Archived Discussion

This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.

Lupis42: Would it be reasonable to add the Joker as the Chaotic evil example?

Lull The Conqueror: Moved discussion of Palladium alignment system to "Examples."

Nasrudith: Does Deidre really count as neutral good? She's the leader of a faction that tames and uses mind worms for the military. I'm pretty sure that using monsters who deliver horrific Mind Rape then Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong qualifies as a war crime at very least and is to big of a Rape The Dog moment for her to qualify for the alignment, the only ethical approach to them is to Kill It with Fire.

Norwegian Guy: I'd argue that the plot vindicates Deirdre, showing that while she may be slightly too... eager, she is essentially right in every single particular view. Also, using mind worms to kill the enemy may not be nice, but isn't it better than sending in people to die? I'd argue Deirdre as one step more good than everybody else on the moral axis, making everybody else Neutral at best and Evil at worst. Not to mention that every single other faction also has the opportunity to train or capture mind worms, and the rather extensive use of Nightmare Fuel psychics in-game...

Whether or not we agree with Deirdre's views, she is canonically "good" - or, at least, better than everybody else.

Signed, Someone who always plays as the University and agrees with them most of all.

Sunder The Gold: I just want to say I'm REALLY pleased with how well and intelligently this article was executed. Rather than just offering the straight official definitions for each, including the various intrepretations helps to avoid some confusion and argument.

Lull The Conqueror: Thanks! I've played TabletopRPGs for the past 12 years or so (I'm 24, to give you a sense of scale), so I have a lot of experience with rational discourse on Character Alignment.

Ruthie A: Since this discussion is getting rather long, do you think we should maybe move it to the Forums?

Sunder The Gold (after truncating the formerly long discussion): Right you are. Except I haven't ever used the forums here before, I'm not sure where to start, and I'm too lazy to bother unless necessary. So for now, I've picked it up and moved it to Lull's personal Discussion Page instead. If you mind that, Lull, I'll start looking into those forums so as to get it off your backlawn. For now, I'll continue our discussion.

Spud: Now I'm not sure if this argument should go into 'Just Bugsme' or here in the discussion; but anarchic does NOT mean chaos. Check the dictionary.

Earnest: Hey y'all, should we include a 3x3 table with the alignments, or would that be too much?

Lull The Conqueror: That might be cool, but I don't know how to do it. Could we fit all the words in there, or would it be ancillary by necessity?

Earnest: It's not that hard to do; check the Editing button on the left and then Text Editing.

Here's an example.

Alignment Chart	Lawful	Neutral	Chaotic
Good	Lawful Good	Neutral Good	Chaotic Good
Neutral	Lawful Neutral	True Neutral	Chaotic Neutral
Evil	Lawful Evil	Neutral Evil	Chaotic Evil

Bob: I'd like to point out what I believe is the difference between Chaotic Evil and Neutral Evil.

When someone Chaotic Evil butcher an innocent village? They were bored and the screams of pain and pleadings for mercy amused them. Chaotic Evil is amoral psycopathy. Spreading evil and suffering for the sake of evil. Kefka and the Joker are perfect examples of this.

When someone Neutral Evil butcher an innocent village? It was a blood sacrifice to make a pact with a demon. Neutral Evil is the desire for power at any cost, whether it is achieved by breaking the law or by (ab)using it. Money? Power? Immortality? Godhood? They want it all. Sarevok and Jon Irenicus? Neutral Evil. The Ori and the Goa'uld? Neutral Evil. Arkham and Vergil? Neutral Evil.

Tanto: ...Ugh. Can we all please sign a pact that we shall never use yellow text on these pages ever again? It might as well be spoilered text for how easy it is to read.

HeartBurn Kid: This got deleted in a drive-by; put it back, and dropping it on the Discussion page on the off (fat) chance that our drive-by-er bothers to discuss things further:

Arguably The Punisher. He believes in right and wrong, and protects the innocent, but doesn't trust the laws and the courts to punish society's criminals — instead preferring himself and his gun for the job.

