Chaotic frackin' Neutral

Speaking as a CN player who DOES play a sociopathic rogue - The best thing about CN is that it's a balance game. It's probably one of the most difficult alignments to play properly due to that fact. Without being aware of it, a CN player could VERY easily slip into a good or evil character because of their selfishness or altruism.

Sidenote: I think Evil and Good are boring constructs that don't allow for real factions and cloak and dagger style play as they are such finite world-views. I think thinking about it as a selfish vs. altruistic approach works much better for balance but also for understanding character motivations. Take the drow for example: They are a stereotypically evil race, but what does that necessarily mean? That their customs aren't aligned with that of humans? Is it not possible to have an altruistic drow that hates humans and normal 'good' races yet still works tirelessly for the betterment of their society?

Look at character motivations and determine the best way to move forward with that CN player - do they want to be rich? do they want to be feared? All actions have consequences as others have said and a CN character is not one who would kill an innocent unless it brought balance to the game in some way. It sounds like he's leaning evil and not true CN

Sidenote: I also might strongly disagree with our hosts about alignment and the quagmire that morality really is. It's easy to make a game where the PCs are heroes. It's much harder (but more interesting) to make a game where they are just as flawed, petty, selfish as every other character and still allow them to take actions which might not necessarily adhere to the predetermined story you had laid out.

Game of thrones does this really well.


Edit: In my last campaign I convinced a druid to burn down a forest, our mage to incinerate innocent orc children so we could smuggle two werewolves out of the underdark and then turned the werewolves in to an elf ranger we met later on due to the need for balance. I'm sure most players at the table weren't happy with me, but the DM and I had worked it out as a part of my backstory where I was a fallen demigod of chaos and only gained EXP when I caused any character to act against their natural alignment. It made the disruptive play a part of who my character was, and it changed the story greatly and allowed me as a naturally disruptive player to act as an aid to the GM in generating twists and plots to the story which was really awesome and made for some great table jokes and suspense moments (like when I let a giant snake eat me because it wasn't chaotic enough to call for help and only survived by rolling a nat 20 to cut my way out of it's belly.)

I've posted about my feelings on this before, but I love this discussion. I have three fantasy book series that I consider my favorites: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, A Song of Ice and Fire, and the Kingkiller Chronicles. We'll leave the Kingkiller chronicles out for now; its almost a commentary on heroic myths in general.

I feel like LotR and SoIaF (Game of Thrones to the uninitiated) are the two ends of the spectrum, but they share some common ground. LotR has very obvious good guys and bad guys. You know who to trust, you know who will (likely) win. The Hobbits are the center of the story to me. The theme of the smallest, meekest people alive, shaking the very foundations of the world and holding the balance in their hands. These tiny, simple souls standing up and facing evil against overwhelming odds...and winning. I'll always advocate for books over movies, but there's one scene in The Return of the King film that gets me every time. The scene near the end, when Aragorn is crowned (whoops, SPOILER ALERT!) king of Gondor, and is walking through the crowd. He meets the four Hobbits, his friends and companions. They begin to bow, and he stops them saying, "My friends! You bow to no one." Then he kneels before them. This king of men, from an ancient house of great power, kneels before these tiny, simple folk from a homely farming country far away. I'm choking up at my desk even writing about it! That's a powerful story, and while there is pure and simple good and pure and simple evil, there is also depth and a theme of hope rising from the ashes of impossibility; of the meek inheriting. To me, those pieces are what make the story compelling.

SoIaF is a whole other can of worms. The characters are all complex and flawed, and we never know who is going to die! Its difficult to find a single character in those books who is worthy of the mantle: hero. There are no Paladins in Martin's world; everyone has an anterior (Edit: ulterior, lol) motive, everyone has dark desires and fears and flaws. At the same time, those flaws help us identify with the characters. We aren't looking at these characters as paragons of unattainable virtue. Instead, we see them as human beings...as ourselves. We think, "What would I do, if that were me?" And who hasn't made a decision they regret? Who hasn't been faced with a moral dilemma and at least considered the more selfish option. Who isn't morally conflicted in this world? Saints and madmen only. I know I am neither (well, perhaps a touch of the latter).

