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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 6314918" data-attributes="member: 18">He's clearly not Good, either, nor Lawful, though. He's loyal to Britain, not to good, evil, chaos or law. Nor is he trying to balance those forces. He's just trying to protect Britain and Britain's interests (and to a lesser extent, his own interests/feelings). That's one thing D&D has consistently missed out on - a proper alignment for people whose loyalty is to a concept, such as "my country, right or wrong" (this has particularly caused problems with Druids, who tend to have loyalties to Nature first, and everything else second).The problem is largely that Neutral, in D&D, tends to get portrayed one of two ways:1) Apathetic/uncaring - They just don't give a sod. Which is nonsense, of course, people pretty much always give a sod unless they are both depressed and a nihilist.2) Psycho balance enforcer. Too much happiness in the world? Kill some kittens! Too much misery? Push an evil-doer off a bridge! Too many laws? Burn down a city! Not enough laws? Burn down a forest! Has this person ever existed outside of D&D or D&D-derived fiction? I very much doubt it.EDIT - Though I am kind of narrowing my eyes at Michael Moorcock here, as I seem to recall one of his characters being along these lines.4E had a go at fixing it with Unaligned, which was like 1) but without the implied apathy, and that was decent, but it still doesn't really account for people who are loyal to a concept, when that concept doesn't match an alignment (and very few do).What they really need to do is just write Neutral as it should be, as it kind of is in the real world - "I've got bigger fish to fry!". For a peasant, that's keeping his family alive, probably, eff your war between good and evil, he just needs to eat and stay warm - nothing apathetic about that. For James Bond it's "I have to take down this supervillain and save Britain and the world!", and if he has to do some really morally sketchy stuff doing it, well, that's how these things happen.EDIT - Back on Paladins, LG-only Paladins would be a "dealbreaker" for me with regards to 5E, because they'd show a design philosophy I had no time for, and a messed-up belief that someone who is LG is somehow "better" than someone who is NG. I wouldn't have minded if each alignment got a different set of abilities and/or name, but that's a lot of work for little gain.</blockquote>

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