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Rule Playing

 Rule Playing
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 A specific form of Role Playing, mostly applied to Tabletop RPGs.
Rule-playing occurs whenever the rules begin to dictate not just whether a particular action succeeds or fails, but how the overall story progresses. This can be good or bad, depending on the general opinion of the gaming group. It does, however, tend to be in contrast to what Tabletop RPGs were created to do. (Supposedly, anyway.)
There are many things that can bring rule-playing about. For one, if the players don't pay attention to what their characters would want to do in a situation, and instead spend all of their attention on what the rules let them do, that's rule-playing. For another, if the game master takes a heavy-handed approach to rules enforcement, requiring a skill check for everything and giving only the standard bonuses, then the players will be required to rule-play if they want to stay alive. However, rules-heavy gameplay doesn't always devolve into rule-playing; skilled game masters will often give bonus modifiers to players who are roleplaying their characters well.
Advertisement:propertag.cmd.push(function() { proper_display('tvtropes_content_3'); })Rule-playing is the dominant mode of play in computer and console RPGs, because there's no game master there to give roleplaying bonuses. It is the preferred play style of Rules Lawyers and Stop Having Fun, Guys. The spiritual opposite to Screw the Rules, I Have Plot!.
The Rule of Cool may be a rule, but a game master who follows it is not considered to be rule-playing. The same applies to the Rule of Drama, Rule of Funny, Rule of Scary, and any other rule that is vague and open to interpretation.
 Rule Playing
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 Rule Playing
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 Rule Playing / int_6ac55ec7
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 Dungeons & Dragons:
Early editions are the Ur-Example. Player Characters are generated by rolling up The Six Stats at random and then seeing which Character Class you qualify to play. Want to play a wizard? You just have to hope the dice give you a high enough Intelligence score. In practice, most groups use House Rules to be more lenient and flexible.
A possible drawback of the more miniatures-rule heavy editions of D&D (notably third and fourth) is that especially during combat players may focus more on moving their physical playing pieces around and choosing actions from an established standard list and less on actually playing their characters as such.
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 Dungeons & Dragons (Tabletop Game)
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 Old editions of Traveller are infamous for having random character generation tables that can kill a character before play even starts. The current edition allows much more choice in the process and makes "killer character creation" ("Iron Man") optional.
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 Traveller (Tabletop Game)
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 GURPS (Tabletop Game) / int_e6afba8d
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 Rule Playing