D&D General Which type of True Neutral are you?

[GuardianLurker]

I remember these discussions from back in the day. Gygax even chimed in once in one of his dragon columns if I recall correctly. Monte Cook's Book of Hallowed Might has a great discussion about it.

The "True Balance" Neutral is one option - it was the stance of the 1e druids, officially. And they can make great opponents, and story-worthy untrustworthy allies.

There's also the Blue/Orange neutral axis - where Law V. Chaos and Good V. Evil just aren't part of the world view. Heck Blue/Orange might also have independent axises of Plaid/Solid and Stripes/Dots.

Both of these are completely drowned out by the other neutral faction - "I don't care." Often compounded with "Leave me alone. (And I'll leave you alone.)" These are the people who don't make great and important moral or ethical choices, who don't have a great or important impact on the World, and the ones that the Great Powers of the World tend to ignore.

Note that "Doesn't" or "Won't" is very different from "Can not". The latter is the realm of the non-sapient; animals, beasts, and other mindless beings (like skeletons and golems). Which is another way of saying that to me "Unaligned" is not the same as "Neutrally Aligned".

 

[Vaalingrade]

True Neutral means I've been informed I have to put an alignment on the sheet, CN was banned, and the class I want to play can't be Chaotic Good for some reason. It is the final 'leave me alone about alignment' choice before the parodies start.

 

[TheSword]

I’m with Stannis Baratheon on this one. “A good deed doesn’t wash out the bad, nor the bad the good.”

Or in other words “A half rotten onion is still a rotten onion.”

 

[GMMichael]

Does being neutral mean partaking of either extreme in relatively equal measures, or does it mean avoiding them?

Partaking of either extreme has its own term: sociopath. Seriously, an extreme-partaker is probably going to be chaotic, and cannot then be considered true neutral.

You can avoid an extreme, but all actions are aligned. The gods have deemed it so. So being true neutral means that most of your actions are not extremely aligned. Alignmented.

 

[dead]

I’ve always felt the Neutral types that want to “maintain the balance” like Mordenkainen and the Circle of Eight seem to have more of a leaning towards Good tendencies. For example, they’re always trying to thwart disaster happening to Oerth rather than seeing to its destruction.

Also, it’s often assumed that Good and Evil are binary opposites and that Neutrality is this thing that forms in the middle. But you could argue that Neutrality is just as much an idealogy as Good or Evil. It is just another player on the multiversal stage. So there’s no binary opposites, just ideologies pushing their own spin on how the universe should be.

 

[Umbran]

Neutrals can care about friends a d family or local communities thongs like that.

Folks too interested in other peoples thongs are probably not so neutral...

 

[Umbran]

Also, it’s often assumed that Good and Evil are binary opposites and that Neutrality is this thing that forms in the middle. But you could argue that Neutrality is just as much an idealogy as Good or Evil. It is just another player on the multiversal stage. So there’s no binary opposites, just ideologies pushing their own spin on how the universe should be.

Yes, you can have moral and ethical systems that aren't binary opposites.

Unfortunately, if you have a third option that is defined only in terms of relation to the other two, that third option is not independent, it is engaging in the polar opposition, not breaking from it.

 

[Zardnaar]

Folks too interested in other peoples thongs are probably not so neutral...

Typo. Means something different over here as well.

Thong Australian flip flop.
Jandal New Zealand flip flop.

Generally we don't use the term. Usually default to Australian if we do hear it. Thong (USA) is G-string here.

Corner store (USA) dairy NZ.

Drug Store (USA) pharmacy NZ

Drug store (NZ) =tinny house (place to buy pot or meth).


They like us saying fish and chips or six due to accents.

Side effect is I didn't know what sone words meant in sings and TV. Eg American pie song no idea what a levee was for years.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The "keeps a rigorous balance sheet of good/evil and law/chaos" type of True Neutral is fundamentally schizophrenic and damaging, so I reject that outright for anyone who isn't crazy.

