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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6383391" data-attributes="member: 4937">I think your alignment descriptions are good and well thought out as far as they go, and are in fact probably better thought out than the descriptions TSR/WotC have typically provided.   The are useful as minimal, practical guides to how your character should generally behave, and they avoid all the common fallacies you see in descriptions of alignment (alignment as personality, alignment as a stricture for 'good' but freedom for 'evil', lawful good as more good than good, chaotic evil as more evil than evil, evil defined by a lack of a single virtue, or good defined by the presence of a single virtue, etc.)That said, while I like the table, I'd prefer it to be supplemented with a bit more depth and a bit more specifics.In play, I find that Chaotic Neutral is the most common alignment of characters played by Americans with a mainstream cultural background.  Banning it seems impossible, since no matter what a player puts on a character sheet, they'll gravitate to Chaotic Neutral in probably 2/3rds of the cases - and those that don't group strongly around CN (N, CG, CE).  You might as well have on the character sheet what the player is actually animating, otherwise, you might as well have 'red team', 'purple team', etc.As a minor critique, I think you should make the statement of Neutral Evil stronger and more symmetrical with Neutral Good.  Evil doesn't merely tolerate laws or rules that favor the strong over the weak, it is intolerant of laws when they favor the weak over the strong.   Likewise, Evil doesn't merely avoid helping others for free, but is compelled to hurt others even when it does so at a cost or risk.  Neutral evil in particular is less interested in whether harming others results in personal gain (Chaotic), but in doing harm for its own sake.   It is not only, "Often willing to harm friends for personal gain.", "Often willing to harm others even at personal cost and personal risk."   Granted, the first implies the former (since losing the friend involves a cost and a risk), but its even more than that - the actual pain caused by the betrayal is weighed as a benefit to be enjoyed.   The fact that they successfully abused a friend - someone that trusted them and depended on them - is a form of self-validation greatly to be savored.  That the pain of betrayal was more acute for the friend because they thought that the person was their friend is itself something that will be delighted in and gloated over.   One typical problem I see with statements of 'neutral evil' is that they typically end up being 'less evil' than either 'lawful evil' or 'chaotic evil' because they give 'neutral evil' a wishy-washier motivation.  This is failure to understand that self-interest (doing evil to advance the good cause of ones own happiness) or self-sacrifice (doing evil to advance the good cause of one's own tribal security and prosperity) are mitigating factors in a person's degree of depravity and render evil more understandable and more palatable.  A person who is 'neutral evil' is literally doing evil for its own sake, and holding up evil itself as the highest good.The best example of this I can think of parallels the 'What Alignment is the Batman' meme, where the real answer is, "Which Batman?"   The question of "What alignment is the Joker?", has a similar problem.   The Joker is traditionally presented in the form of the Clown Prince of Crime, with an explicitly Chaotic Evil motivation - he's doing this all because of the depraved delight he takes in it but he's got basically the normal motivations associated with depravity.  He wouldn't sacrifice his own interests and when Batman has the advantage he legitimately begs for mercy because the only thing he really cares for is himself.   But the Keith Ledger Joker is presented with a different set of motivations.   The Keith Ledger Joker is neutral evil and has the classic neutral evil motivation - he wants to prove Good doesn't actually exist and that a fundamental level there really is no such thing as goodness.  His schemes aren't done to advance his own interest, but instead to advance evil as a general principle.  He doesn't want to steal things to have them.  He wants to watch the world burn.   And ultimately, when faced with death, he doesn't beg for mercy because he would rather die than see mercy or justice exist and be validated.   Evil is more important to him than even himself in a way that Chaotic Evil would never agree to.</blockquote>

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