D&D General Worlds of Design: Chaotic Neutral is the Worst

In my articles from the early 1980s I often characterized the typical D&Der as a hoodlum (hood). You may know them by many other names: ruffian, bully boy, bully, bandit, mugger, gangster, terrorist, gunman, murderer, killer, hitman, assassin, hooligan, vandal, and more. Has anything changed?

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

According to D&D Beyond, as reported by Morrus, the most popular alignment after Chaotic Good is Chaotic Neutral. I doubt the preponderance has changed much since the 80s; it might even be more common today in an Age of Instant Gratification thanks to the Internet. Even 40 years ago, most players wanted their characters to act like more or less Chaotic Neutral hoods, doing whatever they wanted but not responsible for what they did, able to act like hoodlums but not suffer the consequences of being of actual evil alignment. And they wanted to be called “Good” at the same time.

Fundamentally, this is a desire to avoid all constraints. Which is fairly natural for people, in general, though rarely attainable. But a game is an agreed set of constraints on behavior within the “magic circle” of the game. And some games have constraints that ought to affect the chaotic neutral character's behavior.

The typical hood wants to be able to do whatever he wants to, to other people. Occasionally killing one, or something just as evil, that’s OK as long as it isn’t excessive. In another context, I saw someone ask why so many people disliked a certain person as a liar, because after all he told the truth more often than he lied! That would be ideal standard for a hoodlum, but most people don’t see it that way. Key to this behavior is a desire to avoid responsibility, very common in the real world too - people wanting to do things without facing the consequences (taking responsibility).

The question is, how does “the game” see it? Taking D&D as the obvious example, we have alignment as a guide to behavior. The alignment system in D&D was designed (I think) to provide constraints on character behavior, so that games wouldn’t devolve into a bunch of murderers having their way with the game-world. Certain alignments have advantages in civilized society, some don’t. In uncivilized society, other alignments might be preferred. Chaotic Neutral (the alignment hoodlums gravitate to) should be a disadvantage in civilized contexts because it doesn’t include/condone permission to kill people whenever you feel like it (as long as you don’t do it often!). Yet that’s how players want to treat it. That’s Evil, and if you behave “evilly” you’re going to be in an Evil category, which makes you fair game for a lot of adventurers.

I’m not saying killing is necessarily evil, e.g. in wartime it’s expected that you kill the enemy if they won’t surrender. It’s the “senseless killing,” killing for sheer personal gain or enjoyment, that sets apart the hood (who wants to be called Chaotic Neutral, or better, Chaotic Good), and of course the “officially” Evil characters as well.

D&D GMs who feel that constraints make the game better, will enforce alignment and make clear to Chaotic Neutral types that they can easily slide into Evil alignment. Those who aren’t interested in constraints, will let the C/N types do just about everything they want to do without consequences. In other rule sets, who knows . . .

Of course, Your Mileage May Vary. If everyone wants to be a hood rather than a hero, and the GM is OK with that, so be it. It’s when you run into players who think (as I do) that these characters are the worst -- certainly, not someone you would want in your party! -- that we encounter problems.

 

[mrpopstar]

I'm inclined to say that it doesn't matter in the end, or to the extent that it does stances like avoidance, indifference and balance all are encompassed by the 'neutral' philosophy, so that a low intelligence character that is indifferent to those considerations and avoids harming others out of disinterest and a high intelligence character with a well developed philosophical stance of avoidance of extremes, are both equally 'neutral'.

Point is, Chaotic Neutral is not a license to regularly engage in evil behavior even if that behavior is less deplorable and depraved than murder. A Chaotic Neutral character will avoid theft except as in emergencies, and if stealing will tend to focus on targets which he believes can afford to suffer the loss, precisely because they recognize that theft is harm.

Sure! I'm indifferent.

 

[jasper]

Yes!
Chaotic Neutral has been tainted by misunderstanding (for a long time) as shown by the gawdawful definition it got in the 2nd Edition books where it was described as a ridiculous "be crazy and flip a coin to decide how you act" Alignment. CN means you don't like authority, and you don't go out of your way to either help or hurt people you don't know. People who misuse CN to act like thugs should have their characters Alignment changed to Evil by the DM.

