D&D General Which type of True Neutral are you?

[Ruin Explorer]

Whereas if you identify nature with chaos, then animals are pure creatures of instinct and impulse each acting according to its own savage whim. Animals in this conception are mostly "Chaotic Neutral". This is nature at its most red in tooth and claw, and civilization as the balancing power that brings order to a savage world - but whose triumph might threaten to unbalance the world in the other direction.

Complicating matters is that many animals are deeply social which runs against D&D's frequent conception of Chaotic as inherently anti-social and individualist, which has itself always been a somewhat incoherent idea because it impinges on that of Evil.

It's worth noting perhaps that Physis doesn't align with the individualistic/anti-social sense of Chaotic, especially as in classical Greece there were extensive discussions on how much society and human behaviour was natural - i.e. Physis - and how much was or should be Nomos (law/convention/tradition - and I'd actually argue individualistic behaviour is strongly enabled by law/tradition, and can barely exist without it, so D&D conceptualizing that as Chaotic I think was always short-sighted - it made more sense, admittedly, when D&D only had a Law-Chaos axis that was very much derived from a superficial understanding of Moorcock and a few other fantasy writers, rather derived from say, an understand of the 4th century Greek philosophical debates!).

 

[Celebrim]

Complicating matters is that many animals are deeply social which runs against D&D's frequent conception of Chaotic as inherently anti-social and individualist

I don't personally find the idea of sociality in the sense you are using it being inherently contradictory to individuality. While it is clearly the case with social insects giving up their individual rights and sacrificing themselves for the good of the hive that this is a lawful conception of social organization, it is not at all clear that a social herd animal like a horse is giving up its individuality by being part of a social band. Chaoticness, at least to the extent that it is expressed by mere animals and humans, does not preclude strong emotional attachment to others, and indeed as I conceive it "friendship" as it is usually conceived of as a free association between peers who mutually value each other is a strong "Chaotic" concept and the basis of sociality within chaotic communities because it's non-hierarchical and leaves all parties to define the boundaries individually without enforcing obligations.

...which has itself always been a somewhat incoherent idea because it impinges on that of Evil.

For some conceptions of what evil is. Notably, both Gygax and many other commentators tend to view "Lawful Good" as "most good" and "Chaotic Evil" as "most evil". Third Edition commentators tended to indirectly reinforce this viewpoint by defining Evil as "selfishness". I reject this description as inadequate and missing the point.

I believe this is a bias brought to the discussion by people whose predisposition culturally is to see "Good" as aligned with "Law" - even if they reject that "Good" and "Law" are morally correct. For example, people who reject "Good" and "Law" as morally correct are still highly likely to see "Lawful Good" as "most Good" while strongly promoting the "Paladins are jerks/Paladins are morally deficient" model that is at times the default view of Paladin behavior.

It's worth noting perhaps that Physis doesn't align with the individualistic/anti-social sense of Chaotic, especially as in classical Greece there were extensive discussions on how much society and human behavior was natural - i.e. Physis - and how much was or should be Nomos (law/convention/tradition

Natural vs. Constructed is adjacent to but I think not completely aligned with the standard view of the Law/Chaos axis within D&D. A Lawful Neutral would object to the idea that the natural world is not ordered and regulated by law. They would not see the world as inherently unordered except where tradition, civilization, and law brought order to it. Rather they would see all of those things as part of the intended natural order and chaos as the absence of the intended order.

and I'd actually argue individualistic behavior is strongly enabled by law/tradition, and can barely exist without it

Now that seems a telling confession of your real-world philosophy. "I have looked for our rights in the laws of nature and can find them only in the laws of political society."? On that note though, I do think one of the most difficult contradictions that the standard D&D model struggles to describe are societies organized and regulated to support and protect the individual and individuality. But I suppose an Anarchist would probably argue that such constructs are ultimately false and misguided and will succumb ultimately to their internal contradictions. The converse though is equally bizarre, as for example the Feudal structure is highly hierarchical and subject to external regulation, but the basis of its organization is individual private contract. Lawful or chaotic? But, well, there are always going to be edge cases and "neutral" offers a refuge for the weirder constructions.

 

[Mannahnin]

On that note though, I do think one of the most difficult contradictions that the standard D&D model struggles to describe are societies organized and regulated to support and protect the individual and individuality. But I suppose an Anarchist would probably argue that such constructs are ultimately false and misguided and will succumb ultimately to their internal contradictions.

