Alignment thread - True Neutrality

[Celebrim]

It's not the acknowledged supremacy I find most problematic, if advertised beforehand the players can choose appropriate PCs not doomed to existential failure (unless they want to). But DM bias, and particularly unconscious DM bias is a thing, which creates effective winners and losers in PC concepts which can really blindside players, especially when referees refuse to discuss such issues.

If the DM genuinely thinks neutrals are cool, and good guys finish last, playing a good PC in that game isn't likely to be fun for non-masochists. Far too often I have heard referees say "play anything you want" and promise impartiality, and then when it comes to play favour the TN, pragmatic or evil PCs and sideline or make fun of the "good" PCs.

IMO DMs should make a point of being very aware of their own biases in the interests of averting them, and not echaustively denying they have biases to their players.

This is very good stuff.

In practice, I think you do see many DMs acting not as impartial referees, but passing judgment on the players and using their power as DMs to arrange for the world to punish players for not adhering to the 'correct' philosophy whatever that may turn out to be. Thus, you find DMs that gleefully punish players for being good or evil, depending on how they think the player ought to act.

Right now I'm dealing with the problem of having players that seem to have come from tables where if you tried to be good, honest, compassionate, merciful, or so forth the universe perversely and invariably arranged itself to punish you for that. So for example, invariably if you cut a mook some slack, despite having just demonstrated to the mook how completely outclassed he was and despite acting honorably toward the mook, instead of say deciding he's never going to mess with these PC's again, the mook would invariably try to wreck vengeance on the merciful player and make his life hell. So I have players trying to inform other players what they think the metagame is by saying things like, "Kill the prisoners. If we let them live, they'll just come back with more levels as a reoccurring villain." or "What are you doing? Don't ever tell an NPC the truth, that just gives the DM an excuse to have someone betray you." And so on and so forth, where the gist of the logic is always, "The only way to survive is to be absolutely ruthless."

And it's not me that their ultimately talking about here, because none of that has actually happened in my game, and even if it did occasionally happen it would certainly not be the invariable consequence but something very rare and specific to the circumstance.

 

[pemerton]

IMO True Neutral can't be *both* the actively seeking literal and mystical balance in the world alignment *and* the pragmatic realist alignment . And the writing indicating True Neutrals should constantly swap alliances and betray former allies at the drop of a hat I found freaky in the extreme and instinctively rejected.

I agree with this.

In the OP, I am trying to explain how the idea you put forward in your second sentence isn't a necessary concomitant of True Neutrality (at least as the latter is presented in the original AD&D books). And I also explain (or try to explain) how True Neutrality as a commitment to "balance" makes sense.

A pragmatic, realist person isn't TN (as I see it, based on the passages I quoted). Such a person is not committed to balance, and allowing nature to take its course. Such a person is quite active in the world. A pragmatic person could be any good or evil alignment, I think, though perhaps less than fully committed in his/her good, or less than maximally self-serving in his/her evil.

Neutral alignments allow more self-centred PCs, pragmatic decision making and dubious allies.

I don't think that TN, as written up in the passages I've quoted, is about self-centred or pragmatic characters. As Gygax presents the alignments in the original PHB and DMG, being self-serving or self-centred is evil, not neutral.

A TN person, as I'm articulating it, may be a dubious ally, but not because of some idea of constantly swapping alliances in the name of "balance". S/he would be a dubious ally because - again, as I am presenting it - a TN person is sceptical about the capacity of humans to actually improve things through deliberate action.

my small exposure to the version of Greyhawk run locally had insufferably smug True Neutral NPCs, druids and wizards and others, inscrutable, uncooperative, secretive and oh so much better and more knowledgeable than the PCs, especially the good ones.

But then I disagree with the OP in that I require good to be good and evil to be evil to bother with alignment at all. When I play a good PC I don't want them to be some dupe that's manipulated by more clued in NPCs with contempt.

I don't see any connection between True Neutrality, as set out in the OP, and good PCs being "dupes manipulated by more clued-in NPCs with contempt".

