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 Sigvatr wrote:
The whole "RAW" term sees no use outside of internet discussions where people stand by ridiculous and downright silly rules interpretations, claiming they're "RAW".

I've not really heard the terms RAI or RAW used outside of internet discussions. People on the interwebs just like using those terms as a soapbox to stand on or as a throwaway term so they can avoid having a proper discussion about it.

Actually, our group uses the term "Rules as Written" quite often. We don't turn it into an acronym in conversation.


It generally gets used when the actual rules of the game contradict fluff, or when they contradict what seems most logical.

It also gets used when we've discovered some small nuanced situation, with two or more special rules interacting in a specific way- and we all look up what the "Rules as Written" are (Does this character have line of sight to himself for effect X? What are the rules as written?).

The term especially gets used in RPGs, where our GM can trump Rules as Written. So we at least always want to know what Rules as Written are, whether or not we then play by them.

Usually my group(s) play rules as agreed

or RAA

Trying to follow the rules but when it gets dumb we fix it. usually between multiple people so as to not have a dead lock between two people that dont want to budge. that or da grand poo ba GM puts her foot down.

Honestly the stuff earlier on about how you can't say RAI without being telepathic is really bogus. Generally that term would be if the intention really shines through and it's clear what they mean but the actual technicalities contradict it. Though it is thrown around a bit when something else might be more appropriate.

I'll give some examples from the current Dark Angels Codex:
The Ravenwing HQ problem is a clear-cut RAW vs RAI. The fact that there are 3 HQ slots clearly communicates that they intended more than one HQ choice but demanding the Ravenwing rule when Bikes don't give that and only Sammy has it by default makes it clear that they intended one thing and the specific wording contradicts that. Classic RAW vs RAI.
For a murkier example of RAI, or an example of how narrow the definition is, there's the specifics on how that was meant to go. Did they mean to have Bikes give the Ravenwing rule or let Biker HQs without it join the detachment? Both could just as easily be called RAI and you can't really know which of those was ACTUALLY intended. Doesn't help that the first one is more obvious but there are rumors that they're planning to FAQ it into the second.
But there are times when the RAW but it isn't an issue of RAW versus RAI at all. Like the Deathwing detachment issues. You end up losing turn 1 without screwing around or having something else on the board, and there's the issue of how Dedicated Transport Land Raiders fit into it. But you can't call RAI on any of it, it's never really clear if any of these things are errors or what was actually intended if they were. You could certainly have house rules, HIWPI and other such stuff but trying to go for RAI there is a non-starter.

 odinsgrandson wrote:
The term especially gets used in RPGs, where our GM can trump Rules as Written. So we at least always want to know what Rules as Written are, whether or not we then play by them.

That might be why I've not really heard it outside the internet, I don't play any RPG's.

 CrashGordon94 wrote:

The Ravenwing HQ problem is a clear-cut RAW vs RAI. The fact that there are 3 HQ slots clearly communicates that they intended more than one HQ choice

Does it?

Or does the lack of any way to get the Ravenwing rule on other characters clearly indicate that allowing 3 HQs was either an error or something built in to accomodate a later supplement?

 insaniak wrote:

 CrashGordon94 wrote:

The Ravenwing HQ problem is a clear-cut RAW vs RAI. The fact that there are 3 HQ slots clearly communicates that they intended more than one HQ choice

Does it?

Or does the lack of any way to get the Ravenwing rule on other characters clearly indicate that allowing 3 HQs was either an error or something built in to accomodate a later supplement?

Yes it's clear, no there will not be a supplement to add rw characters, if there was they would have just put ravenwing in a supplement in the first place, they didn't.

 Formosa wrote:

Yes it's clear, no there will not be a supplement to add rw characters, if there was they would have just put ravenwing in a supplement in the first place, they didn't.

You're privy to GW's plans, then?

The simple fact is that regardless of how clear the reasoning behind someone's guess of RAI may be, aside from those rare situations where GW have previously told us what they were aiming for, it's only every going to be just that: a guess.

So in the vast majority of cases, what people are calling 'Rules as Intended' is actually nothing more than 'Rules as I Think They Should Be'.


Not that there's anything wrong with that. If you're unhappy with the rules as written, or they lead to a broken situation, then tailoring the game to suit yourself and your opponent is exactly what you're supposed to do.

It's only a problem when that gets passed off as the only 'right' way to play the game. Particularly since, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, we've had plenty of situations in the past where we've been specifically told by GW to go by RAW even though it differs from what was originally intended.

Technically, the sky isn't blue.

You don't advance a RAI argument because *you* have an opinion. You advance it because the overwhelming majority of people clearly would come to the same conclusion if asked. It's not about what *I* think. It's about what I believe *most* people think.

