"They're not loopholes! They're special rules for the people who go to the effort of finding them!"
A particularly annoying kind of player who believes that because he can find a rule about some action in one of the manuals, the
Game Master is bound to allow him to take that action, even if it
doesn't make sense, or would
screw with what's going on. He's convinced that, with the power of the
rules, he can outmaneuver the GM and get what he wants. He will attempt to employ every loophole, every odd circumstance, and every footnote he can. Expect the Rules Lawyer to have pored over most of the manuals, even those that players aren't supposed to read. And most annoyingly, he seems to remember only the parts that support whatever he's doing at that moment, intentionally ignoring whatever doesn't support his own case.
Usually, the first rule the Rules Lawyer conveniently "forgets" while making his arguments is "Rule Zero": that
the GM is always right. Squashing him with this early is the best bet; attempting to argue about rules with him only encourages his behavior.
One of the basic tactics of
Munchkins everywhere. They are among the few people who
Read The Fine Print.
A variant of the
Rules Lawyer is the
Lawful Good Rules Lawyer: they always stick to the rules, no matter how bad it might be for them personally. And they'll point out exactly the proper rules that state that, no, they didn't escape the deathtrap, they died.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- Light Yagami from Death Note is constantly exploiting the rules of the Death Notes in obscure and bizarre ways to accomplish his goals. Arguably, the entire series is about Rules Lawyering.
Card Games
- Parodied (naturally) in the card game Munchkin with the card Invoke Obscure Rules. This card has been translated as Regelneuker in the Dutch version, which is actually the Dutch word for a Rules Lawyer.
- The term 'Regelneuker' literally translates as "rule fucker" (although it does mean "rules lawyer"). Arguably a more accurate interpretation.
- The actual rules of the game are generally a subversion, since their way of judging a rules dispute is "loud arguments with the owner of the game having the last word."
- It is, however, possible to pull off some of these rules-lawyerly tricks, such as using automatic-escape cards to force your enemies away from easy-to-kill monsters, until they stop accepting this and houserule it away.
- My favorite is that it is completely legal to play Go Up A Level cards on your opponents while they are facing monsters that have a "Will not pursue under level X" restriction.
- Similarly to munchkin, much of the point of Magic The Gathering is to find unusual ways to twist the rules to win (although not too much, of course).
Comic Books
Film
Literature
- Subverted in the Robert A Heinlein novel Space Cadet, where the one of the heroes early in the story attempts to exploit military regulations to make it too inconvenient for his superiors to give him orders he does not like. He is soon warned about what happens to "space lawyers."
- An entire alien race in Tom Holt's Falling Sideways. They managed to rip a gargantuan loophole in Thou Shalt Not Kill.
Tabletop Games
- There's a saying among players of StarFleetBattles: "Legal Officer, report to the bridge!" The fact that the rulebook is the size of the Manhattan phone directory doesn't help.
- Players have been spotted with buttons reading "Scotty, I need a rule in five minutes or we're all dead!" (From Star Trek II The Wrath Of Khan, suitably tweaked.
- Obviously, Dungeons And Dragons. People are fond of finding incredibly powerful abilities and combos that would allow them to create practically unbeatable characters, ignoring the fact that any competent GM would disallow them because they're so broken and/or because while the rules don't technically ban it, the build makes no logical sense.
- The Other Wiki has a nice long list of role playing games; every single one of them could be listed here.
- Nomic is a game for which (at least among most devotees of the game) rules lawyering is generally encouraged.
- Paranoia averts this: the player's aren't even supposed to know the rules. If they show any sign that they do (a requisite of Rules Lawyering), the GM is basically authorized to kill them on the spot.
Web Original
- Since it's also a common tactic of internet trolls, it is explicitly forbidden on That Other Wiki.
- In the Whateley Universe, there's a member of the Whitman Literary Girls who is so bad about this that her codename is Loophole.
- To be fair, it is actually her power to see how the rules work. She just doesn't seem to get, most of the time, why people find her methods aggravating.
Webcomics
Western Animation
- King Of The Hill - Hank has to tell Bobby to stop playing 'lawyerball' instead of actually trying to win.
Other
- In Model United Nations, rules lawyering is called "parliamentary maneuvering" and is considered to be a valuable skill in some circles.
- Carried out twice by Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper. In late 2008, with a minority government, due in large part to questionable tactics he'd tried during budget planning, he was facing a non-confidence motion that would bring down his government. So he prorogued Parliament, preventing the vote. Proroguing hadn't been used in decades, as its original intent to close down Parliament when it looked like the useful work was over and there was no point hanging around in Ottawa if the MPs didn't have to, allowing them more time at home in their ridings (when, before common air travel, it might take weeks to get to instead of the few hours it does now). When Parliament reconvened sometime later, the opposition unity had fallen apart. In late 2009, facing calls for an inquiry on Canadian involvement in torture in Afghanistan, questions about the the economy and a bunch of other issues, he did it again (having gotten away with it the first time), lamely claiming it was because of the Olympics distracting everyone (although the government seemed to manage okay the last time the country hosted the Games). No one is buying it and he's finally paying a political price for this chicanery.
Hey, is there some other kind of lawyer I wasn't aware of?