KIDS THESE DAYS. Back then we couldn't own a coin. We had to roll a baby blue d6 which we colored in using a fat kindergarten crayon which wasn't a Crayloa. Odd nuts Even goody.

 

[DWChancellor]

I don't think we are that far off.

...

That said, I think that D&D writers over the years have had utterly thoughtful depictions of aligned societies that do not well portray the dominate philosophical beliefs of those societies, and as a practical matter there is little difference between how the devils and the demons beyond the depth trees of their feudal hierarchies. Drow society is notably not particularly chaotic. Devil society is notably not particularly lawful. Slaad definitely don't seem to be particularly embodied chaos.

I agree with your first statement, but am having a harder time following the last bit.

A mortal being victimized by a Devil or a Demon may not see much difference, but that doesn't mean that Devils and Demons experience their actions as similar. Devils consistently believe that the means are critical to the ends. Demons only consider ends.

Drow are quite chaotic: anything is worth doing if it works. The end is all, means be damned. This is true all the way up to Lolth who is the strongest and so has everything her way.

Slaad are problematic in that the MM makes them seem quite distinct and regimented. Depending on which origin story you prefer they embody chaos or are a corruption seeking to cleans aspects of Order from Chaos. Generally, Slaad are chaotic because the ends are all and means bear no consideration.

 

[Coroc]

...

and it beats hell out of becoming an alcoholic or buying a sports car and running off with a 20-year-old.

Well the alcoholic true that, the sports car and running off with a 20 year old .... not so much

 

[Coroc]

Had some guest in the oota campaign where i am a player. One of our regulars is playing a very shy and "inactive" character, she does not like to engage in combat unless really forced to. Well this guy takes over Jinjar the deep gnome for the session, we are attacked by a mixed group some of the enemies are derro.
The "shy" player hides in a side corridor in a tactical vantage point when Jinjar successfully shoves her into the corridor with the enemy missile barrage shouting"for the party!"

Next thing he is on the floor infighting and wrestling with some Derro and acompanies that with: "i rip your head of"
and i get deja vues of Samwise fighting with Gollum i nthe LOTR movie

So that is CN at its finest imho

 

[Celebrim]

I agree with your first statement, but am having a harder time following the last bit.

Briefly, the writers have a hard time imagining anything as alien, and so tend to ascribe human traits and motivations and social structures to things which - if we are to believe the backstory - are not remotely human in character. They also have a really hard time distinguishing between immortal and mortal beings, and ascribe to immortal societies traits that would only exist in mortal ones.

Devils consistently believe that the means are critical to the ends. Demons only consider ends.

After having been on largely the same page, where did this come from? At no point did you differentiate things by 'means' and 'ends', and if you are going to start trying to do that then we actually will have something to debate.

In particular, you just told me that the distinguishing factor between the two is that lawfuls accepted authority and chaotics rejected it. Demons and devils are incarnated ideas, and as such we expect them to embody those ideas in the extremes. Unlike mortal beings, their societies ought to be pure and free from internal hypocrisy. They literally are the thing that they are, and are not merely trying to be that thing. A devil cannot be but utterly lawful and evil, because that's the only things that make up their being.

So what we expect to see in their society is a society were everyone on every rung of the society accepted the notion that they ought to be subject to the law. No one ought to be a hypocrite about it. The all agree to follow rules and they all agree on the utility of rules, and to a large extent we would expect a society that is in a sort of dark harmony where everything works but everything runs on pain, suffering, degradation, and so forth. And instead what we are presented with is essentially a pastiche of a decadent mortal wicked kingdom where the characteristics of the beings within the hierarchy are the stereotypical of how we'd expect free willed mortals to act in the same situation. Thus, despite this being a lawful society, there is a lot of backstabbing, intrigue, disunity, change, disloyalty, betrayal, and in short a bunch of attributes we properly associate with chaotic evil, rather than lawful evil. Chaotic have no loyalty, where as we would expect loyalty to be one of the few 'virtues' that lawfuls - even evil ones - would display. Most of all the leaders in the society are all hypocrites. They don't seem to believe the very philosophy that they embody. Rather they behave as we'd expect humans to behave in the same circumstances, as beings who ultimately see society organized for their own benefit and not as beings who just see themselves as important cogs in a a machine that they serve as much as anything else in the society. In other words, they don't think like lawful evil beings despite being lawful evil archetypes.

