Neither Riggs nor Sherlock Holmes qualify as Chaotic Neutral. The reason? Their ultimate goal, in their behavior, is towards adding to the common good.
If you try to save lives and help people, you are by definition, "good."
I take it you haven't read the books about sherlock holms, or seen the movies?
At one point Sherlock Holmes tell a gang of thieves how to most efficiently rob a bank, why? Because it would be more interesting for him to capture them later on. He doesn't do things out of good will, he does it because he's curiouse and want to be satisfied intellectually. The whole thing with Moriarty from the movies isn't about him taking down Moriarty for the good of the world, it's about him winning over Moriarty as the more intelligent man. He's a selfish person that end up doing something good on the side without that being his intention. Even wattson calls him selfish several times. In the movies he's taking Wattson out to a bachelor party, but that was a lie as what he wanted to do was have a chanse to investigate on his own.
Riggs is Chaotic neutral without a doubt. He has some tendencies to Chaotic good but some of the things he does is downright crazy and illogical. And most of the people he hunt down in lethal weapon isn't to make the world a better place, it's out of revenge for something they did/do against him. Second one the diplomat kills his romance interest -> Revenge. Third one with the chineses is because they were after his wife and close family. He starts out as Chaotic neutral in the first movie, and slowly moves towards chaotic good in the later ones, but he's closer to chaotic neutral than good in the last movie still.
Sherlock holmes doesn't try to do good, it's just a bi product. If you steal 10 000 gold from a bank, and while you're on the run from the police you save 7 children. That doesn't make you good, you have some tendencies to do good things but you still robbed the bank for your own selfish gains, and you're still running away from the Police.
D&D Alignments are nothing more than guide lines. They are flawed and aren't ment to be dissected and made logical. This is a fun little thread but it's in the end all opinions. It's like reading the bible, it's guide lines but it's up to you how you decipher the histories and what moral you get out of them.
Also a lawful person dosn't have to follow every single law, he can follow the laws and orders his god dictates him to do. If a paladin of Tyr meets two children that he finds out through his god are evil, and will do something horrible in the future. Him killing those two children makes him what alignment then? It's all guide lines to make it easier for people to understand and get into the world.
[Edited] : Riggs in the third lethal weapon basically tortures the chinese. He wrecks their office, throws a chair through the window because he doesn't bother taking the door. Everything he does points towards chaotic neutral with tendencies towards being chaotic good. If he was chaotic good, he wouldn't insult the chinese and their culture, he wouldn't break a room and an expensive mirror because he wasn't bothered with taking the door and wanted to irritate the chinese even more.
@ScionIV, adding 'Chaotic' doesn't effect their neutrality. Chaotic alignment doesn't mean 'Anything goes'. And Chaotic certainly doesn't (necessarily) mean Crazy. There are loads of Crazy Lawful goodies. Insanity doesn't play into alignment.
@Schneidend, Doing something because you are getting paid means doing it for selfish reasons. Equals evil. And doing something under duress or threat of force (i.e. being ordered to) isn't necessarily a factor in alignment. A lawful good might do an evil thing if given sufficient force or duress. And saving some chick for the simple reason that you like her would be evil. Or else you remove alignment altogether and call it hormones. Either way, the neutral didn't save the damsel 'Because they are neutral'.
The perfect chaotic neutral to my mind is Ford Prefect of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy books (not the terrible movie that came out a few years back). Given the choice between saving the universe or going to a good party, someone else will surely save the universe. After all, it's been around for a long time and can probably take care of itself. Poor me a drink.
Understand that Good, Neutral and Evil are all absolutes and should be played as such. A good person might do some evil. As soon as they make a habit of it, they turn evil. An evil person might do some good, likewise they should turn good. But what people don't get is that it should be just as hard to play neutrality as it is to play either good or evil (possibly harder). The further they stray from strict neutrality, the further they are from their chosen alignment. People take it as a pot-luck wherein they don't have to choose. You have to choose.
Don't get me wrong, any character at any given time falls into a range of their alignment. They sometimes stray from that alignment based on any number of factors. This is not a carte-blanche to not play alignments. The character should remain true to their absolute alignment at their core.
