I don’t think the alignment system works if you base it on any kind of moral or ethical relativism.
The main difference between lawful and chaotic alignments is probably the attitude toward hierarchies.
Hierarchies might be too much, social structures and conventions is a better way of looking at it.
Lawful Good characters want a well-ordered society where everyone has their place. Sure, because they’re Good, there’ll be some decent social mobility, but there will still be people with power (only those who have the wisdom to use it well, naturally) and people without (the meek who must be shepherded and protected by the strong), because that structure is easy to deal with.
Strong disagree. Lawful good says nothing about that there hase to be people with power and people without power nor that the reason for this is because it's easier. A lawful (good) person believs that there should be order to society but that order doesn't have to mean that some people neccesarily are above other people.
The Chaotic Good character, on the other hand, sees hierarchies and social stratification as inherently bad, violent structures that shackle and oppress, even if they’d being put to an ostensibly noble purpose. To the Chaotic Good character, there is no such thing as a good king, because no one is free when one person wields such disproportionate power over others, regardless of their wisdom or good intentions. Rather than shepherding the meek, the Chaotic Good character seeks to ensure they can shepherd themselves.
Again, doesn't have to be like that. Rather, a chaotic good person would let the laws and norms of society to come in the way of doing what is "good".
The difference between a lawful good person and a chaotic good person is that the lawful person will, as far as possible, strive to do good within the system whereas the chaotic person won't care about if they work within the confines of the system or not.
Again, a person who doesn't care whether they work within the law or not sounds neutral to me. "Don't care" is about as neutral as you can get. That would then put chaotic as someone who actively works against the law.
If, instead, someone who doesn't care is chaotic, that would mean the neutral "cares a little bit", which sounds ridiculous. Someone is not neutral if they care, even a little bit. It mangoes the meaning of the word, to the point where thinking of it as "plain English" no longer works (and makes my head hurt).
Again, a person who doesn't care whether they work within the law or not sounds neutral to me. "Don't care" is about as neutral as you can get. That would then put chaotic as someone who actively works against the law.
If, instead, someone who doesn't care is chaotic, that would mean the neutral "cares a little bit", which sounds ridiculous. Someone is not neutral if they care, even a little bit. It mangoes the meaning of the word, to the point where thinking of it as "plain English" no longer works (and makes my head hurt).
A neutral person balances using lawful constrictions and skirting them, because they realize there are advantages (and disadvantages) to both. Depending on what needs to be done, they could go either way (or choose to disregard minor regulations but abide by more major ones). A chaotic person doesn't value the straight and narrow that way.
If being chaotic meant deliberately working against the law just because it's the law, regardless of moral stance, it'd be straight-up anarchist.
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But where else would an anarchist fit, other than the extreme of the chaotic scale? And if that's the extreme of the chaotic scale, then someone who only breaks the law when it gets in the way, because they don't care about the law, becomes neutral. They are, as you say, balancing whether staying within the law or breaking it helps them or their cause, and choosing the path which is of most benefit regardless of whether it is lawful or not. This is the very definition of neutrality.
I've written this in the past, but my take on alignment is that there are four or five cardinal virtues and while chaotic is not exclusive with lawful, it can be incompatible.
Law's virtue is honour, chaos's virtue is freedom, good's virtue is compassion and evil's virtue is individualism. Neutrality is not a virtuous system, excepting maybe true neutrality, which might have the virtue of harmony. Neutral Good, Lawful Neutral isn't necessarily someone who tries to walk the line between Good and evil or law and chaos. It could be simply a person who doesn't care about the philosophical debate between the two.
Therefore: A lawful good is someone who believes that one must be compassionate and help the less fortunate, but to do so in a systematic way because they know that someone shouldn't get less help because they are less likeable or other emotional reason.
A chaotic good character is someone who believes that if you see the right thing to do, you do it. If they give their word to protect someone and then learn that person isn't worth protecting, they might go back on that word. Or if someone in society is someone they know to be a villain, they might not care that they are innocent (or not proven guilty) of any crime before taking action.
Neutral good is a bit more murky. It's probably someone who tries to mostly follow the rules but will consider breaking them for results.
But where else would an anarchist fit, other than the extreme of the chaotic scale? And if that's the extreme of the chaotic scale, then someone who only breaks the law when it gets in the way, because they don't care about the law, becomes neutral. They are, as you say, balancing whether staying within the law or breaking it helps them or their cause, and choosing the path which is of most benefit regardless of whether it is lawful or not. This is the very definition of neutrality.
