Hypothetical: Neutral Parties

[tadkins]

Just something I was thinking about right now; can a group of neutral-aligned folks make for a fun game?

Good parties and Evil parties tend to have pretty clear goals and a bottomless wellspring to draw motivation and passion from. I don't really see the same thing for neutrals though. "Sure, whatever, i'll help your village against those orcs, it'll help our bottom line after all."

Neutral to me just seems like a rather apathetic alignment. It can work for individual characters in a heavily aligned group, definitely. That wizard working with that good party for the sake of sheer power and knowledge. The druid actively striving to maintain balance, etc etc. The hired fighter soldier-of-fortune. But the thought of a full group of neutral characters seems like it'd be kind of awkward. Just a few folks loosely allied with each other for their own benefit. Can a game like that be made fun and interesting? I'd be interested in hearing some stories.

[Malimar]

The easiest way to make it work is to have an obvious thing all the characters want accomplished. Like saving the world from an invasion of demons ("because I'm one of the idiots who lives in it") or whatnot.

[Morty]

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Of course yes.

Longer answer: How is that even a question? People with neutral alignments can have motivations, goals and relationships every bit as compelling as everyone. They might be personal, they might be ideological, or they might be something else. You seem to have painted a deliberately dull and uninteresting picture and now claim it represents every neutral-aligned character.

Besides, even if you do use alignment, it's far better to create your character first, and then decide which alignment, if any, fits them.

[mabriss lethe]

Neutral isn't necessarily bland. If anything they have even more options than the alignment extremes. They're capable of being motivated by greed, conquest, power, noble ideals, a sense of duty, etc. They realistically can be motivated by anything short of the absolute extreme motivations of the various alignments. (ie: stereotypical Stupid-X motivations)

[Warchon]

I'm currently playing a neutral aligned Dread Necromancer and it is the most fun I've had in D&D.
Focused on a noble long-term goal and willing to sink to any depravity to see it through.

[AvatarVecna]

A neutral alignment is not a lack of a strong, nuanced opinion, merely a lack of a general trend towards one side of an extreme.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Yes, for all the reasons listed above.

Also, merely having a non-neutral alignment doesn't actually provide much motivation.

[Goaty14]

TN is the best alignment because then you can go out and murderhobo everything in the name of "balance", while not breaking alignment RAW.

This means that if a cleric of pelor comes to proselytize to the masses, you can cut off his head, knowing that he'd also bring evil to the area as well. Likewise, when a bunch of cultists show up, you kill them too, because their existence draws the attention of high-horsed paladins.

[Ghen]

Being neutral can be an extremely fun time. Being neutral does not make you apathetic, necessarily. You can and most likely do care about the well being of a lot of things that would motivate you to adventure. How's about some examples?

-All the characters are in the same family/house (such as the dragonmarked houses of Eberron, but it doesn't have to be that setting) and are fighting to improve/maintain/ or recover the family name/family wealth/ reputation/ land holdings of the family.

- The party consists of casters of all kinds, who happen to worship some knowledge god like Boccob. Each wants to become a master of all things magical, but are forced to realize that there's no good way to really do that with a single person, no matter how ambitious. Instead, they reason that by uniting their powers and mastering their individual fields, they can collectively become the ultimate authority on all magical knowledge!

-The characters want to found a new town in a wild, unsettled, and uncivilized land. Characters have to deal with feeding the townspeople, settling disputes, destroying the local terrasque unfriendly monsters, and possibly trading with the cannibalistic uncivilized natives. This is pretty much the entire concept of the game Dwarf Fortress, one of the games which inspired Minecraft!

-The party is all stuck together for reasons beyond their control, i.e. conscripted into the same military unit or sailing together on the same ship, and all must work together to survive their ordeal.

-The party all has the same common problem, such as, they are all the products of a mirror of opposition! The mirror compels them to want to kill their "real" counterparts, and they struggle with the possibility of one day ceasing to exist alltogether!

Anyway, my break time at work is over, so hopefully you feel more inspired now, or something lol. Good luck.

-

[frogglesmash]

The majority of normal people are neutral. Being neutral does not preclude moral behaviour it merely permits immoral behaviour.