As I see things - and this is related to the idea of "static" vs "dynamic" that I try to articulate in my OP - if alignment is going to be part of the game at all, then the question of which alignment is correct is something that needs to be an open question until play actually takes place.

Consider, for instance, LG vs CG vs TN. The LG character takes the view that only social order can ensure widespread human wellbeing. The CG character takes the view that social order is a burden on widespread human wellbeing, because an obstacle to self-realisation. The TN person takes the view that both LG and CG are mistaken, because they have a false conviction in the capacity of human action to produce worthwhile changes in the world. It seems obvious to me that at most one of these beliefs can be true. I call this sort of approach "dynamic" because the full meaning and truth of alignment claims is something that is up for grabs, to be determined via play. If the GM has decided in advance of play which is true, then there seems little point even using alignment in the game.

This is why I have issues with the presentation - in Appendix IV of the PHB, and subsequently - of the Outer Planes as places where each alignment realises its own self-conception. If the Seven Heavens is really as LG people conceive of things - ie a place where social order produces wellbeing - and Olympus is really as CG people conceive of things - ie a place where individual self-realisation produces wellbeing - then I can't see that there is any basis for alignment disagreement or conflict at all. The difference would be purely aesthetic, and there would be no conflict any more than the plane of jazz would have reason to war eternally with the plane of punk. This absence of conflict is why I call it a "static" picture of alignment - but I also think it is incoherent, as alignment without conflict seems oxymoronic to me.

 

[Aenghus]

This is very good stuff.

In practice, I think you do see many DMs acting not as impartial referees, but passing judgment on the players and using their power as DMs to arrange for the world to punish players for not adhering to the 'correct' philosophy whatever that may turn out to be. Thus, you find DMs that gleefully punish players for being good or evil, depending on how they think the player ought to act.

Right now I'm dealing with the problem of having players that seem to have come from tables where if you tried to be good, honest, compassionate, merciful, or so forth the universe perversely and invariably arranged itself to punish you for that. So for example, invariably if you cut a mook some slack, despite having just demonstrated to the mook how completely outclassed he was and despite acting honorably toward the mook, instead of say deciding he's never going to mess with these PC's again, the mook would invariably try to wreck vengeance on the merciful player and make his life hell. So I have players trying to inform other players what they think the metagame is by saying things like, "Kill the prisoners. If we let them live, they'll just come back with more levels as a reoccurring villain." or "What are you doing? Don't ever tell an NPC the truth, that just gives the DM an excuse to have someone betray you." And so on and so forth, where the gist of the logic is always, "The only way to survive is to be absolutely ruthless."

And it's not me that their ultimately talking about here, because none of that has actually happened in my game, and even if it did occasionally happen it would certainly not be the invariable consequence but something very rare and specific to the circumstance.

A genuine preference for grim and gritty or players conditioned by such a game or some combination of both? Ultimately only the players can come to a conclusion for themselves. I find players vary in their flexibility, some can play many styles of game, others stick with a few or just one.

I find a willingness to discuss such issues out of character and provide assurances can help some players learn to trust more, and let them consider a wider range of options than just the basest and most pragmatic. It can require some level of rewarding players for their choices when those choices don't provide their own reward in game.

 

[Aenghus]

I agree with this.

In the OP, I am trying to explain how the idea you put forward in your second sentence isn't a necessary concomitant of True Neutrality (at least as the latter is presented in the original AD&D books). And I also explain (or try to explain) how True Neutrality as a commitment to "balance" makes sense.

A pragmatic, realist person isn't TN (as I see it, based on the passages I quoted). Such a person is not committed to balance, and allowing nature to take its course. Such a person is quite active in the world. A pragmatic person could be any good or evil alignment, I think, though perhaps less than fully committed in his/her good, or less than maximally self-serving in his/her evil.

I don't think that TN, as written up in the passages I've quoted, is about self-centred or pragmatic characters. As Gygax presents the alignments in the original PHB and DMG, being self-serving or self-centred is evil, not neutral.

A TN person, as I'm articulating it, may be a dubious ally, but not because of some idea of constantly swapping alliances in the name of "balance". S/he would be a dubious ally because - again, as I am presenting it - a TN person is sceptical about the capacity of humans to actually improve things through deliberate action.

