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Ok I see these two accronyms (RaW, Rai) used quite frequently on these and other forums, yet I find no mention of them in any Games Workshop rules books. So help a brother out, and point me to the right manual that explains these two things. If they are made up then tell me that too. I find it funny that they are quoted alot as a discussion ending statement but I am thinking they have zero merrit. Please Please Please help.

chas

Acronyms for:
RAW - Rules As Written, ie what the rulebook says
RAI - Rules As intended, ie what someone believes they meant to say

Pretty much only used in rules discussions, not a GW thing.

You see how those words are in yellow?

If you hover your cursor over them a little definition will pop up. This applies to all yellow words that show up on Dakka. Its really helpful.

Oh ya I see the yellow, and even managed to hover over them a time or two. What I was asking is, where are they written in GW rules system that makes them the final say.

However Don_Mondo answered that for me. Its not the rule just a made up thing that people use. I will ignore them from now on.

Thx Don_Mondo

Its not so much a made up thing as a way of settling debated.

RAW is literally what is written in your 40K rulebooks, following it to the letter even if it can occasionally lead to odd rulings.

RAI is an attempt at reasoning out said rules based on the "spirit" of the rule and not the wording.

No, its not something to ignore.


The Rules as Written is mearly a term meaning exactly that. The rules as written. it means to take the rules at face value.

Rules as Intended is a term that means you read the rules with your opinion of what the writers of the rules meant. "O' they obviously meant for this to happen even though it actually doesn't say that"


They are very important in a rules discussion.

Yep, they are indeed important in a rules debate. However, RAI is, of course, almost impossible to truly determine. And even when you do know EXACTLY what the author intended, say, through a conversation with him on the subject, that's not always what winds up reading as RAW or being FAQed. Been there, done that. Anyways, glad to help.

RAI is playing obscure rules in the spirit of the game when RAW utterly fails. Stuff like the "grounded" monstrous creature debate.

Even the biggest "raw" sticklers agree that bounding FMC is silly. Its a poorly written rule waiting for an FAQ for clarificiation.

Other situations just have no rules to cover them. Feel no Pain vs instant death on eternal warriors for example. There is no RAW covering the interaction of those three rules. People may try to agrue it, but it is outside the scope of the rules as written. So all you have is RAI to fall back on, and that is hotly debated.

Until there is an FAQ or errata to clarify any issue, the rules are written as they are intended. It's impossible to reason any other way. If GW intends for a rule to be a certain way, it's up to them to say so.

"RAI," as most people treat it, is simply house-ruling with a fancy name on it.

 Fafnir wrote:
Until there is an FAQ or errata to clarify any issue, the rules are written as they are intended. It's impossible to reason any other way. If GW intends for a rule to be a certain way, it's up to them to say so.

"RAI," as most people treat it, is simply house-ruling with a fancy name on it.

Not really.

Some times old rules just don't gel with new rules. Like, using a psychic power from an Eldar ally in your army. The power says it lasts until the start of the next Eldar turn. But, there is no Eldar turn. Does the power last for the duration of the game then?

RAW, yes it does. RAI, no it doesn't.

 Kaldor wrote:

 Fafnir wrote:
Until there is an FAQ or errata to clarify any issue, the rules are written as they are intended. It's impossible to reason any other way. If GW intends for a rule to be a certain way, it's up to them to say so.

"RAI," as most people treat it, is simply house-ruling with a fancy name on it.

Not really.

Some times old rules just don't gel with new rules. Like, using a psychic power from an Eldar ally in your army. The power says it lasts until the start of the next Eldar turn. But, there is no Eldar turn. Does the power last for the duration of the game then?

RAW, yes it does. RAI, no it doesn't.

For all we know, that may be exactly how GW intended.

 Fafnir wrote:
For all we know, that may be exactly how GW intended.

It could be.

 Kaldor wrote:
Some times old rules just don't gel with new rules. Like, using a psychic power from an Eldar ally in your army. The power says it lasts until the start of the next Eldar turn. But, there is no Eldar turn.

Yes there is. This is the same argument as the old 'Librarian's Movement Phase' argument for Gate of Infinity... with the exact same conclusion.