Meanwhile on the other end of the spectrum we have beings like Graz'zt who have feudal courts and behavior little distinguished from their diabolical counterparts.

Drow are quite chaotic: anything is worth doing if it works. The end is all, means be damned.

I disagree. Every portrayal we've seen of the Drow from Gygax to Salvatore describes a highly regimented, organized society which shares a universal set of laws and regulations across the whole of society, which has caste systems, large functioning cities, and a series of tests and trials which everyone in the society will be familiar with and expect to undergo, and social mores which pretty much everyone obeys.

And I submit to you that this is a lawful society by your own definition.

There are chaotic alternatives.

This is true all the way up to Lolth who is the strongest and so has everything her way.

This is the strangest part of it. Because in mortal society, if someone is chaotic evil, then you could expect them to hypocritically organize society around lawful principles and adherence to the state and obedience to lawful authorities, not because they believed in any of these things, but because this ultimately caused the whole of society to be organized around them. And, for a mortal society drawing on mortal powers, this makes perfect sense.

But it makes absolutely no sense for an immortal ruler on several grounds. First, being an immortal being the very idea of a lawful society, even one secretly organized to serve them, is distasteful to them to the point of distress. They cannot hypocrites in the same fashion that mortals are unless they are some sort of incarnated hypocrisy, and in which case hypocrisy we'd expect to be the dominate mode of society (so everyone would pretend to be good to maximize that). Instead, chaotic evil rulers should prefer a chaotic evil society, even if it that means that the society is not loyal to them. Further, being a deity, Lloths ultimate goal is to acquire petitioners. But she organizes the society as a lawful evil society, then ultimately most of her followers will be lawful evil, and as such will not ultimately end up as her petitioners. She has to have society be chaotic before she can claim the spirits of that society as her own. Creating a lawful evil rigid authoritarian society to serve her is in the long term contrary to her interests. So she's not going to create structure for her society, or overtly try to rule over it, or issue laws, because that is her way. Her followers will be largely left to their own devices to pursue their own interests without overt interference by her, because that will encourage best the chaotic mindset she prefers and tries to cultivate. Instead we see her largely acting like a lawful overlord trying to keep a semi-rebellious (but not very rebellious) people in line.

Slaad are problematic...

Yep. I tend to ignore most of the cannon on the Slaad and run them in a very different way.

 

[Aaron L]

The problem with CN in D&D is that it's not a real alignment. Think of the other examples given from pop culture: Han Solo in A New Hope, Cpt. Jack Sparrow, etc.
If Han Solo didn't choose a side and didn't join the Rebellion (and become Chaotic Good), he'd have left at the end of A New Hope. He'd have been an NPC and not a heroic protagonist of the film series. Same thing with Jack Sparrow. He's ill-suited for being in a heroic game like D&D when he's playing the CN alignment. The times when he's acting heroic and acting for the common good, that works. But other times, he's an NPC.
D&D doesn't work when characters can't decide what side of the fence they're on.

Chaotic Neutral is absolutely a "real Alignment" and is very well-suited to professional adventurers; such a character dislikes authority, does not go out of his way to help strangers without good reason, and does not go out of his way to harm strangers without good reason... but he likely would go a bit out of his way to free slaves if he came across any, seeing as how slavery probably really rubs him the wrong way. Conan is pretty much the poster child for the Chaotic Neutral Alignment, and he is an excellent model for a D&D character.

"D&D doesn't work when characters can't decide what side of the fence they're on."

Why? Says who? Why does D&D require choosing a side between Good and Evil? D&D is not defined by the cosmic struggle of Good vs Evil; that's just one element of the game, which can be used or ignored as wanted. I've been through that style of game, over and over and over again, where every damn campaign was another Dragonlance, and it is extremely limiting; all about (yet again!) rolling up a new band of unlikely heroes who are destined to rise up from obscurity to fulfill some prophecy and save the world from the latest threat from the Forces of Darknessas part of a predetermined DM storyline with story goals the PCs had to hit, and let me tell you it gets old real fast, and I've come to hate such kind of play. After the 3rd campaign in a row of such cliche all I wanted to do was play an amoral treasure hunter who didn't give a squat about saving the world, like the original D&D characters; ever notice how most of the original, storied D&D characters were some variety of Neutral? That's because they were treasure hunters and tomb-robbers out to make themselves rich and famous, not "heroes" out to save the world. Playing Good Aligned Heroes who pick a side is fun and a fine way to play the game, but it is not the way to play the game, and when it's every single campaign it just gets deathly boring.

