by Elton Gahr

Created on: March 28, 2009   Last Updated: March 31, 2009

Role playing games are meant to be fun and one of the keys to making certain that you have fun is to deal quickly with any social dynamics which can pop up quickly. One of the most troublesome of the personal problems which crop up in is that of the rules lawyer. Rules lawyers come in two types, players and Game master's and dealing with these two situations are completely different problems, one which is usually solvable and one which typically isn't but there are things that you can do to deal with both and here are a few ideas that may help.

Dealing with a game master who is a rules lawyer is typically less problematic than dealing with a player, game masters are expected to know the rules, expected to enforce them and a good game master will do both, but that doesn't mean that a game master can't be a rules lawyer and that this can't become a problem.

The first of these problems is when the game master is wrong. The problem in this situation is three fold, one, in order to argue with him you must become the rules lawyer which is a problem and two, arguing with him disrupts the flow of the game, and third and most importantly you are going to lose. The game master is the judge and jury of the rules in his own game and even if the book says something he can change it. My suggestion in this situation is to bite your tongue during the game and, if it is vital to your character, talk to the game master later.

Another problem that can come up from a rules lawyer as game master is the game slowing to a crawl. This typically happens when you have a game master and at least one player who are rules lawyers and at this point the game becomes closer to a legal brief than a game. Two of them flip through pages trying to find a point that will disprove the other while you wander into the other room and start watching the office because if you're going to watch people act like idiots it might as well be funny.

The best possible solution I have found to this is to find a rules light game for the group to play and suggest it. This doesn't have to be your permanent game, many of the best rules light games are one shot games, but if you can get them to play a couple of the rules light games they might find that they like playing without arguing about the rules so much and pull back, if not at least the arguments will be shorter.

The second issue is a rule lawyer player. If you are the game master there are two problems with this. One, you end up with a co-game master if you aren't

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