Chaotic Good Is The Most Popular Alignment!

Yaarel · Jun 18, 2019

For me personally,

Lawful = collectivism
Chaotic = individualism

So, Lawful Good is making an effort for the community as a collective effort to do good things.

Chaotic Good is making an effort to help others become their true self and discover their own talents and uniqueness as much as possible.

Charlaquin · Jun 18, 2019

Yaarel said:
I appreciated the point that Charlaquin made in his* post about ‘Chaotic Neutral’ being the ‘truest’ Neutral.

I interpreted this to mean: Chaotic Neutral: ‘I am going to do what I want, and I really dont care what the DM expects of me or my player character.’

In other words, ‘truest Neutral’.

Similarly for ‘Chaotic Good’: ‘My character is good, and I have zero interests in the DM manipulating or punishing me because of the DMs ethical opinions’. ... ‘truest Good’.

Similarly for ‘Chaotic Evil’: ‘My character does whatever I want. F everyone else.’ In other words, ‘truest Evil’.

I dont interpret the official alignments this way. But it helped me make sense of why Chaotic Neutral was surprisingly popular.

I assume, many of these players want the Chaotic Neutral character to kill monsters and steal treasures, and dont want to get entangled in reallife ethical implications.

*her, but no worries.

Yeah, this is more or less what I was driving at, though I was more thinking about in-character societal pressures than DM imposition. Lawful Good and Lawful Evil may sometimes find themselves in a position where the Good/Evil thing to do is not Lawful. Neutral, on either axis, is defined by indifference towards the central conflict of that alignment axis. It is only Chaotic individuals who are absolutely free to be as uncompromisingly good, evil, or uncommitted as they wish. I’m glad someone understood my point, even if you don’t agree with it.

Hussar · Jun 18, 2019

Maxperson said:
What you do is based on your personality and what you believe, though. There are many, many reasons why someone would not report an orcish army, and you can find people of all alignments among them.

The problem is, we're not mind readers. We don't know why this character did X. All we know is that he did X. And, really, while there might be all sorts of reasons, reliability isn't one of them.

5ekyu said:
If I were going to describe a CN ftom fiction, Phillipe the Mouse from Ladyhawke. Willing to steal from anybody, distrusts mostly everybody but not the type to just kill for fun.

Jayne from Firefly, likely, especially when the money gets good.

Ok, now, let's use Jayne. Would you consider Jayne to be reliable? Is loyal, reliable, or anything similar be a proper descriptor of that character?

Zardnaar said:
CN Han Solo start of ANH.

I'd probably put Han Solo as just neutral. He's not actively opposing the empire, after all. He might not like it, but, he's also not going to do anything about it. That's about as neutral as it gets.

Hussar · Jun 18, 2019

doctorbadwolf said:
Which you brought up as if it were relevant to what anyone else was talking about.

Intentionally falling asleep on watch while in dangerous territory where there are potentially creatures that can easily kill your whole team in your sleep is one of two things. Insane, intentionally suicidal, or moronic.

You say “your safety” as if the person in question isn’t capable of understanding their own safety. That isn’t a person who is both intelligent and mentally stable.

Refusing to take watch is sane and not completely idiotic, but intentionally sleeping on watch? Come on, man.

Who said anything about "intentionally"? The character is unreliable. Falling asleep on watch is pretty much textbook unreliable.

Lanefan · Jun 18, 2019

Jay Verkuilen said:
I think that's been true from way back.

Dorm room style argumentation aside, IMO the real problem spots tend to be the conflicted alignments like Lawful Good, Chaotic Good, and Lawful Evil, where there's inherent tension between the adjectives. Part of it, I think is that there's an implicit notion that many people have that "Lawful" is also "good", hence "Lawful Good" is the best good.

Not helped at all by the fact that in the beginning - i.e. 0e and Basic - Lawful *was* Good; as there was no good-evil axis. Just three alignments: Lawful (implied good), Neutral, Chaotic (implied evil).

Oddly, Chaotic Evil's pretty simple---maximum mayhem and destruction. Of course, not that many people play Chaotic Evil, at least on paper, though there are plenty who do in reality (cue "murder hobos").

One could argue that the relative Evilness lies in who the hobos murder, and why.

Are they, for example, quite well-behaved in town and only killing everything when out in the field - where often everything is trying its best to kill them in return?

Hussar · Jun 18, 2019

So, to amend my question slightly:

Can you come up with an example of a chaotic neutral character that is trustworthy and responsible?

So far, the examples have been Q from Star Trek and Jayne from Firefly. Neither would be described as trustworthy or responsible I think. If CN is entirely plausible to be trustworthy and responsible, then there should be many examples we can point to where obviously CN characters are trustworthy and responsible. Seems a fairly easy task given how everyone keeps telling me how it's perfectly normal for CN characters to be trustworthy and responsible.

I'll be over here at the bar waiting if you need me.

Sadras · Jun 18, 2019

Yaarel said:
Chaotic Good is making an effort to help others become their true self and discover their own talents and uniqueness as much as possible.

Touched by an Angel-style?

Hussar · Jun 18, 2019

Thinking about CN archetype characters.

Deadpool.

Hulk (particularly before Thor Ragnarok)

Jack Sparrow

Lucifer from the Lucifer TV show (although, I'm on the fence on that one)

Maze from the Lucifer TV show (that one I'm pretty confident in)

That's my picks anyway. Still not seeing a whole lot of "responsible" and "trustworthy" there.

Jay Verkuilen · Jun 18, 2019

Lanefan said:
Not helped at all by the fact that in the beginning - i.e. 0e and Basic - Lawful *was* Good; as there was no good-evil axis. Just three alignments: Lawful (implied good), Neutral, Chaotic (implied evil).

Very Medieval in that sense and it's a direct lift from Three Hearts and Three Lions as well as Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion books.

One could argue that the relative Evilness lies in who the hobos murder, and why.

Are they, for example, quite well-behaved in town and only killing everything when out in the field - where often everything is trying its best to kill them in return?

Being ruthless in the field is one thing, but murder hoboism often seems to go well beyond that, though, as one says, there are degrees. I have less problem with being ruthless out in the field, but even there things can go strange. I do think there's no substitute for knowing the table, though. A DM who constantly throws moral dilemmas (e.g., what to do about the orcish dependents?) to a table that's just there to roll some dice is in for some disappointment.

Maxperson · Jun 18, 2019

Hussar said:
Who said anything about "intentionally"? The character is unreliable. Falling asleep on watch is pretty much textbook unreliable.

It was very heavily implied with your statement about the PC not caring about YOUR safety. That indicates that it's a conscious choice to go to sleep.