And yes, Neutral is dis-interest in it's finest. Neutral = disinterest. doesn't mean that you will never EVER act on a cause. Just means that at your core, you honestly don't want to involve yourself in the whole good v. Evil thing.
Neutral Good is my personal world view. Overall I prefer a society that is generally good and laws can help facilitate that. But the law can often be too rigid and is not always right or fair. Sometimes the law must be ignored or changed for true justice to prevail. Chaos on the other hand often leads to destruction and widespread unfairness with no way to reign things in and thus the rule of law is preferable vs. the rule of chaos. The middle ground between law and chaos is right at home to me so long as the end results are generally good.
@ScionIV, adding 'Chaotic' doesn't effect their neutrality. Chaotic alignment doesn't mean 'Anything goes'. And Chaotic certainly doesn't (necessarily) mean Crazy. There are loads of Crazy Lawful goodies. Insanity doesn't play into alignment.
@Schneidend, Doing something because you are getting paid means doing it for selfish reasons. Equals evil. And doing something under duress or threat of force (i.e. being ordered to) isn't necessarily a factor in alignment. A lawful good might do an evil thing if given sufficient force or duress. And saving some chick for the simple reason that you like her would be evil. Or else you remove alignment altogether and call it hormones. Either way, the neutral didn't save the damsel 'Because they are neutral'.
The perfect chaotic neutral to my mind is Ford Prefect of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy books (not the terrible movie that came out a few years back). Given the choice between saving the universe or going to a good party, someone else will surely save the universe. After all, it's been around for a long time and can probably take care of itself. Poor me a drink.
Understand that Good, Neutral and Evil are all absolutes and should be played as such. A good person might do some evil. As soon as they make a habit of it, they turn evil. An evil person might do some good, likewise they should turn good. But what people don't get is that it should be just as hard to play neutrality as it is to play either good or evil (possibly harder). The further they stray from strict neutrality, the further they are from their chosen alignment. People take it as a pot-luck wherein they don't have to choose. You have to choose.
Don't get me wrong, any character at any given time falls into a range of their alignment. They sometimes stray from that alignment based on any number of factors. This is not a carte-blanche to not play alignments. The character should remain true to their absolute alignment at their core.
And yes, Neutral is dis-interest in it's finest. Neutral = disinterest. doesn't mean that you will never EVER act on a cause. Just means that at your core, you honestly don't want to involve yourself in the whole good v. Evil thing.
Putting chaotic forward neutral effect everything. A true neutral person does his actions based on the balance of the world. A chaotic neutral person does what he feels like at the moment, he doesn't have any moral code to follow nor does he feel that he have to balance anything. Jack sparrow doesn't think about what his actions will do and what consequences they have on the balance. I'm sorry but you're putting too much focus on the neutral. What you're talking about is True Neutral, there is quite the difference.
Insanity does play into alignment. You can see this the clearest between neutral evil and chaotic evil. Montaron and Xzar are pretty much the same when it comes to moral, yet one is insane and the other is calculating which is why Montaron is neutral evil and Xzar is chaotic.
And i go to my work because i get paid for it. I wouldn't work if i didn't get paid. So that makes me selfish and turn me into an evil person? I hope you can see how silly that is.
chaotic doesn't mean 'anything goes'. Correct that in your thinking.
You can be insane and be any alignment. You are falling into the fallacy of 'Post hoc ergo propter hoc'. Just because there are examples of chaotic evil insane people it does not follow that all chaotic evil people are insane. There is not causal link. maybe there is correlation, but it isn't causal.
You go to work because you get paid. Yes, that is a little selfish. There are people who go to work and don't get paid. There are people that do work exclusively to help others. They are less selfish.
And yes, if you are selfish ENOUGH, that would make you evil. One selfish act is nothing. Making your world revolve around your selfish acts, is evil.
"Master morality weighs actions on a scale of good or bad consequences unlike slave morality which weighs actions on a scale of good or evil intentions." /source
Good consequences are to grab Drizzt's Twinkle from his pockets as well as convulsively shaking corpse. Hesitation in this choice is negative - My character is just good in the way of Friedrich had described it.
chaotic doesn't mean 'anything goes'. Correct that in your thinking.