If you define Chaotic by its extreme, you should do the same with Lawful - making only those who abhor the absence of strict rules and seek to impose strictures on everyone Lawful, and with that 99% of the population becomes Neutral.
But where else would an anarchist fit, other than the extreme of the chaotic scale? And if that's the extreme of the chaotic scale, then someone who only breaks the law when it gets in the way, because they don't care about the law, becomes neutral. They are, as you say, balancing whether staying within the law or breaking it helps them or their cause, and choosing the path which is of most benefit regardless of whether it is lawful or not. This is the very definition of neutrality.
If you define Chaotic by its extreme, you should do the same with Lawful - making only those who abhor the absence of strict rules and seek to impose strictures on everyone Lawful, and with that 99% of the population becomes Neutral.
Yes, you need to consider the two extremes. L/C is a scale, with neutral being the central part, and lawful and chaotic being the "ends".
The extreme of chaotic would be someone who seeks to subvert the rules and society as an end in itself. Similarly, they extreme of lawfulness is upholding the law and defending society as an end in itself. Those to extremes do not need a reason to do either: they will do so regardless of the damage it causes to themselves or others, or even to any mission they happen to be on. The extreme of lawfulness would have no opposition to the execution of a starving child who had stolen an apple, and the extreme off chaotic would be perfectly happy to risk their life to disrupt society by stealing an apple, even if he wasn't hungry.
There would obviously be less extreme lawful and chaotic elements. But smack bang in the middle is the person who just does what they want or need to do, regardless of whether it was legal or not. They are absolutely neutral when it comes to society and law: they don't care of it exists or what it says, they just find the best way to do what they want.
To set an example, take a person who wishes to move goods from one country to another. The extreme lawful will take it through the official checkpoint, paying any duties and taxes required and accepting any delays without complaint. The extreme chaotic would takes a back road to avoid the inspectors, even if this was dangerous or would take a long time. Anyone along the scale who was not at the extreme would, to a greater or lesser extent, evaluate the choices and decide: the lawful would look to use official channels unless there was good reason not to, and the chaotic would look to smuggle the items unless there was a good reason not to.
Then, smack bang in the middle, there is there true neutral. They will not take into account whether their actions are legal or not, except to evaluate risks and rewards. They would have no bias toward either option. If the duties or the risks of goods being impounded or delayed were too high, they would have no hesitation in smuggling. Similarly, if the smuggler's trail was too dangerous or too slow, or the risk of getting caught too high, they would have no problem using the official checkpoints and paying the duties. Whatever suits the mission the best is taken, whether legal or not, because they truly don't care about the law.
The extreme of lawfulness would have no opposition to the execution of a starving child who had stolen an apple, and the extreme off chaotic would be perfectly happy to risk their life to disrupt society by stealing an apple, even if he wasn't hungry.
This disregards the influence of the moral (Good - Evil) axis.
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At the most extreme end, I don't believe they can coexist, or at least that the extreme view will vastly outweigh the considerations of the other axis. At the absolute extreme of lawfulness, considerations of morality don't enter the picture when the law is involved, and similarly at the extreme end of chaotic. In fact, I would postulate that the same is true for good and evil: if a character is at the extreme of good, they will be good to the exclusion of all else, no matter what the law says. Similarly, pure evil will do evil whether lawful or not. The extremes at either end of either axis will necessitate a neutral stance on the other when their extreme view is triggered.
Remember, I'm only discussing the extremes in that. You could end up with the same result as described above both by absolute extreme lawfulness or by LE. Heck, with strong enough reasons, LG could be the child killer, if they believed that e.g. good will come from strong law and strong society, enough to outweigh the child's life.
The difference is that no other reasoning would enter into it for the extreme lawful. The law says a thief must be executed, the child stole the apple, therefore the child must be executed, end of story. There is no malice, no consideration of good or evil, nothing but the application of the law.
At the most extreme end, I don't believe they can coexist, or at least that the extreme view will vastly outweigh the considerations of the other axis. At the absolute extreme of lawfulness, considerations of morality don't enter the picture when the law is involved, and similarly at the extreme end of chaotic. In fact, I would postulate that the same is true for good and evil: if a character is at the extreme of good, they will be good to the exclusion of all else, no matter what the law says. Similarly, pure evil will do evil whether lawful or not. The extremes at either end of either axis will necessitate a neutral stance on the other when their extreme view is triggered.
