D&D General Reconstructing Neutral: Two Scores or Four?

[payn]

...which would be a great demonstration of how Law and Chaos can be controversial.

Having had a family member go through alcoholism and get out the other side, yeah, being drunk all the time (note that I said the archetype, not the style; the former almost always actually DOES have to drink alcohol to use their powers, the latter simply uses moves which sway like a drunken person) is absolutely a Chaotic thing, and terribly self-destructive.

But there's not really much point in debating it. The fact that we disagree at all--and that both of us find it strange that the other could disagree--is ample demonstration that the thing in question isn't anything like "commonly agreed."

I don't put value judgements on law/chaos like that. A person who drinks a lot may be engaging in self destructive behavior, but that doesn't stop them from honoring tradition and respecting authority. If the implication is that being a drunk is harmful to oneself, and thus bad, that would lie on the good/evil axis. Though, I view alignment mostly how the character acts in society and outside themselves. This description feels very categorical imperative.

 

[Tonguez]

I always liked Palladiums decision to outright remove Neutral and replace it with Selfish (Unprincipled or Anarchist) and then use real terms to categorise expected behaviours rather than the abstractions of DnDs alignments

 

[DND_Reborn]

I'm reminded of the old chart, and that there is quite a bit of differentiation even in an alignment.

I like the old chart, but feel a bunch of Venn diagrams overlapping would make it make sense more. NG is more the overlap of LG and CG. True N is the overlap of all four corners, but could be just overlapping opposite corners. It would be hard to be half LG and half CE but Neutral is just code for "do whatever I want and say it is my character and not me being a jerk"

Adding "tendencies" makes a lot of variations IME and accomplishes the overlapping.

Chaotic (Neutral) Good or Chaotic Good (Neutral) differs in that the first moves towards Lawful, but not to that extreme; while the second moves towards Evil, but not to that extreme. These "shifts" are relatively rare, not common enough to make the alignments Neutral Good or Chaotic Neutral, respectively.

The bigger issue IMO is people have a hard time agreeing on what some of the alignments actually are... FWIW, "Neutral" has never been "do whatever I want etc." to me.

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

Maybe make alignment two triangles? Somewhere in the area of the triangle you draw a dot indicating alignment. Probably a big fuzzy dot.

The first triangle has good on one corner, evil or another, neutral on the third corner. The scond triangle has lawful, chaotic, neutral.

 

[aco175]

Someone must have a game for random alignment choosing. I'm picturing a sheet of paper with the alignments in circles of different sizes and you roll a die to see where you land or even a dart board. Lawn Darts were removed after the BBgun incident of the late 80s.

 

[payn]

Someone must have a game for random alignment choosing. I'm picturing a sheet of paper with the alignments in circles of different sizes and you roll a die to see where you land or even a dart board. Lawn Darts were removed after the BBgun incident of the late 80s.

Thats why they invented motorcycle helmets.