Alignment thread - True Neutrality

Maxperson said:

I don't see how it's possible for the "balance" neutral to contest the actions of the other alignments, either. How do you contest them? Which ones do you contest? The other alignments outnumber neutral balance folks by a large amount, so the balance folks can't possibly keep up.

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I think the answer to this is found in looking at how, in the real world, devotees of "naturalistic" (Gygax's word) or "quietistic" (my word) philosophies implement their viewpoints in the face of widespread rejection of their outlook.

A common means is isolation - living as hermits, or establishing small utopian communities. In D&D, druids fit this general description. This difference between druids - isolationist - and clerics - deeply engaged with human(oid) communities and the cosmological context and conflicts within which they are located - is one of the things I alluded too in my reply to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] upthread.

Another is a type of resignation - a recognition that the majority folly can't be prevented, but trying to ensure that the enlightened individual is not corrupted or distracted by it. This sort of stoicism has not been a big part of D&D (at least, I can't think of it at the moment - maybe a certain understanding of Boccob "The Uncaring", but if he's really uncaring then he shouldn't have clerics as he is typically depicted as having).

Ye gods and little fishes, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] - put the can opener down and step away. You've let out far too many worms already!

pemerton said:

I think this raises bigger questions about whether "the world of D&D" is meant to be generic, or particular. I see it as quite particular, and I see this particularity as also expressed via the alignment system.

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The game of D&D, or its universe, I see as generic. Each particular game world is, of course, particular. That said...

Clerics, for instance, aren't just priests. They are militant religious types whose outlook and capabilities broadly reflects a quasi-mediaeval stereotype of the warrior-saint: undead and demons flee in their presence, they can call down blessings and curses, and they have power over serpents. Anti-clerics, on the other hand, do less healing but more cursing, and command the undead and demons. This set-up in turn presupposes a particular sort of cosmological set-up: gods of light, civilisation etc vs "gods" of death, destruction, corruption etc.

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And also presupposes - wrongly - that there's such a thing as an "anti-Cleric" at all. There isn't. There's just Clerics of different alignments; and Cardinal Holierthanthou is mechanically every bit as much a Cleric as Cardinal Demonspawnfromhell.

Druids, by way of contrast, are quietistic, naturalist types who believe that human intervention (and the intervention of the divinities that humans serve) introduces destructive imbalance into the world.

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This to me is a far too limiting interpretation of what Druids are or can be, and thus I tossed it some 3 decades ago.

Some ordinary Clerics (and every other class, for all that) can be quietist too, and some Druids can get right up in your face.

If one moves away from this underlying setting assumption, to include gods with the druidic outlook, and to make clerics and druids just special instances of the generic category "priests" - and by 2nd ed AD&D the move in this direction is basically complete - then personally I don't see the point of retaining the cleric spell lists, the alignment system, the rules for turning undead, etc, in their classic form.

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Whyever not? Druids (a.k.a. Nature Clerics) can easily use the same framework as Clerics (a.k.a. Normal Clerics) and War Clerics, a third Cleric class we invented well before I started DMing. And it's in fact simpler that way; while also allowing for true Nature deities (of which, in Earth's history, there are a rather large number; Earth Herself is but one) to support the Cleric type that is closest to their sphere.

(Eg once things head in this direction, it makes sense to ask why animating the dead is evil at all, why good clerics need to be cautious about casting cause wounds spells, etc; because all those classic features of the rules system for clerics rest on setting assumptions that have been departed from.)

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Er...no. Good is still good, evil is still evil (particularly from the absolutist point of view, my option 2 in a previous post) and the framework still holds up just fine. The only difference is that it's now possible to play a Chaotic Good Nature Cleric, or a Lawful Neutral one, rather than just being stuck in Neutral.

I think labelling automata and unintelligent undead (golems, skeletons, zombies etc) as TN makes less sense in this framework, as they are per se contrary to the natural order. I think it would makes more sense for them to have no alignment, just as most inanimate objects lack alignment altogether.

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It's a very fuzzy line between Neutral and non-aligned. Golems tend to get lost somewhere in that fuzz.

A common means is isolation - living as hermits, or establishing small utopian communities. In D&D, druids fit this general description. This difference between druids - isolationist - and clerics - deeply engaged with human(oid) communities and the cosmological context and conflicts within which they are located - is one of the things I alluded too in my reply to @Lanefan upthread.

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Again, I think you're being far too harsh in your pigeonholing of Druids / Nature Clerics. Druids can also be healers, herbalists, and so forth within a community; they can bless the sowing of seeds and the reaping of harvest; they can remind and-or educate city dwellers of the nature that is out there; and they can - if it suits their deity - spread the word of said deity to anyone who bothers to listen. (I have some deities ask far more than others when it comes to their Clerics promoting and advertising them)

Lan-"by far the best Nature Clerics I've seen are always either Elves or Hobbits"-efan

True Neutral seems to be a pretty easy thing to grasp.

