How would you explain the different alignments to someone completely new to the hobby, Veeky Forums?

"A classic element of roleplaying despised by moral relativists and the neoliberal left."

Good: You care about everyone.
Neutral: You care about yourself and your associates.
Evil: You only care about yourself.

Lawful: You observe a moral code and respect laws.
Neutral: You are not afraid to be flexible and break laws if you need to.
Chaotic: You actively resent authority and ignore codes to do what you think is right.

If you have no associates, can you not tell whether you're Neutral or Evil? And can't Evil individuals still care about their close family?

>Lawful Good

Truth, justice, apple pie, and curbstomping. All Lawful Good characters are the same boring boy scout types. Their ridiculously rigid codes of morality will often lead them to betray the party when you kick a bunny or try to use something demonic (I.E. they get angry if you do anything cool). They will also whine constantly about the party breaking the law for perfectly good reasons, and are prone to BS black and white morality. ("You are not doing good, then you must be doing evil! Taste my blade, evildoer!") When they start to complain about the party's "evildoing", have the rogue engineer an "accident" for them, Dwarf Fortress style.

Beware of Lawful Stupid, if it wasn't painfully obvious.

>Neutral Good

The quintessential "nice guy". Is overridingly concerned with being "good", which is extremely vague but generally boils down to mincing around like a useless pansy and trying to talk their way out of every situation. His idiotic insistence on nonviolence is going to TPK the party when he tries to negotiate with Orcus. Tell him to go make friends with a wolverine and head back to the inn for a drink.

>Chaotic Good

Essentially adopting the credo of: "If you want peace, prepare for war", they will do good deeds and actions using rather unorthodox methods. Though this alignment can respect the law, they mostly break in it efforts to protect people, since to them the "Good" comes before the "Law". This tends to have mixed results. Sure, that cop beat his wife or took drug money… and maybe that bank was run by the mafia. But the fact remains he broke rules - he broke them for good reasons, but he broke them. His well-intentioned extremism is going to get you in deep shit with the man, so be sure to betray him to the establishment at first opportunity. For an apt summary, think Robin Hood.

Beware of Stupid Good.

Doesn't capture neutral evil properly.
Neutral evil is just someone in it for themselves at all costs. Which is to say, the white color murderers and sociopaths who don't necessarily want to kill, but do so without hesitation if it brings progress towards their ends.
Chaotic Evil is more cartoonish, "burn down everything and cackle".

>Lawful Neutral

Think Paladins without the morality. Lawful Neutral characters are essentially the law-made-manifest. They uncompromisingly enforce the law down to the letter and do not give any unofficial leeway regardless of the criminal's motives or intentions. Stole some food to feed your starving family? Go to jail. Robbed the bank to buy a cure for your dying sister? To the dungeon. Stole a car to save the lives of hundreds? You're under arrest. Equally for evil, you committed genocide? Hanged, drawn and quartered.

At best they're obstructive bureaucrats, at worst they're insufferable Rules Lawyers given the license of roleplay, and will bitch even more about the rules than the lawful goods. They're going to turn on you the second you jaywalk across the street to stop a mugger, so as soon as you get out of town leave them in a shallow grave.

Beware even harder of Lawful Stupid.

>True Neutral

Comes in two varieties: "Dedicated to Balance" True Neutral and "Can't be Bothered to Care" True Neutral.

The "Dedicated to Balance" types are types who are not concerned about the morality of their choices, but rather how it will affect the status quo (although what that status quo is, is dependent on the character in question). This means that a true neutral character may allow things like war, suffering, or disasters to continue, if it ensures that the balance of power is maintained. They are not necessarily malevolent, as they see their actions as a completely necessary act for the greater good that would benefit everyone in the long run - but then again they're insufferable dickbags who sees the entire universe as one big chequebook to even out, who will sell you out in a heartbeat if it meant maintaining the status quo.

"Don't Care" types are either extremely uninspired roleplayers, NPC villagers, or bears. However, they'll usually do what seems like a good idea at the time. This means you should kill them, because chances are they're reading this at the same time as you, and will try to kill you preemptively.

Overall, show them the business end of your weapon as soon as the opportunity presents itself.

Beware of Stupid Neutral.