I feel pretty safe to say most people consider the sky blue, though certainly you can argue the point with me. Yes, it is what *I* think, and ultimately I can't prove it. That said, if I play a game where we match objects to color, I'd prefer you not paralyse the game by denying the existence of color itself based on the subjective nature of human experience.

 insaniak wrote:

Does it?

Or does the lack of any way to get the Ravenwing rule on other characters clearly indicate that allowing 3 HQs was either an error or something built in to accomodate a later supplement?

Yes it does, it's clear as day with 0% doubt. I'll freely admit that you're right about RAI some of the time but not all of the time, sometimes it's really clear and you're just being arbitrarily skeptical.

It's GW. There is no such thing as arbitrary skepticism. These are the people who made scatterbikes, after all. So, yeah, I have no idea what they are thinking. Ever.

Yoyoyo wrote:
You don't advance a RAI argument because *you* have an opinion. You advance it because the overwhelming majority of people clearly would come to the same conclusion if asked. It's not about what *I* think. It's about what I believe *most* people think.

Unless you've conducted some sort of research prior to advancing that opinion, this is not at all the case. The best you can offer is what you think is the conclusion that 'overwhelming majority' would reach.

And we've seen any number of times in rules discussions that people quite often read a rule as very obviously reading one thing, and then discovering that most people actually read it completely differently.


Which still overlooks the fact that there is no way of knowing if the conclusion that most people would reach when reading the rule is anything whatsoever to do with what was originally intended. Or whether or not what was originally intended is how we're 'supposed' to play the game.


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 CrashGordon94 wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

Does it?

Or does the lack of any way to get the Ravenwing rule on other characters clearly indicate that allowing 3 HQs was either an error or something built in to accomodate a later supplement?

Yes it does, it's clear as day with 0% doubt. .

Why?

Yes there is, when something is clearly shown it's clearly shown, cut it out.

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
Yes there is, when something is clearly shown it's clearly shown, cut it out.

My point was that being 'clear' is not the same as being 'intended'.

In the 4th/5th edition Ork codex, a whole bunch of units had Mob Rule despite receiving no benefit from it. They clearly had it... whether it was supposed to do something for them, or they simply weren't supposed to have that rule was not so clear, until GW issued errata that fixed it.

This is no different. You have an allowance for 3 HQs, but only one HQ you can actually use. You've chosen to assume that this clearly means that any other HQ is supposed to be able to be included. But that's only one possibility here. It's equally possible that the allowance to have 3 HQs was simply an error, and with no evidence either way you have insufficient information to make any sort of declaration about RAI.


And even if you can determine RAI, that still doesn't tell you how to actually play it. Ask anyone who wanted to field an Assassin from Codex Daemonhunters without an Inquisitor Lord and retinue tagging along for a ride how much RAI counted for in that situation...

A clear intention is a clear intention, no amount of arbitrary skepticism changes that.
The Ravenwing HQ problem is one of those times, the intention is made clear, there's no way the HQ slots are a mistake as it's highly specifically made out that way, even in that force diagram thingy! This is a clear cut RAI versus RAW thing and the sort of thing that's the reason for the term RAI to exist. And I'm sure there are others, this is just the one I'm most familiar with.
Yes there are times when it's not valid to be used, but sometimes it is. Sometimes there isn't an obvious intention but that doesn't make the obvious ones any less obvious. I hate to say it but it kind of sounds like the misuses/abuses of the term have gotten you a big grudge against the concept and have made you want to rail against it as a whole. The thing is there are both valid and invalid times to use it as I gave examples of both.
In fact, I don't know why you pointed out that knowing RAI doesn't necessarily tell you how to fix it, I said that in my initial post too, did you skip to just the part you didn't like? :/

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
I hate to say it but it kind of sounds like the misuses/abuses of the term have gotten you a big grudge against the concept and have made you want to rail against it as a whole.

There is no railing going on here. In a discussion on the merits of RAW vs RAI, I'm explaining why I feel that RAI is overused and frequently misapplied.

The thing is there are both valid and invalid times to use it as I gave examples of both.

Indeed you did. And I pointed out that your example of a valid use of the term wasn't actually any such thing.

The fact that you disagree that there might be other possibilities doesn't change the fact that you're only guessing that the single interpretation you consider valid is the actual intention of the writer.

 insaniak wrote:
Unless you've conducted some sort of research prior to advancing that opinion, this is not at all the case.

As I said insaniak, it's perfectly possible for anyone to challenge my unresearched opinion, that most people consider the sky blue.

Some things are pretty obvious even without the need for formal research.

