What is your character's alignment?

[MeTekillot]

Seeing as we have a "What does your character look like?" thread, and I'm kinda curious as to the representation of good, evil, or don't-give-a-fuck among the PC populace, I wanted to ask, in terms of DnD Lawful/True/Chaotic Good/Neutral/Evil, what is your character's alignment?

Tvtropes.org is useful if you need some information on what might clearly define your character's alignment.

Mine:
Chaotic Good.

[musashi]

Doesn't seem like it fits well for Arm.

For example, an elf has a very different "alignment" when dealing with their tribe vs outsiders.

[NOFUN]

It's a nice concept, but I don't see the point since most characters players are anonymous so we're just spewing random alignments. I'll play along, though.

Neutral evil

It'd be cool if we could include a quote to enforce that alignment, but I think that'd be too IC.

[Kalai]

Um, Lawful something-or-other.

[BleakOne]

Chaotic would still fit for elves, since you can still follow some rules as a Chaotic-character. Dwarfs definately lawful, and humans strongly leaning towards evil in general.

Most of my characters tend to go towards LN, LG or LE.

[Barzalene]

On Arm? Lawful Good.
In Brooklyn? Chaotic Neutral.

[Ocotillo]

Tend to play along the lines of Lawful Good, Lawful Evil, or Chaotic Neutral. Anything to take me to extremes.

[Cindy42]

Almost always neutral and never lawful. Chaotic, sometimes. I'm never evil and I'm either good or neutral in equal measures. So I'm most likely to be neutral good or true neutral at any moment.

[boog]

Chaotic good. My character is basically a dryad.

[Ocotillo]

Witch.

[Case]

Cannot classify my PC on this alignment scale and the chaotic neutral fallback when that occurs is less of a fit than something like neutral good. Oh noes, I am not running a D&D PC.

[Saellyn]

Cannot classify my PC on this alignment scale and the chaotic neutral fallback when that occurs is less of a fit than something like neutral good. Oh noes, I am not running a D&D PC.

Classic AD&D Chaotic Neutral is a lot of fun...

"You see a Gorgon here."

"... Okay let me roll a dice... okay, according to the dice, I scream like a banshee and charge."

"GG yo, you're petrified."

On that note, I'd define my character as... uhh... Something evil or chaotic or some mixture of... lawfully chaotically evil good neutral.

[jstorrie]

LN. LE on a bad day. LG to my bros.

[Synthesis]

Neutral evil

[Kismetic]

Neutral Good, with Lawful tendencies

[Spoon]

Neutral evil.

That one's underrated.

[Kismetic]

Neutral evil.

That one's underrated.

NE is fun, but one of my favorite characters on a MUD was TN.  That alignment's definitely underrated.  I think most people pick CN instead.

[chrisdcoulombe]

I have played chaotic evil, but they don't seem to live long.  Most of my characters that stay alive have a chaotic neutral alignment.  I haven't played chaotic good I should sometime try it.

[Nao]

All my characters are shades of grey. I find the d'nd alignment system way too simplistic and restrictive to provide a sort of guideline for my character. I also see very little room for moral objections to anything in zalanthas, especially for the poor(ish) characters. A person does what they need to survive, period.

Dwarves lawful, what? They follow their own rule, their focus, but they're free to follow laws or not like any other race. My favourite dwarf would probably qualify as very chaotic. So would Thrain Ironsword.

[BleakOne]

The way I understand it, the Lawful alignment doesn't mean you follow the laws of whatever land you are in, but act and think in a rigid, structured manner and prefer clear distinctions to grey areas.

Dwarves are, generally, Lawful-leaning because they follow their focus no matter what and their thoughts are focused on it. Most, if not all, things are weighed in relation to the focus, and the focus must always come first. They will avoid death (since that would make the focus impossible to complete, usually), but their happiness and freedom are not more important to them than the focus.

