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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 7871110" data-attributes="member: 18">I think you're conflating two different issues."What alignment is Batman?" is not a problem to do with "real or fictional characters".It's a problem that's the result of a character being written inconsistently over decades by a huge number of different writers in different media, all trying for different "takes" on the same character, some actively trying to portray him as a monster, some as a saint, and so on.Yes, any character written inconsistently over decades is hard to pin down. Or written inconsistently over a shorter period, like, say Janeway, who regularly flopped around the alignment chart.But well-written, consistently-written characters with a single main vision behind them are much easier to categorize, at least in broad terms. Sometimes that's even true of characters written over decades. "What alignment is Batman" is the punchline to a joke. "What alignment is Superman" is, at least 90% of the time, a simple matter of "LG, duh" (and most of the rest of the time it'll be NG).My experience is different - I've seen equal amounts of bad RP from Lawful and Chaotic characters. Principally Lawful Stupid and CN. The leading cause, in my experience, what what I outlined above - people putting the alignment in PLACE of the personality and background of their character. Effectively treating every character as a fanatic, irrational devotee of their alignment. A cultist, practically. Whether than cult is "Diceman" (CN) or "Lawful Stupid" (LG - or occasionally LN).I do agree that if you see a CN character from a person you don't know, the odds that they're going to basically RP Diceman or some kind of weird take on Rorschach (who isn't really CN but whatever) are very good.Whereas LG has been so discussed and meme'd re: Lawful Stupid that the odds of Lawful Stupid actually being the case are lower. But this is talking about now, not my entire experience, which saw a heck of a lot more Lawful Stupid than Diceman/Rorschach. Lawful Stupid was alive and well, well into 3E. It was the the removal of mechanical consequences to alignments that was part of the decline in Lawful Stupid, because a ton of Lawful Paranoid Paladins and Clerics loosened their chastity belts, took off their sackcloth robes and hair-shirts, and went "Phew!" when that happened.</blockquote>

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