I don't see any connection between True Neutrality, as set out in the OP, and good PCs being "dupes manipulated by more clued-in NPCs with contempt".

As I see things - and this is related to the idea of "static" vs "dynamic" that I try to articulate in my OP - if alignment is going to be part of the game at all, then the question of which alignment is correct is something that needs to be an open question until play actually takes place.

Consider, for instance, LG vs CG vs TN. The LG character takes the view that only social order can ensure widespread human wellbeing. The CG character takes the view that social order is a burden on widespread human wellbeing, because an obstacle to self-realisation. The TN person takes the view that both LG and CG are mistaken, because they have a false conviction in the capacity of human action to produce worthwhile changes in the world. It seems obvious to me that at most one of these beliefs can be true. I call this sort of approach "dynamic" because the full meaning and truth of alignment claims is something that is up for grabs, to be determined via play. If the GM has decided in advance of play which is true, then there seems little point even using alignment in the game.

This is why I have issues with the presentation - in Appendix IV of the PHB, and subsequently - of the Outer Planes as places where each alignment realises its own self-conception. If the Seven Heavens is really as LG people conceive of things - ie a place where social order produces wellbeing - and Olympus is really as CG people conceive of things - ie a place where individual self-realisation produces wellbeing - then I can't see that there is any basis for alignment disagreement or conflict at all. The difference would be purely aesthetic, and there would be no conflict any more than the plane of jazz would have reason to war eternally with the plane of punk. This absence of conflict is why I call it a "static" picture of alignment - but I also think it is incoherent, as alignment without conflict seems oxymoronic to me.

In my alignment interpretation, different alignments make things easier for their adherents sometimes, more difficult sometimes. None of them guarantee victory or defeat in arbitrary circumstances. Some may suit the themes of a particular campaign more than others. All serve purposes in the gameworld, and in the game. All contain some truth, none hold all the truth. All have virtues, all have flaws.

In my game True Neutrals tend to believe none of the other alignments has all the truth, a typical failing being to imagine that they themselves do. They are just as susceptible to wishful thinking, bigotry, wrong conclusions and irrationality as anyone else.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

In general, most versions of the upper planes treat Good as "being able to get along" (at least as far as other Good is concerned), while Evil is prone to conflict (see the Blood War). The Neutrals barely seem to acknowledge the other side exists (Pathfinder is the big exception to this, although the Proteans are basically at war with everyone, just like pretty much all the evil outsiders, but CN outsider sliding to evil is a long standing thing in D&D). I vaguely recall some Mt. Celestia types trying to relocate some real estate (a whole mountain's worth) to Mt. Celestia "for their own good" alluded to someplace, so there is no reason you couldn't have conflict between types of Good, but I think it should be rare (or a cheerful version of the Cold War) rather than the blood bath of the Blood War. I tend to think of every other plane (Archeron, Arcadia, Bytopia, Beastlands, Ysgard, Pandemonium, Carcini, and Gehenna) as transitional planes that are disputed by their neighbors (each in its own special way).

 

[Tony Vargas]

The way I ended up looking at 'True' Neutrality in old-school 1e AD&D was as actually being two alignments.

There's the lofty 'maintain the balance' of Druids. Moorcockian big-B Balance. If much of the world, or even just the campaign area, is dominated by an LG society, for instance, that's an imbalance. Giving aid and comfort to a demoniac cult or CG revolutionaries would be something a TN might do, not in a -for-tat way because he did something LG he needs to make up for, but because the conflict he's abetting will weaken a too-powerful force and lessen it's influence. One could approach that kind of alignment in a less lofty, well-considered way, too, as simply reacting against whatever the dominant zietgiest is, a sort of compulsive radical who always seems to be on the side of the underdog. If that's what EGG was getting at with TN, then I'm guessing he had not just Moorcockian balance in mind, but the environmentalism of the day.

