heroic rebel spirits who are trying to save everyone from the Inspired. Furthermore, Riedra is a high-psionics, low spread nation (meaning the common people have almost no power but the leaders are much higher level; compare to Khorvaire's low-magic, but widespread use), so high-level Inspired who know too many secrets tend to have access to ways to simply ignore lie-detection.
• Exalted: In a comic in Exalted: The Alchemicals, diplomatic negotiations hit a snag when the Autochthonian emissary says "There can be no peace between our peoples now". He meant "now" as in "at the present moment", not dismissing the possibility of future friendship. After the misunderstanding is cleared up, the Realm emissary agrees that indeed their nations are not friends "now".
  But I believe we can change that. Don't you?
• In Nomine:
  • The Seraphim, angels who must speak the truth at all times, often take refuge in this trope when trying to maintain secrecy or otherwise keep certain things hidden. For instance, a Seraph named Zebadaiah who's been nicknamed Zane by his associates would never actually call himself Zane, but might introduce himself with lines such as "People call me Zane" or "I go by Zane".
  • This used to trip up Laurence, Archangel of the Sword, in his early days as Commander of the Host. Angels of the Sword must obey both the spirit and the letter of Laurence's orders, and, when his commands were too detailed, the servitors were left with no way to adjust for conditions without earning dissonance.
    "Thus, Laurence will not tell a Servitor 'Take Highway 41 to Tifton, Georgia, find the Tether of Death just south of there, and bring me the Seneschal's head.' Such specific orders could result in all kinds of dissonance — what if the angel knows a more efficient way of traveling to Tifton (or Highway 41 is washed out)? What if Laurence’s intelligence is flawed, and the Tether is north of Tifton, or it's actually a Tether to Dark Humor? What if the Seneschal has been destroyed already — should the Tether be left intact? What if the Seneschal wants to redeem? What if the angel can only kill the Seneschal by some means which won't leave an intact head to bring to Laurence? Scenarios like this came back to bite the young Archangel of the Sword, until he learned to loosen his control — a little." — Superiors 1: War and Honor
• Nobilis: This is how Imperial miracles work. They can be very nasty (with things like automatic Divine-level wounds for people who just ignore them), but you can freely work toward any interpretation of the letter of the law you can sell your HG on.
• Paranoia: Reactor failures have a 94% survival rate, provided that appropriate protective measures are taken. The specific nature of "appropriate protective measures" (donning a Green-clearance environment suit and evacuating the sector) is classified to preserve morale.
• Pathfinder:
  • Asmodeus, the god of contracts and lord of the devils, specializes in this. His clergy are savvy in using the wording in their contracts to their avantages, they even get a spell that uses a contract as material focus.
  • Subverted with Abadar, god of cities and merchants. Like Asmodeus, he have an interest with contracts, but, unlike him, he prefers to follows the spirit over the words.
  • In the Land of the Linnorm Kings, the only way to earn the right to rule a city-state is to defeat a Linnorm and bring back its head. White Astrid figured that nobody said the head couldn't still be alive and attached to the body, having sworn to serve you in exchange for its life. And she now has a Linnorm at her back, so nobody is going to say it for some time to come.
• Shadowrun: In 4th Edition, the Hong Kong Triads have developed powerful magic-based loyalty oaths that instantly kill the swearer if they reveal the Triad's secrets to outsiders. It's mentioned that one of the Triads recently lost its leader to inter-Triad fighting, but one of the runners says that it was actually his second-in-command pulling a Klingon Promotion. When another runner asks why that didn't trigger the loyalty oath, a third notes that the oaths only prevent you betraying the Triad to outsiders — whacking your boss is not covered by the magic.
• Truce At Bakura: Chewbacca suggested to Han Solo that he have the Tydirium return to the fleet while doing repairs. Han Solo agreed, but then it occurred to him that Chewbacca forgot to specify which fleet he was supposed to return to, thus giving him and the Endor Strike Team an easy opening to take over the Star Destroyer Accusor without having to fire a single shot.
• Warhammer Fantasy Battle:
  • Prince Apophas, upon death, tried to bargain his way out of the Tomb Kings' equivalent of Hell with Usirian, the god of the underworld. Usirian promised that should Apophas bring him a soul "of equal value" then Apophas would be freed and can return to life. What Usirian didn't say was that no soul is ever created equal; they can be extremely similar but each would be microscopically different on some level. Thus, Apophas is forever enslaved to Usirian as he can never fulfill his end of the bargain.
  • Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: In the first edition, the sourcebook Realms of Sorcery has Erik' Sword of Confusion. The warrior Erik commissioned a wizard to make a sword that "cut through things like butter". The wizard dutifully made a sword that cleaves through butter, as well as assorted dairy products, with unparalleled ease.
    This was made for Erik the drunkard, a notorious Norscan mercenary. While in the cups, he foolishly commissioned a wizard to make him a sword that could "cut through things like butter". The wizard was as good as his word. Against normal targets, the sword has Damage -3, but it cuts through dairy products with the efficiency of a fine cheesewire. The wizard who made the sword was later found drowned in a vat of yoghurt.