 

[Coroc]

Briefly, the writers have a hard time imagining anything as alien, and so tend to ascribe human traits and motivations and social structures to things which - if we are to believe the backstory - are not remotely human in character. They also have a really hard time distinguishing between immortal and mortal beings, and ascribe to immortal societies traits that would only exist in mortal ones.



After having been on largely the same page, where did this come from? At no point did you differentiate things by 'means' and 'ends', and if you are going to start trying to do that then we actually will have something to debate.

In particular, you just told me that the distinguishing factor between the two is that lawfuls accepted authority and chaotics rejected it. Demons and devils are incarnated ideas, and as such we expect them to embody those ideas in the extremes. Unlike mortal beings, their societies ought to be pure and free from internal hypocrisy. They literally are the thing that they are, and are not merely trying to be that thing. A devil cannot be but utterly lawful and evil, because that's the only things that make up their being.

So what we expect to see in their society is a society were everyone on every rung of the society excepted the notion that they ought to be subject to the law. No one ought to be a hypocrite about it. The all agree to follow rules and they all agree on the utility of rules, and to a large extent we would expect a society that is in a sort of dark harmony where everything works but everything runs on pain, suffering, degradation, and so forth. And instead what we are presented with is essentially a pastiche of a decadent mortal wicked kingdom where the characteristics of the beings within the hierarchy are the stereotypical of how we'd expect free willed mortals to act in the same situation. Thus, despite this being a lawful society, there is a lot of backstabbing, intrigue, disunity, change, disloyalty, betrayal, and in short a bunch of attributes we properly associate with chaotic evil, rather than lawful evil. Chaotic have no loyalty, where as we would expect loyalty to be one of the few 'virtues' that lawfuls - even evil ones - would display. Most of all the leaders in the society are all hypocrites. They don't seem to believe the very philosophy that they embody. Rather they behave as we'd expect humans to behave in the same circumstances, as beings who ultimately see society organized for their own benefit and not as beings who just see themselves as important cogs in a a machine that they serve as much as anything else in the society. In other words, they don't think like lawful evil beings despite being lawful evil archetypes.

Meanwhile on the other end of the spectrum we have beings like Graz'zt who have feudal courts and behavior little distinguished from their diabolical counterparts.



I disagree. Every portrayal we've seen of the Drow from Gygax to Salvatore describes a highly regimented, organized society which shares a universal set of laws and regulations across the whole of society, which has caste systems, large functioning cities, and a series of tests and trials which everyone in the society will be familiar with and expect to undergo, and social mores which pretty much everyone obeys.

And I submit to you that this is a lawful society by your own definition.

There are chaotic alternatives.



This is the strangest part of it. Because in mortal society, if someone is chaotic evil, then you could expect them to hypocritically organize society around lawful principles and adherence to the state and obedience to lawful authorities, not because they believed in any of these things, but because this ultimately caused the whole of society to be organized around them. And, for a mortal society drawing on mortal powers, this makes perfect sense.

But it makes absolutely no sense for an immortal ruler on several grounds. First, being an immortal being the very idea of a lawful society, even one secretly organized to serve them, is distasteful to them to the point of distress. They cannot hypocrites in the same fashion that mortals are unless they are some sort of incarnated hypocrisy, and in which case hypocrisy we'd expect to be the dominate mode of society (so everyone would pretend to be good to maximize that). Instead, chaotic evil rulers should prefer a chaotic evil society, even if it that means that the society is not loyal to them. Further, being a deity, Lloths ultimate goal is to acquire petitioners. But she organizes the society as a lawful evil society, then ultimately most of her followers will be lawful evil, and as such will not ultimately end up as her petitioners. She has to have society be chaotic before she can claim the spirits of that society as her own. Creating a lawful evil rigid authoritarian society to serve her is in the long term contrary to her interests. So she's not going to create structure for her society, or overtly try to rule over it, or issue laws, because that is her way. Her followers will be largely left to their own devices to pursue their own interests without overt interference by her, because that will encourage best the chaotic mindset she prefers and tries to cultivate. Instead we see her largely acting like a lawful overlord trying to keep a semi-rebellious (but not very rebellious) people in line.



