# Chicanery: No

There is a concept I picked up from the Onyx Path forums, from a link that is now dead and a post I can no longer find. That concept is the Chicanery tag, and while I’ve primarily used it for tabletop RPGs (think Dungeons & Dragons) I find it applicable elsewhere. If you happen to be better at searching the forums than I am, a link would be lovely.

Chicanery:   
Noun.  
The use of trickery to achieve a political, financial, or legal purpose.  
From French *chicanerie*, from *chicaner* ‘to quibble’.

I. 
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Imagine a magic power in a roleplaying game that says “You may change your features to look like another humanoid. You can change your entire appearance, even your sex, but cannot look like something significantly larger or smaller, or anything that isn’t humanoid.” Imagine it being positioned as a basic disguise power, not too high level. 

Now imagine doing your level best to rules-lawyer this power and break it over your knee.

Can I change my features to have gold fingernails, clip my fingernails, and sell the gold? Can I change myself to look exactly like the queen? How much larger is “significantly” larger anyway, can I get tall enough for the extra reach to matter in a fight? Can I change into someone much more attractive and get a charisma boost? Can I change into a humanoid creature with claws, and cut myself free of these ropes I’m tied with? Can I change into a magic humanoid creature whose hair is on fire and have my hair be on fire, then light a match off it? Can I change into a humanoid creature with wings, then fly? Hey, I just got stabbed- can I change into me, but without the open wound? If so, does that heal me?

This kind of thing can be brainstormed by a good player in about five minutes, and a lot of it will be shut down by a skilled Dungeon Master just as fast. You can see the scar tissue of it in the fact that some versions of this power are [about a page long](https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/alterSelf.htm), mostly disclaimers of what you can’t do. It seems excessive, especially since the basic disguise power is both a fun fantasy trope and also not that complicated. Wouldn’t it be great to have a rulebook that wasn’t three hundred pages long?

And yet, that kind of clever rules-lawyering can lead to some fun moments in roleplaying games. 

Enter “Chicanery: No” and its partner, “Chicanery: Yes.”

II.
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Here’s the idea:

When writing rules, game designers sometimes want you to explore the edge cases of an ability and try to push it as hard as they can. Other times, they want you to just do the obvious, sensible thing. 

This often affects an ability’s power budget. If the designer things there’s potentially for impressive combinations or edge cases, they’ll often deliberately make an ability weaker than it otherwise would be. If the designer carves away any of the toe-holds a munchkin would use, they’re often willing to make the ability stronger. But listing what you can’t do with an ability is kind of a game of whack-a-mole, and usually makes the description in the rules longer. So, what if instead there was a single line on powers that just said “Chicanery: Yes/No” and if it was Yes the player was invited to get crazy with it, vs if it was No when the DM is encouraged to be conservative in interpretation?

I like this idea.

I’ve never seen it used explicitly in a game, though I often interpret detailed and complicated rules as inviting a bit of Chicanery. In Magic: The Gathering, basically anything technically complying with the rules is valid. In [Microlite20](https://donjon.bin.sh/m20/Microlite20.pdf), rules-lawyering seems rude.

Other situations invite more or less Chicanery. Recipes are Chicanery: Yes, if you want to bake that pumpkin pie with a bit of cardamom go for it. Taxes are archetypically considered Chicanery: No, if you think you’ve found a creative loophole to get away without paying taxes the IRS is probably not going to be amused. 

I want to note that Chicanery isn't about whether or not you can *break* rules. That's a whole different topic. Chicanery the way I'm using it here is about how far you push interpretations. On the Yes extreme, you have the unfounded versions like "hey, does a Fireball spell provide motive thrust for a rocket? On the No extreme, you have the kind of heavily supported, obviously within-bounds uses like a fireball dealing 1d6 damage per caster level or posting "I plan to vote against that candidate" in the USA. At the very far end of Chicanery: No you get things like [Marit Ayin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marit_ayin), where something is banned that *looks too much* like it's breaking the rules, even if it perfectly follows them.