The "refrains from any action that would be too X" direction leads to either logical contradiction (e.g. "it is good to save a person from death, but evil to allow someone to die when you could have easily saved them," meaning both action and inaction are aligned) or to an idiotically passive and generally uninteresting character, so that's out too.

Hence, I prefer either the Principled Neutral or the Unaligned Neutral types.

A Principled Neutral person is someone who deeply cares about some thing or set of things...but those things are genuinely completely orthogonal to both Law/Chaos and Good/Evil. "Blue and Orange Morality" is the way TVTropes puts it. As an example, I have run fey-like noble genies (genies who manifest prodigious power, not ordinary genasi-like genies who just have a bit of elemental juice and that's it) as being utterly obsessed with social standing. They don't, strictly, care about law--but having an ordered, lawful society means having a society that generally results in more citizens, and that's a status symbol, so most of them favor orderly society rather than anarchic bedlam. They love having and spending money, and will invest in lavish public works projects, etc.

I've also run actual fey beings (the "Shi"--faux-Arabized version of "Sidhe") for whom the moral axis was Beauty vs Ugliness. To a Shi, ugliness is (effectively) sinful, deplorable, disturbing, and someone who tries to preserve ugliness would be viewed the same way that (say) most folks today would view a person defending the institution of slavery. They could be profoundly benevolent and also horrifically cruel. They had vivisection theaters, but also the ability to restore missing limbs or sense organs, which to them would be a form of restoring beauty via symmetry or greater access to the senses.

I'd consider both these and the aforementioned "Principled Neutral." They have a guiding "moral" principle, it's just not something that registers as "moral" or "ethical" to us humans. Springing the former on my players after they'd gotten a bit buddy-buddy with Sahl, Prince of the South Wind, was a real treat. I could hear in their voices the realization that his "morality" was fundamentally NOT their morality, and that they needed to be really, really careful with him. (To be clear, he's largely benevolent and sees the party as sort of casual friends, so he has no interest in harming them, but they correctly realized that "harm" means something different to him than it does to them. Particularly because one of his favorite pastimes is watching the Skywind Repertory Company performing the totally true and unembellished stories of the party's adventures--meaning that putting them in survivable danger creates more entertainment...and raises the prestige of his court.)

Unaligned, by contrast, would cover all beasts (who are not meaningfully capable of "moral" behavior in the first place), and those who are more or less pragmatically avoiding any commitment. That doesn't mean they have to balance books or scrupulously avoid any particular things, but it does mean that they're sort of committed to avoiding commitment, if that makes sense. I would challenge a player's "Unaligned" nature if they did something particularly egregious without a good reason, but it would need to be very much out of character. E.g., risking life and limb to save a hated enemy would definitely be a "are you sure you aren't actually some flavor of Good, just with a big selfish streak?" (Contrast cold-blooded purposeless murder for evil.) Or, for L/C, someone breaking laws just because they resent being told what to do, or someone insisting that things be done by the book even when it's a serious imposition to do that, would get some (between-sessions) questions.

More or less, "Principled Neutral" will take not-strictly-necessary risks for something that doesn't normally parse as "moral/ethical" principles. Conversely, Unaligned folks would only rarely take such risks, usually because there's some other reward attached, not because of any compunctions or convictions. Genuine enlightened self-interest would be an Unaligned attitude unless clearly flavored by something else.

 

[dead]

Unfortunately, if you have a third option that is defined only in terms of relation to the other two, that third option is not independent, it is engaging in the polar opposition, not breaking from it.

Or is that what Neutrality and the agents of “The Balance” want you to believe?

Couldn’t you say Mordenkainen’s agenda is no less ideological than the schemes of Asmodeus or the meddling of Paladine?

And who’s to say Neutrality is in the middle of Good and Evil? That thinking could be falling into a binary trap. They might make you believe they are defined by Good and Evil, and perhaps they believe it themselves, but could you say they are just another ideological point of light or chess piece on the multiversal stage weaving and positioning themselves with their own agenda?