Yep. I tend to ignore most of the cannon on the Slaad and run them in a very different way.

With drow it is difficult. How do you define the alignment chaotic evil, i mean what is the biggest denominator? For me it is that they are fond of cruelty and violence, they hurt and kill for fun, are treacherous and unreliable at the first opportunity.
It is the same with their ritualised attacks of one house on another:
If it succeeds it is justified and all others will help root out the losing house, if it fails it is the attacker who gets this treatment.
Lolth demands the third son as a sacrifice , that is just to show that the high priestess does not even care for mother instincts.

Of course rules of society make something seem lawful, but i see the deciding factor in the psychopathic aspects of drow behavior, not that they have some acompaning laws. Because, if they were e.g. lawful evil, then the daughter of a high priestes would not intrigate versus or kill her mother to get herself into that position.
There would be laws concerning succesion or disputes between houses, not just laws seemingly justifying chaotic behaviour.
A law always is absolutely defined e.g. it cannot be like: a thief gets not punished if he manages to escape with the loot and is identified later, but if the victim manages to catch him instantly he gets punished the hardest way possible.

Maybe neutral evil is the best fitting for drow society since they favor personal success at all costs over everything else, which is a thing a chaotic being eventually does not care for.

 

[DWChancellor]

With drow it is difficult. How do you define the alignment chaotic evil, i mean what is the biggest denominator? For me it is that they are fond of cruelty and violence, they hurt and kill for fun, are treacherous and unreliable at the first opportunity.

Maybe neutral evil is the best fitting for drow society since they favor personal success at all costs over everything else, which is a thing a chaotic being eventually does not care for.

I agree with Celebrim that published materials have poor discipline in terms of the "alienness" of extraplanar strongly aligned creatures. I lean a lot on the alienness of my supernatural NPCs and I'd like to think my players' reactions confirm that I do a descent job.

That drow are evil is obviously true. I see them as being "chaotic" more than "lawful" because the basis of their society is the strongest wins (only the ends matter). This I see as a chaotic principle. Chaotic societies (etc.) aren't necessarily unstructured. What structure the Drow have is imposed directly by Lolth and would mutate or disappear along with Lolth (as we see it does in all Drow exceptions from Jarlaxle's troop to non-Lolth worshipping Drow).

I don't remember if it was here on Enworld or not, but I read a very good article arguing that tribal societies are chaotic in D&D alignment. The chieftain is selected for strength and while they may impose a structure and the appearance of "law" it is on the basis of their personal notions and strength (i.e. Lolth enforcing Drow societies' "norms" by punishing those who are caught violating them, but rewarding those who get away with things without being caught.) If Lolth disappeared, everything would be reordered by whoever stepped into the power vacuum.

In a lawful society these norms would occur by habit or rote with members of the society obeying as a matter of course and not because of the direct threat posed by those stronger. The more I type the more this reminds me of descriptions of Demonic societies.

So when I try and differentiate lawful societies and chaotic ones, it isn't based on whether there is an appearance of "structure" but whether that "structure" is based on direct threat (strength of the leaders) or general consensus (following norms).

* **

I think part of this is how we are defining "authority." For me, if the authority is a direct threat from someone stronger, that isn't necessarily lawful.

I think there is a lot more room for interesting discussion in "would a Chaotic God tolerate or approve of lawful servants." For me, that would depend on exactly how they are chaotic. Lolth isn't chaotic because she likes a disordered mess like the Slaad; she is chaotic because she wants everyone to follow her whims regardless of what they are. Etc.

 

[DWChancellor]

Another chaotic/lawful test:

Would you stop at a red light at midnight with no one in sight (no cameras, etc.)

Drow would definitely NOT stop. Devils definitely would (should).

Neutrals would consider their options.