Then there's the apathetic or complex neutrals or even the non-sentient neutral-by-default (like Golems or Oozes). They don't cleave to high ideals of Good/Evil or Law/Chaos. They may like one more than the other, but they lack a commitment to it. Or they may be merely indifferent. Or they may have much more nuanced, private, limited or detailed moral and ethical concerns that miss those bigger pictures and completely fail to mesh up with them. Or there's just nothing there to align with higher moral & ethical values.
'Unaligned' summed up that take on neutral well.

 

[pemerton]

I think that one thing Appendix IV of the AD&D PHB got right, which has since gone in the wrong direction, is the absence of a true neutral outer plane (and the corresponding prohibition on clerics being true neutral).

To explain this thought, I am going to elaborate a bit on some of my comments about why I think the outer planes, especially in the Planescape-y form, cause problems for the alignment framework.

As typically presented (beginning especially with MotP, and with Planescape being the high water mark for this approach), the outer planes are the epitmoe of each alignment. But, as I've already posted this produces incoherence. If the Seven Heavens is really a place where social order ensures that everyone's wellbeing is achieved, then CG people - who likewise aspire to universal wellbeing - have no reason for preferring CG to LG. Unless, of course, the "wellbeing" that CG aspire to is different from that which the LG aspire to - but then "good" has a different meaning in the context of different alignments, which also undermines the coherence of the system.

But a way of trying to make sense of the outer planes is to focus on their description (PHB p 120) as being "the source of alignment (religious/philosophical/ethical ideals)". This suggests that what characterises the Seven Heavens is not that it is a place where perfect social order generates universal wellbeing, but rather that it is the home of those "powerful beings" whose LG convictions are as strong as such convictions can get.

Thinking of the outer planes as defined by the convictions of their inhabitants, rather than as exemplars of the social realities over which adherents of different alignments are disputing, means that we aren't obliged to think of every alignment conviction being correct. Which avoids the incoherence mentioned above, where CG are meant to think that LG people's conviction that order will cause wellbeing is wrong, yet also have the counterexample of the Seven Heavens staring them in the face.

But if the outer planes are about convictions, then it makes sense that there is no outer plane of true neutrality, because true neutrality - as least as characterised in the passages I quoted above - is defined by the belief that conviction, and the intentional action to which it gives rise, can only be a source of disharmony and disruption to a natural reality that is already as good as it can be.

 

[pemerton]

there is no reason you couldn't have conflict between types of Good

From the point of view of mortal actors in the mortal world, I agree.

LG types believe that the only path to universal wellbeing is social order; CG types, on the other hand, think that social order is a burden on the individual self-realisation that is the only path to universal wellbeing. So they can come into conflict.

But once we move to a MotP/Planescape-style presentation of the outer planes I think it doesn't make sense any more. On this approach, the Seven Heavens is an exemplar of the truth that social order can produce universal wellbeing. At the same time, Olympus shows that the pursuit of individual self-realisation can produce universal wellbeing. So there is no reason, any more, for LG and CG types to disagree.

This is the problem with what (in the OP) I called "static" alignment: it tries to present all alignments as true - which means that it would be an error to deny the claims of any alignment - yet to present them as contradicting one another. Which makes no sense.

Whereas what I have called "dynamic" alignment - the idea that alignments are convictions, whose truth will be tested through the actual play of the game - doesn't involve the same incoherence. Devils, for instance, think that by spreading social order they increase their capacity to impose their yoke upon the world; but paladins disagree, believing that the spread of social order will pave the way for widespread wellbeing and flourishing. Both convictions can't be true - the play of the game will provide answers.

In my alignment interpretation, different alignments make things easier for their adherents sometimes, more difficult sometimes. None of them guarantee victory or defeat in arbitrary circumstances. Some may suit the themes of a particular campaign more than others. All serve purposes in the gameworld, and in the game. All contain some truth, none hold all the truth. All have virtues, all have flaws.

When you say "all have virtues" I assume you are referring to virtues from the point of view of game play, not virtues within the fiction. Within the fiction, I would have thought that, virtually by definition, there is no virtue in evil.