Point of order- anarchists are not definitionally opposed to organization or regulation, but to the imposition thereof by authority. "No rulers, not no rules" as the saying goes.

 

[Celebrim]

Point of order- anarchists are not definitionally opposed to organization or regulation, but to the imposition thereof by imposed authority. "No rulers, not no rules" as the saying goes.

I will leave each philosophy to argue its own points as strongly as it may. But a critic might suggest that it would be very hard to have anything like rules if you didn't have imposed authority. "I didn't vote for that.", etc. Ultimately if you have rules there comes a time when they have to be enforced and that requires imposition of authority however that authority is derived.

My point was not attempt to denigrate any one viewpoint, but merely to show how having a framework doesn't settle all the questions.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I look at neutral as baseline for most human cultures in D&D and really here on earth!

There are xenophobic folks and cultures but we often recognize them as departing from typical.

Also all people are affected by situational and other factors. Look at the prison and obedience studies out there! People so weird things if conditions are right. But generally how do people behave if not prompted?

Some people get involved with the outgroup but far more often we stick up for family and friends and country. “Usually” and with many exceptions.

Most people go to work, want to get home to family and pay taxes. There are many exceptions and we notice them because they deviate from expectations.

This of course is in reference to social animals who are increasingly enculturated to do these things…1:1 anyway. In big groups wild things happen

 

[Ruin Explorer]

They would not see the world as inherently unordered except where tradition, civilization, and law brought order to it.

I don't think that's true using the definition of LN in any extant edition of D&D. I feel like that's a huge and slightly funny overreach on your part, because that is in fact precisely how a lot of LN characters and societies and gods and so on are presented as seeing the natural world, or the world outside of "civilization". The routine understanding of LN, whether you agree with it or not, is precisely what you're saying it isn't. Which means you're really just asserting an implausible niche position - not at all uncommon in D&D discussions involving alignment of course. Routine even.

Now that seems a telling confession of your real-world philosophy. "I have looked for our rights in the laws of nature and can find them only in the laws of political society."?

I don't think so - it's reflective of the debate in 4th and 5th century Greece, so I think you're just a bit ignorant on the particular subject here. There was intense debate over how society and law interacted with human behaviour, and what it enabled and didn't enable. Humans aren't intrinsically individualistic animals either, which the Greeks realized and which informed the discussion. That's completely unarguable given human evolution and history, indeed it's easier (though I think also an overreach) to actually argue humans are eusocial, as the biologist Edward O. Wilson did. But there's a difference between formalized rights and informal ones. Which again, was part of what the Greeks were discussing.

On that note though, I do think one of the most difficult contradictions that the standard D&D model struggles to describe are societies organized and regulated to support and protect the individual and individuality.

Perhaps because generally such societies didn't really exist in the past. The rights of individuals tended to strictly delimited by hierarchical position, and usually based on specific needs for that particular society, and thus quite flexible and changeable. The Code of Hammurabi is fascinating here. You can see it hands out responsibilities, rights, requirements and so on in a way that is largely pragmatic and focused on keeping Babylon and environs running and minimizing conflicts, dishonesty, and so on. That's not to say that, in practice, people didn't often de facto have rights beyond those written down in society - customary behaviours and traditions and de facto give people significant unwritten rights. But those aren't "organised and regulated to support and protect the individual and individuality", in fact, I struggle to think of society that did that for the bulk of its members before the 20th century.

Point of order- anarchists are not definitionally opposed to organization or regulation, but to the imposition thereof by imposed authority. "No rulers, not no rules" as the saying goes.

Indeed to keep an anarchist society going you'd need people to be pretty dedicated, individually, to following specific rules and guidelines in a fairly consistent manner, and to make sure they passed them on to future generations (and particularly to getting together - entirely by choice - to stamp on anyone who started trying to get into the warlord/conqueror business). D&D's conceptions of Law and Chaos, being simplistic derivations from the half-considered concepts fantasy authors used primarily to make "cool antagonists", aren't really a good match for complex concepts like that.

But a critic might suggest that it would be very hard to have anything like rules if you didn't have imposed authority.