  • Heinrich Kemmler is repeatedly touted as the most powerful necromancer alive in the setting. This is entirely true, but that wording also excludes a number of much more powerful undead necromancers in the setting like Mannfred Von Carstein, Zacharias the Everliving, and Arkhan the Black (to say nothing of Nagash). This was actually averted during the latter half of the 6th edition, as Kemmler received a White Dwarf army with unique rules that made him the most powerful necromancer in the setting, dead or undead.
  • Bretonnia is subject to Fantasy Gun Control because of a kingly decree that states no crossbows can be used on Bretonnian soil (likely a measure to protect the privilege of the nobility - Bretonnia is an exercise in medieval classism to the extreme). A strict reading of the decree does not support a ban on black powder firearms but the decree hasn't been updated to include them and since a handgun can kill a knight just as readily as a crossbow can, including them is in the spirit of the law. However, Bretonnia's navy is full of ships bristling with cannons scavenged from anywhere the captains could get them - they don't operate on Bretonnian soil.
  • Tzeentch and his daemons, Jackass Genies to the last, are prone to this, leading to things like a man who wanted to be the "greatest mage in the world" gaining no magical skill but ending up 15 feet tall.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • During the War of the Beast, the Imperial Fists Chapter was utterly destroyed to a man, with the Chapter Master himself dying on an assault against the titular Ork Warlord Beast. However, just before the fateful assault, Chapter Master Slaughter Koorland had called all the Imperial Fists successor chapters together under a decree made by their Primarch, Rogal Dorn, during the reforms after the Horus Heresy (which split up the old Legions into multiple chapters) that would reform the Imperial Fists Legion in times of crisis to protect the Imperium. As the decree was still active by the time Koorland died, the gathered successor chapters deemed that, for the moment, they were all Imperial Fists and so even if the last actual Imperial Fists Marine died, the chapter technically did not. Several members of each successor chapter then decided to take on the livery of the original Imperial Fists, effectively "reforming" the chapter before the decree was ended. The vast majority came from the Fists Exemplar chapter (a portion of said chapter, under the First Captain, Zerbryn, had lost contact with the Imperium during the war and was forced to ally with a Warband of the Iron Warriors traitor legion and all but one company of that force defected while said one company joined the Imperial Fists reform along with the remaining loyalists of their Chapter and all files regarding the Fists Exemplar were deleted from public record on orders of Maximus Thane, who himself went from being the Fists Exemplar Chapter Master to being Imperial Fists Chapter Master). Ironically, Thane was a veteran of the Horus Heresy himself, obviously an Imperial Fist at the time.
  • When a planetary governor was being beset by the Dark Angels Chapter (specifically the Deathwing and Ravenwing companies) he begged the chaos gods for help. The Changeling came and asked for his two daughters in exchange for something to "end the battle". Seeing no way out, the governor agreed. The Changeling took the man's two girls and handed him a device. The moment the Changeling left, the device activated; it was the teleport homer from the Ravenwing Squadron and on the other side the entire contingent of Deathwing Terminators had been waiting for the signal. The battle was indeed ended.
  • The Ministorum was to have no "men under arms" in the aftermath of the Age of Apostasy. Knowing that a complete lack of a military force would make them unable to police themselves and subservient to the Administratum, Ecclesiarch Sebastian Thor installed his predecessor Goge Vandire's redeemed private army as the Sisters of Battle. In some versions of the story this was arranged before they decided on the wording, especially considering the fact that the Daughters of the Emperor, as they were named at the time, turned on Vandire after being informed by the Adeptus Custodes that the Emperor wished him dead.
    • Also, nothing prevents them from having the arms themselves - that is, huge stocks of weapons which, in an emergency, can be handed to untrained Ecclesiarchy members and huge mobs of faithful citizens. These people aren't a maintained force, after all.
    • Yet another dodge is that it is only the Ecclesiarchy that is to have no men under arms. Planetary Governors in the Imperium are allowed to raise armies, and many cardinals of the Ministorum are planetary governors as well (specifically, that of Shrine Worlds), so while it is frowned upon by some, so long as the armies are raised in the role and legal persona of governor rather than cardinal it is not a violation of the Decree Passive as those men and women are the Planetary Defense Forces of the specific planet and are under the same obligations of the Imperial Tithe as other Imperial planets to hand over their best recruits to the Imperial Guard.
  • Dark Heresy: Assod Morirr, the villain of the Baron Hopes adventure, has made a pretty sweet deal with the Ruinous Powers. In exchange for his service, he was promised that he could only be hurt by the blood of his Arch-Enemy, Baron Ulbrexis. When said enemy falls in battle with no heirs or relatives around, Morirr is convinced that he has become invincible. And sure enough, the players can't do any sort of damage to him... unless they choose to soak their weapons in the Baron's blood.
  • One of the reasons the Tyranid Pyrovore was so disliked was a special rule that was intended to give them a Taking You with Me move on dying, exploding and dealing damage to nearby units, based on how many of those units were nearby. However, because of the wording used, it was quite possible to read it as the damage based on nearby units being applied to every unit, a.k.a the entire board, instead of every unit within D6, becoming less of a Taking You with Me and more of a tactical nuke.
  "Volatile: If a Pyrovore is slain by a Wound that inflicted Instant Death, every unit suffers a Strength 3 AP- hit for each model (excluding Pyrovores) within D6" of the slain Pyrovore (resolve damage before removing the Pyrovore as a casualty)."

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