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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6688423" data-attributes="member: 4937">[MENTION=6790260]EzekielRaiden[/MENTION]: I certainly didn't mean to imply that all players of CN were treating CN as CE with no downsides, or a sort of CE lite.  However, in my experience the majority of them were.   This will of course vary with your experience, but I don't think it's an inconsiderable sum.In my game, if CN was an axiom, it would be: "Harm no one; do as you please." or "Don't do to anyone, what you wouldn't want done to you."  It's not immorality, and not necessarily insanity, and certainly not all insanity falls under CN (a harmless crackpot would; a sociopathic serial killer wouldn't).   The fundamental difference between CN and CE is that you don't think you have a right to hurt others or trespass on their rights.  The fundamental difference between CN and CG is that you don't feel obligated to help anyone, and if forced to choose between risking your own interests and intervening to save someone, you'll generally choose to save yourself.   In other words, you might not push someone into the water, but if someone else has, you probably won't risk your neck to rescue them.   In general, a CN person will look and act a lot like a CG person until it comes time to make some sort of real sacrifice.  They see life as a series of transactions, freely entered into, and freely left.  Everyone is supposed to be getting what they want, and leaving everyone else alone when they want to be left alone.  'Mischievous Rascals': In general, these are players whose aesthetic of play is to be crazy, blow steam, and draw attention to themselves by clowning around.  They perceive CN as legitimizing that, and to a certain extent they are correct, but I think they are confusing personality with alignment sometimes.   And in any event, a not inconsiderable percentage of these frequently carry it to far and are in play actively malicious and treacherous.  Because sadism is funny, right?  'Actual Chaotic Neutral': These are players that get it and RP the character per the actual alignment.  I never really have a trouble with this group.  It's actually a fairly sizable group, per my theory that 80% of all players are only able to play some variation of themselves (either themselves, or an idealized version of themselves as they wish they were, or themselves as they would be if the fear of consequences was removed), and the fact that the ideas I outlined as CN are pretty hip and popular currently back in the real world IMO.   Like you, I observe the majority of players begin as either CG or CN.  I'd also add that the majority of alignment drift in play I observe is downward, as a fair percentage of the CG ones end up CN and a fair percentage of the CN end up CE.  Your other category strikes me as a being distributable amongst the 'CN is CE without the drawbacks' and 'Actual CN' categories.I should also make clear that to me, if you want 'no strings attached', you should play Neutral.  Every other alignment is taking a stand on some sort of principle that I expect them to observe most of the time during play.  Neutral can be taking a stand, but it usually isn't.   In particular, the character I'd expect the least constancy in (and thus the most freedom for the player to act however they want) would be a Neutral aligned character with low intelligence and low wisdom.  They don't particularly stand for anything and nothing constantly.  They won't have really thought about what they stand for.  And even to the extent that they think they stand for something, their low wisdom prevents them from perceiving the issues at hand correctly, from formulating a response to those issues that actually lives up to their standards, and from having the willpower to live up to any sort of code consistently anyway.  This wouldn't necessarily stop them from thinking that they are a paragon of virtue, because the Dunning–Kruger effect doesn't just apply to knowledge, but it does mean that they are free to act like a loose cannon without me thinking that they are being really out of character.</blockquote>

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