Evil: "Want to go burn down that village and enslave those people over there for no reason but that we can?!"
True Neural: "Uh... no. Seems rather dickish."
Evil: "Oh! Did I mention that they are all wicked sinners who insulted your god and he himself spoke through his prophet and said their city must be destroyed and they must be killed or enslaved to his glory and if you do, he will reward you with eternal peace and happiness in the afterlife?"
True Neutral: "Oh! You didn't say that. Okay, let me get my sword."

Evil: "Hey, want to kill that guy over there just to see how he screams and watch the life extinguish from his eyes?"
True Neutral: "What?! Absolutely not!! I am going to turn you over to the police."
Evil: "Oh, but you know that 10,000 gold piece debt you have that you will never be able to pay off and will keep you in slavery forever? That will be wiped out and no one will ever know you were the one who did it. Just shoot this poison dart into him."
True Neutral: "ugh.. I guess I have no choice, but I'm going to feel bad about this for the rest of my life."

Good: "Would you please make a donation for the poor of the city?"
True Neutral: "You know, I am feeling good today and I have more than I need. I would be glad to help!"
Good: "Oh, wonderful! So you will give us all your worldly possessions including the clothes on your back? I am so pleased to hear it!"
True Neutral: "WHAT?!! Absolutely not! What kind of maniac are you? Here is 5 gold and be glad I gave that!"

Good: "Oh no! There are Orcs attacking the town!! We must sacrifice our lives so that all the weak may escape!"
True Neutral: "Oh, crap! Everything I own is here. Okay, I will help with the defense as long as it looks like we can hold. But if it becomes hopeless I am out of here."

Lawful: "We must create more stringent laws and uphold them or our society will entirely crumble!"
True Neutral: "I totally agree. Respect for the law is totally necessary for us to all live together in peace."
Lawful: "That is why we are instituting a city wide curfew and we are going to put scrying spells on everyone in the city to watch every action they take so we can immediately take away and execute anyone who violates the law."
True Neutral: "Wait, what?! Oh, no you don't! I am not going to have your creepy wizards watching me every moment of the day and you need to stop executing people over minor infractions."

Chaos: "Freedom!! We must all be free to live our lives and be who we want. Down with the tyranny!"
True Neutral: "Yeah, I like freedom. I hate being oppressed. I am totally with you!"
Chaos: "That is why we are going to abolish all government and law. Then we can all be ourselves by doing whatever we want whenever we want to whomever we want so long as they can't physically stop us!"
True Neutral: "Ugh.. well, you just lost me. On second thought, I kind of like having a city watch around and some laws to protect me from you without having to watch my back with a weapon in my hand constantly."


It is real simple. True Neutral is just general anti-extremism. You aren't generally going to be down to do evil things for the sake of doing evil or enjoying causing pain or suffering, but you can be tempted into doing evil things if the reward for doing so or the penalty for not doing so is high enough-- particularly if you can do so secretly and without having to see the victim for yourself or face the consequences.
You are probably going to be up for doing good things, so long as it doesn't cause you to suffer in order to do so and almost certainly you need to be prompted to do so by being asked or seeing the need for good to be done. A lot of your good acts are probably going to be somewhat self-serving to an extent, but that doesn't mean they are entirely so.

You understand that there can be too much restriction and there can be too much chaos, you probably aren't going to be in favor of either repressive tyranny or complete anarchy as both make the lives of yourself and those around you harder than they need to be and are liable to cause more harm to you and those you have good relationships with than a nice balance between the two. You will probably be more or less okay with the society you were born into and raised in, more likely to be critical of foreign societies with a certain blindness towards your own's faults. If it comes down to a massive rebellion to take down the monarchy and a massive movement to protect them, you will probably be late to join either side unless you get dragged into it by someone else.

Honestly, True Neutral should probably be the most common alignment in the world. It means your mind can be changed and your opinion can be swayed. Even most Dwarfs and Goblins and such should probably be True Neutral with only a few of them being Lawful Good or Neutral Evil in order to influence the generally True Neutral majority into adopting certain behaviors or customs.

But is important to note that willingness to go along with one's peers and a distaste for extremism is far different from being mindless or autonomous or following a set of preprogrammed routines. There are those lines that you get to in terms of selfishness, selflessness, honor or impetuousness or whatever that you are going to say "this is crazy" and not cross unless placed under an enormous amount of pressure to do so. True Neutral's default stance is the mediocre everyday status quo, not nothingness and inaction.