Remember, I'm only discussing the extremes in that. You could end up with the same result as described above both by absolute extreme lawfulness or by LE. Heck, with strong enough reasons, LG could be the child killer, if they believed that e.g. good will come from strong law and strong society, enough to outweigh the child's life.
The difference is that no other reasoning would enter into it for the extreme lawful. The law says a thief must be executed, the child stole the apple, therefore the child must be executed, end of story. There is no malice, no consideration of good or evil, nothing but the application of the law.
I'm not so sure. I don't think even extremely lawful characters entirely disregard a law being arbitrary or fundamentally unfair. Such laws destabilize the system and inherently invite chaos.
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I don’t think the alignment system works if you base it on any kind of moral or ethical relativism.
The main difference between lawful and chaotic alignments is probably the attitude toward hierarchies.
Hierarchies might be too much, social structures and conventions is a better way of looking at it.
Lawful Good characters want a well-ordered society where everyone has their place. Sure, because they’re Good, there’ll be some decent social mobility, but there will still be people with power (only those who have the wisdom to use it well, naturally) and people without (the meek who must be shepherded and protected by the strong), because that structure is easy to deal with.
Strong disagree. Lawful good says nothing about that there hase to be people with power and people without power nor that the reason for this is because it's easier. A lawful (good) person believs that there should be order to society but that order doesn't have to mean that some people neccesarily are above other people.
The Chaotic Good character, on the other hand, sees hierarchies and social stratification as inherently bad, violent structures that shackle and oppress, even if they’d being put to an ostensibly noble purpose. To the Chaotic Good character, there is no such thing as a good king, because no one is free when one person wields such disproportionate power over others, regardless of their wisdom or good intentions. Rather than shepherding the meek, the Chaotic Good character seeks to ensure they can shepherd themselves.
Again, doesn't have to be like that. Rather, a chaotic good person would let the laws and norms of society to come in the way of doing what is "good".
The difference between a lawful good person and a chaotic good person is that the lawful person will, as far as possible, strive to do good within the system whereas the chaotic person won't care about if they work within the confines of the system or not.
Again, a person who doesn't care whether they work within the law or not sounds neutral to me.
A neutral person is someone who believes that there should be some laws or structures. A chaotic person doesn't have to actively go around breaking laws and/or structures just because they don't believe in them. A CG person could, for example, following a law, not because they agree with that particular law but because their good action just happens to align with said law.
And of course you are missing the whole point that we are talking about more than just "laws" here.
"Don't care" is about as neutral as you can get. That would then put chaotic as someone who actively works against the law.
Like I said, there are cases where the good actions align with the lawful actions. Are you saying that a chaotic good person needs to go around murdering people just because there are laws against murder and a chaotic good person is "someone who actively works against the law"?
If, instead, someone who doesn't care is chaotic, that would mean the neutral "cares a little bit", which sounds ridiculous.
I agree that is a ridiculous strawman you've come up with. Luckily, I've never suggested anything of the sort so we can leave that at once.
Someone is not neutral if they care, even a little bit. It mangoes the meaning of the word, to the point where thinking of it as "plain English" no longer works (and makes my head hurt).
Of course you can still care about things even if you are neutral. "Neutral" on the alignment scale doesn't mean "complete devoid of interest, feelings or opinions" but rather neutral on the scale of good to evil or lawful to chaotic. A true neutral person might care a lot about their friends or a certain cause. A good example of a neutral person would be Jayne Cobb from Firefly. He obviously care about some things (his mum and his friends) but at the same time he can be mean and even downright cruel, especially to people he doesn't care about but there are some things not even he would do. He has no qualms about selling out people he doesn't care about but he can also be immensly loyal to the people he does care about. So your statement that "Someone is not neutral if they care, even a little bit." is completelt false when it comes to D&D alignments.
I think it was fairly obvious that I meant they are not neutral on the L/C scale if they care about the law.
Given the existence of people who actively wish to subvert and break the law, that being the opposite of those who actively attempt to enforce and follow the law, the scale of lawful to chaotic must include each of those. We know lawful is one end, so chaos must be the other. That puts those who do neither in the middle... Or neutral.
Every time I see a discussion to better define alignments I can't help but feel it misses the point. Trying to group people in 9 boxes and then have an actual defined meaning on personality? You might as well just give each character a sign from the horoscope of your choosing and roleplay that.
Alignments are tendencies and really broad tendencies as that. Tight definitions can be counter productive.
