I hate Chaotic Neutral

[FreeTheSlaves]

An superfluous re-interpretation:

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Chaotic = think of the individual
(method) Neutral = think of the pragmatic status quo (?)
Lawful = think of the collective

Good = think the best of people
(means) Neutral = think people are calculating
Evil = think the worst of people

****

A possible Chaotic Neutral = an individuated & calculating character; s/he relates best to people rather than organizations & negotiates the world looking for friends but prepared for enemies. I think if a player presented something like this as a general framework for the personality to fit within I would be pretty happy.

 

[Li Shenron]

Chaotic = think of the individual
Lawful = think of the collective

I just don't seem to be able to abide to this interpretation.

At the very basic, my idea is:

Lawful = favors laws, rules and conservation
Chaotic = favors change, freedom and innovation

(of course this is just the start, there is a lot beyond this...)

Instead I tend to associate individualism with evil and sense of community with good. Furthermore, I think good/evil is a lot about the means one is using to achieve his/her goals.

Now that I have read lots of posts in this thread, I wonder how much our ideas were influenced by the very early alignments of D&D, which IIRC were only Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic. In those times, it seemed to me that Lawful was commonly associated with being good people interested in the common good, and Chaotic were bad people interested in their own business only, but I may be wrong (at least that was the interpretation of many gamers when I played those old editions in the 90s).

When I started DMing 3ed, some of our players had never RPed at all before, and I remember that I explained alignments with this idea in mind... none of them has ever played CN as a clueless selfish individual, much less an insane! Apart the fact that insanity can be of schizofrenic type (with some 'ruleless' behaviour) but also of manic type (which may theoretically relate to lawfulness).

 

[The Thayan Menace]

Words From a Master ....

"Chaos is a hell of a drug ...."​

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

I just don't seem to be able to abide to this interpretation.

At the very basic, my idea is:

Lawful = favors laws, rules and conservation
Chaotic = favors change, freedom and innovation

But really where do these laws, rules & conservation spring from? I argue that they spring from social groupings because laws & rules are unnecessary for the individual by themself; only when people collect together is there a need to establish the protocols for interaction. Conservation is the belief in preserving the previous & current traditions & norms, but why do these traditions & norms exist? They exist because they were of value to previous generations & they have been passed down from person to person; & they can only be a norm if it the dominant way within a social grouping.

Likewise I argue that change, freedom & innovation spring from & are for the individual. Change requires a pioneer to reveal a new way for others to adopt & seldom would a society be pioneering en masse; no I think change requires an individual pioneer. Freedom from what? I say freedom from others, i.e. putting the self before the social. Innovation is the opposite of conservatism, it builds on an existing or inherited thing rather than maintaining it; it is the spring of which change draws from and it requires someone to not accept as wholely satisfactory that which exists.

What I am trying to do is boil down the base concept that then flows out to the alignment descriptions; but I'm having trouble theorizing the neutral alignment in the law to chaos axis, I think it is method to complement morality but I'm not sure.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

Furthermore, I think good/evil is a lot about the means one is using to achieve his/her goals.

Yeah, I agree, I changed the above to reflect this.

 

[Thanee]

Maybe the problem is, that many people equate lawful with order and chaotic with lack of order. The negative of lawful. This might lead to an automatic negative viewpoint, too.

It's certainly correct to some degree, because it's the opposite of lawful, naturally, but chaotic is not just non-lawful, it's a seperate entity. Something unique, it has its own meaning, just like lawful has. It's not just the otherwise undefined opposite of lawful.

But really, the primary problem, as Psion said repeatedly already, is the player.

Bye
Thanee

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

Instead I tend to associate individualism with evil and sense of community with good.

Heh, the liberal western world got you down?

Hmm, I'm of the belief that the good to evil axis is more about how the person perceives the world.

The evil person just like the neutral & good person would generally have a consistant internal logic based upon their world perception. The evil person thinks the worst of others & responds in kind, and so on with the calculating (neutral) & altruist (good).

The evil/neutral/good person then has to choose their method to respond to the world they perceive; & they may choose to go it alone, carefully navigate, or commit to a social grouping.