Uknown Troper: In fact I do. The Punisher is a 'hero' whose very gimmick is that he uses lethal force on the drop of a hat against criminals. Even if they're guilty, killing people is not a good act, not even in self-defence. What the Punisher does — killing scores of people who do not fit into the system without the benefit of due process or opportunity to have the society they wronged try them just because his family got bumped off by the mob — does not imply a respect for the sanctity of life or a desire to help people that would define good on a D&D scale. The Punisher is basically Judge Dredd without the governmental sanction (or the irony value).

And also because his ability to provoke outbursts like those from both sides of the camp means he's stated in the main trope as a really bad example.

HeartBurn Kid: Good points. Still, we are talking about D&D alignments here. In D&D, even Lawful Good characters often wind up committing Genocide for Fun and Profit. And the Punisher does what he does as a servant of the greater societal good (in his mind, at least), which he doesn't consider the court system to serve. Considering that The Kingpriest, who started the Dragonlance equivalents of both The Spanish Inquisition and Armageddon, is canonically considered Lawful Good, I see no reason why The Punisher wouldn't be considered Chaotic Good. After all, Chaotic Good doesn't mean Chaotic Nice, any more than Lawful Good means Lawful Nice or Lawful Stupid.

And honestly, I'm not sure what outbursts you're referring to. You stated your point rather civilly, and for my part, this is the first I've said anything on the subject besides posting the original example.

Uknown Troper: Well, no, it doesn't imply 'nice', but it does imply, and I quote from the SRD here: "'Good' implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others."

Now, while I may be persuaded to say that, yes, his one-man crusade on crime is a 'personal sacrifice', the punisher does not, to my knowledge, show any sort of regard for the sanctity or dignity of the sentient life (criminals) that he has made it his duty to fight. Because real life doesn't possess such things as 'ultimate evil', criminals, however vile, are still basically human beings and gunning them down willy-nilly without offering them due process, to say nothing of using violent interrogation methods and torture, is not 'good'. If the punisher can be considered 'good', then so can Rorschach — both of them are prime examples of the He Who Fights Monsters trope if you ask me.

HeartBurn Kid: Actually, his entire one-man war on crime is based entirely on the "sanctity and dignity of human life" — specifically, the lives of his murdered family, in whose memory he... well, does everything he does. And true, "real life" doesn't contain ultimate evil... but comic books do, and that's the world in which The Punisher lives. There aren't too many criminals in the Marvel Universe who ever get reformed — this, to me, says that they are evil on a fundamental level, much like the orcs that the paladin slaughters by the hundreds with hardly a thought to his "sanctity of life". Again, I point to The Kingpriest — he did what he thought was right to protect his people and his society, just like The Punisher does what he thinks is right to avenge his family and protect innocent people. That both of them end up doing very, very horrible things due to this drive to good is a case for the Balance Between Good and Evil rather than a personal judgment on them as less than good.

You do bring up a lot of excellent points, though, and I can at least agree that the issue is probably too contentious to put the example back on the main page. And I do appreciate you coming back and talking about this. Most people who do drive-by edits don't, and some of them actually like to start Edit Wars instead of dropping in on the discussion page and, you know, talking about their points of contention. Now, we just need to get you doing that when you pull examples, and not after... :)

Austin: I'd like to point out that Frank has been shown to care about innocents, and he has shown mercy to criminals on various occasions. Some comics show him as being afraid to consider that the people he kills have something to live for, because he worries that doing so will dull his edge. Unfortunately for Frank, more than a few writers are unable to write anti-heroes as more than one-sided psychopaths, so his character is widely misunderstood.

Sikon: Here's an example I came up with to compare how characters of various alignments would react to a single situation. I'm not adding it to the main page because I may have got something wrong, and would like to discuss it first.

What would be the intended course of action for dealing with a Corrupt Corporate Executive?

