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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6756327" data-attributes="member: 996">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 <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />-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.</blockquote>

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