You can be insane and be any alignment. You are falling into the fallacy of 'Post hoc ergo propter hoc'. Just because there are examples of chaotic evil insane people it does not follow that all chaotic evil people are insane. There is not causal link. maybe there is correlation, but it isn't causal.
You go to work because you get paid. Yes, that is a little selfish. There are people who go to work and don't get paid. There are people that do work exclusively to help others. They are less selfish.
And yes, if you are selfish ENOUGH, that would make you evil. One selfish act is nothing. Making your world revolve around your selfish acts, is evil.
Chaotic means you CAN follow your own codes, a Jester at a kings court is really "Anything goes" depending on his mood. And a majority of chaotic evil humans (!) are insane, or what you would call crazy, bloodthirsty and unpredictable. This is like saying just because there are examples of Neutral good people doing good actions, doesn't mean that they all do it.
I can't say for D&D but us humans in the real world are all selfish. Some are just more than others, so the question comes in at what point do we go evil?
There are so many things with the alignment system that can't be and shouldn't be made into logical explanations. It's how we look at it individually. That you would say "Correct that in your thinking" is quite insulting and i don't feel that i would have to correct anything about my understanding and opinion about this topic. This isn't 2+2 equals four. I'm no more wrong than anyone else here, and you're no more right than anyone else here. You have your opinion, i have mine. So i'm not falling into any fallacy, nor do i have to correct the way i'm thinking.
I'm sorry if this post comes forward a little bit strong, but i can't help but to feel that the attitude you have here is rude and bashing. If that wasn't your intention i'm sorry, but i still took it that way.
I'll be dropping out of this conversation, as it seems that my long posts are only throwing more fuel onto the fire
Huh, looks like I'm currently the only one who favours the passional side of evil.
It's an rather fascinating alignment in itself, if I do say so myself. Many view it to be limited to classical "dumb villians", but there's much more possibilities to utilise Chaotic Evil personalities than that. It could be just as well an perfectly normal and harmless person on the surface... but underneath they may be obsessive, controlling, and sometimes just plain insane. One could think of the Babylonian goddess Ishtar in that regard.
I always play neutral good, as that's my personal alignment. I just can't be bad to good people even in a video game or choose your own adventure book. -_-'
Must admit, I might be chaotic good instead. I'm gonna read the difference between the two again. :u
EDIT - nope, neutral good!
The difference between neutral good and chaotic good can be rather fuzzy depending on how you define law vs. chaos. Once you've crossed the threshold of being flexible enough in your do-gooding to not qualify as lawful good, the exact point where you begin to qualify as chaotic can be difficult to pin down.
Chaotic Good. It's the one that reflects myself the best imo and it also fits a good-aligned CRPG character the best seeing as you're going to be looting everything even as you help the people whose houses you rob. Neutral Good I have never understood based on the ingame descriptions yet.
I also like Lawful Neutral (when in Amn, do as the Amnish, when in the Underdark, hey, murder is okay...) and Neutral Evil. The latter is really easy to grasp; just be selfish.
i'm not trying to break the law...it just happens, i just do the stuff i would of done and it just so happens i'm chaoic good, if you wait for the authioires to do something then their perious red tape will put them threw a berucratic circus, by the time they get there it may be too late
I love playing the Paladin, being the knight in shining armor, doing every good deed I can. That's fun for me. But, I play NG almost as often as I play LG. And I've played CG on occasion too. I really can't bring myself to play nasty, being able to fix everything wrong in the world is the ultimate in "fantasy" RPGs!
No, doing something because you're being paid is called working. It's common sense. People need to feed, shelter, and clothe themselves. Those things cost money. A mercenary paid to save damsels is not necessarily Evil-aligned.
the characters I play fall pretty heavy on the side of either law, good, or both. Yeah, NG is the alignment I play most often, but numbers 2 and 3 are LG and LN.
This topic is like watching a train derail... Getting popcorn.
Normally I'd agree, but seeing how quickly the argument turned into walls of text, I can't imagine watching it unfold will be anything other than exhausting.