The common thread of these two tales is The Adversary. Sauron and the White Walkers. These enemies are compelling because they care not for anyone's morality. All they desire is destruction and dominion. Even enemies may band together to fight such a threat, this is part of why I lean toward moral ambiguity in my own storytelling. The idea of enemies banding together and setting aside their differences to fight a true threat is as compelling to me as the idea of the meek rising up, and infinitely more realistic. I also lean away from a black/white good/evil story because its been done and I find it a bit boring. To me, the most interesting villains see themselves as the morally correct ones! The best villains have the best of intentions. The White Walkers and Sauron, they are otherworldly threats to humanities very existence. They represent the void that we all fear is waiting for us on the other side. I think such an enemy was necessary for both stories. However, Tolkien and Martin are master storytellers, far above and beyond my own abilities.

If you are curious, I'll say that I do believe in absolute evil and absolute good, I just don't believe humans can really live such a concept, any more than we can understand infinity or the mind of god. We are the middle children of the universe; no parents to help us along, too weak to fend for ourselves. The very fact that we live at all is a beautiful miracle.

Anyway, there's my rant. Hope you enjoyed it!

I think that this point is probably where ASoIaF and LoTR come together - the 'threat' is this obscure evil, all consuming destruction that can't be reasoned with or truly fought against with the constructs and tools that the rest of the mortal plane fights with. Both are this vague and never-fully materializing threat that brings death and the ultimate end with them. One could probably say that literarily they represent death or something, but I'm not going to make that point.

However Sauron never materializes, he's like Voldemort in the first couple Harry Potter books - and by never materializing and always existing as this external threat, they transcend reality and act as embodiments of fear which make them much more than a simple villain, but closer to the realm of a universal force - akin to gravity.

I would say the major point of interest in LoTR (and the Hobbit to a lesser degree) is the exploration of these forces, such as magic. Magic in lord of the rings isn't as base as it is in D&D, but a much deeper current that underlies the world that the characters inhabit: Golum dying after hurting frodo, after promising ON the ring not to harm him is a great example of this concept of 'deep magic'. Sauron's overwhelming power to corrupt and twist that which is innately good and ultimate undoing by the most human of all characters - not the humans of legend and full armor, but the hobbits who seek out comfort and family over grand deeds, and do great things in an effort to preserve the life they know and love and are able to rise to the biggest challenge, which is facing that omnipotent and inevitable darkness without allowing it to consume them.

But yeah, TL;DR - the most despised villains are the ones who think they are doing the world a favor (Hitler is a pretty good example of someone who thought his actions were justified, and that's not even digging too deeply into the history books.) I suggest checking out the 48 laws of power by Robert Greene, the law and the examples of them in history is some wonderful DM fodder to make interesting and deep NPCs.

I like providing NPCs who have interests that go against what other friendly NPCs might want. This keeps the morality free flow. I also try not to chain people to their alignment because that's far too rigid. But I do ask them to think about consequences, which my CN player just absolutely refuses to do. And I feel like I'm picking on him by dumping the town guard down his throat whenever he crosses the line.

I've been thinking a lot about this.

I don't think we are really discussing alignment here. There is nothing inherently wrong with the CN alignment. The problem here is players using a CN alignment as an excuse for randomized PC behavior.

Real people do things for REASONS. If a player wants to play a character who wets the bed or is a kleptomaniac or eats the hearts of his fallen foes or is obsessed with amassing wealth or is a pacifist, any of those can work. Provided the player has provided sufficient personality and background for the character to justify those actions.

The real issue here is the vast proliferation of RPG video games that reward optimization and sociopathic behavior. Skyrim is the text book case. But, one doesn't have to play like that. My first play through of Skyrim, I played totally immorally and with no agenda beyond learning the game and exploring. I killed everyone, went on werewolf rampages, and generally behaved exactly like one of these players we are complaining about.

It got boring.

In order for me to maintain interest, I have to create a personality for my character and behave accordingly. Ironically, this is even more true with a wide sandbox game like Skyrim. If one can do anything at all, one's choices define who one is. Isn't this the basis of free will?