D&D General Slaads are failures as exemplars of Chaotic NEUTRAL

[Celebrim]

1. No.

Not an argument.

2. This sounds like something you might find in one of those current on-line tests designed by people that really, really want you to believe what they believe.

Not an argument either.

3. This presumes that all lawful/chaotic distinction have to go with government; they don't. Or, at least, it doesn't have to. A tribal society might be generally lawful (rules and strictures tend to favor survival); a highly structured society could be chaotic depending on the beliefs of the individuals.

No I don't presume anything of the sort. I can fully agree that a tribal society might be generally lawful, or that a highly structured society could be chaotic. Since you think you are disagreeing with me here or otherwise providing some useful insight, my suspicion is that you don't understand me nearly as well as you think you do.

That said, I find it useful to think of the law/chaos distinction in the nine-point alignment system as having to do with the distinction between utilitarianism, and rule utilitarianism.

In other words, a chaotic individual is seeking to maximize utility (whether it's for good or evil) on an individual basis, whereas a lawful individual is seeking to maximize utility based upon a rule.

I don't think that is particularly out of line with the normal distinctions drawn between law and chaos, or the way I've been using the terms. I'm not at all sure where you are going with this line of argument though.

You have a rule (say, a Monk's vow of silence). Assume that there is a situation wherein it would be best for the monk to say something (he witnesses a crime and could cry out). The chaotic view would be that the rule could be discarded on an ad hoc basis; the lawful view is that the rule has value for the rule itself, and should not be discarded- otherwise, why have the rule?

Allow me to attempt to clarify, because I think I know what you were aiming at, but I think you've slightly missed the target. (And if it turns out you were aiming at something completely different, that will at least clarify why I don't understand you.) The chaotic view is that each situation is so distinct that no rule could provide a reasonable basis for judging the situation. The chaotic may have several axioms and maxims that are supposed to inform their thinking, but they are expected (by themselves and by whom they hold themselves accountable to, if anyone) to use their judgment over any given rule. The chaotic believes that fundamentally all situations are unique, all persons are unique, and no general rule applies to every situation.

The lawful view on the other hand is that their own judgment is not to be trusted, but rather that someone or something higher and wiser than themselves have created rules for living that will result in the best outcomes overall, and that those higher and wiser rules are what is to be trusted even in cases when you can't see how or why obeying them results in the best end. Thus, the rule can not and should not be discarded, because to do so would be to suggest that your own wisdom was greater than the law, an action that in and of itself disproves the validity of your judgment.

That might seem simple, but apply it to the various rules, norms, etc. in life and you understand (following commands in the military or mafia; following ethical rules for professions or protecting confidential information, and so on).

Yep, fully on board with the complexity of the application of either philosophy. For example, in the case of the Monk, if he's actually a part of some sort of lawful philosophical school, they've probably thought the rules out far enough to have considered this very case, and so the wise, learned, and well studied monk will know that there is a hierarchy of duties and obligations that a person has, and will know in this situation what duty or obligation under the law has the higher stature and first claim on his behavior. So for example, the Monk may well know that under the law his vow of silence and his own personal well being and honor comes lower than the life of another, and that under the law he must speak out even if it means suffering the consequences of breaking his vow. What might surprise the chaotic in this situation, is the Monk and the rest of his lawful society might still feel the Monk deserves to pay the penalty of breaking his vow of silence despite having acted in the manner that everyone agrees was right and honorable.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Celebrim]

No. That's not it at all.

The lawful person might also think that situations might be unique. The chaotic person might not. The lawful person may value their own judgment. The chaotic person might not. That is completely irrelevant.

Instead, it has to do with the benefit of having a rule.

Attorney-client privilege/confidentiality- or another ethical rule, such as priest/penitent. A murderer tells their attorney/priest that they know where the corpse is. The rule is that the attorney/priest cannot tell anyone else.

The chaotic good view is that the rule is stupid. The attorney/priest should break the rule, because the most good (utility) comes from revealing the information.

The lawful good view is that the rule has value. Even though in this specific case the rule might cause individual harm, the greater good is served by not breaking the rule, because if the attorney/priest breaks the rule, then no one would trust attorneys and priests in the future. In other words, the overall societal good is enhanced by maintaining the rule precisely because people know it will not be breached even when it is convenient.

You say "That's not it at all.", but I feel like that then you agree with 99% of what I'm saying. None of the above clarification actually distinguishes what you are saying from what I'm saying. I fully agree that all of what you say is true, and necessary, but I'm just going one small step in the logic beyond where you seem content to stop, and that is to rationalize why the rule exist in the first place. While the lawful would certainly agree that there is value in people knowing that a rule will not be breached even when it is convenient, I don't agree that this is the only reason that the lawful person will assert as to why the law should be followed. Something must justify why attorney/client confidence should exist in the first place, even in situations where it isn't obvious why it serves a good purpose. While it is sufficient to tell a child, "Because it is the rules and I say so.", this isn't the extent of how law can rationalize itself.