@SionIV, yes I have read Sherlock Holmes. And in those stories, I would qualify Holmes as more Lawful Good than anything else. Why, might you ask?
A) His whole profession is based on the idea of assisting law enforcement in the solving of crimes. Law. Enforcement. His effects on society are to help bring criminals to justice, and thereby promote Order.
He is concerned for other individuals' safety, and puts his own life at risk to help them. Sound like a Good guy, to me.
Isn't it funny how alignment topics often stir up the most passionate debates?
I think a lot of it has to do with people's very different perceptions of what drives behavior (and their often trite rationalizations for their own behavior), and the fact that the D&D alignment system is quite a cumbersome abstraction that ultimately fails to capture the whole reality.
I think a lot of the system originated with an idea of combining the classical good vs. evil fantasy tropes (as in Tolkien's fiction) with the rock-and-roll weirdness of Michael Moorcock's law vs. chaos dynamic (as in his Elric saga). On paper it seems to provide a decent abstraction that encompasses people's effects on the world around them, but I think that too often D&D players take it on as some kind of ultimate moral compass--and here I think it fails utterly. Because it doesn't properly distinguish motivations, and it doesn't properly account for the influences of a person's surrounding culture on their behavior.
I love playing the Paladin, being the knight in shining armor, doing every good deed I can. That's fun for me. But, I play NG almost as often as I play LG. And I've played CG on occasion too. I really can't bring myself to play nasty, being able to fix everything wrong in the world is the ultimate in "fantasy" RPGs!
That's cool, sounds like you RP the Good alignments properly, though as I definitely try to be "good" in the real world, it can be fun to play a character who has no qualms about stealing etc. in an RPG :-)
@SionIV, yes I have read Sherlock Holmes. And in those stories, I would qualify Holmes as more Lawful Good than anything else. Why, might you ask?
A) His whole profession is based on the idea of assisting law enforcement in the solving of crimes. Law. Enforcement. His effects on society are to help bring criminals to justice, and thereby promote Order.
He is concerned for other individuals' safety, and puts his own life at risk to help them. Sound like a Good guy, to me.
Isn't it funny how alignment topics often stir up the most passionate debates?
I think a lot of it has to do with people's very different perceptions of what drives behavior (and their often trite rationalizations for their own behavior), and the fact that the D&D alignment system is quite a cumbersome abstraction that ultimately fails to capture the whole reality.
I think a lot of the system originated with an idea of combining the classical good vs. evil fantasy tropes (as in Tolkien's fiction) with the rock-and-roll weirdness of Michael Moorcock's law vs. chaos dynamic (as in his Elric saga). On paper it seems to provide a decent abstraction that encompasses people's effects on the world around them, but I think that too often D&D players take it on as some kind of ultimate moral compass--and here I think it fails utterly. Because it doesn't properly distinguish motivations, and it doesn't properly account for the influences of a person's surrounding culture on their behavior.
I have a different view on sherlock holmes and i can't agree with you there.
But i couldn't have said the rest of your post any better! Really amazing post
True Neutral.... sometimes i do evil, sometimes i do good, sometimes i follow the law if it is logical and sometimes I don't care of the law... I follow my emotions.... simply put I do see everything in grey... there ain't no black or white :P If they want me to do something... then they should hire me
BY the way have anyone done the Aligment test??? I ended up as True neutral hahaha
and on the debate side about whats CN whats CE i do belivie Complete Scoundrel 3.5e explains somewhat good a declaration On alig... like Captain Jack Sparrow and Snake Plissken (from Escape from New York) are CN in alig while Riddick from Pitch Black are CE alig.... also remember Dracula, Han Solo (episode IV) and Lara croft are T.N....
personally i do find neutral aligment colourful.. to play as a player.. anyway that's my opinion..
Chaotic Good seems to work the best for the way the game is written and designed. And it works well (conceptually) for mixed alignment parties, which I typically assemble.
Addendum: I occasionally play other alignments just for variety, but CG has been for me the most satisfying overall.
