ITT: Neutrality

We often discuss Lawful Good becasue of the requirement for non-5e Paladins and Chatoic Neutral because of many That Guys, but I don't often see threads on neutrality. If you enjoy alignment mechanics or you're playing games that require having a valid alignment, how do you think True Neutral should be played? Most handbooks describe it as "lol just do whatever", and that many times ends up with players sticking to an alignment (often CN as I've seen) without having any of the mechanical restrictions or benefits. There's also "stupid neutral" but nobody wants to play that.

Self-interested normie with no strong principles and a vague concern for those close to him.

Bob the Chicken Farmer

Johannes the Town Guard who just wanted to avoid working in the fields.

Etc. Just be as normie as possible, only showing immediate concern for family and friends but otherwise being generally self-interested as long as it doesn't involve any kind of standing on principles or lack of principles, breaking the law [you might get caught] or whatever.

Be normal.

Tried it for a while. Was boring. Used the fact that my dryad got werebearism? Ursanthopy? to alignment change to neutral good.

I don't care.

It's a pretty much meaningless alignment because it doesn't lend itself well to any form of motivation or principles. It's boring to play, boring to use outside of minor NPCs, and boring to discuss, as you can probably tell by the way this thread's going.

Don't help others if it's a pain
Don't hurt others even if it benefits you
Don't worry much about the law if it's a major inconvinence but don't reject it entirely.

Or instead of being self-interested you can be interested in absolutely nothing at all. A completely detached character who is never surprised, never cares about anything, the ultimate nihilistic memer.

A character that doesn't care about good and evil or even lawful/chaotic in the way they are described. You can have a lot of personal rules, guidelines and principles that don't align with general party line.

You don't even need to be normal. You just need to act within your own frame of reference.

>Chicken Farmer
Neutral good. He wouldn't get far as a farmer if he was an autist that sat alone and didn't contact anyone outside of immediate family. After all, how is he going to find a spouse in the first place if that requires going out of the way to befriend someone?

>Town Guard
Lawful neutral. You'd have a hard time finding a guard who isn't lawful to an obnoxious degree.

Handbook states that true neutrals are rare because their philosophy makes it difficult to make friends in the first place due to their anti-social nature, which only makes finding them all the more harder since they won't go out of their way to meet you, and is likewise an explanation for why the few true neutrals that do manage to obtain friends regard them higher them anything else.

Your average person is certainly not a TN. LN? Probably, maybe even CN, but the true neutral is a rare beast.

I think people have a really stupid definition of neutral characters. It's a blanket that covers most types of people with mixed morals. If you feel that lawful evil has a point over lawful good but chaotic good is necesarry sometimes, then you're a neutral character.

I have a huge problem with alignments because a majority of people will end up playing a neutral character whether they consider it or not. Unless they stop refusing payments and other things that give personal gain for their actions, they're not good.

Good and evil are supposed to be extremes of either. If the paladin takes payment for killing the orcs, he falls to a lawful neutral paladin.

I'm constantly asshurt about people not changing their alignments when they start acting evil or good, and I'm constantly asshurt that people use alignment as a justification to do something outside of "My character would do this."

alignment a shit all characters are neutral whether you like it or not

mechanical things revolving around alignment are extra shit

What if character helps others if it is a pain? Especially if it is hard to do.
What if he hurts some people because he thinks it is the right thing to do? Even though most wouldn't agree and periodically try to stop him.
What if he doesn't care about law but has a set of rules that are basically cast in steel and he will better die than break them?

You can be objective and disaffected, always thinking of things in terms of numbers and logic instead of how things make people feel or what you "should" be doing. This person can take all sides of an argument into account because they are not personally invested in any specific ideology.

Smart neutral, the opposite of stupid neutral. Autistic mages fit here.

>What if character helps others if it is a pain? Especially if it is hard to do.
Probably some variant of good.
>What if he doesn't care about law but has a set of rules that are basically cast in steel and he will better die than break them?
Almost definitely lawful something.

True neutrals can actually be pretty diverse now that I think about it. You could have indecisive people fit into it, they're made of so many conflicting values that it averages out to neutrally not being able to do anything at all.

Then he's not true neutral? what the fuck are you even asking

The people in the game world probably wouldn't have agreed with you on both accounts. While this character did good deeds which many paladins wouldn't have been ashamed to partake in he also was a proponent of a something similar to Closed Fist philosophy. In general he was considered an undiplomatic asshole with a habit of beating people capable of mind magic (well beating people was his general past time and the work of his whole life). He beat mind mages as a preventative measure. He also killed some mind mages who practised their magic very much within the law but out of what he considered acceptable. Which put him into many troubles and lead to many other people getting beat up.

but that's just boring

Neutral is the majority of the population. You think people give a shit what the king wants or the rebels want? No, they just want to fucking sit on their farms and smoke their crops.

Neutral is just the unmotivated person, they don't fucking care as long as it allows them to continue living their life.

Good, Law, Evil, and Chaos are extremes. Most people are Neutral, not really having strong convictions about helping people, or obeying the law, or really wanting to hurt people, or disregarding the law. Your average Chicken farmer really only cares about the few miles around his township, his farm, and some of the people within that. The same is true of a Town guard. This doesnt mean of course that a Town guard won't be LN, and be a stickler about the rules, or be NG and be willing to let certain things go to help someone less fortunate.

People aren't inherently good, but conversely they aren't inherently evil. Most just muddle on somewhere in the middle, caring for family and friends but not really being all that interested in the well being of all of the people in their nation or race.