In my opinion, Good/Evil is broadly how you think about 'your' people. If you want your people to be happy, healthy, and successful you are probably good. If you don't want people harmed but won't make an effort to help them and your own well being comes first you are probably neutral. If you actively wish people harm and your success is worth any cost paid by other people then you are probably evil.
Law/Chaos is your 'plays well with others' trait. Lawful characters try to look at the big picture and understand that their actions can have ripples that spread wide and they worry about things at the societal level. Chaotic characters think on a smaller and more immediate scale, they work better in small groups and tend to focus on the current goal. Neutral characters see both the big and small picture and consider them both when making decisions and plans.
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Lawful characters like rules, and prefer following rules. Whether a character is LG, LN, or LE depends on the set of rules they follow. These rules can come from a variety of sources, including civil law, religious law, philosophy, or simple personal codes of behavior.
Chaotic characters consider rules useless to harmful, and are concerned with outcomes. Whether a character is CG, CN, or CE depends on the outcomes they seek.
Neutral (law/chaos) characters are concerned with both rules and outcomes.
For example, consider a beggar stealing food.
A LG character would stop the beggar, but seek a method where the beggar can get food, or can help himself (such as giving him a job).
A LN character would stop the beggar.
A LE character would stop the beggar, and make sure his hands were cut off for stealing.
A CG character would ignore or assist the beggar.
A CN character ignores the fellow shoplifter (in practice CN is a somewhat incoherent alignment).
A CE character points out the theft, and uses the distraction to steal to shopkeeper's purse.
Neutral characters generally fall between these points.
I see Alignment in terms of what people do to make themselves happy. Good people help others, Evil people hurt them, Lawful people obey orders, and Chaotic people disobey. Those who are truly neutral, which is what seems to be under discussion at this point, don't care. The only thing that matters to them is themselves.
The character of Jayne from Firefly was brought up. I think about him from the movie Serenity in particular. Jayne is perfectly happy to kill a man in a fair fight, or if he thinks they are going to start a fair fight. He appears to be perfectly willing to kill, or steal, and he gives every indication that he enjoys a tussle. He gets beat up by a little girl, and it develops that she's very dangerous and he's likely to get in trouble over having her around, but does he kill her? Nope. Gun in hand he goes to take her for a nice shuttle ride. He's going to turn her in to the authorities with no assurance of a reward. I see Jayne as True Neutral.
Next up, how about The Operative? Here is a man who says flat out that what he does is evil. He's a monster and there is no place for him in the society he works so hard to help build. He will kill, and apologize to a dying man, then wipe his sword and start issuing orders. He will go into a situation where he knows perfectly well he is in danger, unarmed, without making any direct threats, and apparently not take umbrage when he gets shot. He may not even have become angry after he was overcome, and he was graceful in his defeat. This from a man who killed a man with a sword for no apparent reason. His victim did exactly as he was told, and betrayed his friends. He didn't even get his 30 coins, he got killed instead.
The Operative really does not strike me as Good. He's not helping other people. He's absolutely not fighting against the system or encouraging others to do so. He is well motivated, willing to do what he was told without question. He gives orders and he expect them to be followed. I have him pinned down as Lawful Neutral.
Then we have Captain Malcom Reynolds. What is he? He's a thief. That's what he does. He makes no bones about it, and he has been willing to kill in the past. He shot a man who was trying to surrender just because he was angry. He's very much willing to fight authority, to the point of volunteering to fight in a war, and yet once the war was over he stopped fighting. He has no rudder, the wind blows northerly, he goes north. He is, himself, an authority figure and expects his orders to be obeyed. He shows every evidence of being a Good man. He helps people even if it costs him. He shot a man down after he was begged to let the guy come along, but he was doing so out of compassion. It was a piece of mercy. He orders Jayne around and Jayne clearly doesn't like it, and he picks up a stray who might cause him all the trouble in the verse.
I have him penciled in as Chaotic Good, but might be convinced to erase that and put down Neutral Good instead.
If we want to range much further out, how about a comic book character? This has already been mentioned. So. The Punisher. This is a man who goes around killing people. Why? Because he wants to keep other people from having to suffer the way he did once. He kills bad guys only. He's got zero respect for the law. He holds the entire legal system in contempt and feels that they are corrupt. He is a punisher, he is The Punisher, out to right wrongs. So what Alignment is he? He cares for others, he doesn't try to make anyone suffer, he won't follow the law, he does what he thinks best. Chaotic Good.