With the little experimental game I have going that's designed for a high degree of RP, I think I'll be more interested to try out various alignments just to see where they might take the game (i.e., I'm sometimes using dice and cards to determine outcomes, and overall roleplaying each party member individually to react to whatever develops).
This topic is like watching a train derail... Getting popcorn.
Normally I'd agree, but seeing how quickly the argument turned into walls of text, I can't imagine watching it unfold will be anything other than exhausting.
The trick is to only read a few words from each wall, and then put them together to a whole new story. It's a bit like a "make your own adventure" book, just weirder.
while i mostly play as a lawful good character would,i cannot help myself from butchering some npcs i hate
so my chop chop-list in bg includes: all whelps and weasels asking for mercy,Saemon,everyone except Solafuein and the Sviferblins in the underdark,all petty thugs i come across,Drizzt,Baeloth
also i love 'disciplining' chaotic types but the lawful neutral description is a bit alien to me...
I voted chaotic neutral becuase I often choose this alignment when I am undecided who I will choose to take with me and how my character is going to play out as a result of those choices and thats been my mindset mostly for the numerous characters I have created for BGEE - (because I had already approached the game from a more character & party based on character alignment theme dozens of times in the original)
my character concepts have for the most part been more about how the character will play out mechanic wise with the RP side being decided more so as the game plays out - thus the chaotic neutral seems to offer me the most leeway in character development without just ignoring alignment altogether. (since it doesn't matter mechanics wise anyway)
However when I do choose my characters alignment and how he will react up front - and then play the character and choose the party to comply with that alignment - I am most likely to choose Chaotic Good.
I didn't originally write this but this covers in essence what a chaotic neutral person is:
"...He considers himself above the law. Finds most people to be narrow-minded and inflexible. Believes those who seek to rule others are, by nature, corrupt. Seeks to undermine the authority figures of his community or nation. Finds the legal procedures of his nation corrupt. Blieves luck determines wealth. Will break any contract when he feels like it. Believes people deserve the treatment they are willing to endure..." Etc etc...
So in essence... A CN person is an anarchist who doesn't go out of his way to harm or help others.
This to me is exactly why the whole alignment mechanic fails - becuase people can't seem to help assigning rigid unwavering restrictions on how someone with alignment A has to react as opposed to looking at them as flexible personal decisions based on how each individual sees them.
Our rules are very strict...
In this case for instance why couldn't a chaotic nuetral person see himself as ambivelent or even below the law? Why couldn't he find people in general to be open minded and flexible? Believe that those who rule have their hands tied by mountains of bureaucracy. Choose to ignore the whole political system and it's tenets of authority and believe he answers to a higher more spiritual authority? Be ambivelent towards wealth and material things in general and more interested in philosophy and the natural world?
Comments
At one point Sherlock Holmes tell a gang of thieves how to most efficiently rob a bank, why? Because it would be more interesting for him to capture them later on. He doesn't do things out of good will, he does it because he's curiouse and want to be satisfied intellectually. The whole thing with Moriarty from the movies isn't about him taking down Moriarty for the good of the world, it's about him winning over Moriarty as the more intelligent man. He's a selfish person that end up doing something good on the side without that being his intention. Even wattson calls him selfish several times. In the movies he's taking Wattson out to a bachelor party, but that was a lie as what he wanted to do was have a chanse to investigate on his own.
Riggs is Chaotic neutral without a doubt. He has some tendencies to Chaotic good but some of the things he does is downright crazy and illogical. And most of the people he hunt down in lethal weapon isn't to make the world a better place, it's out of revenge for something they did/do against him. Second one the diplomat kills his romance interest -> Revenge. Third one with the chineses is because they were after his wife and close family. He starts out as Chaotic neutral in the first movie, and slowly moves towards chaotic good in the later ones, but he's closer to chaotic neutral than good in the last movie still.
Sherlock holmes doesn't try to do good, it's just a bi product. If you steal 10 000 gold from a bank, and while you're on the run from the police you save 7 children. That doesn't make you good, you have some tendencies to do good things but you still robbed the bank for your own selfish gains, and you're still running away from the Police.
