I understand being true neutral because you don't care, but why would anyone devote themselves philosophically to neutrality?
>>93386987Because everyone says they are righteous and their enemies are evil, and only rarely is it actually that simple. Neutrality keeps one from becoming entangled in battles that really have nothing to do with you. See Switzerland.
Maybe you were just born with a heart full of neutrality.
Because lawfags and chaosfags are both mental.
>>93387009fpbp>>93386987>Be Good>Slay creatures deemed Evil and fight other Goods about which Good is Gooderer>Be Evil>Do horrible things just because>Be Chaotic>Try to destroy the universe and also prevent OSHA agents from doing their job>Be Lawful>Try to fuse all of reality into a single obelisk that stands watch over reality until the end of time and also worship OSHA as a religion
>>93386987Kingmaker, power-broker position.
A Neutral ideology might believe that the cosmic forces must be kept in balance for the universe to continue existing.One could also worship the gods of fate and destiny, which don't bother caring about details like morality.
>>93387009The Swiss do it for economic reasons, not ethical ones. Easier to profit when you play all sides and are too difficult to punish for it.
>>93386987It's more along the line of having a philosophy that corresponds poorly to any given traditional alignment. For the classic example, a druid is pro-nature, but nature doesn't take an ethical stance; it gives no particular support to good or evil, nor does it specifically choose to prop up or tear down society.
>>93387208>Be Neutral>Just want the game to keep going. Prevent any player from being defeated; prevent any player from winning.
>>93386987Devoting themselves to it? Usually because they believe neutrality is a greater good, which makes them good by proxy.Or they're neoliberals, profiteers or Swiss. Which makes them evil.
It’s the pragmatic alignment, you don’t care who you work with as long as it benefits you>But that’s evil!No, if your alignment is evil that means you’re only willing to work with evil and neutral people and factions.>But that doesn’t make le sense!It’s a game mechanic meant to make clear divisions of factions. That’s why it’s called Alignment.
>>93386987Any philosophy that doesn't fall into good-evil spectrum (or law-chaos in case of dnd) is neutral.
>>93387645The lesser of 9 evils.
>>93386987Because people are always willing to do terrible things in the name of extremes and then claim that they weren’t really terrible. I refuse to play that game.>b-b-but all that’s required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing!And all that’s required for good to triumph is for evil men to do nothing. Funny how that works.
>>93388397It actually justifies Zapp's line:"With enemies you know where they stand, but neutrals? Who knows? It sickens me."
>>93388470DND is canon in the Futurama universe so it makes sense he had a few unfortunate run-ins with particularly annoying druids. In the famous 'what makes a man turn neutral' speech he even mentions a lust for gold. He checks all the boxes: stupid, self-absorbed, obsessed with sex that he isn't getting, weird interests that border on fetish; make no mistake he's just like us.
Nobody "devotes" themselves to neutrality, that's just a lie someone tells when they want to seem impartial or more important than you. Devoting yourself to enforcing some kind of universal balance is a lawful act, not neutral. Devoting yourself to enforcing some kind of universal fairness would be a good act.
>>93388703I dedicate myself to a strict code of honour to do chaotic things.
>>93388710Devoting your self to chaos loops back to lawfulness. True chaotic is ignoring rules and conventions, intentionally subverting any law that others impose on you is just a different flavor of lawful
>>93386987>rule of acquisition 34: War is good for business>rule of acquisition 35: Peace is good for business
>>93386987It makes sense in the original source material that it came from, which showed that either Law or Chaos triumphing would lead to slightly different-flavoured nightmare realities. Your goal then was not to be the greatest centrist that ever existed, but to prevent essentially two different apocalypses. You were an active agent in favour of balance, rather than something passive or undetermined.With modern D&Ds decay of alignment into a purely moral spectrum that determines your attitude towards helping little old ladies across the street, it's largely nonsensical, yeah.
It can be argued that True Neutrality is the safest and least destructive of alignments. NPCs everywhere struggling and dying either to advance themselves at the cost of others or to defeat the people and forces attempting to do that. People who just operate at the center of the wheel with all of that rotating around them have the smoothest ride. Unless one side of the wheel starts getting out of proportion and knocking the hub around. That's when Mordenkainen comes in.
>>93386987It makes sense in DnDrone slop settings where alignment "Good" is stated by experts to not actually be "True good" but more a factional philosophy that's actually quite capable of being evil. Despite being also treated as "True good" in-setting.Under that system, True Neutral makes sense as an endpoint where you realize that no side is a hundred percent correct or righteous, and straddle them all in the middle.Other than that, only Switzerland answers like >>93387009 make sense, where it's about not getting dragged into things.
I view True Neutral as being devoted to a cause or philosophy and doing what ever is needed to further or protect it.A Druid will recruit a bunch of orcs to kill loggers in their forest and then call on the local paladins to drive out the orcs when they start being destructive.