Lawful Good: Work with investigators to find incriminating evidence against him, then turn him over to the court.
Lawful Neutral: Dig the history of all of his actions, good and evil, and decide whether he really is corrupt.
Lawful Evil: Collect evidence, then threaten him with legal action, blackmailing him into doing the character's own bidding.
Lawful Stupid: Burst onto his tribune when he's giving a public speech, and accuse him of being evil.
Neutral Good: Take over the company without using any extreme tactics, then change its ethics to be more benign.
True Neutral: Invest into his competitors, to weaken his monopoly and keep him in check.
Neutral Evil: Send an assassin after him.
Chaotic Good: Rob him and give the money to the poor.
Chaotic Neutral: Drive him and his employees mad with prank calls and other anonymous lunacy, until the entire company is in disarray.
Chaotic Evil: Raid his town and kill its entire population, including him just for being there.
Chaotic Stupid: Bomb his house and the company headquarters, decapitate him, dismember the body, and put the head on a pole with a sign: "Thus — all who stand in my way!"

Earnest: Seems about right. All I'd add is that the Chaotic Good/Neutral Good types might plant evidence to incriminate him. He's evil after all, so what does it matter if he goes to jail for a fake crime when he's already done similar things? The True Neutral types might also choose to fight fire with fire. If he's a predator in the corporate ecology, the TN might decide to get or become a bigger predator to get him out of the way. Whether this new corporate executive is corrupt or not is beside the point, the guy who was in his way is out of it now.

Lull The Conqueror: These all sound like good examples, but if you're going to put this on the main page I'd suggest giving a couple of examples of how each alignment might handle a problem. For instance, the Lawful Good character might work with the investigators to bring the Corrupt Corporate Executive down - or, if he suspects/knows the investigators themselves are corrupt, he may decide to take the vigilante route. The Chaotic Neutral character might decide to wage a large scale war of pranks and vandalism on the company, or he might decide that Molotov cocktails would be funnier; then again, a Chaotic Neutral character might decide to do anything. If the Lawful Evil character doesn't think the executive will yield to blackmail, he might just send in an assassin, especially if there's a legal Assassin's Guild. Even if it isn't legal, Lawful isn't necessarily law-abiding (blackmail is illegal in most places as well, after all).

Razide: I think that's a mischaracterization of chaotic neutral; a chaotic neutral person isn't necessarily a zany prankster, and even if they are, firebombing a building for the fun of it is not a neutral act. A chaotic neutral person holds their personal freedom as paramount. They won't maliciously hurt others, but they won't go out of their way to help others either. As mentioned in the article itself, Han Solo - when he first appears - is a perfect example. Also, evil doesn't necessarily mean homicidal, and chaotic evil doesn't necessarily mean psychotically homicidal (unless they're really Chaotic Stupid).

Anyway, part of the problem with the above scenario is that it's a bit vague. As such, let me suggest the following alternative: a junior executive discovers that his boss is embezzling money from the company. However, the company has been engaging in practices that, while not illegal, are destructive to the enviornment, and the executive has been using the embezzled money to help people who've been harmed by the corporation's practices.

Lawful Good: Will probably bring the senior executive to justice, but will likely ask for clemency on his behalf, and will also bring the corporation's harmful activities to light.
Lawful Neutral: Will bring the senior executive to justice. The fact that the executive was stealing for a good cause is irrelevant.
Lawful Evil: Will make it look like the senior executive was stealing the money for personal gain, then go to the boss with the evidence, get himself promoted into his boss's position, and then double the destructive activities of the company so as to increase profits and make himself look even better.
Neutral Good: Will weigh the severity of the crime with the reasons behind it before acting. Will probably tell his boss that if he stops the embezzelment, he'll forget what he knows.
Neutral: Depends on how he feels about his boss and the company. May or may not get involved.
Neutral Evil: Will blackmail his boss for some or all of the stolen money, a promotion, or something else.
Chaotic Good: Won't turn in his boss, and will probably help him cover it up. The good he's doing is what's important, and if he has to break the law to do it, so be it.
Chaotic Neutral: Depends on how he feels about his boss and the company, and how it affects him personally. Either way, he doesn't care that the law is being broken.
Chaotic Evil: Will do whatever is the most advantageous to himself personally, without any regard for the law, and without compassion. This could include blackmailing his boss, stealing the embezzled money, and so on.