D&D Alignments are nothing more than guide lines. They are flawed and aren't ment to be dissected and made logical. This is a fun little thread but it's in the end all opinions. It's like reading the bible, it's guide lines but it's up to you how you decipher the histories and what moral you get out of them.
Also a lawful person dosn't have to follow every single law, he can follow the laws and orders his god dictates him to do. If a paladin of Tyr meets two children that he finds out through his god are evil, and will do something horrible in the future. Him killing those two children makes him what alignment then? It's all guide lines to make it easier for people to understand and get into the world.
[Edited] : Riggs in the third lethal weapon basically tortures the chinese. He wrecks their office, throws a chair through the window because he doesn't bother taking the door. Everything he does points towards chaotic neutral with tendencies towards being chaotic good. If he was chaotic good, he wouldn't insult the chinese and their culture, he wouldn't break a room and an expensive mirror because he wasn't bothered with taking the door and wanted to irritate the chinese even more.
@Schneidend, Doing something because you are getting paid means doing it for selfish reasons. Equals evil. And doing something under duress or threat of force (i.e. being ordered to) isn't necessarily a factor in alignment. A lawful good might do an evil thing if given sufficient force or duress. And saving some chick for the simple reason that you like her would be evil. Or else you remove alignment altogether and call it hormones. Either way, the neutral didn't save the damsel 'Because they are neutral'.
The perfect chaotic neutral to my mind is Ford Prefect of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy books (not the terrible movie that came out a few years back). Given the choice between saving the universe or going to a good party, someone else will surely save the universe. After all, it's been around for a long time and can probably take care of itself. Poor me a drink.
Understand that Good, Neutral and Evil are all absolutes and should be played as such. A good person might do some evil. As soon as they make a habit of it, they turn evil. An evil person might do some good, likewise they should turn good. But what people don't get is that it should be just as hard to play neutrality as it is to play either good or evil (possibly harder). The further they stray from strict neutrality, the further they are from their chosen alignment. People take it as a pot-luck wherein they don't have to choose. You have to choose.
Don't get me wrong, any character at any given time falls into a range of their alignment. They sometimes stray from that alignment based on any number of factors. This is not a carte-blanche to not play alignments. The character should remain true to their absolute alignment at their core.
And yes, Neutral is dis-interest in it's finest. Neutral = disinterest. doesn't mean that you will never EVER act on a cause. Just means that at your core, you honestly don't want to involve yourself in the whole good v. Evil thing.
Insanity does play into alignment. You can see this the clearest between neutral evil and chaotic evil. Montaron and Xzar are pretty much the same when it comes to moral, yet one is insane and the other is calculating which is why Montaron is neutral evil and Xzar is chaotic.
And i go to my work because i get paid for it. I wouldn't work if i didn't get paid. So that makes me selfish and turn me into an evil person? I hope you can see how silly that is.
You can be insane and be any alignment. You are falling into the fallacy of 'Post hoc ergo propter hoc'. Just because there are examples of chaotic evil insane people it does not follow that all chaotic evil people are insane. There is not causal link. maybe there is correlation, but it isn't causal.
You go to work because you get paid. Yes, that is a little selfish. There are people who go to work and don't get paid. There are people that do work exclusively to help others. They are less selfish.
And yes, if you are selfish ENOUGH, that would make you evil. One selfish act is nothing. Making your world revolve around your selfish acts, is evil.
/source
Good consequences are to grab Drizzt's Twinkle from his pockets as well as convulsively shaking corpse. Hesitation in this choice is negative - My character is just good in the way of Friedrich had described it.
I can't say for D&D but us humans in the real world are all selfish. Some are just more than others, so the question comes in at what point do we go evil?
There are so many things with the alignment system that can't be and shouldn't be made into logical explanations. It's how we look at it individually. That you would say "Correct that in your thinking" is quite insulting and i don't feel that i would have to correct anything about my understanding and opinion about this topic. This isn't 2+2 equals four. I'm no more wrong than anyone else here, and you're no more right than anyone else here. You have your opinion, i have mine. So i'm not falling into any fallacy, nor do i have to correct the way i'm thinking.
