Don't act lolrandom

>Forget to put on seat belt
>GM forces me into CN

>Take the last slice of bread at a restaurant
>"Hey you're NE now"

I like this breakdown, pretty much how you described.

>get drunk and call someone a faggot nigger
>Wake up being CE

>Chaos and Law are tangible, primordial forces in the world
>each has their own specific set of ideals, rules, monsters, and factions
>aligning with one rather than the other makes you that alignment, aligning with neither makes you Neutral

I don't see the problem. Alignment was "solved" ~40 years ago. Robin Hood isn't Chaotic unless he's allied with a Cult of Chaos, and Darth Vader isn't Lawful just because he follows a code.

>absentmindedly hold the door for someone behind me
>"thanks, btw you're CG"

I think the first guy's broad definition is the one to go with. The individual alignment definitions in your screencap are still too rigid. For example you can be of Evil alignment and still act altruistically in a few narrow circumstances (loved ones, or even for a cause if you're Lawful Evil). Or another example, you can be Lawful and follow a rigid code that overrides any other, meaning you'd ignore differing legal systems and social mores.

b8

>Try to throw my gum into a waste bin but I miss and a bird swoops down and eats it
>GM tells me I'm CE

Not b8, just going by old-school/OSR ideas. Pretty sure the Law/Chaos thing comes from a novel I can't remember the name of, and admittedly I haven't read it.

Sure there's some gray area with Lawful = the good of the group and Chaos = fine with poisoning people type ideals, but when you live in a fantasy world where there's a Temple of Law dedicated to the Lawful gods who want to take down the Chaos Cult seeking the Fountain of Chaos, it's hardly ambiguous.

>act lolrandom
>GM nods approvingly as the party's plan is derailed by my antics, "Good job roleplaying CN user, have 500 bonus XP"

>Act like an uptight cunt about the rules and playing RAW
>Make the game hell for everyone
>user, great playing of LN! Here have 500xp
>I cannot accept this, as the rules do not allow it.
>Accept it anyways
>Covered my E with whiteout
>I have been rules lawyering since I needed it for my sick combo

The Law/Chaos thing comes from Michael Moorcock's various novels. The Gods of Order and Chaos were in constant battle for supremacy.

There was also Balance, with Gods of its own, that would side with whichever of Order or Chaos was currently weakest in order to keep the balance of power. The idea was that the total dominance of Order would lead to stasis and stagnation, while total Chaos would either be meaningless inconstancy or else would eventually stagnate after exhausting all possibilities, depending on who you ask.

The one I was thinking of was Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson, which gets a mention in Appendix N.

>Law
Order, humanity, the construction of organized systems apart from the rest of the world. Walls, boundaries. Civilization. Selflessness. The greater good of society.

>Chaos
Entropy. The destruction of organized systems, the violation of boundaries. Selfishness. Sacrificing your long-term health and sanity for immediate gain, sacrificing other people's health and sanity.

The big one on a low-level moral sense is selfless vs selfish; being self-destructively retarded isn't chaotic. On a cosmic scale the important thing is the construction of organized systems vs the destruction of same.

he can if he has the proper rage allocation forms, filled out in triplicate, and signed by the local magistrate

Being a Vogon Barbarian is suffering.

If your cosmology uses good and evil you need to stop sucking your mom's tit and graduate to the sippy cup.

If your cosmology isn't a multiversal chaoskampf you need to get Monte and David's dicks out of your mouth and read appendix N.

>Law
>Selflessness. The greater good of society.
You're not talking about D&D with this.

See

>2017
>Giving fuck about alignments at all

Fuck off? A Lawful Evil character is no more moral, and has no more concern for others than a Chaotic Evil character, just more restrictions on their behavior. Law can mean well established structures of oppression that are not intended to be for everyone's greater good, just rules and order that benefits an evil group.

Will you please eat shit and die, faggot? :)

Also:
>my cosmology is stolen from a novel

Nice worldbuilding, kid. Come back when you've got some original ideas.

>Throw my hotdog on the ground to litter
>A bird picks up the remains of my hotdog
>check my alignment later that night
>LG

Maybe I used the wrong word. An oppressive government is still about the subordination of individual will to the will or the organization, including the ones at the top. If you're just using the laws for your own benefit and not following them then you're a parasite, and outside influences subverting organizations are by definition chaos.