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
Yes there is, when something is clearly shown it's clearly shown, cut it out.

No. It's that simple. You can never, ever be sure of someone's intention unless said person openly tells you about it. It's basic common sense. You can be 99,99% sure about what someone intended to do, but you can never be fully sure. That goes for tabletop as well as for anything else in life, there always is a tiny margin of error involved.

 Sigvatr wrote:

 CrashGordon94 wrote:
Yes there is, when something is clearly shown it's clearly shown, cut it out.

No. It's that simple. You can never, ever be sure of someone's intention unless said person openly tells you about it. It's basic common sense. You can be 99,99% sure about what someone intended to do, but you can never be fully sure. That goes for tabletop as well as for anything else in life, there always is a tiny margin of error involved.

I'd argue that the 99.99% is more than good enough then the other side is trying to argue the 00.01%.

There are much better raw vs arguments than the ravenwing one, and to back up a previous post, around here we decided to go with rai and allowed the hq's, so did the 5 other local clubs, majority rules and we all independently thought it was rai, so the intent is pretty clear.

But here's the black and white of it.

Raw has a bad name, the term not the actual meaning, these are oddly not the Same thing, as to be frank, it allows a lot of cheating, rules bending and general tfg behavior, while the smug person doing it uses the poorly written rules as a shield. I've been places where the mere mention of the term "raw" will have you labeled a rules Lawer or cheat, which is sad, as it's a tool like any other thing.

Then you have rai, only the raw players have an issue with this, as it undermines their view of the game, and it encourages discussion of what was intended as opposed to simply allowing the rules abuse or cheating to continue, they claim the thoughts of the designers can never be known, and in some cases this is true, others it is not, there are quite a few cases where rai simply doesn't work, and vice versa, but the raw players refuse to accept this view, they would likely still refuse to accept it even if the designer was infront of them telling them the way the rule works, they would simply say "that's not how it's written Mr Thorpe" or whatever. Raw players need to accept that rai is simply another tool to use to make sense of the ruleset.

Use rai and raw, rai first, raw second, rai is talking to your group, and seeing how they think the rule is intended, if a consensus is made, that's correct, regardless of any other factor as that's the way your group has ruled it for your group, result may Vary from Group to group of course.
Failing a consensus you move to raw, and try to play it as written, and if that fails, you email gw, sure results may vary but it's good enough to just get a single.ruling and carry on as if it's a faq, for your group.

now, dare I ask, is there anything wrong with playing RAW?

my brother and I play occasionally at a local game store, they are entirely RAI, with a lot of houserules.

I play basically entirely RAW, only using RAI arguments when stuff is stupid broken (canoptek harvest rules issue, deepstriking fortifications), and when we were playing, a rules issue came up, I said my side of the argument, he said his. We couldn't agree, so I simply said, wanna roll off? I won the roll, and he starts complaining about RAI and gets people involved from all over the store. Calling me a rules lawyer and stuff of the sort (even though the rule in question disadvantaged me).

is there a stigma associated with this way of playing the game?

 gummyofallbears wrote:
now, dare I ask, is there anything wrong with playing RAW?

my brother and I play occasionally at a local game store, they are entirely RAI, with a lot of houserules.

I play basically entirely RAW, only using RAI arguments when stuff is stupid broken (canoptek harvest rules issue, deepstriking fortifications), and when we were playing, a rules issue came up, I said my side of the argument, he said his. We couldn't agree, so I simply said, wanna roll off? I won the roll, and he starts complaining about RAI and gets people involved from all over the store. Calling me a rules lawyer and stuff of the sort (even though the rule in question disadvantaged me).

is there a stigma associated with this way of playing the game?

No your doing what you should, using a good mix of both techniques, while you lean towards raw, that's fine, I lean towards rai, also fine, and you couldn't agree so you rolled off, also absolutely fine, you've done everything a reasonable person should to be fair.

And yes, there is a stigma attached to players who strictly adhere to raw, simply due to the few that use it to break the game.

Example in 5th a raw rules Lawer used to not take saves on his marines as the rules said "you may take saves" or some such, this allowed him to fall back due to casualties to avoid assaults, was it raw, yep, was it rai, absolutely not, but it was right there in the rules, this comes with the obvious caveat that it was a while ago, so a few details may have been forgotten, either way you could see his clear intention to "break the spirit of the game" which is a big no no these days, he ran out of people to play in the end and had to cave to peer pressure to not be an ass hat when playing the game, and now he gets games, other places may of course not have the stigma attached.

Yoyoyo wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
Unless you've conducted some sort of research prior to advancing that opinion, this is not at all the case.