The term of art in game design for phrase attached to an ability or character which doesn't do anything on its own but toggles other rules and interpretations on or off is a 'tag.' Thus, this would be called a 'Chicanery tag.' 

III.
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How about social norms?

There aren’t explicitly, universally agreed upon social norms. There’s general principles, there’s common wisdom, there’s Miss Manners, but none of those are ironclad. And so, it depends. Generally I think American society is Chicanery: No though. Consider the following examples:

First, there’s a sense of what’s racist to say. You might think if you’re clever it’ll be fine. Observationally, “I don’t think this is technically racist, surely if I say it nobody will be mad at me” has not been a successful strategy the last ten years.

Second, if you come up with something wildly and completely unexpected, you will find there’s often a rule that basically reads ‘don’t come up with anything wildly and completely unexpected.’ How about painting a jellyfish on your face for a job interview?

You will find subcultures where particular kinds of Chicanery are welcome! “Write very long [BDSM/Decision Theory/Dungeons and Dragons fanfic](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zRHGQ9f6deKbxJSji/review-planecrash)”[^zgafc0qcw9] turned out to be basically fine for one of the two authors. The other author, as I understand it, firmly does not want to be publicly connected to it.

Third, consider pornography. Sure, sure, you know it when you see it, but consider: If you have to ask, "hey, I'm not sure and this is an edge case, but do you think this is pornographic?" then it probably got banned from Tumblr in 2018. The rule doesn't have to be all encompassing to not be welcome in a first grade classroom. I'm not going full "Michelangelo's David is naked, therefore it's porn" here. Instead I'm pointing out that the edge cases tend to be ruled conservatively in many cases, and for good reason.

How about truth?

Sometimes stretching the truth is invited. If I'm telling you a story about a fish me and my uncle caught, it was this big, fought like the devil. . . yeah that story has a bit of chicanery in the details, parts exaggerated for effect even if they is a kernel of truth there. If I'm on the witness stand having been just sworn in for testimony, my words ought to have a strict relationship to what actually happened as best I know it. 

(This suggests we might also benefit from a 'Chicanery: Medium' or a 'Chicanery: You know, the normal amount'. On the other hand, Chicanery is most useful in places where precisely specifying the lines isn't worth it.)

IV.
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A few days ago I talked about the [rules on forum moderation](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CzyGJzESo7vm75KKz/pick-two-concise-comprehensive-or-clear-rules), using that as a jumping off point into the writing of rules in lots of cases. The Chicanery tag is another lens by which to view rules.

A rule on profanity might be fine with edge cases. I dimly remember a Star Wars MMO I played growing up that had a No Profanity rule, whose mods cheerfully ignored any swearing done using the alien languages from the novels. There was less wiggle room when it came to linking porn, though someone probably could have gotten away with pictures of Princess Leia in a golden bikini. 

Consider a drug policy. If the federal government asks you're taking any illegal drugs and you respond with "it's a legal gray area" then I predict that conversation is not about to go well for you. If it's a nootropics conference, I think you're fine. If anything, they might give you a high five.

LessWrong is in theory a forum about rationality. Astral Codex Ten meetups are about ~~ṛta~~ Scott's blog. If LessWrong wrote down rules, they might write them as "talk about rationality (Chicanery Yes) and don't post porn[^c1pnw4o7wtn] (Chicanery: No.)" If Astral Codex Ten meetups wrote down rules, they might write them as "talk about Scott's blog (Chicanery: Yes) and don't doxx people to newspapers (Chicanery: No.)"

When writing or reading rules, consider how much Chicanery seems reasonable or expected.

[^zgafc0qcw9]: Pathfinder fanfic, not D&D fanfic. I am the exact kind of pedant who cares about that distinction, I'm writing this for an audience that might not know what Pathfinder is. 

[^c1pnw4o7wtn]: I actually don't know what the LessWrong team's stance on porn is.