The only thing is that True Neutral is the worst alignment for any sort of hero or villain in the world. They generally try not to be active participants in the kinds of actions and movements that fundamentally change the world. They really generally just want things to stay the way they are and to benefit primarily but not exclusively themselves and see that as many others are safe, happy and productive as possible, at least those who have not been labeled "enemy" and they are convinced are out to harm them, while still allowing for less than pure things to exist in the world for fun and just to be generally harmonious.

I think the style and genre of the intended game using alignment necessarily influence interpretations of alignment in that game and vice versa.

In an action adventure genre with typical "goodish" PCs, they use fairly straighforward tactics including violence to solve their problems, and do so effectively. There's an implicit imperative on the referee in such a game to allow appropriate successful endeavours to be successful in the game without major sabotage or takebacks. In such a game, A True Neutral(TN) attitude that major change is impossible or detrimental isn't a useful one, it's the attitude of an obstacle NPC or antagonist. This is because major change is in fact possible and the TN is wrong in this game world in this context - maybe only the heroes are effective in this way, but they are, and they can aspire to make big changes in the world. The heroic path is to carry on despite naysayers, obstructive superiors, corrupt politicians etc etc.

Conversely, a more serious game placing more importance on "realistic consequences" requires the players to constantly do their homework and seek good intelligence, as their actions could well be pointless or counterproductive. The TN attitude of preferring balance, or barring that small, tentative steps makes more sense in such a context.

In a dark and gritty gameworld way out of balance to the dark side, the TN may feel obliged to assist "good" allies to restore balance, despite their concern that major change can produce unintented consequences. If the current situation is bad enough, they may feel obliged to try.

My personal problem with TN is that I prefer straightforward action adventure, and "don't bother" TN is a poor fit for such a game style. YMMV.

Maxperson said:

I don't see how it's possible for the "balance" neutral to contest the actions of the other alignments, either. How do you contest them? Which ones do you contest? The other alignments outnumber neutral balance folks by a large amount, so the balance folks can't possibly keep up.

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In a pragmatic sense, they could just side with other alignments against whichever one has the upper hand at the moment. For instance, if the world's in the grip of an LE Empire, TNs could hide CN/E bandits from the law, support LG/N reformers in the government, and supply CG revolutionaries - maybe even subtly coordinate the efforts of those groups who would otherwise never be able to work together.

Tony Vargas said:

In a pragmatic sense, they could just side with other alignments against whichever one has the upper hand at the moment. For instance, if the world's in the grip of an LE Empire, TNs could hide CN/E bandits from the law, support LG/N reformers in the government, and supply CG revolutionaries - maybe even subtly coordinate the efforts of those groups who would otherwise never be able to work together.

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While it is possible, I feel like since CE bandits pose a greater threat to a TN's safety and security than the LE empire, they are not likely to actively help them-- they would be more likely to side with the LE empire by default simply because that is the majority society opinion and a lack-luster support is safer than trying to oppose it. Although, perhaps adopting a "no snitching" policy is something I could imagine being a sentiment that spreads-- and certainly supporting reformers to pull the society back to a less extreme level seems likely. So certainly sympathy for the CG revolutionaries would be high....

But, again, a TN actions would be unpredictable because they would probably be pretty easily swayed. Their heart might be with the revolutionaries, but they would probably also sell out the revolutionaries when they came under any real threat. There might be some that would bravely stand up to LE empire, but they would be few.... and probably once the CG revolutionaries won and started dismantling society in the name of freedom, there would be a point they would begin opposing them too.

TheHobgoblin said:

While it is possible, I feel like since CE bandits pose a greater threat to a TN's safety and security than the LE empire, they are not likely to actively help them.

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Whether that relative threat is the case would depend on the details. CN/E bandits would make terrible allies, but as long or you never trusted nor depended upon them, helping to keep the thorn they represent firmly in the Empire's side might be worth it.

But, again, a TN actions would be unpredictable because they would probably be pretty easily swayed. Their heart might be with the revolutionaries, but they would probably also sell out the revolutionaries when they came under any real threat. There might be some that would bravely stand up to LE empire, but they would be few.... and probably once the CG revolutionaries won and started dismantling society in the name of freedom, there would be a point they would begin opposing them too.

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That's one of the distinctions of the committed 'balance' TNs. Like other extreme alignments, they will stick to principles even if it means making personal sacrifices. Those principles may seem inconsistent from the outside, because balance can be homeostatic, a moving target....

Where it gets even less intuitive is that the TN's in question might, if the revolutionaries were wildly successful, end up in later years aiding and abetting an LE cult left over from the fallen empire, to play against the new CG coalition that replaced it.

pemerton said:

I think that, in the framing of TN that I am trying to articulate, it makes sense for animals and other natural creatures (which in D&D might include griffons, hippocampi etc) to be neutral: they are incapable of the sort of nature-defying intentional action that the TN regards as a source of disruption.