I'm not an anarchist, but my brother in Erathis, do you think the anarchists don't know that? Do you think this isn't literally the first thing they considered? Do you realize how deeply sophomoric it is for you to point this out, as if it were wisdom, not an obvious truism? This is like saying that if you choose be a sea-fisherman, you should be aware that storms might cause you problems! I don't think many people have suggested anarchism would be easy, apart from maybe utopian ruralists.

 

[Celebrim]

I don't think that's true using the definition of LN in any extant edition of D&D. I feel like that's a huge and slightly funny overreach on your part, because that is in fact precisely how a lot of LN characters and societies and gods and so on are presented as seeing the natural world, or the world outside of "civilization". The routine understanding of LN, whether you agree with it or not, is precisely what you're saying it isn't. Which means you're really just asserting an implausible niche position - not at all uncommon in D&D discussions involving alignment of course. Routine even.

I can conceive of a Lawful power asserting that the natural universe is nothing but chaos and that they are asserting order artificially on a universe where order doesn't exist. But I don't think that's the only or even most natural and likely source of a lawful viewpoint. I think that it's more likely to assert that Law is the morally correct position because the world was created in an ordered way by a maker or lawgiver or that the universe came into being as a natural expression of some external universal and eternal principles - perfect forms as it were.

I don't think so - it's reflective of the debate in 4th and 5th century Greece, so I think you're just a bit ignorant on the particular subject here.

I won't pretend to have anything like the expertise you have in this field, but I do wonder if your expertise here is introducing a bias.

There was intense debate over how society and law interacted with human behaviour, and what it enabled and didn't enable. Humans aren't intrinsically individualistic animals either, which the Greeks realized and which informed the discussion. That's completely unarguable given human evolution and history, indeed it's easier (though I think also an overreach) to actually argue humans are eusocial, as the biologist Edward O. Wilson did. But there's a difference between formalized rights and informal ones. Which again, was part of what the Greeks were discussing.

I think these particular questions are as you seem to suggest above unsettled to this day, and furthermore that historically different societies have attempted to resolve the question of man's individuality versus man's participation in society in different ways and come to different conclusions. I what you claim is inarguable is something that someone somewhere has argued. While I'm neutral on this question ("haha"), I do think it is strange to claim that humans aren't intrinsically individualistic given how intrinsically self-centered humans tend to be in their instincts. I think a parallel can be made with other social primates, such as say Chimpanzees, who exhibit sociality but which still have objectively individualistic instincts as can be proven by such things as the greed instinct with counting and comparison experiments.

Regardless of my own feelings on this matter, I've met too many people who would argue that humanity is an intrinsically individualistic animal who socializes only out of self-interest (and who should therefore never be forced into social relationships) to claim the question is "unarguable".

Indeed to keep an anarchist society going you'd need people to be pretty dedicated, individually, to following specific rules and guidelines in a fairly consistent manner...I'm not an anarchist, but my brother in Erathis, do you think the anarchists don't know that? Do you think this isn't literally the first thing they considered? Do you realize how deeply sophomoric it is for you to point this out, as if it were wisdom, not an obvious truism? This is like saying that if you choose be a sea-fisherman, you should be aware that storms might cause you problems! I don't think many people have suggested anarchism would be easy, apart from maybe utopian ruralists.

Quite a few political and ethical theorists tend to argue that their preferred view of society - whether communal or individualistic - is the natural one preferred of by humanity and that if people can be just freed from whatever artificial constraints that have been imposed upon them by the existing social order, that they would naturally gravitate to and support the system they prefer and it wouldn't therefore be hard to keep going. So communists tend to argue that humans naturally like to work and to support each other and that absent compulsion they would continue to do so, and anarchists likewise tend to argue that humans freed from social constraints would naturally chose behavior that was not predatory but instead that would be mutually beneficial free exchange without compulsion and that corrective action by arbitration would be rare and society would just natural adjudicate itself. I'm not here to dispute any of that or suggest who is right or wrong in their assertions about human nature, but merely point out that different philosophical groups make different assertions about what is natural and normal behavior outside the structure imposed by society. Some say we have to be taught to kill because killing goes against our nature, and others that we are natural killers, and some say we are inherently good and compassionate and others that we are inherently evil. Compelling arguments can be made by all sides, and as such these are still topics we debate.