HeartBurn Kid: Just wanted to add that the Chaotic Neutral type is also fairly likely to not get involved at all. After all, the situation doesn't affect him personally, so why should he care about the "company politics"?

Sikon: The problem with this example is that four alignments (Neutral Good, Chaotic Good, True Neutral and Chaotic Neutral) will have no incentive to act at all. After all, the character isn't affected personally, and the boss's behavior is only unacceptable for Lawful characters (who will deride the boss for breaking the law or at least acting covertly and thus dishonorably) and Evil characters (who will view the boss as a sentimental sissy).

Ideally, I'd like the situation to impact all characters personally so they would at least act somehow even if their alignment doesn't dictate their behavior.

How about the textbook example of Lawful Evil and Chaotic Good characters, the tale of Robin Hood? Let's imagine that someone like the Sheriff of Nottingham is collecting ridiculously high taxes from a small peaceful village, and one of its inhabitants is the character in question. This will be unacceptable for:

Good characters, because innocent people suffer and they can't just sit and watch.
Chaotic characters, because someone is enforcing the law upon them and they don't want to obey.
Evil characters, because somebody is harming them while it could be the other way round, and they could be in charge.
Neutral characters; they couldn't care less about the law and the others, but don't want to part with their money themselves.

So, the example could be as follows:

Lawful Good: Will try anything to legally stop the tax frenzy, including petitioning for lower taxes, convincing the sheriff's superiors that he's harmful for the community, or finding some law that the sheriff does violate (if tax law is not violated itself).
Lawful Neutral: Will grudgingly pay the tax. After all, it's his duty. The sheriff himself is Lawful Neutral if he's just doing this because it's his job; if he enjoys driving the villagers into poverty, then he's Lawful Evil.
Lawful Evil: Will sign up to participate in the sheriff's "crusade" and extort taxes with doubled fervor. May later convince the superiors that he's doing a better job as a law enforcer than the sheriff, and thus deserves this position himself.
Neutral Good: Basically the same as the passive True Neutral, but will give the money he saved to others instead of keeping it to himself. An active Neutral Good character may plant false evidence to get his deposed, although I don't know if this is a neutral act.
True Neutral: Will be as uncooperative as possible at paying taxes, won't give anything voluntarily, and will exploit every chance to avoid paying that he can get away with. An active True Neutral character may decide to fight fire with fire,
Neutral Evil: Will employ any means to depose the sheriff, take his place and continue the exploitation, without consideration for legality.
Chaotic Good: Will pull a Robin Hood (who himself was Chaotic Good) and steal the collected money and secretly give it back to the villagers. Alternatively, will blackmail the sheriff into resigning, or incite the people to acts of civil disobedience (as long as they don't go overboard).
Chaotic Neutral: Will act in a "screw you, I'm not paying" way. Will conceal his income, or bribe the sheriff to leave him alone, or rob him and take back the money he lost, or disrupt tax collecting operations for the heck of it, or just go into hiding.
Chaotic Evil: Will simply kill the sheriff for trying to collect from him. Alternatively, will incite the villagers to rebel and fight his patrols and burn down his house, and then watch as the violence escalates.

