Basic Alignment for Dummies
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85fJpdmjHbc
Pretty good explanation -
Except it's wrong.
"The System" has nothing to do with a character's alignment, only the perception of the character's alignment by others from my understanding.-
If a character has a code that they won't break no matter what they're lawful.
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If a character has a code that they break whenever it's best for the situation or no code at all they're ethically neutral.
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If a character has no code and seeks to spread chaos (for whatever goodly, neutral or evil reason) they're chaotic.
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If a character acts mercifully, seeks to do good and makes sacrifices for the sake of others they're good.
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If a character doesn't care about mercy, won't self-sacrifice for the sake of others or seek to kill others for the benefit of themselves they're morally neutral.
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If a character enjoys killing/stealing/causing harm to another for their own benefit and doesn't care about the lives of others they're evil.
In the comments of that video the author states Batman is CG because he ignores the law, steals from crime scenes, breaks and enters however, Batman refuses to kill any of the criminals he hunts even though he could prevent many innocent deaths by doing it. This makes him lawful even as he fights "The System". Batman sits on the LN/LG boundary since his goal is to do good for Gotham but his means are no where near paladin-like as he acts without mercy while he subdues criminals.
Another example would be of Cheshire's Tanivek. He was LN yet this youtuber would state he's TN or CN (Possibly even NG or CG since he's saying the Joker is CN when he's clearly CE) just because his code made him act outside of "The System's" laws if it was best for his kin.
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Another example would be of Cheshire's Tanivek. He was LN yet this youtuber would state he's TN or CN (Possibly even NG or CG since he's saying the Joker is CN when he's clearly CE) just because his code made him act outside of "The System's" laws if it was best for his kin.
Actually quite a lot of people would state that he was mostly CN, because he acted CN. So Tanivek is a bad example.
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How did he act CN?
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Tanivek was LN at its finest.
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Tan was LN, some people thought he was Chaotic because from an outside perspective he did not enforce the laws of arabel at all, he was very often seen discussing with criminals and rarely seen opposing them.
From an inside perspective the only time he ever discussed with criminals for any reason was to tell them to stay out of his business if they did not want him getting in their way.
His's code was to preserve, protect the dwarven way, everyone was ordered to respect Arabels laws but never to mingle in their affairs unless the city would be in perril if they did not. To them it was live and let live, Taniveks job was to keep his kin safe and Arabel functional, as long as criminals affected neither one of these things meddling with them would only put his kin in danger (which would go against his entire purpose for being there), the only time Tanivek ever dealt with criminals was to let them know that he would only pursue them if they put harm to his kin, and that he would do so even if it would get him killed.In the end criminals kidnapped one of his kin and Tanivek died pursuing them, knowing full well he was charging into a trap.
Moral of the story, it's not always easy to figure out what someone's alignment is unless you know their whole story. As for roleplaying alignments, you should NEVER play to what your alignment is, you should always play to whom your character is, people change based on the events of their lives and their alignment changes to correspond to it. Not the other way around.
Batman has been every alignment, Adam west's batman was a ficking Paladin compared to Christian Bale's batman who was quite different.
As for Lawful, lawful means you follow "a" law, not "the" law. If you follow your whimsey you're chaotic, if you follow a strict code you're lawful, if you're somewhere in between you're typically neutral, Good and evil is where the ethics of what your whimseys and codes end up going.
Just remember that in a war…..every soldier is breaking the laws of the opposing nation, by upholding their own nations laws, this doesn't mean that everyone in that army is chaotic, it just means that their code is different.
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I do Chaotic fun very well