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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6756225" data-attributes="member: 42582">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.</blockquote>

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