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I am aware of the perils of over-simplification but hey, I'm currently doing a political theories paper & I'm seeing the possibility to transpose real-life theories into d&d & I think they're fitting reasonably well (not surprisingly as d&d is created & maintained by real life people shaped by their world).

 

[Deadguy]

I think it's a trait of evil and that neutral (unless you have the true neutral balance fanatics) has no inherent traits, but rather inherits traits from both good and evil, which are somewhat weaker than they are for the more extreme alignments.

Now that I don't agree with. 3E at last made some effort to give Neutral (both on the Law-Chaos and Good-Evil axes) an identity of its own, rather than an absence of extreme traits. It's that kind of reading (the absence of Neutral traits) that tends to blur discussions, since N has no value except as a smear of G-E or L-C elements.

Neutrals have their beliefs too. Indeed it's preceisly that that makes me happy to pigeonhole a lot of NPCs as plain Neutral - concerned with family and community above all else. Very handy.

On the question of Chaotic Neutral, I understand some of Psion's fears. It is an alignment that is abused to produce individualist troublemaker characters who really don't want to adventure with a party. As a rule of thumb, though, these days, if someone refuses to knuckle down and join in party activities then they create a new character who will. I'm not interested in running a solo parallel campaign for their troublemaker character.

 

[Aexalon]

Maybe the problem is, that many people equate lawful with order and chaotic with lack of order. The negative of lawful. This might lead to an automatic negative viewpoint, too.

It's certainly correct to some degree, because it's the opposite of lawful, naturally, but chaotic is not just non-lawful, it's a seperate entity. Something unique, it has its own meaning, just like lawful has. It's not just the otherwise undefined opposite of lawful.

That's why I've always advocated treating Law and Chaos differently.

Either one places them on separate axes, resulting in THREE alignment axes (ordered here by scale):

• Order - Chaos
• Good - Evil
• Law - Anarchy

Or one adds an amplitude to the 2-axis system:

• Exalted - Good - Neutral - Evil - Vile
• Order - Law - Neutral - Anarchy - Chaos

Both are start, IMHO. Dunno where they'd lead to, however...

 

[Li Shenron]

Now that I don't agree with. 3E at last made some effort to give Neutral (both on the Law-Chaos and Good-Evil axes) an identity of its own, rather than an absence of extreme traits.

However this idea sometimes has bad consequences! I have heard a few players stating that a Neutral (on the good-evil axis) is someone who doesn't care if the goodies or the meanies win the war at the end. Someone like that, who doesn't care whether good or evil triumphs, is EVIL in my vision.

Neutrals have their beliefs too. Indeed it's preceisly that that makes me happy to pigeonhole a lot of NPCs as plain Neutral - concerned with family and community above all else. Very handy.

On the other hand this way of giving Neutral something more that "being in the middle" is just the right way. In fact IMC we always think that:

- a Good PC is someone who is going to "help the neighbor" as first reaction, even if he has never seen him before and even if the neighbor isn't good himself (although this doesn't necessary mean to be saint)
- a Neutral PC is basically the everyday citizen who doesn't hurt anyone, but also who would not sacrifice himself or put himself to danger to help a stranger; he'd definitely help his own family and friends of course, and he'd still help a stranger as long as there isn't a price
- an Evil PC would mostly help himself only, and would help others only if there's an advantage for him (which means he'd still have friends and comrades, but quite a few); an extremely evil one would actually purposefully hurt others, but it's not necessary

IMXP lots of gamers think that evil is only when truly depraved (and they are very disruptive when playing evil campaign). If one thinks so, then it's kind of obvious that Neutral includes people who care for nothing but at least they aren't harming others on purpose, and that Good includes also those who protect their mommies without caring if the neighbor's children are dying of famine (actually some in RL behave like that and consider themselves good in fact...)

In the law-chaos axis instead I always had a hard time defining the Neutral, other than being "half-way". I think in practice there are hundreds of little independent behaviours which qualify as lawful or chaotic, and I loathe characters which "have to" be lawful (or chaotic) in EVERY circumstance. I hate when a DM says "you're lawful, you shouldn't tell a single lie" for example. In my view, the law-chaos axis is a continuus spectrum made of thin different strands, on each of which a PC may be more on the right or the left.