Lull The Conqueror: I find the Robin Hood example interesting because it highlights one of those sticky wickets in determining what exactly Law and Chaos mean. As mentioned in the main page, Robin Hood isn't always portrayed as Chaotic Good - in some stories, he slides all the way to Lawful, because the Sheriff's actions are not just unjust, but defy the order of the "True King." If Robin Hood is obeying the rightful order, but the local regime is defying that order, does that make him Lawful? Even if these tax laws are actual documented laws, and the Sheriff is following them to the letter, opposing him isn't necessarily a Chaotic act. To modernize it - even if the oppressive regime was democratically elected and passed all their laws in the full sight of the taxpayers (or alternatively if the evil corporation is in fact obeying all the laws to the letter), it's not clear that opposing them is necessarily Chaotic. One could cite an order that transcends ordinary laws entirely; the classical example, of course, would be God, but the religious context isn't necessary. Most of the rhetoric I've seen from the American Revolution, for instance, appealed to Natural Law as a justification for rebelling against the King. Opposing existing law in the name of Natural Law or Holy Writ or what-have-you may be Lawful or it may be Chaotic. Or it may be neither. Fitting real-world examples into this sort of thing is extremely tricky. At least in Dungeons And Dragons The Powers That Be are usually in the habit of coming out and saying what they want.

HeartBurn Kid: Yes, opposing them wouldn't necessarily be a Chaotic act, but opposing them as Robin did — with a concerted campaign of thievery and guerilla attacks — is definitely Chaotic. In fact, the part I disagree on is the idea that Robin Hood could be Lawful Good; just because he does what he does in support of the true King, that doesn't necessarily change the fact that he's breaking a ton of laws, and not just the corrupt ones that the Sheriff put in place.

Earnest: I would suggest that the NG character would find a more active way to help the community, like finding loopholes in the law to help himself and other's pay less, or joining (or getting contacts in) the sheriff's collectors to get them to collect less and warn collectees before they arrive. A NG wouldn't fabricate evidence, but may otherwise find a way to manipulate existing evidence to get the sheriff/lord to back off.

Lull The Conqueror: HeartBurn Kid - I'm not sure about thievery and guerrilla tactics being necessarily Chaotic. After all, the Sheriff and Prince John had Robin and his men outclassed, and he was fighting them the only way he could. Breaking laws isn't necessarily non-Lawful if you're opposing a corrupt order, even if you're breaking laws set in place by the rightful King. To me, whether he's more Chaotic or more Lawful depends mostly on whether his actions were in the service of justice as an ideal (Chaotic) or King Richard specifically (Lawful). I added him as a Chaotic Good example myself because it's usually depicted as more the former. This is just my take on things, though - for some, breaking the law is specifically Chaotic, even if you're doing it for a good reason and in the service of the rightful power.

One example I have seen for law/chaos is that lawful characters think on the large-scale, while chaotic characters think on the small scale. If there is a bomb in the heavily guarded enemy base about to fire a superweapon and kill millions, but the base also contains prisoners, a Lawful Good character probably wouldn't risk saving the prisoners at the expense of millions, but the Chaotic Good character would spout something like "Never leave a man behind!" Similarly, a Chaotic Evil character will take what's in front of him, whereas a Lawful Evil character is more willing put off personal gain for a while if it will bring him greater benefit in the end.

Lawful: "I do what I must..."
Neutral: "I do what I do..."
Chaotic: "I do what I want..."
Good: "...for everyone's benefit."
Neutral: "...regardless of who benefits."
Evil: "...for my own benefit."

Sikon: Actually, Lawful characters can justify trying to save the prisoners if it's their duty. So, if a Lawful Neutral character was told by the commanding officer to defuse the bomb with no instructions about the prisoners, or save the prisoners with no instructions about the bomb, they will do exactly that. A Lawful Good character would be caught in a dilemma in this situation, but making tough moral decisions between Law and Good (rather than being a holier-than-thou Lawful Stupid) is arguably the whole point of this alignment.

Cromage: Also, Chaotic Evil characters are capable of self-control (except the crazy ones), and frequently must be, so that they can come to power. But to them, stuff like "duty" and "honor" (and other such things that come between them and their enjoyment) is for chumps.