[HouseRules]

Altruism vs Selfishness
1) Being Selfish for Your Self - EVIL
2) Being Selfish for Your Family - EVIL w/NEUTRAL LEANING
3) Being Selfish for Your Community - NEUTRAL w/EVIL LEANING
4) Being Selfish for Your Nation - NEUTRAL
5) Being Selfish for Your Race/Sub-Type - NEUTRAL w/GOOD LEANING
6) Being Selfish for Your Type - GOOD w/NEUTRAL LEANING
7) Being Selfish for Living - GOOD

Respect for Life vs Respect for Non-Living
1) Killing Living Beings - EVIL
2) Oppressing Living Beings - EVIL w/NEUTRAL LEANING
3) Hurting Living Beings - NEUTRAL w/EVIL LEANING
4) Hurting Non-Living - NEUTRAL w/GOOD LEANING
5) Oppressing Non-Living - GOOD w/NEUTRAL LEANING
6) Killing Non-Living - GOOD

Dignity of Living vs Dignity of Non-Living
1) Killing Sentient Beings - EVIL
2) Oppressing Sentient Beings - EVIL w/NEUTRAL LEANING
3) Hurting Sentient Beings - NEUTRAL w/EVIL LEANING
4) Hurting Non-Sentient - NEUTRAL w/GOOD LEANING
5) Oppressing Non-Sentient - GOOD w/NEUTRAL LEANING
6) Killing Non-Sentient - GOOD

Killing for Food is "Killing Living Being" EVIL and "Killing Non-Sentient" GOOD which neutralize each other to be NEUTRAL.
Killing a Sentient Undead/Deathless/Construct is Neutral, Evil since they are Sentient, but Good since they are Non-Living, so those cancel out.

Trustworthiness and Honor vs Dishonor
1) Lying - CHAOTIC
2) Omitting - NEUTRAL
3) Truthful - LAWFUL

Obedience vs ...
1) Improvise without Permission - CHAOTIC
2) Ask for Permission to Improvise - NEUTRAL
3) Follow Instructions to the Letter - LAWFUL

Reliability vs Unreliable
1) Fail to Keep your Promise - CHAOTIC
2) Forget your Promise, and do not do them late after you remember them - NEUTRAL w/Evil Leaning
3) Forget your Promise - NEUTRAL
4) Forget your Promise, but do them late when you remember - NEUTRAL w/Good Leaning
5) Keep your Promise - GOOD

Freedom vs Closed-Minded
Have not though about this yet....

Adaptability and Flexibility vs Stagnate and Reactionary Adherence to Tradition
Have not though about this yet....

Why is it so much easier to Judge on the Good Evil axis in some areas, and harder to Judge Lawful Chaotic axis?

[noob]

I think that whenever the person you kill is living or not should not be taken in account.
For example there is a good ghost army protecting a village against endless tides of demons who wants to pillage the village and turn the villagers in demons and eat their souls and keep destroying and rampaging the whole world once they got rid of that village.
According to your chart killing the demons(which by the way just send them back home: killing demons is only a temporary thing) is evil while killing the ghost army who is protecting the whole world from the demonic invasion is merely neutral.
While in the former case you help the protection of the world and in the latter you doom all the world.

[Troacctid]

Why is it so much easier to Judge on the Good Evil axis in some areas, and harder to Judge Lawful Chaotic axis?
Because Law and Chaos are alignments so wishy-washy and vague as to become mostly useless as soon as they encounter a smidgen of nuance. That's why 4e had a superior alignment system.

[noob]

Because Law and Chaos are alignments so wishy-washy and vague as to become mostly useless as soon as they encounter a smidgen of nuance. That's why 4e had a superior alignment system.
4e alignment system is close to the old school dnd alignment system since it is looks similar to when the axis was chaotic vs lawful(except we add the evil and good terms).
I still find weird 5e went back to the double axis alignment instead of for example picking 4e alignment or yet trying something new(like deciding to make the alignment based effects more about being in side X or Y rather than having a tenuous link with morality)

[Troacctid]

5e went back to the grid because it was popular and iconic, not because it was the superior roleplaying aid.

[Seto]

Just something I was thinking about right now; can a group of neutral-aligned folks make for a fun game?

Yes! Interesting characters are driven characters. Good characters may be driven by the desire to do Good, but that alone is a vague motivation. Evil characters may be driven by the desire for power at any cost, but that alone is a vague motivation. Any character can be driven by anything. Reclaiming your homeland? Fighting to survive? Save the world? Hunt for the Graal? Oppose the Lich-King? Slay the dragon and marry the princess?