I think labelling automata and unintelligent undead (golems, skeletons, zombies etc) as TN makes less sense in this framework, as they are per se contrary to the natural order. I think it would makes more sense for them to have no alignment, just as most inanimate objects lack alignment altogether.

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I think that looks like a crack in your theory. Nature may tend to be neutral by default, or maybe not. Nature in a fantasy universe might be the creation of the gods, if the divine powers are in balance and each contribute equally to that creation, maybe they create a balanced world. If not, maybe not. Even if nature does tend towards balance, things outside nature may also tend towards balance, even if it might be a separate balance.

Tony Vargas said:

I think that looks like a crack in your theory.

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If it is a crack, it's not just in my theory - it goes back to Gygax's description of True Neutrality as a "naturalistic ethos"!

Tony Vargas said:

Nature may tend to be neutral by default, or maybe not. Nature in a fantasy universe might be the creation of the gods, if the divine powers are in balance and each contribute equally to that creation, maybe they create a balanced world. If not, maybe not.

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This is yet another point where - to me, at least - it becomes evident that alignment is not an all-purpose labelling system, but rather makes sense against a particular set of world assumptions.

You are right that if the mortal realm ("nature") is the creation of the gods, and in some sense plays out or expresses their cosmological concerns, then the idea of nature as "neutral" or "balanced" breaks down. But, in that case, True Neutrality as described by Gygax ("this naturalistic ethos", "Nature will prevail and keep things as they were meant to be" - see the OP for more quotes along similar lines) is erroneous, because it rests on a false premise about the character of "nature" and the "natural" world.

It seems to me that, if the GM has already decided as part of the campaign backstory that the world is created in the way you describe, and hence that Gygaxian naturalistic True Neutrality is already known by the game participants to rest on a false premise, then there is no point allowing True Neutrality as an alignment option. It would just be a trap (in something like the way [MENTION=2656]Aenghus[/MENTION] has articulated in posts upthread).

Another way of going, though, would be to allow the cosmological status of the mortal world to be something that is up for grabs in play. Is it, in fact, as the naturalistic True Neutrals conceive of it, and to the extent that it looks otherwise that's just because of imbalances introduced by human and divine action? Or is it inherently a site of mortal and divine striving that makes so-called True Neutrality mere foolishness? That could make for an interesting game.

In 4e, it might involve something to do with the nature and role of primal spirits. In my 4e game, the primal spirits have played no role in the campaign to date (and are extremely unlikely to do so in the remaining handful of sessions), but a somewhat similar sort of question is playing out, as the PCs (and their players) struggle to decide whether the mortal world is something good in itself, worth preserving with all its apparent imperfections, or whether the Lattice of Heaven should be rebuilt, or whether the Dusk War should come and everything be started again from scratch, Ragnarok-style.

Tony Vargas said:

Nature may tend to be neutral by default, or maybe not. Nature in a fantasy universe might be the creation of the gods

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Another thought on this.

I've recently re-read Walter Ullman's History of Political Though in the Middle Ages. One important topic in that book is his account of the reception of Aristotle in the high Middle Ages, and the effect of that reception on political ideas.

Prior to Aritotelean influences, the dominant conception of rulership was what Ullman calls "theocratic" - all power is a gift from god, to be used to further god's purposes. One upshot of this is that there is no meaningful contrast to be drawn between citizen and Christian, or between state and church, because all social arrangments aim at the same end - achieving the divine purpose for humanity. At a practical level, it is hard for secular rulers to articulate their authority as lying outside the authority of the Papacy, as once they frame their claim to authority by reference to divine purpose and a divine gift of power to them, then it is hard for them to deny that the Pope has a lead role in voicing and giving effect to the divine will, and hence has the authority to guide and correct temporal rulers.

One of the important ideas that emerges under the influence of Aristotle is that human government and society is a product of human nature, and that human nature - and nature more generally - is itself a divine creation whose laws of operation are therefore consistent with the divine will. On this account, temporal rulers have a foundation for their authority - human nature - and a grounding in the divine purpose - humans and their nature are themselves divine creations - which is prior to the institutions of the church, and which thereby undercuts Papal claims to authority over temporal rulers. The Pope has no special claim to know or to direct government in accordance with human nature.

True Neutrality, as I am articulating it, seems to me to set itself up in opposition to divine action, and in favour of nature as containing its own balance, in a way that fits better with the first sort of approach to understanding the relationship between divinity and nature: the divine is something that (from its point of view, and the point of view of its adherents) acts upon and improves nature. If nature is already conceived of as having its own perfection because the natural laws are divinely decreed laws, then True Neutrality seems to me to lose its metaphysical grip.