Please avoid using the RAI acronym, or use it carefully & be clear in context

Question

This meta exists to explain some issues with the RAI acronym. It has a couple of issues with its usage, and often get asked to clarify it. You've probably been pointed to this meta in relation to a request to clarify some usage of the acronym in a post. It attempts to summarise a couple of issues people will regularly have to cover in requesting such a clarification — this meta exists to save them the effort of re-explanation when it's difficult to explain in the size of a comment what's going on behind their request.

If they've pointed out which issue's going on, please refer to that section.

First issue: RAI can mean two completely different things.

It can stand for either of these:

• Rules As Intended — an assertion about what the person who wrote the rules meant by them.
• Rules As Interpreted — what you think they say.

It can also have other readings, and some readers may not be aware of the reading you intended to convey.

Rather than use the "RAI" acronym, it's often better to say “rules as intended” or “rules as interpreted” in full so that people know what you mean. If you do want to use the acronym, please make sure it's very clear in context, such as by only using the acronym as shorthand after you've already spelled out those words.

Bear in mind that while we're a site by experts, we're also trying to assist and guide beginner and intermediate audiences. They may be unsure what you mean based on their colloquial experiences.

Second issue: Making assumptions for Rules As Intended.

There's lots of precedent for errors in RPG writing. An author picks some ambiguous wording which reads differently to what they intended; mechanics get changed or dropped during production which changes how a feature functions; an editor “helpfully” makes a revision which breaks something; or an author has a deadline of ten spells to finish by sundown and are focused on quantity without time to spare on polish (as RPG designers sometimes describe in podcasts).

If we're honest, we usually really don't know what designers intended for the words we're reading.

Despite that, there's a common trend in RPG advice: an expert will make an educated guess about what the writer intended, conclude their guess is correct because it makes sense, and then provide advice asserting what they guessed is the case. That's done with the best of intentions, but really, there's no guarantee the guess is correct, so doing this can be misleading and problematic.

We prefer (and may require) that if you make an assertion about an author's intentions, you back it up with evidence of their intentions: a reference to the game text discussing the game's philosophy, a quote from the designer, etc. Doing so improves confidence in your answer and teaches people more about the game they're playing. If you can't produce such a citation, it's probably best to drop the part where you're asserting about their intentions, and focus instead on working with what you do know for sure. It's okay if you don't know for sure what they meant.

Answer 1

I agree.

While I personally have never heard "Rules As Interpreted" for RAI, and always knew it as "Intended" - ironically, people generally substitute their own opinion for "intended" anyway. Unless the question is asking for developer citations and is tagged designer-reasons, "RAI" is a signpost saying to me "look at this question and see if it needs to be closed as opinion-based."

If you really want to know intent ask a question that fits the designer-reasons tag. If you are just looking for a reasonable interpretation or you are just saying "how you read it" - say that, you don't need an ambigious abbreviation for it.

Answer 2

One does not have to ask the author to analyze their intent

If that were the case, studying Shakespeare would be pointless (or more pointless if you are of a scientific rather than humanities bent :-))

There are some ways of thinking of this that may (or may not) bring clarity:

Literary Theory

If the rules are to be considered as a literary work then Rules as Intended is a function of how to deal with Authorial Intent.

These range from the New Criticism view which holds that the intent of the author is irrelevant "the text is the primary source of meaning, and any details of the author's desires or life are secondary". This is essentially what we mean by Rules as Written

To the Cambridge School contextualism which states that we need to consider the social environment in which the work was made - for role-playing games this would include the prior works that influenced it and the social norms of the community at the time it was written. This is possibly what we mean by Rules as Intended but it spreads the net wider than authorial intent.

Weak Internationalism which says that both the readers' response and author's intent must be combined - generously this could be what the OP refers to when saying "an expert will make an educated guess about what the writer intended".

And then there are the strange ways of looking at it - I would love to see a Marxist interpretation of D&D.

Legal Theory

Alternatively (or as well as), RPG rules could be thought of as akin to laws and the techniques that courts use to interpret them can be applied. The primary methods are:

• the literal approach - our RAW.
• the golden rule - reject RAW if it results in an absurdity or is inconsistent with the rest of the rules.
• the mischief rule - what is the problem this rule is trying to fix? This is really only applicable to errata.
• purposive approach - what are the rules trying to achieve? Interpret them so that is achieved.

In a legal context, these rules are applied in the context of looking beyond the statute to the "intent" of the legislators to the extent that this can be determined (e.g. from speeches made or press releases explaining the new law etc.).

Answer 3

For D&D 5E, the term is defined in Sage Advice Compendium. RAI means Rules As Intended by the game developers:

RAI Some of you are especially interested in knowing the intent behind a rule. That’s where RAI comes in: “rules as intended.” This approach is all about what the designers meant when they wrote something. In a perfect world, RAW and RAI align perfectly, but sometimes the words on the page don’t succeed at communicating the designers’ intent. Or perhaps the words succeed with one group of players but not with another.

Answer 4

Perhaps "Rules As Interpreted" needs to be discouraged or never written as an abbreviation.

1. It's a synonym for RAW. When explaining how a rule is written, what you are explaining is how you interpret the rule. There is no difference between "Rules As Written" and "Rules As Interpreted."
2. Very few people have ever heard "Rules As Interpreted", few even seem to use it. On rpg.stackexchange searching "Rules As Intended" gives 238 questions, "Rules As Interpreted" gives 27 results. "RAI" is used 784 times, 94 times in dnd-3.5e, 15 in dnd-4e, 516 in dnd-5e, 3 times in dnd - making up more than 80% of RAI usage. We can conclude that the vast majority of usage of RAI means "Rules As Intended". Even discussing "Rules As Interpeted" only serves to confuse people because of the similarity to "Rules As Intended".
3. "Rules As Intended" is official WotC terminology. There are more than 25,000 questions about dnd. Maybe the the popularity of the franchise and its dominance on this board should lend some favour to not confusing askers with terminology that only really exists here.
4. Rather than telling people not to use RAI, it would be less hostile to new users to let them continue to use common terminology on the site.