Whether you're Good, Evil or Neutral, unless you're playing in total sandbox mode the onus of providing motivation falls on the adventure itself. There's something that needs the PCs to do something about it, and it should provide motivation enough. It's the GM's job, or the module's writer job. Sure, it's easier with Good characters (since you can just introduce Evil and they'll be morally obligated to oppose it), but having Neutral characters just forces the GM to do a good job at building reasons why the PCs should care about the adventure. (Caveat: of course, part of the players' job is also to play along and accept/find reasons for their characters to care, regardless of alignment).

Of course, you sound like it's adventure design that worries you. If it's simply character design, Neutral is not different from Good or Evil, except that any laziness is more blatant, because you can't rely on vague motivations. "I want to do Good" or "I want to do Evil" are lazy motivations, and too vague to be useful. Neutral, especially TN, doesn't let you do that.

[HouseRules]

I think that whenever the person you kill is living or not should not be taken in account.
For example there is a good ghost army protecting a village against endless tides of demons who wants to pillage the village and turn the villagers in demons and eat their souls and keep destroying and rampaging the whole world once they got rid of that village.
According to your chart killing the demons(which by the way just send them back home: killing demons is only a temporary thing) is evil while killing the ghost army who is protecting the whole world from the demonic invasion is merely neutral.
While in the former case you help the protection of the world and in the latter you doom all the world.

The problem is how you would define the living vs. how the game does it. However, I took my aspects directly from the definition of alignment from the game. The interpretation may not always be good for the game, and sometimes it does not make sense like the scenario you have shown. However, you forgotten about being selfish for your race/sub-type or type level of conflict. Your example is also a humanoid type vs outsider type conflict which is good w/neutral leaning as another aspect so it is not neutral. Thus, killing those demons are Good w/Neutral leaning instead of Neutral.

Killing those good aligned ghost may be harming your own Type (humanoids) or even Race (humans) making you selfish for your nation, or even worse, a traitor to your nation putting you at selfish for your family level. Thus, the evilness of being selfish cancels out and make it a Neutral w/Good Leaning instead of Good.

Edit: I though most roleplaying is the journey from True Neutral towards your end goal alignment with the DM judging your alignment along the way until you've reached your goal, or failed to reach your goal. Many Chaotic Evil Paladins are out there since DM's do not mandate players follow alignment.

Edit: The Good Evil has Three Sub Axes. The Lawful Chaotic has Five Sub Axes.

[noob]

The problem is how you would define the living vs. how the game does it. However, I took my aspects directly from the definition of alignment from the game. The interpretation may not always be good for the game, and sometimes it does not make sense like the scenario you have shown. However, you forgotten about being selfish for your race/sub-type or type level of conflict. Your example is also a humanoid type vs outsider type conflict which is good w/neutral leaning as another aspect so it is not neutral. Thus, killing those demons are Good w/Neutral leaning instead of Neutral.

Killing those good aligned ghost may be harming your own Type (humanoids) or even Race (humans) making you selfish for your nation, or even worse, a traitor to your nation putting you at selfish for your family level. Thus, the evilness of being selfish cancels out and make it a Neutral w/Good Leaning instead of Good.

Edit: I though most roleplaying is the journey from True Neutral towards your end goal alignment with the DM judging your alignment along the way until you've reached your goal, or failed to reach your goal. Many Chaotic Evil Paladins are out there since DM's do not mandate players follow alignment.

Edit: The Good Evil has Three Sub Axes. The Lawful Chaotic has Five Sub Axes.
And also killing the demons is not selfish for living: the demons are living(all the creatures that are not constructs,undead or immortal are living) according to dnd 3.5 rules(so I killed living creatures) And since I did not defend only my type but also all the non living creatures and all the creatures of types other than mine then it was not selfish for my race/type(since selfish means I help a category at the cost of not helping others)

Furthermore killing demons also ticks the evil by killing sentient so even if it ticks the good by helping your race/type it does ticks two evil boxes and if the various boxes counters each other it stays evil to kill those demons(2 evil boxes vs one good box).

In fact now that I applied all the modifiers then killing the ghosts for saving the demons is what a "good" person is supposed to do(selfish for living since you save the demons + good for killing non living + evil for killing sentient which makes two good and one evil) while it will surely destroy your entire world.

[HouseRules]

An that's where things are so different.