The lawful greater good is whatever the lawful organization says it is. When I said greater good I meant subordination to the organization's vision. Not capital-G Good because >If your cosmology uses good and evil you need to stop sucking your mom's tit and graduate to the sippy cup.

Do something do aid a marid or a slaad.

Sorry, but you are stupid.

>If your cosmology uses good and evil you need to stop sucking your mom's tit and graduate to the sippy cup.
See, it doesn't sound like you really believe that though, It sounds like you're trying to disguise the human concepts of good and evil behind the words "law" and "chaos", tying the idea of morality and selflessness inextricably to law and order, and selfishness inextricably to disorder, and the world is more complicated than that.

If D&D morality is simplistic an d naive, this is doubly so, because it's even more reductive in the way it draws its lines.

>park in a handicapped spot because I'm late for an appointment
>come back to a parking ticket with $200 fine and mandatory court appointment to change my alignment to CE

>player forgets to tip the barmaid

What is their new alignment, Veeky Forums?

Depends, what did the barmaid do to earn her tip?

Nothing out of the ordinary. She was pleasant enough but didn't go above and beyond. However, this is in a region of the realms where a 15% tip is expected and considered lawful.

Oh, it's just a phoned-in 'murrica joke. And here I thought you might actually be clever.

You can still be good or evil, and there's still a moral difference between a paladin and Satan, but I prefer old-school cosmologies where Order and Disorder are the primordial concepts being warred over while good and evil are just relative human concepts.

Law and Chaos aren't associated with good or evil in Moorcock, for example. When all the cards are on the table Law ends up being just as inimical to normal human life as Chaos is, and Rhynn and Kwll (the Neutral gods) destroy them both.

It's not reductive, "good" and "evil" are still concepts, they're just subjective ones and Order and Chaos don't really give a shit what you think.

Go ahead and remove "humanity" from the Law list in retrospect. Civilization still works, but you can make a better argument that humans themselves are fundamentally chaotic and need to be leashed to the will of Society, i.e. Law, and Chaotic humans support primal freedom instead.

Well you also set me up for a dick joke, but this was the lesser of two evils.

Chaotic Good. Mandatory tipping encourages poor-to-mediocre service.

This entire thread is why alignment is retarded. Good, evil, lawful, and chaotic are too general of terms. If shit was like Altruistic vs Egoistic, Principled vs Capricious, Eusocial vs Antisocial that shit would make more sense and there wouldn't be this fucking debate with everyone's interpretations of this stuff.

I know that this fundamental disagreement and inconsistency is why I don't play characters that have alignment requirements.

>tipping mentioned at all
>not already a murrica joke
fuck off retard

>Altruism/Egotism
>Mutually exclusive
>Contradictory at all
Found the peasant.

I said egoism, not egotism

>Entire party is CN
>The only time shit actually gets done is when two or more character's motives actually match up out of pure coincidence
>GM pulls his hair out as entire plot points are irgnored

Well, do you act in a manner aligned with the forces of chaos?
You shouldn't have to go out of your way to mess up shelves and cause disorder with every single action but you should generally show a disrespect for rule of law and not allow yourself to be constrained by it beyond immediate necessity.

I think there are some variant fighters that get rage that you could look up and talk to your dm about.

>Robin Hood isn't Chaotic unless he's allied with a Cult of Chaos
No.

The forces of good/evil/chaos/law/and even neutrality are active throughout different levels and aspects of the multiverse.
While there are chaos cults and organisations, some even with prestige classes, like the doomlords you don't need to be a member of one or even aware of the larger multiverse and related conflicts in order to be chaotic and aligned with chaos.

Tyrants and figures of justice can be lawful and warlords and barbarians can be chaotic without realising their connection to the larger metaphysical forces.

I like chaos/law as the greater conflict but with evil/good as still a tangible thing. So you have lawful good and evil teaming up sometimes against some big chaos and likewise, you have chaos and law teaming up to take down some big evil that threatens to upset the balance.

I also like the world as a mix of chaos and law but law-dominant because chaos dominance dissolves reality into the stuff beyond that doesn't follow our rules.

>express interest in the plot and characters
>GM threatens to shift me away from True Neutral