As I said insaniak, it's perfectly possible for anyone to challenge my unresearched opinion, that most people consider the sky blue.

And most people would consider this a strawman argument.

Given how fickle GW is with rules writing, we have a solid baseline to know that what GW intended isn't always the most logical, or the most balanced, or the most realistic and sometimes it's not even the thing that is closest to what they've written down


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Formosa wrote:
it allows a lot of cheating, rules bending and general tfg behavior, while the smug person doing it uses the poorly written rules as a shield.

Ya know I have had the exact opposite problem on more than one occasion, people who have bent the rules in their favour under the guise of what they think was intended and then whinge about it being what was intended, leading to long discussions about what was actually intended.

RAI can be used as a shield for TFG behaviour just as much as RAW can. Labels which can be used as catch all arguments in place of proper discussion are the tools of TFG's to act FG-ish which is why we should stop using them.

 Formosa wrote:


I'd argue that the 99.99% is more than good enough then the other side is trying to argue the 00.01%.

Aye. Just argueing semantics here and as long as you are not 100% sure, RAW is not RAI.

Raw has a bad name

SHOT THROUGH THE HEART!

...sorry.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Given how fickle GW is with rules writing, we have a solid baseline to know that what GW intended isn't always the most logical, or the most balanced, or the most realistic and sometimes it's not even the thing that is closest to what they've written down .

This, in a nutshell, is my main problem with claims of 'clear' RAI.

We've had an awful lot of rules that were just downright absurd, that turned out to be absurd intentionally. Last edition, for example, we had two interpretations of the Look Out Sir rule, one of which was fast and intuitive, and the other which forced players in certain situations to roll 40 saves one... at... a... sodding... time. When GW got around to clarifying it in the FAQ, it turned out that the 'one at a time' interpretation was, against all expectation, exactly the way they wanted it to work, something that has continued into the current edition.


If you had asked me prior to that FAQ what the intention was, I would have said that it would have been ridiculous for GW to have intended that latter interpretation, and so the first one was obviously the way it should be played. Hell, it's how most people I encountered at that time were playing it, and how a lot of them continued to play it even after GW pointed out it was wrong.

To be fair, a lot of games play perfectly fine when using the strictest reading of Rules as Written.

Games Workshop does not write rules so precise, although I do believe that sometimes the intention is quite clear. Mostly this comes about because they don't homogenize their terms.

For example:

In Age of Sigmar, there is a rule that wizards can cast spells on their warscrolls in addition to the two generic spells in the core rules.

Many warscrolls allow units to be summoned and express this by stating that certain wizards "know" the summoning spell.

The rules have no mechanical use for "knowing" a spell. Most players would figure that "know" means "can cast" but the strictest RAW reading fails to make that leap.

RAW unless RAW is stupid. With GW, that happens more often than other systems. While it's easy to argue that you can't assume intention (hence where RAW vs. RAI came in to existence), you can make some fairly safe assumptions, and fall back on RAW if people can't be civil about "GW forgot to put Bikes give RW."

...And then there's MYTH. Chunks of that game can't even be played RAW. As in, you get part-way through setup or maybe all the way to the first turn, and then you realize that you need to make major assumptions or you can't progress.

Basically I tend to go for RAW first and continue to do so for some time. There is often a reason why a certain rule is written the way it is, and I do believe that not all flaws, nor all such reasons I mentioned, suddenly appear during the first, second, third, or even fourth time you play a game. Any game. Not just 40K.

After some extensive game time, I might decide to switch to RALI, or Rules As Likely Intended. Yes, I do think I am unable to look inside the mind of each and every game designer. I am not telepath, I am no psychologist. But I am a grown-up man who has some experience in the world of gaming (currently in my 30th year of RPG's, for example) so I do think I might be qualified to make an educated guess as to what a certain rule was likely intended to accomplish. Fortunately, I tend to play casually only. I have no WAAC opponents who feverishly defend each and every rule interpretation that benefits them and assault every rule that is a nuisance. So most of our rules discussions tend to be very relaxed.

RAW until something comes along about a Flamestorm Cannon shooting out lightning, rain and thunder instead of flames. Then go for RAI

RAI... whether or not 40K RAW is broken or not is a discussion for a different thread. I play RAI because it's just more fun.

For example, I was talking with the manager of my local GW. I was asking about Fortificatios and where they had to be placed. He said within 12" of the side you start on. Then he went on to say that it's really up to how you want to play. He personally would rather set up his foritifaction in the middle of the board/table and have his opponent come at him from all sides as it'd make for a game that's more fun.

SG

RAI unless you find yourself disagreeing on what the intention was. Then it is RAW.