In most real world religion, Outsiders are not living beings, and this is the difference between real world philosophy and D&D philosophy.

[noob]

An that's where things are so different.

In most real world religion, Outsiders are not living beings, and this is the difference between real world philosophy and D&D philosophy.

In my example I could have replaced demons by regenerating bandits with magical powers that wants to torture and kill everything and eat souls and it would have stood the same except that now it is less directly related to demons in real life religions.

[HouseRules]

In my example I could have replaced demons by regenerating bandits with magical powers that wants to torture and kill everything and eat souls and it would have stood the same except that now it is less directly related to demons in real life religions.

Now, it is a game of giving the correct weight to the three sub-axes.
Which sub-axis should have greater weight?

[noob]

Now, it is a game of giving the correct weight to the three sub-axes.
Which sub-axis should have greater weight?
Even after axis balancing it still does not works well.
Example: someone living and sentient wants to kill you.
if you hurt that person in self defense it is evil leaning on all the three axis(it is selfish for self to hurt someone to defend yourself and it is also evil to harm living and it is evil to harm sentient) and it is really hard to defend yourself from someone out to kill you without hurting that person.
So basically defending yourself from murderers make you evil.(basically no matter what happens being targeted by a murderer makes you evil or dead unless you are so powerful you can make yourself immune to the attacks of the murderer which is possible only if you are way stronger than the murderer)

[HouseRules]

I'm missing the a few hidden sub-axes in the Good Evil spectrum. The alignment of the target itself would influence the alignment of the action. The alignment of the action a character is trying to prevent also influence the alignment of the character's action.

However, the three sub-axes comes from narrow interpretation the description for the alignment, so someone could expand the interpretations of those three sub-axes.

[Telonius]

Altruism vs Selfishness
1) Being Selfish for Your Self - EVIL
2) Being Selfish for Your Family - EVIL w/NEUTRAL LEANING
3) Being Selfish for Your Community - NEUTRAL w/EVIL LEANING
4) Being Selfish for Your Nation - NEUTRAL
5) Being Selfish for Your Race/Sub-Type - NEUTRAL w/GOOD LEANING
6) Being Selfish for Your Type - GOOD w/NEUTRAL LEANING
7) Being Selfish for Living - GOOD

Respect for Life vs Respect for Non-Living
1) Killing Living Beings - EVIL
2) Oppressing Living Beings - EVIL w/NEUTRAL LEANING
3) Hurting Living Beings - NEUTRAL w/EVIL LEANING
4) Hurting Non-Living - NEUTRAL w/GOOD LEANING
5) Oppressing Non-Living - GOOD w/NEUTRAL LEANING
6) Killing Non-Living - GOOD

Dignity of Living vs Dignity of Non-Living
1) Killing Sentient Beings - EVIL
2) Oppressing Sentient Beings - EVIL w/NEUTRAL LEANING
3) Hurting Sentient Beings - NEUTRAL w/EVIL LEANING
4) Hurting Non-Sentient - NEUTRAL w/GOOD LEANING
5) Oppressing Non-Sentient - GOOD w/NEUTRAL LEANING
6) Killing Non-Sentient - GOOD

Killing for Food is "Killing Living Being" EVIL and "Killing Non-Sentient" GOOD which neutralize each other to be NEUTRAL.
Killing a Sentient Undead/Deathless/Construct is Neutral, Evil since they are Sentient, but Good since they are Non-Living, so those cancel out.

Trustworthiness and Honor vs Dishonor
1) Lying - CHAOTIC
2) Omitting - NEUTRAL
3) Truthful - LAWFUL

Obedience vs ...
1) Improvise without Permission - CHAOTIC
2) Ask for Permission to Improvise - NEUTRAL
3) Follow Instructions to the Letter - LAWFUL

Reliability vs Unreliable
1) Fail to Keep your Promise - CHAOTIC
2) Forget your Promise, and do not do them late after you remember them - NEUTRAL w/Evil Leaning
3) Forget your Promise - NEUTRAL
4) Forget your Promise, but do them late when you remember - NEUTRAL w/Good Leaning
5) Keep your Promise - GOOD

Freedom vs Closed-Minded
Have not though about this yet....

Adaptability and Flexibility vs Stagnate and Reactionary Adherence to Tradition
Have not though about this yet....

Why is it so much easier to Judge on the Good Evil axis in some areas, and harder to Judge Lawful Chaotic axis?

