Always consider alignment as a tool, not a straitjacket that restricts the character. — Oft-forgotten sentence from
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition Player's Handbook
A character who does things that don't make any sense, just because it's a "good" or "evil" thing to do. It's not that they've lost their goal — they're actually true to their good or evil
alignment, but at the cost of every survival mechanism developed by humanity.
This goes way beyond being a
Slave To PR or
Card Carrying Villain. Nor is any of these characters a
Knight Templar. A
Knight Templar is not Lawful Stupid, but rather Lawful Neutral or Lawful Evil - with fanatical devotion to the word of law and absolutely no concern for the spirit.
For more on Lawful Stupid and Chaotic Stupid, check out the
LJ post by The Ferrett
in which he introduced the terms. However, note that his definition of Chaotic Stupid is closer to our usage of Stupid Evil.
Alignments covered as sub-tropes include:
Note: this page is currently undergoing editing to split it into separate pages. Please put new examples on each alignment's page, and not here.
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Examples of Chaotic Stupid / Stupid Evil
Tabletop Games
- The old World of Darkness games had at least one faction in every playable race that was frequently chosen by players of Stupid Evil or Chaotic Stupid characters. These groups had a tendency towards extreme violence, madness, and generally being Darker And Edgier than the other factions of that race. Whether or not these factions were inherently Stupid Evil or Chaotic Stupid is debatable, depending on how awesome you believe a given faction to be.
- Vampire: Any member of the Sabbat for Stupid Evil, especially the faux-transhumanist Tzimisce. The Malkavian Clan was pretty much only ever played as Chaotic Stupid, as players went out of their way to play "wacky" insane people. One of the most notorious, a character that would only say the word "fish", led to the term "fishmalk" for any such character.
- This is not to say that ALL Malkavians, for example, submit to this trope. I remember at least one character who was absolutely ordinary and normal - until he got behind the wheel of a car. Another was an extremely rational being, but could only express himself filtered through the irrationality of the clan curse, ending up getting his quite valid points across through pranks, jokes, and occasionally a little bit of stolen Chimerstry.
- Werewolf: The Black Spiral Dancers, and Werewolf-related entities like the Fomori.
- Mage: The Nephandi for Stupid Evil, Marauders for Chaotic Stupid. Curiously, the more popular choice over both was the Lawful Stupid Technocracy.
- They got better when they got their own sourcebook. The basic game is told from the Traditions' point of view; an Alternate Character Interpretation could be the silly Traditionalists are fighting a pointless rearguard battle against the rationalism that will liberate humanity from the dominion of superstition and unwholesome supernatural puppetmasters. Or this could be what the reader wants to believe about the Technocracy, thus proving the whole point about debateability related to perceived awesomeness.
- That Alternate Character Interpretation for the Technocracy could have been great if their sourcebook had tried exploring it in depth. But instead of portraying the Traditions as backwards or evil (which wasn't hard if you gave it some thought), the sourcebook spent half its pages demonizing the Technocracy's own leadership and implying every Technocracy game is about field agents becoming disillusioned with their evil supervisors.
Video Games
- In Neverwinter Nights 2 original campaign, you find a sorceress named Qara as a companion. She's Chaotic Neutral according to her alignment, but she could fool you. All of her actions, every single one of her words and absolutely any dialog options you have with her that makes her like you better are outright Chaotic Stupid AND Stupid Evil. If you're True Neutral you'll learn to dread your conversations with her very quickly, as all options always gives a bunch of points towards any of the extremes or alignment, giving or taking also a bunch of influence with her. With no middle terms.
- Which is quite odd, considering that Sand, a wizards you can get to follow you and is the exact opposite of Qara for most things, is a much better character. He is Lawful Neutral, but understands the law is no absolute. He is a jerk most of the times, but devotes himself for your trial in order to take a few punches at bigger jerks. And his opinion is that it is better to be a coward and live than to be brave (or stupid, in his opinion) and die. Horribly, most likely. He only do follow you afterward to potential danger because he is already caught in the mess.
- In the Mask of the Betrayer expansion, the system is a bit better. You find more instances where being evil is not being brain-dead and it is a lot easier to keep a True Neutral alignment without looking like a turncoat psychotic. Even though the Spirit-Eater your character turns out to be is still a pain to the alignment (some powers give you points towards one way or another, without considering that you may simply want to use them for the convenience, if you're neutral), it was later fixed with patches. Not to mention that you receive much more chances to affect the influence of followers, so you can screw a bit during conversations without screwing the relationship itself.
