D&D General "True Neutral": Bunk or Hogwash

[Piperken]

I think a genuine sticking point with the D&D alignment system is at its base it's reactive. Like, people have commented above in different ways that whether running a game or playing a game, unless the table runner or the game's setting makes it immediately engaging and consequential, it's vestigial?

In my present game, I've only brought up alignment when PCs have committed several acts that didn't fall easily within the spectrum of their stated alignment. ie If you continue on this path, your alignment will shift. Is that how you see envision your character as being?

It's why I think other games reoriented their focus on things like character aspirations, goals, destinies etc. rather than an alignment framework.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

For me, this is a far more interesting take on Law and Chaos than is the morality gloop that typically gets mixed into it.

Stephen Hawking and Neal DeGrasse Tyson got me thinking about this some years back, when they explained why some of the chaotic elements of quantum physics are probably necessary for the universe as we know it to exist.

 

[Umbran]

Hyperbolic, of course, but my point stands. Unless there is some supernatural fabric of reality reasoning

In the reality (and game edition) in which Mordenkainen's alignment was established, morality was a literal cosmic force that interacted with magic, and magic was his raison d'etre - so there was always a supernatural reasoning to his position.

So Yeah. True Neutral? It's nonsense.

Only in as much as the alignment system itself was nonsense.