Also, I'd probably characterize the scale as follows:

Lawful: "I do what I must..."
Neutral: "I do what I do..."
Chaotic: "I do what I want..."
Good: "...for everyone's benefit."
Neutral: "...for my own benefit, trying to avoid harm to others."
Evil: "...for my own benefit, and hurting others is part of the kick! (they deserve it)"

Evil characters tend to be either sadistic, or filled with hate. Compare Xykon to Redcloak (Order Of The Stick). Redcloak is textbook Lawful Evil, filled with hatred and a sense of duty to his people. Xykon is by contrast a typically Chaotic Evil character (well, one of the non-insane ones. Really, "Insane" should be its own alignment)

Also, note that "my own" can be replaced with "my own and those I care about (or "my and my Nakama's" since it's essentially the same; fulfilling of the ego is still the main goal.

HeartBurn Kid: I'd probably go with:

Lawful: "I do what I'm told..."
Neutral: "I do what I do..."
Chaotic: "I do what I must..."
Good: "...to help others."
Neutral: "...to get along in the world."
Evil: "...to get what I want, and screw everybody else."

Though I'm not really happy with "must" there, as it could apply equally well to Lawful (adhering to their code, acting honorably and within the law, etc.) or Chaotic (breaking the law, sticking their neck out, etc.)

Kuroyama: I think it comes out something like...

Lawful:"I do what's acceptable..."
Neutral:"I do what I do..."
Chaotic:"I do what I want..."
Good:"...to help others."
Neutral:"...to get by in the world."
Evil:"...to help myself."

I actually figured that you'd first alignment is first determined by where you fall on Good/Evil, then Law/Chaos. Do you want to help people, or yourself?

After figuring that out, how do you want to achieve that goal? Do you want to do things in a culturally/legally acceptable way, or in whatever way strikes your fancy?

Neutrality means you just pick choice A sometimes, and choice B other times.

Psyonif: After several months of playing Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri, I must say I view some of the assigned alignments with extreme suspicion. Particularly glaring is CEO Morgan as Lawful Neutral. Considering "Morgan Quote Of The Day - Greed ensures the transfer of power from the weak to the strong" (and he means that non-pejoratively), he's got to be at least Lawful Evil and more probably Neutral Evil. No?

Latw PIAT: I'd agree. Morgan is Lawful Evil, Yang is Neutral Evil, Miriam is LawfulAnything, Deidre is Neutral Good, Lal is Lawful Good, Santiago is Lawful Neutral (The leader of a Police State is not Chaotic!) and Zahrkov is True Neutral. Roze is Chaotic Neutral, Aki-Zeta 5 is True Neutral, Cha'Dawn is Neutral Evil (He is the Knights Templar version of Deidre) Domai is probably Lawful Good or Lawful Neutral, Svensgaard is Chaotic Evil, ...Or So I Heard, and the aliens are both Neutral something. Any objections?

Draco Cron: Yes. Yang is lawful evil (he very definitely believes in an orderly society, and seems to be quite genuine about using it to achieve enlightenment for his people), Miriam... starts out as lawful good and very swiftly descends into lawful evil, Roze seems to be chaotic good (her belief in the benefits of a free society are genuine, even if she herself prefers to spend her time hacking), Domai is chaotic neutral (he's chaotic good to his own people, but his backstory implies that he'll cheerfully slaughter any amount of upper-class people (talents?) to improve their condition), and Svensgaard is chaotic neutral (his own background explicitly says that he's not malicious). I personally saw Cha Dawn as a chaotic evil Omnicidal Maniac, but YMMV on that.

Clevomon: Here's a question. What happens to insane characters? Are they chaotic by default? This is more out of curiosity than any desire to edit.

Uknown Troper: Depends on the insanity and how it makes them act. People with OCD, for instance, are probably lawful — they do almost everything by ritual.

anon: Aren't Lawful Good characters being given the short end of the stick? The description makes it sound like every LG character is a Knight Templar, when it is debatable whether Knight Templars are LN by definition.