On the Eldar psychic power thing, I thought that somewhere in the rulebook's and FAQ's there was some thing stating that if a rule said something equating any reference of an allied race with your own for certain effects, with the number of effect increasing if they were battle brothers? Additionally, Eldar's Turn is used possessively, as in the turn belonging to the Eldar model, so the argument is moot anyways.

But yeah, Rules As Written means following what is written in the rulebook, FAQ, and codex to the letter, even if the rule doesn't make much sense if you try to think of the game in realistic terms. As a note, even when there is a conflict between two rules, there is a solution to the dilemma within the written rules, a roll off to determine which rule takes precedence. Basically, if you are trying to play formally (opposed to casually), RAW will be in effect. Note that you CAN use house rules and still play with the Rules As Written, as long as it is clearly understood what those house rules are, and that they do not bend under any circumstances in game (the most obvious example of this are tournament rules, where TO's add slight modifications to the rules so that the logistics of the tournaments run more smoothly, such as disallowing allies or imposing a time limit to turns).

Rules As Intended, however, means that you bend the written rules so that they better fit the scenario that is occurring in the game. It is taking the written rules as a guideline opposed to the law. For example, there could be a weapon which wounds against leadership instead of toughness. Unless there was a special disclaimer otherwise (we will assume that there isn't), this weapon could theoretically wound fearless models, even though they are, well, fearless, because fearless units only automatically pass leadership tests, and this weapon merely compares against a models leadership instead of its toughness. However, players could decide that since this weapon 'obviously' causes harm by attacking the models courage, they could decide that this weapon has no effect on fearless models. To them, this is the way that the game was intended to be played, it was only because of a design oversight that this error occurred. This can also occur within house rules settings. Going back to the tournament rules, if the house rules give a maximum turn time of 20 minutes, a TO could decide that a player who had to move 200 models each turn is not penalized for taking a 30 minute turn, but the player with 5 models could be penalized for taking a 19 minute turn if they are purposefully trying to stretch out the game's length.

 insaniak wrote:

 Kaldor wrote:
Some times old rules just don't gel with new rules. Like, using a psychic power from an Eldar ally in your army. The power says it lasts until the start of the next Eldar turn. But, there is no Eldar turn.

Yes there is. This is the same argument as the old 'Librarian's Movement Phase' argument for Gate of Infinity... with the exact same conclusion.

It's just an example. There are many reasons why the RAW don't always work.

 Kaldor wrote:
It's just an example. There are many reasons why the RAW don't always work.

Sure... it's just not a good one...


And yes, there are certainly some situations that are not covered by the rules, and some where the rules are written in a way to leave the 'correct' application somewhat unclear. It's commonly claimed that in these situations we revert to RAI... but from my experience, when people refer to 'RAI' in that context, they actually mean 'Rules as I think makes the most sense...' since the studio rarely bothers to explain what they were aimiing for, so divining what was actually intended can be problematic.

Having said that, there are some situations where the language used has multiple potential interpretations, but the 'correct' one is still blatantly clear. In those cases, RAI is much easier to establish.

The basic idea is that depending on how you read a sentence, it could mean 2 different things

So we as players need to occasionally try to figure out WHAT THE HELL GW IS TALKING ABOUT

 Kaldor wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 Kaldor wrote:
Some times old rules just don't gel with new rules. Like, using a psychic power from an Eldar ally in your army. The power says it lasts until the start of the next Eldar turn. But, there is no Eldar turn.

Yes there is. This is the same argument as the old 'Librarian's Movement Phase' argument for Gate of Infinity... with the exact same conclusion.

It's just an example. There are many reasons why the RAW don't always work.

Good one would probably be the Deffrolla. The arguments that thing got until it was finally fixed.

So with relativly smart people standing across from each other , you could come to the Raw of thing or the Rai just depends really on how much of a butt ya wanna be that day?

I say they (GW) needs better editing.

 Talamare wrote:
The basic idea is that depending on how you read a sentence, it could mean 2 different things

So we as players need to occasionally try to figure out WHAT THE HELL GW IS TALKING ABOUT

Wouldn't it be weird if all there was in the world was you and other people trying to have a good time?

