This was originally a comment to @mxyzplk’s answer, which I mostly agree with, but it got too long and probably deserved its own answer:

Echoing mxyzplk’s suggestion of rules-as-written and the commentary suggesting that “rules lawyering” has massive negative connotations, I must agree. I actually would have thought of rules-lawyering as a subset of problem-players – i.e. I've got this guy who is constantly badgering me with “but the rules say!” – but I don't think we need a tag for that (and ultimately the problem-players and problem-gm tags worry me a little simply because they are so judgmental and obviously biased against whoever isn't the person asking the question). I definitely agree that “rules as written” is a more appropriate term.

However, I have two concerns with this.

##Meta Tag?

The first is that rules-as-written might be a “meta tag,” which, as I understand things, are characterized by attempting to shape the answers, and are considered a bad thing. Personally, I’m not entirely convinced that meta tags are bad, but then I’m not super-involved in tagging and don’t really know the details. In any event, I think that there definitely can be a need for users to request that answers be by “rules as written” – either to satiate a legalistic DM or player, or to try to maintain consistency (e.g. to avoid a situation where your personal houserule response turns out to contradict official material that ends up forcing you to change yet more rules), so I support rules-as-written but I thought meta-ness warranted discussion now.

##“Rules as _____” tags

I also have some concerns that this might lead to tags like rules-as-intended or rules-as-make-sense – these terms are frequently used in RPG forum debates (or, at least, in D&D forum debates), but I personally detest them because they are overused or inappropriately used.

In the case of “rules as intended,” they are often used as an invalid argument from authority – “my opinion is better than yours because clearly my interpretation is what the authors intended!” and are also frequently absolutely impossible for most of us to realistically answer – the only people who really know what was intended are the authors themselves, and unless they have made external comments on particular rules, it’s unlikely that one can provide any real evidence that a particular interpretation is intended. This tends to lead to unsolvable arguments and I would foresee a lot of such questions ending in either no real answers, or in bickering.

And as for “rules as make sense,” the simple fact is that “common sense” is a myth and just about nothing is innately “sensible” to all people. It’s basically a normative statement made by someone who has absolutely no basis for that claim.

So I’d really prefer that a new rules-as-written tag does not cause precedent for rules-as-intended or rules-as-make-sense tags. The intent of such notions is that “we accept that the rules don’t always work and we want to hear other options that disregard or change the rules,” but my sense is that really, that is the default on this site. That is, after all, why a rules-as-written would be used at all: to indicate that for a particular question, unlike the norm, we are only interested in something that can be directly cited to particular rules text(s).

This was originally a comment to @mxyzplk’s answer, which I mostly agree with, but it got too long and probably deserved its own answer:

Echoing mxyzplk’s suggestion of rules-as-written and the commentary suggesting that “rules lawyering” has massive negative connotations, I must agree. I actually would have thought of rules-lawyering as a subset of problem-players – i.e. I've got this guy who is constantly badgering me with “but the rules say!” – but I don't think we need a tag for that (and ultimately the problem-players and problem-gm tags worry me a little simply because they are so judgmental and obviously biased against whoever isn't the person asking the question). I definitely agree that “rules as written” is a more appropriate term.

However, I have two concerns with this.

Meta Tag?

The first is that rules-as-written might be a “meta tag,” which, as I understand things, are characterized by attempting to shape the answers, and are considered a bad thing. Personally, I’m not entirely convinced that meta tags are bad, but then I’m not super-involved in tagging and don’t really know the details. In any event, I think that there definitely can be a need for users to request that answers be by “rules as written” – either to satiate a legalistic DM or player, or to try to maintain consistency (e.g. to avoid a situation where your personal houserule response turns out to contradict official material that ends up forcing you to change yet more rules), so I support rules-as-written but I thought meta-ness warranted discussion now.

“Rules as _____” tags

I also have some concerns that this might lead to tags like rules-as-intended or rules-as-make-sense – these terms are frequently used in RPG forum debates (or, at least, in D&D forum debates), but I personally detest them because they are overused or inappropriately used.

In the case of “rules as intended,” they are often used as an invalid argument from authority – “my opinion is better than yours because clearly my interpretation is what the authors intended!” and are also frequently absolutely impossible for most of us to realistically answer – the only people who really know what was intended are the authors themselves, and unless they have made external comments on particular rules, it’s unlikely that one can provide any real evidence that a particular interpretation is intended. This tends to lead to unsolvable arguments and I would foresee a lot of such questions ending in either no real answers, or in bickering.

And as for “rules as make sense,” the simple fact is that “common sense” is a myth and just about nothing is innately “sensible” to all people. It’s basically a normative statement made by someone who has absolutely no basis for that claim.

So I’d really prefer that a new rules-as-written tag does not cause precedent for rules-as-intended or rules-as-make-sense tags. The intent of such notions is that “we accept that the rules don’t always work and we want to hear other options that disregard or change the rules,” but my sense is that really, that is the default on this site. That is, after all, why a rules-as-written would be used at all: to indicate that for a particular question, unlike the norm, we are only interested in something that can be directly cited to particular rules text(s).