Whenever you discuss alignment in Dungeons & Dragons, the conversation inevitably veers towards focusing on Chaotic Neutral. Alignment is a tool used to generalize a character’s personality, feelings, and outlook on life that is divided into two portions. The first ranges from Lawful to Neutral to Chaotic, while the second part goes from Good to Neutral to Evil. When these are put together in one of the nine possible combinations you end up with a pretty useful indicator of how your character should act in a game.
Chaotic Neutral (CN) usually comes up because in any group of players you inevitibly end up with one who is playing a character of this alignment, and the reason it becomes an issue is that everyone thinks you can use it to rationalize ANY action. This mistake comes about because of the first portion, Chaotic, which makes people think they can just run around changing their mood and actions however they please at the time. This should bring into question if both elements of a character’s alignment are equally weighted, or if one carries a heavier burden than the other.
A lawful character likes order, organization, and making sense of the world while a Chaotic character is reasonably the opposite of that. When you have a Neutral aligned character, they cannot possibly achieve a constant middle ground between the two, therefore they must fluctuate between them as they see fit. When you put this into consideration, really a Neutrally aligned character is more “do-as-you-like” than a Chaotic one, as the Chaotic [Good/Neutral/Evil] character actively defies laws and systems, when presented with them he cannot do as he pleases but would rather avoid or fight restrictions than go with the flow.
Looking at the second modifier, a Neutral character is definitely in the middle ground, and rather then fluctuating between Law and Chaos this attribute stands firmly between Good and Evil. Certainly a Neutral character in this sense can act with or against the forces of order, but they are much more inclined to stand indifferent and in the middle than to side with either end. When you place the two modifiers together, you get a unique blend of two different attributes. When these come together as Chaotic Neutral, people assume that they can fluctuate between all of the modifiers, but in fact they have it backwards and a character aligned Neutral Evil would be more likely to do as he pleases with no mind towards anyone else or the world around him. (this will lead to another article, for sure!)
The Chaotic Neutral alignment should really act as limited as the Lawful Neutral alignment, each is staunchly opposed to Good or Evil becoming a major force in the universe and will act in a way that neither helps nor hinders either side but instead maintains the balance that they feel should always exist. When looking at the Lawful vs. Chaotic portion, a Chaotic character is no more free to act than the Lawful one. They cannot reasonably work within a city government to get what they want, the character would not be happy joining the local guild in order to get work, instead favoring going out on their own and letting chance handle things. If you begin to view Chaotic to be just as limiting as Lawful, except in the opposite way then the system of alignment begins to form more distinct and effective guidelines for your players and NPC’s.
Also, remember that none of the alignments is an excuse to have your character be insane. CN is the most common offender in this case, but hopefully this will help clarify that this particular alignment confers no special freedoms above any of the others.
Characters in 4th edition will have the option of being unaligned! It should come in handy for people who don’t like the current alignment system.
Graham has some great thoughts on this too, though I think what all of these explorations reveal is that everyone has a different opinion on what alignments are.
It seems to me that if you want to play a delusional whacko character you certainly ought to be able to. Now, that doesn’t mean CN gives you carte blanch to act that way… but I know that aside from alignment requirements for classes I really never gave my PCs alignment much thought. I encouraged players to have a consistent but complex set of values. I’ve had LE characters go down in ‘history’ as almost Christ-like martyrs simply because of their code of honor and LG characters revile ‘historically’ as they were seduced by their own moral superiority. Ultimately, I was also guilty on ragging on some of my friends that played ‘Take No Prisoner’ LG paladins, which I thought was sometimes used as a shortcut rather than really roleplaying.
As for the NE argument, NE character are just the ultimate most selfish characters… they aren’t necessarily erratic. They’re just inherently and unabashedly selfish. If they’re smart they don’t reveal their naked selfishness to everyone, but that’s not required. Just think of a shrieking spoiled teeny bopper and thats about what you get…
… Keep in mind I just said no alignment HAS to be anything earlier… thats just my take on the archetypal NE…
Speaking personally, my problem with CN is that I’ve never, ever had a player run CN as anything but a license to do what the heck they want. It’s the alignment selected by smartalecks who think that CN means they can be as anti-social and troublesome as they want. In my group, we jokingly refer to CN as “Chaotic Asshole” as that’s usually how it’s played. We took the very unusual but unanimous decision to ban it completely as a viable PC alignment. And we do allow Evil characters. Go figure 🙂
That said, I’m sure that CN can be intelligently and wonderfully played; I imagine there are perfectly great players out there running CN Druids, Rangers and whatnot. I just haven’t met any………
What would you guys say is one of the better ‘alignment’ like systems in a roleplaying game? Or do you think a system like that is not really needed at all?
Depends on if you give players bonus xp for excellent roleplaying…it’s not necessary, but it gives some barring to the DM and the players as to how certain characters are going to act from the get-go…I don’t really think it’s too needed, since one can simply play the game and let personalities forge themselves…’course then, you might have some contradictions from starting the game if you do either the “just met each other” or the “known each other for years” set-ups…but the alignment system seems to be just as flawed when players think it’s a good idea to have a CG and LE character in the same party…not that it couldn’t happen…but still…
Hence, SWRPG and d20 Modern have it right…