Last up is Peter Parker. Spiderman. We are in comic books, and Spiderman is kind of the conscience of the Marvel Universe. His creed, with great power comes great responsibility, is very well known. He's out to help people, he doesn't use any more force than he has to. He's well aware that his punches could kill and he holds back a *lot* to keep that from happening. He regularly puts himself in harms way. He is most certainly Good. He's not Lawful as I see it. He's not ordering people around or taking orders, he's doing what he feels is right. He turns people over to the authorities instead of taking things into his own hands. That's Chaos in action. He is Chaotic Good, and yet he has gone head to head with The Punisher on any number of occasions.
I'm pretty neutral myself, it is true. I'm done for now. See you in the funny pages.
"A neutral person is someone who believes that there should be some laws or structures."
No, that's a slightly lawful person.
I know I say this on every alignment thread, and I’ve probably already said it on this one, but Lawful has nothing to do with the law. It’s unfortunately named. What it really means is that someone has a specific code they follow, which may or may not involve the law. So neither of these claims are fully correct.
I see Alignment in terms of what people do to make themselves happy. Good people help others, Evil people hurt them, Lawful people obey orders, and Chaotic people disobey. Those who are truly neutral, which is what seems to be under discussion at this point, don't care. The only thing that matters to them is themselves.
The problem with this is that in a society, what anyone desires for themselves often comes at the detriment of others. If I don't care about others, if I'm all that matters, that at least skirts being evil. And if I don't care about the rules of others, that at least skirts being chaotic.
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I once heard that alignments were an outgrowth of Gygax's wargames. That there were basically two factions, which they called lawful for the good guys and chaotic for the bad guys, but the names were just a shorthand. Then a third faction came along, and thus was neutral born. And since one of the ideas behind D&D was that your character would be someone who was basically a footsoldier in the wargame who would slip out of the wargame, become a hero and then slip back into the wargame after you hit name level (usually around 9 or 10) then the character would need to have a faction identification. The idea that the faction identification defined behavior was sort of bolted on later. Could be just made up, of course, but it does track with a lot of the early game systems development.
Personally, I say bring back unaligned from 4e. It's my favorite thing they canned from that edition. Most people, creatures and characters were expected to be unaligned. You only wrote down lawful on your sheet if dedication to the law was a major portion of your character's personality. Made things much simpler, avoiding just these sorts of issues.
I see Alignment in terms of what people do to make themselves happy. Good people help others, Evil people hurt them, Lawful people obey orders, and Chaotic people disobey. Those who are truly neutral, which is what seems to be under discussion at this point, don't care. The only thing that matters to them is themselves.
The problem with this is that in a society, what anyone desires for themselves often comes at the detriment of others. If I don't care about others, if I'm all that matters, that at least skirts being evil. And if I don't care about the rules of others, that at least skirts being chaotic.
I *think* you disagree with me, since you used the words "The problem with this", and yet you appear to agree with me entirely.
"In a society, what anyone desires for themselves often comes at the detriment of others." Yes. "If I don't care about others, if I'm all that matters, that at least skirts being evil." Yes. I think it skirts all the Alignments, its True Neutral. "And if I don't care about the rules of others, that at least skirts being chaotic." Yes.
I see Alignment in terms of what people do to make themselves happy. Good people help others, Evil people hurt them, Lawful people obey orders, and Chaotic people disobey. Those who are truly neutral, which is what seems to be under discussion at this point, don't care. The only thing that matters to them is themselves.
The problem with this is that in a society, what anyone desires for themselves often comes at the detriment of others. If I don't care about others, if I'm all that matters, that at least skirts being evil. And if I don't care about the rules of others, that at least skirts being chaotic.
I *think* you disagree with me, since you used the words "The problem with this", and yet you appear to agree with me entirely.
"In a society, what anyone desires for themselves often comes at the detriment of others." Yes. "If I don't care about others, if I'm all that matters, that at least skirts being evil." Yes. I think it skirts all the Alignments, its True Neutral. "And if I don't care about the rules of others, that at least skirts being chaotic." Yes.
So what exactly is the problem?
"Those who are truly neutral don't care."
If that's true, then being truly neutral leans towards being chaotic and evil - if it isn't simply those things, maybe watered down a little. And I don't think true neutral should lean in either direction.
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Again, a person who doesn't care whether they work within the law or not sounds neutral to me. "Don't care" is about as neutral as you can get. That would then put chaotic as someone who actively works against the law.
If, instead, someone who doesn't care is chaotic, that would mean the neutral "cares a little bit", which sounds ridiculous. Someone is not neutral if they care, even a little bit. It mangoes the meaning of the word, to the point where thinking of it as "plain English" no longer works (and makes my head hurt).