>>93386987I understand wanting to improv act with your friends because you don't like combat, but why would anyone pretend that it's a game?
The Cosmic Balance
>>93386987Neutral is supposed to be the pro-nature team.
>>93388710>>93388794Devoting yourself to chaos makes you chaotic>But I follow a strict code!Not what lawful or chaos means, unless you’re a 5e tard that is
>>93386987you just want to grill
>>93386987You are devoted to truth and veracity with a zeal that sets others to shame. Many mistake true neutral for being an amoral philosophy when nothing could be further from the truth. It is only through devotion to truth that can allow one to see through the illusions of law, chaos, good, evil and see them as the ideological traps that they are. You are a beacon of light and knowledge in a world of darkness and lies. True neutrals are the diligent guardians of knowledge surrounded by eight kinds of insanity
>>93386987You got a fuckton of power but know you suck at making judgement calls so you stay out of things to not royally screw up the world.
>>93391891You're right, that was badly phrasedDevoting yourself to always act contrary to laws is just another flavour of lawful
>>93388794>>93391891>>93392477Though my strict code of chaotic behaviour is what I strive to live by, I often lapse, and in my heart of hearts I sometimes just do Chaotic things because I forget I'm supposed to do it because I am Lawful.
>>93392341This description of yours shows how neutrality, too, is an ideological trap in which you delude yourself into thinking that you have all others figured out as false, with yourself locked in a state of ethical solipsism.
>>93386987Because your only other options are aligning yourself to Law which leads to a calcified, stagnant universe, or to Chaos which will reduce everything to the howling madness of non-existence. No mortal has ever actually been Lawful or Chaotic, they're just overarching forces of reality that must be balanced lest one reach an absolute that dooms everything we've ever known.
>>93388823NATO vassal, not neutral.
>>93393934Switzerland isn't a part of NATO.
I understand why someone would be Lawful (order, code, tradition, discipline, civilization)In understand why someone would be Chaotic (chance, freedom, creativity, independence, nature)I DON'T understand why someone would think in terms of Good and Evil. The closest thing I reckon is how Gary described Good as coletivist/altruist and Evil as individualistic/darwinistic. But it really needs other name. It doesn't make any sense for anyone to consider themselves evil, or to fight for evil, or to uphold evil. "Evil" is an adjective for something you fight agaist.
>>93400616>"Evil" is an adjective for something you fight agaist.It's something you'd say to accuse your enemies of being selfish and amoral. Which is what D&D evil is, it isn't "individualistic", it isn't "darwinistic", it's just selfish and amoral.
>>93393958funny how people forget thatneither is Austria, if I'm not mistaken
>>93400616Good is going out of your way (often to your detriment, putting yourself in danger for no reward) to help others - selfless charity workers, healthcare professionals, fire fighters, people doing random acts of kindness, etc. Evil is actively going out of your way to fuck over others, often for your own benifit, but mostly because you can and you like to do it - rapists, sadists, drug pushers, torturers, etc.
>>93400616>It doesn't make any sense for anyone to consider themselves evil, or to fight for evil, or to uphold evil.One can be Evil without realizing so. It's how you're perceived by omniscient cosmic forces, not which checkbox you mark at a ballot or how you look at yourself in the mirror.
>>93400864>It's how you're perceived by omniscient cosmic forcesAnd people like this?!
>>93400934In-game, yea, it's really cool to be able to detect bad actors with magic. Evil people don't like it but everyone else does. Out-of-game, yea, it's refreshing in its absolutism and yet also intriguing in its complexities. People would behave very differently if they had the potential to discern their own alignment or the alignments of others, it's fun as a righteous mindless crusader fantasy and yet it's also fun as a thought experiment and it just goes deeper the more you think about it.
>>93400864I dislike the concept of "misguided alignment". A character with a higher WIS than 10 should be able to understand what his actions and decisions are in the grand scheme of things.And Alignment has some meaning into intention, allegiance, choice. You choose to uphold those values instead of being just passive about it. Its more like a flag you decide to carry than a label others put in you.
>>93400934The players are omniscient cosmic forcesYour character can kill babies and rape puppies without considering himself evil, but you know he is
>>93386987It's radicalized centrism
>>93400977>A character with a higher WIS than 10 should be able to understand what his actions and decisions are in the grand scheme of things.Dude, no, there's nothing in human history that would substantiate this claim. Being brilliant, insightful and in-touch just makes you that much more prone to tunnel-vision. Better mental stats means that you have a better chance of catching your own mistakes and learning from them, and that's what it's about in the long run, but your basic ideological bias is just a function of how the world has hurt you and it's always been that way.