Elves, on the other hand, are more chaotic because they work in those grey areas. They trust only their tribe-mates, but will work with others if it suits their purposes. The whole never-rides-mounts thing is decidedly lawful-ish, however. It is outweighed though by their flighty, untrusting, double-dealing, steal-happy mindsets.

That's my opinion anyway. The cool thing about alignments D&D style, is they are only guidelines. You can be NG and be an obnoxious, prideful ass, since none of those are 'evil', per say.

[NOFUN]

the Lawful alignment doesn't mean you follow the laws of whatever land you are in, but act and think in a rigid, structured manner and prefer clear distinctions to grey areas.

I don't think that's true.. some one who is lawful evil would see a well-ordered system as being easier to exploit and usually obey their superiors and keep their word, but they care nothing for the rights and freedoms of other individuals and are not averse to twisting the rules to work in their favor.

On the opposite side of the coin, a chaotic good character favors change for a greater good, disdains the laws that get in the way of social improvement, and places a high value on personal freedom, not only for oneself, but for others as well. They always intend to do the right thing, but their methods are generally disorganized and often out of alignment with the rest of society.

tl;dr

Lawful = Working with society
Chaotic = Working against it

Edit: Lawful good is bro tier. We need more white knights in zalanthas.

Edit 2: Dwarves can be chaotic depending on how they go about achieving the focus. Assuming a dwarf wanted to be the last dwarf alive, he would be evil regardless of how we went about it. If he used legal methods such as forcing them into poverty, execution then the dwarf would be lawful evil. If he went around killing other dwarves without permission from a templar then he would be chaotic evil.

[Whiran Luck]

Chaotic Stupid

[Bilanthri]

The Lawful aspect of the D&D alignment system is one of the most often misunderstood. The evil character that follows the laws of the land because it is safer to exploit them is actually not Lawful Evil, but rather Neutral Evil.

A prime example of this confusion can be seen in the Batman villain, Two-Face. While many would see him as Chaotic Evil, due to his choices being determined by a coin toss, he is actually far closer to Lawful Evil. He follows a very rigid rule when making any decision, never swaying from the results of this rule (Batman even thwarts him by replacing his coin with a weighted one that lands on its edge, forcing Two-Face to become stuck in a state of indecision).

To stick with the Batman example, Chaotic Evil is better depicted by the Joker. He has no structured rules he follows, and even when he presents a situation that seems to have some sort of logical outcomes available, he is likely to discard the results anyway, doing whatever suits him at the moment.

It is perfectly fitting for a Lawful character to have only passing concern over the laws of whatever land they live in. It is their own determination to stay true to a code of behavior that makes them Lawful. That being said, I would think that most Zalanthan city-dwellers would fall into the Neutral-Good to Neutral-Evil range, leaning heavily towards NE. They have no specific code that they follow, though they do not act in completely random fashion, and their moral structure is based on how familial their surroundings are. The larger the social group a character identifies with, the more good/altruistic their motivations can be. If you are the lone-wolf sort, there are not enough people to identify with to motivate what would be seen as 'good' actions.

Addition: The L-N-C spectrum has very little to do with society, reflecting in the majority the personal stability of an individual's decisions. Dwarves are Lawful because they each have a specific goal which drives them in all things.

[Kalai]

Eh...I think you're trying to apply a logical consistency to something that doesn't actually have one.

Here's D&D law/chaos.

'Lawful characters tell the truth, keep their word, respect authority, honor tradition, and judge those who fall short of their duties.'

'Chaotic characters follow their consciences, resent being told what to do, favor new ideas over tradition, and do what they promise if they feel like it.'

'Someone who is neutral with respect to law and chaos has a normal respect for authority and feels neither a compulsion to obey nor a compulsion to rebel. She is honest but can be tempted into lying or deceiving others.'

[Bilanthri]

Yea, I have that book too. There is a reason that the paragraph you have quote is followed up by nine more paragraphs before continuing into a detailed set of examples. Glancing at the surface of the ocean and saying you understand it does not do justice to the depths below.