Some of the law versus chaos stuff is okay, but there are a few weird cases where it can fall apart.

We're currently running a campaign in Ravenloft. My character is a Draconic Human Cleric of Olidammara (using Ludic Savant's excellent re-imagining (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?445953-My-pantheon-s-take-on-Olidammara)), currently aligned as Chaotic Neutral. She treats all intelligent, sentient beings (living or undead) with respect, particularly as possible customers for the chain of franchised breweries we're building across the countryside. As something of a running joke, we've started recruiting defeated enemies as employees, so we have a collection of werewolves, kobolds, half-orcs, minor necromancers, and even a juvenile Green Dragon working for us. She's willing to recruit anybody who's willing to behave enough to serve the customers. She always keeps to the letter of any agreement she makes, but makes them in such a way that it subverts the laws and traditions of the locals. When she gets what she wants anyway, especially when she plays by their own rules, the joke's on them. One of her personal favorite "pranks" was getting a Lawful Good outsider to give an official blessing for her brewery - without mentioning the gaggle of miscreants working there. She's now advertising "Angel-Approved" at all of the establishments. She's extremely greedy - it's her deity's ethos to be - but what she's greedy for is people who want her to be there. She doesn't much care about her Type, living versus unliving, or nation; and doesn't have any family to be loyal to.

By that rubric, she'd be Evil on altruism versus selfish; (probably) Neutral in dignity and respect, living vs non-living. So, Evil, despite the fact that her selfishness is typically achieved through Good means (generosity to those around her, treating others with respect). For Law versus Chaos, she'd be Neutral (omitting), probably Neutral on improvisation (follows the law to the letter, but makes the meaning stand on its head), very Lawful (keep your promise). She'd probably be very Chaotic on the last two, if you fleshed them out; but as it is she'd be scored as Lawful Evil. That does not fit the character, at all.

I think the biggest problem area there would be the "selfishness" part. Everybody's selfish, to some degree, about all of that stuff. What makes it good or evil is how far out of your way you're willing to go (how many people you hurt, and by how much) in order to get what you want.



Anyway, to the OP - most of the party we're playing with is Neutral on the Good-Evil axis. We're mostly playing it as a bunch of anti-heroes. It's been one of the best games I've ever played in.

[HouseRules]

Some of the law versus chaos stuff is okay, but there are a few weird cases where it can fall apart.

It always fall apart. That's the limitation of the alignment system. The game has some aspects listed for the alignment. I split them into opposition groups and try to make due with creating sub-category to fine tune the difference between the alignments, but it still is limiting.

Of course, many children's story love the good vs. evil. When people get older, they see more of the law vs. chaos conflicts and that most things are true neutral with leanings, but still true neutral.

Selfishness, Respect, and Dignity are separated, but what are their interactions? Even noob has pointed out that the interactions still requires other things. The categories are not complete.

The Lawful Chaotic also needs more development, but life is always above this conflict more than the Good vs. Evil conflict.

Neutral Party makes realistic party. They lean one way at one instance and lean a different way in another instance. The changes in their leaning matters, and is the development of roleplaying. Characters in on the edge tends to not be roleplaying, but more in the lines of playing a combat simulator.

[Ruethgar]

Could have a concordant group, murdering the good guys and bad guys to keep the balance in the world.

[Morty]

This kind of nonsense is more or less exactly why the alignment system is bad and always has been. It provokes a lengthy, nitpicky debate over something that every other system manages to deal with by just giving the PCs motivations and expecting the GMs and players to ensure they have a reason to work together.

[ExLibrisMortis]

The alignment system makes sense as cosmic power structure, not as classification of ethical systems. If you use it as such (i.e. power structure), you explain away two big problems: why alignment is objectively detectable as [evil] yet people choose Evil, and why the ethics don't map to alignment in any sensible way.

[Andor13]

The alignment system makes sense as cosmic power structure, not as classification of ethical systems. If you use it as such (i.e. power structure), you explain away two big problems: why alignment is objectively detectable as [evil] yet people choose Evil, and why the ethics don't map to alignment in any sensible way.

What he said. [Good] and [Evil] are extraplanar forces which roughly correspond to pretty and nice or ugly and cruel. They have little to do with good and evil in any practical day to day sense.

Personally I vastly prefer the d20 modern allegiance system to the D&D alignment system.