A neutral person balances using lawful constrictions and skirting them, because they realize there are advantages (and disadvantages) to both. Depending on what needs to be done, they could go either way (or choose to disregard minor regulations but abide by more major ones). A chaotic person doesn't value the straight and narrow that way.
If being chaotic meant deliberately working against the law just because it's the law, regardless of moral stance, it'd be straight-up anarchist.
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But where else would an anarchist fit, other than the extreme of the chaotic scale? And if that's the extreme of the chaotic scale, then someone who only breaks the law when it gets in the way, because they don't care about the law, becomes neutral. They are, as you say, balancing whether staying within the law or breaking it helps them or their cause, and choosing the path which is of most benefit regardless of whether it is lawful or not. This is the very definition of neutrality.
I've written this in the past, but my take on alignment is that there are four or five cardinal virtues and while chaotic is not exclusive with lawful, it can be incompatible.
Law's virtue is honour, chaos's virtue is freedom, good's virtue is compassion and evil's virtue is individualism. Neutrality is not a virtuous system, excepting maybe true neutrality, which might have the virtue of harmony. Neutral Good, Lawful Neutral isn't necessarily someone who tries to walk the line between Good and evil or law and chaos. It could be simply a person who doesn't care about the philosophical debate between the two.
Therefore: A lawful good is someone who believes that one must be compassionate and help the less fortunate, but to do so in a systematic way because they know that someone shouldn't get less help because they are less likeable or other emotional reason.
A chaotic good character is someone who believes that if you see the right thing to do, you do it. If they give their word to protect someone and then learn that person isn't worth protecting, they might go back on that word. Or if someone in society is someone they know to be a villain, they might not care that they are innocent (or not proven guilty) of any crime before taking action.
Neutral good is a bit more murky. It's probably someone who tries to mostly follow the rules but will consider breaking them for results.
If you define Chaotic by its extreme, you should do the same with Lawful - making only those who abhor the absence of strict rules and seek to impose strictures on everyone Lawful, and with that 99% of the population becomes Neutral.
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Yes, you need to consider the two extremes. L/C is a scale, with neutral being the central part, and lawful and chaotic being the "ends".
The extreme of chaotic would be someone who seeks to subvert the rules and society as an end in itself. Similarly, they extreme of lawfulness is upholding the law and defending society as an end in itself. Those to extremes do not need a reason to do either: they will do so regardless of the damage it causes to themselves or others, or even to any mission they happen to be on. The extreme of lawfulness would have no opposition to the execution of a starving child who had stolen an apple, and the extreme off chaotic would be perfectly happy to risk their life to disrupt society by stealing an apple, even if he wasn't hungry.
There would obviously be less extreme lawful and chaotic elements. But smack bang in the middle is the person who just does what they want or need to do, regardless of whether it was legal or not. They are absolutely neutral when it comes to society and law: they don't care of it exists or what it says, they just find the best way to do what they want.
To set an example, take a person who wishes to move goods from one country to another. The extreme lawful will take it through the official checkpoint, paying any duties and taxes required and accepting any delays without complaint. The extreme chaotic would takes a back road to avoid the inspectors, even if this was dangerous or would take a long time. Anyone along the scale who was not at the extreme would, to a greater or lesser extent, evaluate the choices and decide: the lawful would look to use official channels unless there was good reason not to, and the chaotic would look to smuggle the items unless there was a good reason not to.
Then, smack bang in the middle, there is there true neutral. They will not take into account whether their actions are legal or not, except to evaluate risks and rewards. They would have no bias toward either option. If the duties or the risks of goods being impounded or delayed were too high, they would have no hesitation in smuggling. Similarly, if the smuggler's trail was too dangerous or too slow, or the risk of getting caught too high, they would have no problem using the official checkpoints and paying the duties. Whatever suits the mission the best is taken, whether legal or not, because they truly don't care about the law.
This disregards the influence of the moral (Good - Evil) axis.
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At the most extreme end, I don't believe they can coexist, or at least that the extreme view will vastly outweigh the considerations of the other axis. At the absolute extreme of lawfulness, considerations of morality don't enter the picture when the law is involved, and similarly at the extreme end of chaotic. In fact, I would postulate that the same is true for good and evil: if a character is at the extreme of good, they will be good to the exclusion of all else, no matter what the law says. Similarly, pure evil will do evil whether lawful or not. The extremes at either end of either axis will necessitate a neutral stance on the other when their extreme view is triggered.
