# RAW? What's RAW?



## jmucchiello (Nov 5, 2004)

> But can I really guess better than the accumulated experience of the players of this game, as encoded in the RAW? The RAW are a product of thousands of campaigns. I have 20 years gaming experience. The RAW represent hundreds of thousands of times that.



Okay, I'm feeling dumb. I've been around here for 3 years, played RPGs for nearly 25. What the heck does RAW mean in this quote? I've seen the term in many meta-game discussions and nothing parses for me. Did I miss a memo or what?


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## Thornir Alekeg (Nov 5, 2004)

I beleive it stands for Rules As Written.


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## Psion (Nov 5, 2004)

Rules As Written


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## Desdichado (Nov 5, 2004)

Yep.  I hadn't seen it until now, suddenly, it's popping up all over the place.


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## jmucchiello (Nov 5, 2004)

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> Yep.  I hadn't seen it until now, suddenly, it's popping up all over the place.



Yeah, where'd it come from that people feel so free to just throw it around?


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## Ambrus (Nov 5, 2004)

Yeah. Had me scratching my head for a few days until I figured it out.

These younguns these days, always making up silly slang words for stuff, like "cool", "awesome" and "linux"...


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## reanjr (Nov 5, 2004)

jmucchiello said:
			
		

> Okay, I'm feeling dumb. I've been around here for 3 years, played RPGs for nearly 25. What the heck does RAW mean in this quote? I've seen the term in many meta-game discussions and nothing parses for me. Did I miss a memo or what?




Don't feel dumb, I spent probably 30 straight minutes scouring RPG boards for context and thinking about it before it came to me.  And I'm pretty good with chat TLAs.


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## Eosin the Red (Nov 5, 2004)

TLAs?

Illumination please. I hope that you are trying to be obscure    I would hate to think two acronyms have snuck by me.


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## fafhrd (Nov 5, 2004)

[Three letter acronyms] I believe.


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## Deset Gled (Nov 5, 2004)

Personally, I'm not a big fan of the abbreviation (or term, really) "RAW", as I think it's a rather clunky way to say something.  In almost every situation where someone says "RAW", I think that "SRD" works much better, as it is a reference to a specific set of documents, and works much better grammatically.  In the cases where SRD doesn't work, RAW is usually pretty bad in terms of grammar.  Not necessarily incorrect, but definetally not the kind of sentance structure people would use in speach or a technical writing document (which is what most rules arguements that reference the term RAW should be).


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## jmucchiello (Nov 5, 2004)

Why was this moved to Meta? This isn't a discussion about the boards, it's a discussion of currently vogue RPG term. 

Not that it makes a difference to me now. I've gotten an answer but it still feels like a General RPG topic to me.


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## Fieari (Nov 6, 2004)

Three Letter Acronym:
TLA

Four Letter Acronym:
ETLA (Extended TLA)

Five Letter Acronym:
EETLA (Expanded ETLA)


Yeah, RAW had me going for a little while as well.  But it does have a nice sort of feel to it... The raw rules, no cooking here!  RAW.

Some other acronymns I've seen:

IDHTBWM: I don't have the book with me
IANARL: I am not a rules lawyer

And the one that I'm astounded I actually parsed on my first try...

IYKWIMAITYD: If you know what I mean and I think you do


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## nopantsyet (Nov 6, 2004)

Fieari said:
			
		

> And the one that I'm astounded I actually parsed on my first try...
> 
> IYKWIMAITYD: If you know what I mean and I think you do



Amazingly, I had the exactly same experience. There must be some universal cue hidden in there.

But I couldn't figure out RAW. Go figure. I had to stumble across this thread to find out.


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## Olive (Nov 7, 2004)

jmucchiello said:
			
		

> Why was this moved to Meta? This isn't a discussion about the boards, it's a discussion of currently vogue RPG term.




Cos it's a question about board jargon.


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## der_kluge (Nov 11, 2004)

While we're on the subject of acronyms, what is CoC?  I saw that somewhere, and couldn't figure out what it was.


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## Knight Otu (Nov 11, 2004)

Code of Conduct, propably. Would that fit?


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## Piratecat (Nov 11, 2004)

CoC is almost certainly Call of Cthulhu.


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## Crothian (Nov 11, 2004)

It could be Code of Conduct, but I've also seen and used it to refer to Call of Cthulhu.


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## Ankh-Morpork Guard (Nov 11, 2004)

Crothian said:
			
		

> It could be Code of Conduct, but I've also seen and used it to refer to Call of Cthulhu.



 ...there's a difference?


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## Knight Otu (Nov 11, 2004)

Piratecat said:
			
		

> CoC is almost certainly Call of Cthulhu.



 Is it a good sign or a bad sign for my sanity that this possibility did not even cross my mind?


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