It's not necessarily about whether the law (or rule, or custom, or norm) is better than your own judgment, but simply about the overall benefit from following the rule.

Because the law is better than individual judgment, and not just because that it gets everyone on the same page. It's not just that you obey the coach because otherwise the team couldn't work together - true though that statement may be - but also because the coach in the ideal knows more about the game than any of his students and they do not yet have the discernment and understanding to know how to play the game. They need to obey him not just to be on the team, but because he knows best.

Which is why, IMO, lawful characters are much more interesting to play ... because chaotic characters are fundamentally boring.

We'll make a true Paladin out of you sooner or later.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[generic]

Never. But in terms of RPing, chaotic characters are boring. It's all, IMA DO GOOD (CG), or IMA DO EVIL (CE), or IMA DO WHATEVERS (CN).

Lawful characters, however, have interesting motivations and conflicts; specifically, what happens when there is a conflict between their rules/laws/code and what they perceive as the correct course of action? That is the meat of good RPing.

But, this rests on the 1e assumption that CE evil is more evil than LE, right? Or, in fact, that Chaotic means more "absolute", which doesn't seem to be the case, correct?

 

[Celebrim]

But there is the distinction that I don't agree with you on; a lawful character does not have to believe that the rules are like a coach that has been there before (the Burkean conservative view); instead, the view is simply that there can be value in rules qua rules. To move it up a level, a soldier might truly know better than the CO, but there is value in following the chain of command. Everyone needs to be on the same page. There is not only a concern that someone might (incorrectly) believe that they know better when they don't due to (say) incomplete information, but even if they do know better, it is important for many reasons to follow the chain of command.

So I have two objections to this argument.

First, if it is not necessary for a lawful to believe that the rules represent higher wisdom than themselves, then you will not find a hard distinction between being lawful and being chaotic. The implication of your argument that rules utilitarianism itself is the essence of lawfulness is that chaotic cannot believe that there is value in rules qua rules, for the purpose of coordinating individual activity. Yet you can have a football team or an army composed of chaotic individuals, and you can as a chaotic see relative value in having a rule for a specific circumstance or purpose. What you cannot believe and be chaotic is that the following the rules ought to override one's own judgment. Because that is the sine qua non of being lawful.

Secondly, lawful societies have rules for more reasons than just rules utilitarianism, and in particular they have rules that tend to place people in a hierarchy whereby certain persons hold the right to make and pass judgments over others. For example, I was talking with a Graduate Student from Korea, and she told me that she wanted to go home to Korea so that her parents could "find her a boy [to Marry]". This is a lawful rather than chaotic perspective not because the society has a rule that parents arrange the marriage, but because in her own mind parents would do a better job of arranging for her happiness than she would herself and this made perfect sense to her and seemed perfectly logical. But in a chaotic society, the idea that someone else might better judge your own happiness over such a personal decision as marriage seems ridiculous and even abusive. (A lawful on the other hand might wonder why you thought marriage was a primarily personal decision at all.)

Never.

I'm good at wearing people down.

Lawful characters, however, have interesting motivations and conflicts; specifically, what happens when there is a conflict between their rules/laws/code and what they perceive as the correct course of action? That is the meat of good RPing.

I very much agree, and do rather regret that both modern players are rarely attracted to playing a lawful character and even if they put it on their character sheet are rarely actually good at it.

However, I invite you to look at that statement again, "what happens when there is a conflict between their rules/laws/code and what they perceive as the correct course of action", and contemplate just how much you are actually in disagreement with me.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I have to say I think it'd be hard to fit a credit-card between what you're saying re: Lawful, @lowkey13 and what @Celebrim is saying. Yeah there's a minor difference but it is very much the same overall message - that the Lawful character thinks "rules are there for a reason", which doesn't necessarily equate to mindlessly following them in all situations, but does mean they strongly lean towards following them unless there is a strong G/E or personal reason not to.

However I think this is a bit off:

Never. But in terms of RPing, chaotic characters are boring. It's all, IMA DO GOOD (CG), or IMA DO EVIL (CE), or IMA DO WHATEVERS (CN).

Actually, I'd suggest all three are "I'ma do whatevers", it's just that Mr CG isn't willing to do things that harm others (unless those others are harming people), Mr CN probably has some kind of moral compass or moral code, even if it's not very consistent, and probably isn't just "down with murder" or the like unless there's a "good reason" (whatever that might be to him), whereas Mr CE may well present identically to Mr CG 90% of the time, but when it would benefit him to murder an innocent or set a boat full of nuns on fire or whatever, he'll just go right ahead and do it. Just because you're CE, for example, doesn't mean you go around looking to do evil (unless you're a supernatural exemplar of some kind). It just means that when it seems like a good idea to you to do something horrible, nothing is stopping you, I would suggest. CG is particularly unlikely to be going around looking to do good - many CG characters are the type of people who actively hide in the woods or the like. It's just that when they find a weeping halfling-child wandering in the woods, they'll probably at least take them back to society and not rob them, whereas the CE character may well ignore them, or rob them, or even take them back to society (if that has the most benefit to them - which could be financial, or in terms of self-image, or whatever).