Remember, I'm only discussing the extremes in that. You could end up with the same result as described above both by absolute extreme lawfulness or by LE. Heck, with strong enough reasons, LG could be the child killer, if they believed that e.g. good will come from strong law and strong society, enough to outweigh the child's life.
The difference is that no other reasoning would enter into it for the extreme lawful. The law says a thief must be executed, the child stole the apple, therefore the child must be executed, end of story. There is no malice, no consideration of good or evil, nothing but the application of the law.
I'm not so sure. I don't think even extremely lawful characters entirely disregard a law being arbitrary or fundamentally unfair. Such laws destabilize the system and inherently invite chaos.
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A neutral person is someone who believes that there should be some laws or structures. A chaotic person doesn't have to actively go around breaking laws and/or structures just because they don't believe in them. A CG person could, for example, following a law, not because they agree with that particular law but because their good action just happens to align with said law.
And of course you are missing the whole point that we are talking about more than just "laws" here.
Like I said, there are cases where the good actions align with the lawful actions. Are you saying that a chaotic good person needs to go around murdering people just because there are laws against murder and a chaotic good person is "someone who actively works against the law"?
I agree that is a ridiculous strawman you've come up with. Luckily, I've never suggested anything of the sort so we can leave that at once.
Of course you can still care about things even if you are neutral. "Neutral" on the alignment scale doesn't mean "complete devoid of interest, feelings or opinions" but rather neutral on the scale of good to evil or lawful to chaotic. A true neutral person might care a lot about their friends or a certain cause. A good example of a neutral person would be Jayne Cobb from Firefly. He obviously care about some things (his mum and his friends) but at the same time he can be mean and even downright cruel, especially to people he doesn't care about but there are some things not even he would do. He has no qualms about selling out people he doesn't care about but he can also be immensly loyal to the people he does care about. So your statement that "Someone is not neutral if they care, even a little bit." is completelt false when it comes to D&D alignments.
I think it was fairly obvious that I meant they are not neutral on the L/C scale if they care about the law.
Given the existence of people who actively wish to subvert and break the law, that being the opposite of those who actively attempt to enforce and follow the law, the scale of lawful to chaotic must include each of those. We know lawful is one end, so chaos must be the other. That puts those who do neither in the middle... Or neutral.
"A neutral person is someone who believes that there should be some laws or structures."
No, that's a slightly lawful person.
Every time I see a discussion to better define alignments I can't help but feel it misses the point. Trying to group people in 9 boxes and then have an actual defined meaning on personality? You might as well just give each character a sign from the horoscope of your choosing and roleplay that.
Alignments are tendencies and really broad tendencies as that. Tight definitions can be counter productive.
In my opinion, Good/Evil is broadly how you think about 'your' people. If you want your people to be happy, healthy, and successful you are probably good. If you don't want people harmed but won't make an effort to help them and your own well being comes first you are probably neutral. If you actively wish people harm and your success is worth any cost paid by other people then you are probably evil.
Law/Chaos is your 'plays well with others' trait. Lawful characters try to look at the big picture and understand that their actions can have ripples that spread wide and they worry about things at the societal level. Chaotic characters think on a smaller and more immediate scale, they work better in small groups and tend to focus on the current goal. Neutral characters see both the big and small picture and consider them both when making decisions and plans.
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My general take on this is:
For example, consider a beggar stealing food.
I see Alignment in terms of what people do to make themselves happy. Good people help others, Evil people hurt them, Lawful people obey orders, and Chaotic people disobey. Those who are truly neutral, which is what seems to be under discussion at this point, don't care. The only thing that matters to them is themselves.
The character of Jayne from Firefly was brought up. I think about him from the movie Serenity in particular. Jayne is perfectly happy to kill a man in a fair fight, or if he thinks they are going to start a fair fight. He appears to be perfectly willing to kill, or steal, and he gives every indication that he enjoys a tussle. He gets beat up by a little girl, and it develops that she's very dangerous and he's likely to get in trouble over having her around, but does he kill her? Nope. Gun in hand he goes to take her for a nice shuttle ride. He's going to turn her in to the authorities with no assurance of a reward. I see Jayne as True Neutral.