"A neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. She doesn't feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos (and thus neutral is sometimes called “true neutral”). Most neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character probably thinks of good as better than evil—after all, she would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, she's not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way."

That last part is important. Not upholding good in any abstract or universal way. To be Good, is to be committed to making sure good is upheld universally across all peoples, to want to see that everyone doesn't suffer, that all laws are just and serve the good of the people. Good is very much about more than just caring about your family and friends, it's about caring about the strangers halfway across the world, about caring for the non humans who live across the ocean, about wanting every being to see peace and happiness without suffering. That is Good. And until your character can say they believe the same, they are at best neutral.

The kind of person who, upon finding a good portion of drugs would sell them on rather than turn them in because they're convinced that the establishment would do the same underhandedly anyway. Would that be neutral, or would that be chaotic neutral?

Alignment is a shit system that's doesn't add anything to the game except stupid arguments.

>being good means you associate with people outside your family
That's stupid. Neutral means you only stick your neck out for family and close friends. It's the kind of person who walks down the street, sees an execution he believes to be unjust or bandits robbing a trade caravan and just goes around them carefully, because it isn't really his problem, but would certainly say or do something if it was a friend or family member. He'll still sell his chickens, eggs, cabbages and what not to a stranger: he wants their money. He doesn't steal because he might get caught more so than because he is a general strong adherent to local laws or real principles. Sure it's wrong, but sometimes he thinks that laws don't keep his family fed. He's not to close to staunch with the local customs but he doesn't tend to violate them. He's not in it for high ideals or just himself. He's got people to take care of and that's what he's gonna do. I'd say most rural folk if they don't have strong ties to a larger community with hard principles are neutral. Villages that look out for themselves are largely comprised of neutral people. In truth most people, even those with ideals, aren't too staunch adherents to them. Most people don't see law as inherently preferable to crime, so much as less dangerous for them and their families. Where cultures are more important to people's lives and ideals start to come into a focus the average moves out of the middle of the spectrum.

But the problem arises; how does a TN get any friends in the first place if he's not willing to associate with anyone outside of his immediate family? It's a chicken and the egg scenario.

I think there is a solution to this dilemma, and that solution is dynamic alignments. I mean sure, for most of his life, that farmer is probably going to be neutral, but when it comes to making new friends and finding a mate, he's going to shift his actions towards something closer to good for a period because that's usually more attractive than being the fantasy equivilent of a hiikimori.

To illustrate what I'm talking about, here's Conan's statblock as depicted by 2nd Ed. As you can see, he starts as a neutral character, but later branches out into good. One thing far too many people seem to forget is alignment isn't set in stone, and a single person can bounce through the spectrum across their lifetime.

To summarize, a successful farmer can certainly be true neutral, he just needs to temporarily break his alignment in order to gather a following and then dump NG when its no longer self-serving.

All of this.

That's my point though: he's willing to associate with other people despite his neutrality. He'll play a game of horseshoes with his neighbor who lives down the road to pass the time. He'll chat with others on the road as he heads into town to sell his goods, to see what's going on. You don't need high ideals or ideas of good or evil to make friends or be friendly. Nice != Good. A guy can be friendly while he robs you blind, or be an ass and risk his life to save yours. Neutral guy's not going to risk his life for you and doesn't have high ideals or any strong ties to law but that doesn't make him an isolationist. Maybe he genuinely appreciates his neighbor. Maybe they grew up together even. So he has friends just because that's what happens when you participate in society. You don't need high ideals of any sort to participate in most societies. Of course it's also possible that he changes alignment like said and makes more friends that way.

A lot of people try to interpret "Neutral" as though there is a principle of neutrality - really, neutrality is about a lack of any specific principle. The town guard who may not be a naturally cruel person but follows the orders of his evil king because he wants to do his job and take care of himself is a good example. He doesn't contemplate the "principle" of neutrality and decide whether or not following orders is consistent with being neutral - he simply doesn't ponder his orders at all and goes through with them because in the short term that is what is what works best for him and keeps his wallet full and keeps him out of trouble.

Neutrals are arguably the best at acting subtly and controlling their reputation - they have no requirement for humility nor are they compelled to self-aggrandize, and they don't have to act in the bombastic ways the extreme alignments require.

They're also, however, the most likely to see the results of their actions be accidental.

>they have no requirement for humility nor are they compelled to self-aggrandize, and they don't have to act in the bombastic ways the extreme alignments require.
Since when do alignments have requirements for "humility" or "self-aggrandizement"? Wouldn't that come down more to individual circumstances? I mean, a Lawful Evil individual seems just as likely to be a tyrannical but charismatic demagogue as he does to be a meek, ascetic flagellate serving a dark god of self-denial and nihilism.

Ditto for the stuff about accidents. What does this have to do with alignment? People cock stuff up all the time. What does that have to do with how good or evil they are?

>Nice != Good

This is an important thing to consider, as many good characters find it difficult to comprehend the idea of a person acting nicely being anything but good themselves, which is why the friendly robber works in the first place against them. Likewise, they're quick to demonize anyone fighting for the forces of evil regardless of their alignment, viewing them as betraying their principals when in reality they never actually had those principals in the first place.

Much as evil cannot comprehend good, good cannot comprehend neutral- only varying gradients of good ("sure, I mean, he kicked that dog for no reason, but he can't be like that 24/7 if the village hasn't disowned him, right?") and evil.