If GW screw up, so what? Just be a grown-up and fill in the gaps yourself.

 Testify wrote:

 Talamare wrote:
The basic idea is that depending on how you read a sentence, it could mean 2 different things

So we as players need to occasionally try to figure out WHAT THE HELL GW IS TALKING ABOUT

Wouldn't it be weird if all there was in the world was you and other people trying to have a good time?

If GW screw up, so what? Just be a grown-up and fill in the gaps yourself.

Those are some pretty big gaps for a $40 book.

 Fafnir wrote:

 Testify wrote:

 Talamare wrote:
The basic idea is that depending on how you read a sentence, it could mean 2 different things

So we as players need to occasionally try to figure out WHAT THE HELL GW IS TALKING ABOUT

Wouldn't it be weird if all there was in the world was you and other people trying to have a good time?

If GW screw up, so what? Just be a grown-up and fill in the gaps yourself.

Those are some pretty big gaps for a $40 book.

Not really. In the grand scheme of things they're pretty small, and what you'd expect given GW's development size and gametest time.

RAW is most often used by TFG.

 Inquisitor Ehrenstein wrote:
RAW is most often used by TFG.

If following the rules makes me a TFG in your group, I would never want to play with your group.

 Inquisitor Ehrenstein wrote:
RAW is most often used by TFG.

The what now?


The RAW is what is used to play the game. It's what tells you that infantry move 6", that tells you what you need to roll to hit, that tellls you how to make Morale tests...


The 'TFG' is the guy who deliberately twists the rules into places they are not meant to go, not the guy who just wants to play by the rules.

 insaniak wrote:

 Inquisitor Ehrenstein wrote:
RAW is most often used by TFG.

The what now?


The RAW is what is used to play the game. It's what tells you that infantry move 6", that tells you what you need to roll to hit, that tellls you how to make Morale tests...


The 'TFG' is the guy who deliberately twists the rules into places they are not meant to go, not the guy who just wants to play by the rules.

Pfff. If you want to have fun, you got to play by RAIPTOOMA (Rules as I pull them out of my ass). You're a WAAC TFG looser if you play any other way.

 Fafnir wrote:

 Inquisitor Ehrenstein wrote:
RAW is most often used by TFG.

If following the rules makes me a TFG in your group, I would never want to play with your group.

Using exploits and insisting on details is TFG. Wanting to follow the rules normally is not.

A good example of RAI is flying MCs. If they are Grounded, the only thing that does is remove Jink if they had it and allows them to be assaulted that turn.

It does not remove the rule that makes you hit them on 6's (hard to hit?), and does not move them into Gliding mode, they're still swooping, which means next turn, they are unassaultable and can fly away.

It's obviously they intended to drop them into gliding mode, as that makes sense with them being assaultable, which would also remove hard to hit. But the rules don't say it, so it just removes Jink, let's you assault them for one turn, and they fly away.

 Inquisitor Ehrenstein wrote:

 Fafnir wrote:

 Inquisitor Ehrenstein wrote:
RAW is most often used by TFG.

If following the rules makes me a TFG in your group, I would never want to play with your group.

Using exploits and insisting on details is TFG. Wanting to follow the rules normally is not.

If its in the rules, you must follow it. To do otherwise is houseruling.

In fact, the only way to ensure the game is fair is to play exactly by the rules. As soon as you start modifying the rules, you are putting a subjective spin into the game.

If I just happen to know the rules better, so what? What's keeping you from being as versed?

 Inquisitor Ehrenstein wrote:

 Fafnir wrote:

 Inquisitor Ehrenstein wrote:
RAW is most often used by TFG.

If following the rules makes me a TFG in your group, I would never want to play with your group.

Using exploits and insisting on details is TFG. Wanting to follow the rules normally is not.

Following the rules normally is playing it by the book.

And who are you to define what an "exploit" is. There's nothing wrong with taking advantage of every tool you have available to you, so long as it's outlined by the rules. And you bet that I want to make sure that both my opponent and I are getting it right.