 

[CreamCloud0]

lawful and chaotic would IMO, be better of getting renamed as regulation (or structure) and liberty, they're too iconic to be changed now but i think it would be a massive increase in understanding the concepts they are meant to represent.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Regardless of my own feelings on this matter, I've met too many people who would argue that humanity is an intrinsically individualistic animal who socializes only out of self-interest (and who should therefore never be forced into social relationships) to claim the question is "unarguable".

Anyone saying that the 21st century isn't someone who is interested in science or facts, I would suggest, or very selective about it, and primarily choosing to believe something to support an otherwise hard-to-support political philosophy. Particularly "socializes only out of self-interest" is just hilarious Ayn Rand-esque drivel which no serious anthropologist or social scientist could do much more than giggle at. You can't even say that about cats (if you actually know anything about them), let alone humans! Plus it requires humans to not be driven by instinct at all, which is again, fantastical Randian nonsense.

Also, just because a creature is sometimes selfish, doesn't make it not inherently social. Anyone trying to tell you chimps aren't social because they ate more cherries than they gave away is selling you a bridge, frankly (doubly so with humans, who routinely make more altruistic or group-favouring decisions than that).

So to be clear I mean unarguable in a factual sense - which it is - not that some people won't try to argue it. There are always the equivalent of Flat Earthers out there, for every subject. The less physically obvious and unavoidable it is, the more of them there are. Doesn't make them right.

So communists tend to argue that humans naturally like to work and to support each other and that absent compulsion they would continue to do so

No? That's a truly bizarre and seemingly completely ignorant simplification of Marxist and communist thought that is also not even true, because opinions on the degree of human eusociality vary pretty widely in various different schools of Marxist and communist thought. I don't want to litigate that here in detail because ENworld is not really the place for it but I really suggest you might want to read and try to understand some Marx, and then compare and contrast with say, Mao, before making such wild generalizations in future.

It's funny because I'd agree with your general point that many people believe their favoured form of society is in some way "natural" and this is part of what the Greeks were discussing - but it's not consistent in the way you suggest. There have been many, for example, who argue that civilization and orderliness is not natural or innate, but instead something we have to work hard on, and therefore all the more to be honoured and sanctified. Indeed, that's no an uncommon view, historically, especially in Christian societies. It's a very specifically modern view that for something to be "good", it must also be "natural", and often sits very uncomfortably with ideas it gets put alongside.

lawful and chaotic would IMO, be better of getting renamed as regulation (or structure) and liberty, they're too iconic to be changed now but i think it would be a massive increase in understanding the concepts they are meant to represent.

With respect, those aren't easier to understand than Law/Chaos, they're entirely different concepts, which come from a very different place, to the cosmic, magical Law/Chaos of early D&D (which is what current Law/Chaos derives from and still reflects to a large degree). Also, the idea that individual liberty and regulation/structure are inherently opposed is extremely easy to argue as naive. A lot of un-hierarchical, no-written-rules (or even any writing) societies will kick you out of that society, that tribe, for behaviours that would be "technically legal" in a complex and heavily regulated society, and where you would be allowed to continue those behaviours, even if people frowned about them. Hierarchical and and un-hierarchical would be an easier distinction, but also not that reflective of Law/Chaos.

 

[CreamCloud0]

With respect, those aren't easier to understand than Law/Chaos, they're entirely different concepts, which come from a very different place, to the cosmic, magical Law/Chaos of early D&D (which is what current Law/Chaos derives from and still reflects to a large degree). Also, the idea that individual liberty and regulation/structure are inherently opposed is extremely easy to argue as naive. A lot of un-hierarchical, no-written-rules (or even any writing) societies will kick you out of that society, that tribe, for behaviours that would be "technically legal" in a complex and heavily regulated society, and where you would be allowed to continue those behaviours, even if people frowned about them. Hierarchical and and un-hierarchical would be an easier distinction, but also not that reflective of Law/Chaos.

i honestly don't think they are wildly different concepts at least from the ideas that lawful and chaotic alignment intend to represent

Law - i believe that with the right set of rules, and if we follows those rules, is the best way to achieve (success /prosperity /happiness /achieving goals /whatever) - Structure

Chaos - i believe that having the freedom to be able to act in whatever ways you think you need to as you need to is the best the way to achieve (success /prosperity /happiness /achieving goals /whatever) - Liberty