I hate Chaotic Neutral

[Thanee]

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.

Wait, I was talking about partial alignments there only.

The complete alignment has its own identity, but it's heavily based on the non-neutral axis where present.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Mystery Man]

So if my dog poops in the middle of the living room floor after just coming in from outside, would that be considered chaotic neutral? This happened this morning, and I think he did it on purpose.

 

[Psion]

Well, it took four pages to get to mincing the definitions of alignment, at least.

 

[Voadam]

Right. Selfishness is a trait of Evil.

Bye
Thanee

Dwarves are generally lawful good. And typically considered selfish and greedy.

 

[Li Shenron]

Dwarves are generally lawful good. And typically considered selfish and greedy.

It's a mistake.

 

[Voadam]

An superfluous re-interpretation:

****

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

So if you are focused on the collective but think it is oppresive you are lawful? So someone who always rails against society is lawful? The anarchist who wants only to tear down society is lawful?

And someone who thinks individuals can get out of control so laws should be there to keep individuals in line is chaotic?

 

[Voadam]

It's a mistake.

But since I'm about to play a paladin dwarf in Thanee's game it is something I have a selfish interest in clarifying.

 

[Voadam]

Advice for Psion's situation. If you think CN is a mechanical enabler for directionless unmotivatable mercenary characters then ban it, although I believe the PC will just switch the character to Neutral and play the same. So I would suggest only good or LN. And talk up the character motivation as well, your player has been a slacker in that department even when you asked all your players to provide it as part of their characters.

 

[Thanee]

But since I'm about to play a paladin dwarf in Thanee's game it is something I have a selfish interest in clarifying.

I'm not overly strict when it comes to alignment as long as the general trend is there (esp. with a paladin or other classes with an alignment requirement an overall trend should be there).

Bye
Thanee

 

[schporto]

Well, it took four pages to get to mincing the definitions of alignment, at least.

OK ok, I guess we should try to answer your original question and stop going off about whose alignment is better then whose.

1. Have you asked the player what can motivate their character besides personal gain?
2. If personal gain is the only motivation, maybe dangle the idea that there's this really nifty cool magic item. That turns out to be a cheap trinket that the bad guy had hoodwinked folks into thinking was good.
3. Make it a personal challenge. "Defend the town!" "Why, what's in it for me?" "Nothing." "Ehh, then I guess I won't do it." "What you're scared?" Challenge his adventurerhood.
4. Get the other players involved to help with the motivation. Have them try to convince the CN guy to come along.
5. Dirty tricks old man. Common, let's go clear out this dungeon of monsters, it should only take a few hours. Then lead them into world's largest dungeon.
6. Personal ties. Kidnap his {mother/father/brother/sister/son/daughter/donkey}. If he lets the relative go, then the rest of the family gets ticked at him, and you could draw a little plot around that.
7. Peer presure. Common everyone else is doing it. Its fun. You know you want to. It'll make you feel good. (Think of all the antismoking campaigns. Reverse them.)
8. Negative reinforcement. So he doesn't want to do X because there is no reward. Have some NPCs do X. Have X involve the gratitude of the populace like free room and board, free meals etc, or nifty treasure. Either way hopefully he sees that sometimes doing something with no reward gets you a reward anyways.

Shrug. Those are some of my suggestions.
-cpd