As such, Chaotic characters are not always as boring to play as you suggest. Lawful characters have interesting conflicts, but they also (particularly LG characters) can end up being rather predictable, especially if the DM isn't putting challenging situations in their way, and can end up being sticks-in-the-mud, even in a good group when played well. I would go out and say CG is actually the most boring of the Chaotic alignments, in practice. CE at least keeps people on their toes!

Watching the Expanse at the moment and it's characters are fairly trope-y and straightforward but at the same time do work fairly well for D&D alignments. For example, Miller is basically CG, perhaps arguably CN, which is why he isn't a very good police officer, but he takes moral/ethical decisions which are quite sound morally/ethically (esp. from a utilitarian perspective bizarrely enough)/rational, just y'know totally illegal and unlawful, and he doesn't bother to check with anyone or listen to any advice or what the rules are supposed to be. Amos, on the other hand, is a good example of a very playable and kind of interesting CN, or even CE. He's almost completely amoral, but because he has just one rule - "What would Naomi think?" (or however you want to put it), he's actually very reasonable.

I think there's always the danger in alignment-related discussions of think people always pursue their alignments, are defined by them, but I suspect with mortals (or really anything but supernatural exemplars) that's very rarely true. People are driven by their motivations and personality, and their alignment should reflect that. Reflect what they value, what they're willing to do, what they're not willing to do. CN doesn't have to be "Captain Random McLulz". CN can be a largely amoral person who places no value on the rules of society, but is smart enough to follow them, and may have personal attachments or values that make him actually very reasonable. Honestly Amos is arguably more reasonable and interesting than Holden (who is in some sort of LG-NG zone depending on how he's being written this episode - even his initial action which starts the whole thing is both L and G strongly). Maybe you can blame this on bad writing or the Holden character being fundamentally dull, but his dilemmas are frequently the least engaging ones on the show.

So a Chaotic person who is RP'd properly may well be as or more interesting than a Lawful person, I would suggest. Bad RP, treating people just as alignments, not people, is where Chaotic starts to break down in terms of being interesting.

It means that many people who choose to play CG, CN, or CE (aka, one of the Chaotic alignments in the nine-point system) choose that because they believe that chaotic = freedom = no constraints on their choices.

Hence, CN = IMA DO WHATEVS, MAN, U CAN'T STOP ME!

This definitely happens, but it's bad RP that's the problem. A badly RP'd Chaotic character is likely to be more boring than a badly RP'd Lawful character. He's also less likely to cause the game to lurch to a sickening halt over some minor point of lawfulness, though. In both cases bad RP causes things to suck.

With good RP, where the personality comes first and the alignment emerges from that (or they're created in accord with each other), Chaotic can be very interesting.

 

[Celebrim]

@lowkey13 and what @Celebrim is saying. Yeah there's a minor difference...

I'd always thought that lowkey13 was offended by Paladins primarily because he himself (pronoun?) leaned to individualism. I'm beginning to think that he's offended by Paladins because they are so seldom done well.

As for the rest, I've already got one nitpicky argument going and I'm not done with lowkey13 yet, so I'm not going to get into your discussion deeply.

I will however give what I think the distinction between the three Chaotics actually is.

Chaotic Good: Believes in the axiom, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.", and tries to arrange all of his choices around the ethic of reciprocity. Believes that other selves have value at least as great as their own value, and believes that this compels him to actively seek out the good of others as well as themselves, even to the point of placing the lives and happiness of others ahead of his own.

Chaotic Neutral: Believes in the axiom, "Harm no one; do as you will", and tries to live by that standard of ethical behavior. Believes that other selves have value that should be recognized, and that ones own happiness is best ensured by engaging in consensual mutual transactions with others. Everyone's personal freedom holds equal value, and one's own personal freedom is endangered when the personal freedom of others is endangered. Thus everyone has an interest in preserving the personal freedom of others, however no one has the right or responsibility to actively intrude into others affairs. Personal sovereignty extends to even self-destructive behavior, and while people can choose to value someone else ahead of themselves, no one is compelled to sacrifice their own interests for others.

Chaotic Evil: Believes in the axiom, "No one has anything unless they are willing to take it." Believes that life is ultimately a zero sum game and the most successful persons are those who acquire resources at the expense of others. Nothing has real value except ones own self, and the value of anything else is only what it can profit ones self. People exist to be used, and life is only about clawing ones way to the top of the heap.