The way I see it, using my "dynamic" framing for alignment, the interesting alignment dispute from the point of view of gameplay is not between good and evil. To try and make that clearer: in a game focused on good vs evil, alignment does not raise any particular issues for game play. The good guys know (by definition) that they are good, and similarly know that the bad guys are evil. The interesting aspects of play will probably not be moral histrionics but rather practical questions about whether or not the good guys have got the capabilities and resources to defeat the bad guys.

Within my "dynamic" framework, the obvious focus of alignment conflict is law vs chaos. That is, is social order an effective constraint on individual caprice and a basis for universal wellbeing (as the LG and CE believe), or is social order a burden on wellbeing because a basis for the brutal and powerful to impose their yoke upon the world (as LE and CG believe)? In a campaign that focuses on this conflict, victory isn't just about amassing and deploying the means for defeating evil, because it's not clear what means (law? or chaos?) are required. It's about engaging in, and making moral sense of, the different possibilities for human action opened up by different forms of social organisation.

I've GMed two campaigns that really focus on this question (or at least on ideas in its neighbourhood). One was an Oriental Adventures game (using Rolemaster as the system) where the "social order" at issue was the series of pacts reached between the Heavens and other immortal actors, which (in the view of the PCs) had hung a whole lot of mortals out to dry. There were also echoes of this concern around whether pacts uphold flourishing or rather serve as a yoke in the unfolding of the fedual political dramas in the mortal realm. In the end both wellbeing and social order were restored, by the PCs forging a new set of pacts (both celestial and mortal) that were better accommodated to the demands of mortal existence. So in the end a victory for LG over CG, although at many times in the campaign thinks seemed to be moving the other way.

The other campaign with this sort of focus has been my 4e one - which, as it comes to its conclusion, turns out to pivot on the question of whether restoring the divine order of the Lattice of Heaven is or isn't the best way to deal with the threat posed by chaotic forces and the Dusk War that they seem to be threatening.

In thinking through the idea of True Neutrality, as per my OP, I have identified another (less obvious) possible focus of alignment conflict within this "dynamic" framing, namely, whether all intentional activity (by humans and kindred beings) is a source of disruption and suffering. I don't think I've ever played in or run a game that made this question the focus of play, and am not 100% sure how it would be done - because FRPGing depends on players being active in the world (via their PCs), and so it's not clear to me how they might achieve, by their action, the outcome of showing that the solution is inaction (I am ruling out heavy-handed GMing used simply to prove the point). But I think it should be able to be done.

 

[Maxperson]

I view true neutral as basically unaligned. You just don't believe in good, evil, law and chaos strongly enough to push yourself down one or more of those paths.

I view the balance aspect of true neutral is impossible. There's just no way a mortal can possible understand law, chaos, good and evil enough to accomplish that. How many little old ladies do you have to help across the road in order to balance out a murder? Heck if I know. Going up to the macro level makes it even harder.

 

[Lanefan]

I think that one thing Appendix IV of the AD&D PHB got right, which has since gone in the wrong direction, is the absence of a true neutral outer plane (and the corresponding prohibition on clerics being true neutral).

Never did quite understand this, because...

But if the outer planes are about convictions, then it makes sense that there is no outer plane of true neutrality, because true neutrality - as least as characterised in the passages I quoted above - is defined by the belief that conviction, and the intentional action to which it gives rise, can only be a source of disharmony and disruption to a natural reality that is already as good as it can be.

...the Neutral plane is obviously the glue that holds all the others together.

Or, to go more by your definition here, the Neutral plane might otherwise be known as the Plane of Apathy.

It's not a big stretch to say that if mortals can be Neutral then so can one or more gods (hell, a Neutral mortal may have ascended to the divine and simply kept its alignment through the process); and that those gods can support Clerics. Based on this, and thinking the Druidic alignment restriction was absurd for a huge laundry list of reasons, I long ago (as in, over 30 years ago) opened both classes up to being any alignment. I also followed our crew's lead in reskinning Druids to Nature Clerics who mechanically work just like other Clerics only with a different spell list and (sometimes) different deities.

Lan-"suddenly imagining Neutral gods as divine hoboes, pitching their tent in a forgotten corner of whatever aligned plane will accept them that night"-efan