The SR3 group I am in is planning a test run of SR4 thus I have started reading the boards again. People keep quoting RAW as an official source for rule guidance but I can't figure out what that could possiblely be an acronym for.

Thanks for the enlightenment.

Rules As Written.

Thanks for the answer.

Well, at least for me anyways, it carries an air of slavish devotion to the rules, which is why I always type it as RAW, or sometimes, RAW if I'm feeling especially peevish.

A while back someone on the boards claimed it came from the DnD Boards, and you know that you can always believe everything posted on the internet.

People mention the RAW because house rules get touted and debated a lot here, but someone bringing up a house rule without identifying it as such can confuse someone who is new to the game. So you will frequently get statements like "That's not what the RAW says," or "Strictly by the RAW...".


But the RAW itself can be confusing, because some of the rules either allow for a lot of GM discretion, are ambiguously worded, or both. It's not a problem when the rules say that a certain pistol does 5P damage, but things like called shots and longshot tests get vigorously debated, with lots of disagreement on how the RAW should work for them.

Since the SR4 designers did their best- and a good job of it in my opinion- to allow for a playstyles ranging from very gritty street level to jet set cinematic craziness there were several places(called shots and longshot tests being two of the main ones) where they basically gave very basic rules and left the nitty gritty up to the GM instead of spending several pages defining how things worked for low power, med power, and high power games. This irritates the hell out of some people, I on the other hand appreciate the flexibility inherent therein and am not bothered at all, but then I plan on running several games that span the power levels and like not having to change what is already there so that my players can read it and know the basics and know that I won't tell them no on a listed example unless I have a damn good reason. So... yeah, RAW gets debated alot on those two points for those reasons.

Oh, YMMV is your mileage may vary. Took me forever to figure that one out as I have never heard someone say that off of these and the DnD boards. Not once in real life, and it was always abbreviated on the boards.

Chris

I think though, that since there is no 'House Rules' subboard to exile all houserules debates to, that using RAW here is kind of important, since there is no other way to know if someone is discussing an actual rule, or trying to impose their house-rules on others.

if they dont explicitly declare that they are talking about a house rule, they should get a visit from the love troll...

Considering how often rules get errat-ed, is it wise to only go by what's written ??
I've seen whole Campaigns die because the rules for a RPG changed, and the change was enough to make Characters and/or Backgrounds very different.

I'd imagine devotion to the Rules is a situation mainly for new SR players, or the dreaded Rules Lawyer - Not really for longterm Players or GMs.


My Players rarely read the rules, or sourcebooks, apart from the bits they need to know [world background, specific description of something, etc]..
..Cuts out all the rules arguments [and keeps their knowledge level to know what their Character would know] !!

That's one of the beauties of PDFs, just print out and hand to the Players the bits they need to see or have access to.

A little bit of history: "RAW" crept on this boards roughly about the time of the change over from SR3 to SR4. I know because I have used "canon" largely to denote the written rules before I switched over from SR3. For those who still remember the jive boards, I was the one that harped constantly on "canon" there and for a time, "canon" was the word used to denote the printed rules.

I hate RAW! I still normally use canon to denote the actual rules.

As much as I dislike the term RAW, "canon" when used for anything other then fluff grates on me more.

And yet canon is the (or at least one of the) correct terminology for the literal words from the literary text in question.

dont know why, but i never seem to have the mental reaction to canon that i have to raw...

"Canon" is a term usually used to refer to a religious document.

Never said it was. But it is worth mentioning that "Canon" has a wildly different connotation than "Rules as Written".

About the only thing preferable when using RAW over canon, is RAW usually gets spelled (or spelt for certain dialects) correctly. Every time I read someone using cannon when they were referring to canon made me think they were threatening to blow the adversary up if they did not immediately agree.

And I never associated RAW with wrestling until some miscreant got that thought lodged in my brain.

Hey tisoz, I think those people are right, as cannon is often more to the point than canon, don´t you think?

Cannon is much more... expressive.

hmm, now i feel like writing something involving a love troll and a cannon

it's called the Canon Companion for a reason(mainly me making that spelling mistake once and never admitting to it*g*)