>>93386987There are some common threads>non interferenceUsually „let nature take its course“ or „the mortal struggles don’t concern the gods>pragmaticism / self interestAchieving goals without adhering to codes/doing what’s good if it also benefits you and not beeing complete selfish >detachment Englightenment comes from not becoming entangled in mortal affairs
>>93386987Because good/evil and law/chaos are just various forms of attachment which are preventing you from attaining enlightenment. Although I guess that's technically indifference
>>93390655Because it's harder to sell merchandise and ad space when you're just pumping out OC content, instead of rolling for anal circumference and strategizing esoteric abstractions for public spectacle.
>>93392729>he thinks neutrality leads to apathetic nihilismSilence is violence, fascist
>>93401371Apathetic nihilism leads to evil. Your post makes no sense in the context of the post that you have chosen to reply to. He's right, you can't frame neutrality as free-from-ideological-bias while condemning other ideologies, the fact that you are condemning other ideologies makes you a hypocrite right off the bat. You're like what Good would be if Good weren't actually concerned with doing good, but within the D&D cosmology Good actually IS concerned with doing good, and that makes them a strictly-better version of righteous neutrality.
Who says you cant devote yourself to the philosophy of not giving a fuck?You can devote yourself philosophically without trying to convert others and assure yourself constantly. There is no difference between not giving a fuck and philosophically not giving a fuck because having a lengthy and smug explanation of why you are not giving a fuck only matters if you care enough to explain things to yourself and even go so far to making it understandable for others which is the exact difference of not giving a fuck.
>>93401394You're making a baseless assumption about a false dichotomy that doesn't even exist in any edition. Are you retarded?
>>93401544Why are you doing anything if you don't give a fuck about anything?
>>93386987Really? I mean at my current stage of life the headspace is almost unthinkable but when I was in my 20’s it was the most philosophically sound and well-defended stance I could imagine.>decisions made in complete impartiality>cannot be tempted to unethical acts by emotion>can’t be tricked into unethical acts by good intentions>zero guilt as all decisions are impersonal and carry only the consequences others have failed to prepare themselves forIt’s a really comfy way to live when you have no dependents. People can literally sense the power emanating from someone who doesn’t give a fuck in a the purest form and are comfortable letting you do pretty much anything because they can just tell you won’t take advantage of the trust.
>>93401193If that were true, that would make the fight between good and evil just a distracting dog and pony show for someone behind the curtain to benefit from.So, assuming you're correct, who benefits from the constant battle between heaven and hell?
>>93386987No one does. Whenever someone says they're neutral in an issue or topic it's actually:>apathy: they don't know enough or care to know enough to have an opinion>they're a liar: they are of one opinion but trying to present an opposing opinion as being the one that's too serious, or too extreme, or too obsessed. They, a normal average neutral party with not opinion... sure has a strong opinion about someone else's opinion. To invest time into understanding an issue is inherently going to build up your opinions about it. You cannot be neutral and still be involved. So if they're neutral and want to say nothing, then that's actually neutral. If they're neutral but have a lot to say: they're dishonest and cowardly.
>>93400864>One can be Evil without realizing soThat's an evil get out of jail card if I ever saw one.>Yeah I poisoned the entire towns water supply, but I did it because they all secretly wanted me toStill evil I'd argue low wis evil
>>93404480Because I want an accuse for my chaotic ev- I mean my chaotic neutral character's actions!
>>93387645There's an interesting species in one of Jack Vance's novels called the Pnume. Their native planet has been invaded by three aggressive alien species that all have enslaved men and made them into their own images. Incidentally the Pnume do this as well. But their goal is to watch how everything unfolds on their "playground" which is the surface of the planet, as the Pnume dwell deep in underground caves, where they also have a sort of immense museum called Foreverness. They are neutral in that they do not want any one species to gain enough control of the surface to crush the others, and like to watch the wars, events and such, and record them into their endless archives. It's an interesting take on "neutrality".
>>93405868Is it the same JD Vance the author of Hillbilly Elegy or a different Vance?
>>93404995The GMs. They need their plot hooks after all.
>>93386987Often enough people will do True Neutral cause then they don't have to have a major cause or reason for being that way. Though often it's them being lazy.
>>93405801>I poisoned the town's water supply to kill an envoy that was staying there overnight>I poisoned the town's water supply to reduce the amount of levies available to my enemy>I poisoned the town's water supply to cripple a gang of bandits>I poisoned the town's water supply and am going to use the antidote to blackmail them for information crucial to my quest"the end justifies the means" is literally the definition of acting evil for a cause you believe to be important
>>93386987but you could not defend yourself from your attackers, because you are neutral, there is no such thing as true neutrality, unless you are willing to die without objection.
>>93388469>And all that’s required for good to triumph is for evil men to do nothing. Funny how that works.That's the stupidest thing I've ever read, why wouldn't bad men do anything if no one is going to stop them?