Next up, how about The Operative? Here is a man who says flat out that what he does is evil. He's a monster and there is no place for him in the society he works so hard to help build. He will kill, and apologize to a dying man, then wipe his sword and start issuing orders. He will go into a situation where he knows perfectly well he is in danger, unarmed, without making any direct threats, and apparently not take umbrage when he gets shot. He may not even have become angry after he was overcome, and he was graceful in his defeat. This from a man who killed a man with a sword for no apparent reason. His victim did exactly as he was told, and betrayed his friends. He didn't even get his 30 coins, he got killed instead.
The Operative really does not strike me as Good. He's not helping other people. He's absolutely not fighting against the system or encouraging others to do so. He is well motivated, willing to do what he was told without question. He gives orders and he expect them to be followed. I have him pinned down as Lawful Neutral.
Then we have Captain Malcom Reynolds. What is he? He's a thief. That's what he does. He makes no bones about it, and he has been willing to kill in the past. He shot a man who was trying to surrender just because he was angry. He's very much willing to fight authority, to the point of volunteering to fight in a war, and yet once the war was over he stopped fighting. He has no rudder, the wind blows northerly, he goes north. He is, himself, an authority figure and expects his orders to be obeyed. He shows every evidence of being a Good man. He helps people even if it costs him. He shot a man down after he was begged to let the guy come along, but he was doing so out of compassion. It was a piece of mercy. He orders Jayne around and Jayne clearly doesn't like it, and he picks up a stray who might cause him all the trouble in the verse.
I have him penciled in as Chaotic Good, but might be convinced to erase that and put down Neutral Good instead.
If we want to range much further out, how about a comic book character? This has already been mentioned. So. The Punisher. This is a man who goes around killing people. Why? Because he wants to keep other people from having to suffer the way he did once. He kills bad guys only. He's got zero respect for the law. He holds the entire legal system in contempt and feels that they are corrupt. He is a punisher, he is The Punisher, out to right wrongs. So what Alignment is he? He cares for others, he doesn't try to make anyone suffer, he won't follow the law, he does what he thinks best. Chaotic Good.
Last up is Peter Parker. Spiderman. We are in comic books, and Spiderman is kind of the conscience of the Marvel Universe. His creed, with great power comes great responsibility, is very well known. He's out to help people, he doesn't use any more force than he has to. He's well aware that his punches could kill and he holds back a *lot* to keep that from happening. He regularly puts himself in harms way. He is most certainly Good. He's not Lawful as I see it. He's not ordering people around or taking orders, he's doing what he feels is right. He turns people over to the authorities instead of taking things into his own hands. That's Chaos in action. He is Chaotic Good, and yet he has gone head to head with The Punisher on any number of occasions.
I'm pretty neutral myself, it is true. I'm done for now. See you in the funny pages.
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I know I say this on every alignment thread, and I’ve probably already said it on this one, but Lawful has nothing to do with the law. It’s unfortunately named. What it really means is that someone has a specific code they follow, which may or may not involve the law. So neither of these claims are fully correct.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
The problem with this is that in a society, what anyone desires for themselves often comes at the detriment of others. If I don't care about others, if I'm all that matters, that at least skirts being evil. And if I don't care about the rules of others, that at least skirts being chaotic.
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I once heard that alignments were an outgrowth of Gygax's wargames. That there were basically two factions, which they called lawful for the good guys and chaotic for the bad guys, but the names were just a shorthand. Then a third faction came along, and thus was neutral born. And since one of the ideas behind D&D was that your character would be someone who was basically a footsoldier in the wargame who would slip out of the wargame, become a hero and then slip back into the wargame after you hit name level (usually around 9 or 10) then the character would need to have a faction identification. The idea that the faction identification defined behavior was sort of bolted on later. Could be just made up, of course, but it does track with a lot of the early game systems development.
Personally, I say bring back unaligned from 4e. It's my favorite thing they canned from that edition. Most people, creatures and characters were expected to be unaligned. You only wrote down lawful on your sheet if dedication to the law was a major portion of your character's personality. Made things much simpler, avoiding just these sorts of issues.
I *think* you disagree with me, since you used the words "The problem with this", and yet you appear to agree with me entirely.
"In a society, what anyone desires for themselves often comes at the detriment of others." Yes. "If I don't care about others, if I'm all that matters, that at least skirts being evil." Yes. I think it skirts all the Alignments, its True Neutral. "And if I don't care about the rules of others, that at least skirts being chaotic." Yes.
So what exactly is the problem?
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"Those who are truly neutral don't care."
If that's true, then being truly neutral leans towards being chaotic and evil - if it isn't simply those things, maybe watered down a little. And I don't think true neutral should lean in either direction.
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