I'm sorry if this post comes forward a little bit strong, but i can't help but to feel that the attitude you have here is rude and bashing. If that wasn't your intention i'm sorry, but i still took it that way.
I'll be dropping out of this conversation, as it seems that my long posts are only throwing more fuel onto the fire
It's an rather fascinating alignment in itself, if I do say so myself. Many view it to be limited to classical "dumb villians", but there's much more possibilities to utilise Chaotic Evil personalities than that. It could be just as well an perfectly normal and harmless person on the surface... but underneath they may be obsessive, controlling, and sometimes just plain insane. One could think of the Babylonian goddess Ishtar in that regard.
I also like Lawful Neutral (when in Amn, do as the Amnish, when in the Underdark, hey, murder is okay...) and Neutral Evil. The latter is really easy to grasp; just be selfish.
A Paladin's gotta do what a Paladin's gotta do.
No, doing something because you're being paid is called working. It's common sense. People need to feed, shelter, and clothe themselves. Those things cost money. A mercenary paid to save damsels is not necessarily Evil-aligned.
A) His whole profession is based on the idea of assisting law enforcement in the solving of crimes. Law. Enforcement. His effects on society are to help bring criminals to justice, and thereby promote Order.
Isn't it funny how alignment topics often stir up the most passionate debates?
I think a lot of it has to do with people's very different perceptions of what drives behavior (and their often trite rationalizations for their own behavior), and the fact that the D&D alignment system is quite a cumbersome abstraction that ultimately fails to capture the whole reality.
I think a lot of the system originated with an idea of combining the classical good vs. evil fantasy tropes (as in Tolkien's fiction) with the rock-and-roll weirdness of Michael Moorcock's law vs. chaos dynamic (as in his Elric saga). On paper it seems to provide a decent abstraction that encompasses people's effects on the world around them, but I think that too often D&D players take it on as some kind of ultimate moral compass--and here I think it fails utterly. Because it doesn't properly distinguish motivations, and it doesn't properly account for the influences of a person's surrounding culture on their behavior.
But i couldn't have said the rest of your post any better! Really amazing post
simply put I do see everything in grey... there ain't no black or white :P
If they want me to do something... then they should hire me
BY the way have anyone done the Aligment test??? I ended up as True neutral hahaha
Aligment test:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/20001222b
and on the debate side about whats CN whats CE i do belivie Complete Scoundrel 3.5e explains somewhat good a declaration On alig... like Captain Jack Sparrow and Snake Plissken (from Escape from New York) are CN in alig while
Riddick from Pitch Black are CE alig.... also remember Dracula, Han Solo (episode IV) and Lara croft are T.N....
personally i do find neutral aligment colourful.. to play as a player.. anyway that's my opinion..
Addendum: I occasionally play other alignments just for variety, but CG has been for me the most satisfying overall.
With the little experimental game I have going that's designed for a high degree of RP, I think I'll be more interested to try out various alignments just to see where they might take the game (i.e., I'm sometimes using dice and cards to determine outcomes, and overall roleplaying each party member individually to react to whatever develops).
so my chop chop-list in bg includes: all whelps and weasels asking for mercy,Saemon,everyone except Solafuein and the Sviferblins in the underdark,all petty thugs i come across,Drizzt,Baeloth
also i love 'disciplining' chaotic types but the lawful neutral description is a bit alien to me...
so i must be True Neutral
my character concepts have for the most part been more about how the character will play out mechanic wise with the RP side being decided more so as the game plays out - thus the chaotic neutral seems to offer me the most leeway in character development without just ignoring alignment altogether. (since it doesn't matter mechanics wise anyway)
However when I do choose my characters alignment and how he will react up front - and then play the character and choose the party to comply with that alignment - I am most likely to choose Chaotic Good.
Our rules are very strict...
In this case for instance why couldn't a chaotic nuetral person see himself as ambivelent or even below the law? Why couldn't he find people in general to be open minded and flexible? Believe that those who rule have their hands tied by mountains of bureaucracy. Choose to ignore the whole political system and it's tenets of authority and believe he answers to a higher more spiritual authority? Be ambivelent towards wealth and material things in general and more interested in philosophy and the natural world?