This may be the greatest writing on D&D of our lifetimes. I know it looks like a lot, but please read it, you will be so happy and you will either begin to understand D&D or else recognize this rightness in your SOUL.
I figured out a simple guide to the alignment chart last night
Lawful: Rules matter more to me than individuals. Chaotic: Individuals matter more to me than rules.
Good: Other people’s well-being is more important than my own. Evil: My own well-being is more important than other people’s.
Neutrals: My opinion of what is more important is determined on a case-by-case basis.
So a Lawful Good character’s guiding moral philosophy might be “I follow the rules because the rules keep people safe, even if they are sometimes inconvenient or harmful to me or other individuals.” A Chaotic Evil character’s guiding moral philosophy would be like “Screw the rules and screw you.”
This is a very succint way of explaining a long post from a few months ago. It is also kind of how it was originally written, and is what I use. No more “Is he chaotic neutral or chaotic evil” questions.
so I’ve been meaning to put this on tumblr and keep forgetting but, in the campaign I’m running my sister is playing an orc fighter, and one of the options you can pick for a fighter’s signature weapon is that it “glows in the presence of [fill in the blank].”
I was like, “oh, that’s funny because it’s a reference to that sword in The Hobbit that glows in the presence of orcs. Your weapon probably doesn’t glow in the presence of orcs.”
to which she responded, “FUCK YEAH it does.”
So now we have in the party an orc fighter with a club that glows in the presence of orcs. Or, as far as the character is concerned, a club that glows. It’s been in her family for generations since some ancestor won it in a battle, and it’s just always glowed. She has a sack to put it in when she’s trying to be stealthy.
Question of Smoke 