>Chaotic Neutral

The original interpretation was the agent of chaos. Characters of this alignment were often random and completely inconsistent as long as chaos was achieved. Anarchistic and individualistic, AD&D 2e notes that they are extremely difficult to deal with due to their unreliable nature. Abandoned 3.X onwards when everyone realized no-one could ever play this alignment longer than 5 minutes before suffering a forced change for the sake of adventure. That is, of course, if the character wasn't killed thanks to AD&D's high character mortality rate.

The current interpretation of this is a perfectly amoral and self serving character. One who isn't necessarily evil, as they don't actively plot to screw people for some higher cause (it just so happens they need to, given the circumstances), but instead believe in maintaining their own self interest (or cause) above all others. As far as they're concerned, they gotta watch out for numero uno and everyone else is just a tool and stepping stone to keep numero uno alive.

The player interpretation of this is "whatever the fuck I want, whenever the fuck I want." Usually used directly after the DM bans evil alignments and directly before the DM ragequits. They're alright to have so long as your goals align with each other, but as soon as that changes, it's highly recommended you introduce them to the business end of your weapon and throw their corpse in a ditch.

Also the alignment of 13 year old edgelord characters with KEWL powers, because the rebellious asshole who doesn't play by the rules is totally kewl.

Beware of Chaotic Stupid.

>Lawful Evil

Here you have your Fascists, Social Darwinists, contract killers, and anybody else who can be reliably and systematically counted on to be a dick. In real world terms, Lawful Evil would be corrupt politicians, ridiculously wealthy plutocrats who play the system in obviously self serving ways and/or high-functioning sociopaths (ones who are good at hiding their evil and selfish tendencies) , but do it in a socially acceptable manner that sometimes others might applaud as clever tricks, sometimes you might never even know a person is Lawful Evil, since they usually do their utmost to appear integrated in societies. The endgame is almost always multidimensional domination, so be sure to kill them before they get too powerful. Alternatively, kill them before they get the chance to screw you over/enslave you/bind you to some contract that will suck for you.

>Neutral Evil

The asshole alignment. Follows the law as long as it helps them, then breaks it. Ingratiates themselves to people, before betraying them. Does good deeds, until they cease to elevate them. Social acceptance never really comes into it with these guys. If he's being an insufferable prick you should probably just kill him, nobody will question you. If he's generally acting like a good guy you should definitely just kill him, he's up to something.

>Chaotic Evil

A psychopath who's evil for the sake of being evil. There's no driving factor why they're a Satan-incarnat -, not to get rich, not to get revenge, not to set things right in their own misguided way; they just relish in the act of being a total dickwad. They will murder people for kicks, will rape and torture people to get his willies on, and hates everyone else, just because they were there.

Always on a feud against society and will piss on a book of law just because he likes it, and fuck you, and fuck your law too, and i'll eat your babies. This alignment has no depth at all and is very dangerous to keep around. It is highly recommended you give them a good stomping and throw their corpse off the ramparts as soon as possible, because they will be trouble the moment their attention shifts to you.

Beware of Stupid Evil or, worse, someone who alternates between Chaotic Stupid and Stupid Evil.

>Neutral Good
>Not just Good without a bias towards Law or Chaos
How Neutral Good implies nonviolence?

"It sucks don't worry about it"

You could always go to /qst/

Don't worry about them until after you've made your character. Make a character you like first, and then we'll discuss where they fall on alignment. It's descriptive, not prescriptive.

"Use it as you wish I don't care. If it helps you roleplay better, more power to you."

This.

There's nothing wrong with alignments you fucking contrarians, it's just a vague description of a part of a character's personality.

Getting mad at someone's character being described as "Chaotic Neutral" is just as utterly autistic as being upset by someone describing their character as roguish, cowardly, brave, focused, selfless or greedy.

>Willing to make sacrifices to help others
Good
>Willing to harm others for your own benefit
Evil
>Otherwise
Neutral

>Willing to give up personal freedoms for the good of society
Lawful
>Not willing to give up personal freedoms and live outside of society
Chaotic
>Otherwise
Neutral

No, a mafia boss, who doesn't give a shit about law, break them all the times, but expect his members to have a code of honor which basically means "don't do what I won't do" and who loves his close familiy is chaotic neutral.