Lull The Conqueror: An interesting question. I was mostly going for humor when I wrote the descriptions, so I tried to get across a good sense of what each alignment was like while still playing to stereotypes; whether I (and subsequent editors) gave LG the short end of the stick is debatable. What I find more interesting, though, is the question of whether Knights Templar are any particular Lawful alignment "by definition." In my book, they can be any of the three... the LG Knight Templar honestly believes he's doing what's best for everyone around him, even if sometimes he has to go a little far to uphold the order... well, he only does bad things to Evil people, right? The LE Knight Templar is a Utopia Justifies the Means type... he doesn't care who gets hurt, as long as the (local, national, global, cosmic) Order is upheld, and there's definitely something in it for him, too. The LN one is a lot like the LE one, but less bloodthirsty, and more likely to be doing it out of a commitment to Order than the possibility of personal gain. Of course, many other readings are possible. If there's a universal set of morals against which "Good" can be compared in your setting or system, Knights Templar can pretty much never be LG.

anon: I'm pretty sure that there is always a universal set of morals against which good can be compared in D&D, unless the DM decides otherwise. Good alignments embody compassion, which a Knight Templar lacks. Similarly, is an LE Knight Templar who derives pleasure from oppressing people really a Knight Templar? (I need a better handle, by the way)

Lull The Conqueror: In Dungeons And Dragons, there's supposed to be, but they're defined broadly enough that there's still room for interpretation. The classic argument that's repeated ad nauseam in D&D fora is whether it's "Good" to kill the children in a raid on an Orc village, since Orcs are Always Chaotic Evil. I could still see a LG Knight Templar, the sort who falls toward the "kill 'em all" side but never actually hurts anyone who isn't Evil. As said somewhere on the main page, Lawful Good isn't necessarily Lawful Nice. And I could still see a LE Knight Templar who really does believe in Lawful ideals, but nevertheless enjoys hurting people to uphold them. The key distinguishing characteristic, to me, would be whether he's using Law as an excuse for doing Evil things; if so, he's probably not a Knight Templar.

Daibhid C: "Most Discworld witches" are True Neutral? Really? Most of them (even Mrs Earwig) seem to be fairly firmly on the side of helping others (Neutral Good), and the only exception I can think of was a Lawful Evil villain. Discworld wizards, on the other hand, I can see a case for; by and large they feel that taking any sort of side only leads to trouble.

Meta4: So! Seeing how big this whole article has gotten, does anyone else think we could make separate pages for each alignment, and move the relevant examples there?

Lull The Conqueror: I'd be glad to do that, once I'm done with finals (in a week). I like being able to credit myself for more pages, and it would give room for more in-depth discussions of particular alignments.

Filby: Ganondorf — Lawful Evil or Neutral Evil? In Ocarina of Time, he takes over as Hyrule's emperor, but his rein seems to consist mainly of reducing the countryside to a charred wasteland and eliminating just about everybody, not crushing them under his boot with ironclad laws, secret police, and other things you'd expect from a Lawful Evil overlord. The Gerudos under his command do seem to have a fairly regimented organization, but all his other minions are just unorganized monsters. In fact, he never seems to actually rule anyone, and the conquest of Hyrule is really just a stepping-stone towards obtaining the Triforce.

I've never played Twilight Princess, so I have no idea how/if Ganondorf's portrayal is any different. In the earlier games he appears in, he has no motive other than obtaining the Triforce through violence (original NES) or subterfuge (Link to the Past). The only truly lawful portrayal I can think of is in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

anon: I think Ganondorf would probably be NE in Ocarina of Time, but he is more lawful in Wind Waker, and more chaotic in Twilight Princess.

Mr.Bookworm: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was always under the impression in my time with D&D that True Neutral was an entirely different alignment from Neutral (or Neutral Neutral, if you really want to). I thought that Neutral was the alignment of those who didn't lean any way in particular, whereas True Neutral was the alignment of those who actively chose to be Neutral, due to some standpoint of theirs. Correct me if I'm wrong, please.

Lull The Conqueror: Hmmm... I feel like my original draft of this page had a few lines about how True Neutral and just Neutral were in fact the same alignment for the purposes of game mechanics (at least in the core books), but some people did insist on using True Neutral only to refer to those with an active commitment to neutrality. At least in the core books of the past couple of editions, no formal distinction was ever made, though (Planescape may have, but Planescape a) isn't core, b) is heavily reliant upon personal belief, and c) is not a setting with which I'm intimately familiar). Someone else must have left that bit out during an edit...

Filby: In D&D, "True Neutral" and "Neutral" are used interchangeably. A druid and a wild animal are both True Neutral. Not even Planescape made the distinction. Various sources have noted the distinction between active and passive neutrality, but they've never been given different names. D&D no longer uses "True Neutral", possibly because of this confusion.

Austin: I'm not sure if describing "Chaotic Evil" as the bottom of the barrel is fair. At a glance it seems like it, but the Player's Guide gives reasons as to why any given alignment is the "best" or "worst" when it comes to evil. For example, lawful evil has an advantage over chaotic evil, because LE people are more likely to get away with it, and chaotic evil people may be completely deranged, but are also prone to self-destruction and may not be organized enough to cause any lasting damage.

Lull The Conqueror: Thinking of cutting the alignment synopses in this page, since they've all been moved to (and revised on) their own respective pages. Also, I think this could use a paragraph or two on how exactly one goes about defining the various alignments and the boundaries between them. Thoughts on this?

Fast Eddie: Cut too-wide image. Please see Administrative Policy.

Nornagest: Just for kicks, I tallied up the self-assigned alignments on the Troper Tales page, making arbitrary judgment calls when two or more conflicting alignments were listed. Results were as follows:

LG: 6; CN: 14; CG: 10; NG: 9; TN: 10; LN: 2; NE: 1; LE: 1

This leads me to doubt the accuracy of self-assigned or test-assigned character alignments and thus the usefulness of the Troper Tales space for this page as anything more than ego-stroking. The spike over Chaotic Neutral is particularly telling, as is the near-absence of people strongly self-identifying as lawful or evil. On the other hand, the spike over True Neutral seems to indicate that someone's being honest — that's not a particularly glamorous alignment, after all.

Hydro Globus: I don't see what's the big deal... ALL Troper Tales pages are for ego-stroking, why is this one supposed to be different?

Amake: I've been thinking why there's such a huge and endless debate over the finer details of law versus good. A lot of people seem to confuse lawfulness with goodness, leading to lawful stupid and such. Could it be because the codifying of all things in the universe that D&D offers attracts large amounts of Autism spectrum disorders - people who need systems and order in their life - who don't really deep down understand the difference between Law and Good? Or am I projecting my own Asperger traits on everyone else?

In my humble opinion, the lack Law-Chaos axis is one of the biggest problems I have with the new Alignement system of the 4E of D&D. The disappearance of alignements like Neutral Good and Chaotic Good in one "Good" alignement can be manageable; in the other hand blending Neutral Evil and Lawful Evil into "Evil" deprives the GM of such interesting NPC like the Noble Demon or the Worthy Opponent (I also used to authorize evil P Cs and te LE alignment was a good way to have them cooperate with the rest of the party). But the "Unalined" alignment puts Lawful Neutral and Chaotic Neutral - which are very different alignments - in the same level, and abolishes the "horizontal" axis, thus leaving de facto only the Good-Evil axis, with Lawful Good = "Super Good", and Chaotic Evil = "Super Evil". This confirms the "Lawful=Good"/"Chaotic=Evil" mindset. Do you know what that means? The Twelve Gods help us: Miko Miyazaki was right all along!

Wascally Wabbit: Discussion on a possible cleanup here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=yq1uljsi0ak5mheo0khp5iyl&page=2#30

Archived Discussion Main / CharacterAlignment