Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 22 Pt 2 - Roleplaying Your Alignment

Episode Date: May 27, 2020

With the safe alignments out of the way, Jeremy now addresses how to roleplay the evil alignments and Chaotic Neutral.  Thanks for listening and come see us at www.taking20podcast.com to listen to provide feedback and suggestions for future episodes!

Thank you for tuning in to Taking20 Episode 22, Roleplaying Your Alignment, Part 2, The Sequel. I want to thank this week's sponsor, Sew What Sewing Supplies. Follow their threads on Reddit. In Part 1, we talked about all the good alignments, lawful neutral and true neutral. These alignments tend to be easy to play as part of an adventuring party, and they are where I would start as a newer player. This episode of part two covers the alignments where there is danger for PCs. Here there be dragons for novice gamers. These alignments tend to be individualistic, not work well as a team, or can cause real player-player conflict around a table. Not just character-character conflict, which causes drama, and that's a good thing.

Player-player conflict that can cause friendships to break up. So use these with caution. Unless your DM is running an evil campaign, then have fun being a rat bastard. So let's dive into chaotic neutral. Chaotic neutral characters follow their whims. They hold their personal freedom above all else. They're an individualist who follows his own heart without regard for rules and traditions. The concept of good and evil is a secondary consideration when compared to their own freedom.

They look at good and evil as complements of each other, and both are potential tools that can be used. They're not keen on order to nearly anything. They follow the whim that strikes them in the moment even more extreme than true neutral does. They are completely and totally unreliable. They're more likely to indulge in everything, and here's why it's dangerous. I've seen a lot of players say that they are chaotic neutral because they want to shop at a potion shop one day and rob them the next. Like, lol, I'm so random. No, you're not. You're playing that closer to chaotic evil than chaotic neutral.

So how do you roleplay chaotic neutral? Well, okay, if you start thinking of examples, Deadpool's the classic, and so is Captain Jack Sparrow. I've heard debates about, actually one of my buddies said Harley Quinn, but I still think she leans more evil than neutral, so that's my thought. Another one of my friends had a great example, The Punisher, the quintessential vigilante. So like neutral, chaotic neutrals will keep their word if it's in their own best interest, and will harm an innocent if necessary. They may use torture to extract information. They may kill for pleasure.

They may help those that are in need. They tend to work alone unless the group they're in really gives them a lot of freedom. They don't respond well to authority at all. They distrust organizations and will completely disregard the law to pursue their own self-interest. They may betray family members, which brings us to the brother comes to your house and says he killed someone. Hey, the chaotic neutral may help him out, but may also use this information to extort money out of your family member or maybe even turn you in for the reward. maybe even turn you in for the reward.

Friends call you unfettered, individualistic, a free spirit. Others call you frustrating, selfish, unpredictable, greedy, and self-centered, maybe even unhinged. All right, so let's get to the evil alignments. Unless you're running an evil campaign, my strong recommendation to new players is avoid these alignments like the plague. I said that before, chaotic neutral. I am really saying it now. Because evil characters within a party can cause huge amounts of party disruption and not character-character conflict, player-player conflict.

So Lawful Evil. When you're Lawful Evil, you methodically take what you want want within the limits of code, tradition, loyalty, or order. They love well-ordered systems because they're easy to exploit. They believe in schemes and plans, packs and contracts. They believe in honor among thieves. They use the laws to benefit themselves and only obey really out of a fear of punishment. fit themselves and only obey really out of a fear of punishment. The lawful part of lawful evil may be the code that they follow. They value allegiances and alliances. They're very likely not to see their actions as really evil and can justify them in their own mind. So how do you role play lawful evil? Here's some perfect examples. Darth Vader, Hitler, Matt Damon's character in The Departed, any movie with corrupt cops.

They keep their word but may mislead or withhold information. They won't tell you the whole truth. They'll give you half-truths here and there. They will harm an innocent if necessary. They will use torture. They will kill to benefit themselves. They don't help anyone in need without the possibility of reward. They like working with others and trust organizations,

but they look for ways to manipulate the rules and the law to get their way. So the brother comes home to your house and says he killed someone. As a lawful evil character, you may very well use and manipulate the situation to get to your best outcome, regardless of whether it's good for your family member. Friends call you organized, commanding, structured. Others call you merciless, callous, cruel, and ruthless. So neutral evil. Neutral evil characters are those who do whatever they can get away with without compassion or qualms. They have no qualms about turning on allies. They seek to primarily further their own goals. An alternate interpretation of neutral evil is this, that evil is an ideal and you can do evil for evil's sake regardless of whether you follow the rules and use them to your advantage or disregard them as necessary. Neutral evil in a lot of ways is called pure evil. Laws and rules are for chumps

unless they benefit you. They are unscrupulous, self-serving, only out for themselves. They want to come out on top at the end, regardless of what that end looks like. They want power, wealth, position, and they will cooperate with others to further their own ends. So how do you roleplay neutral evil? Best example that I came up with personally was Tony Montana, Al Pacino's character from Scarface. If you haven't seen it, watch it, but you won't feel good about yourself afterwards. You'll feel like your soul needs a bath. Tony Montana has a great quote in Scarface. Quote, I kill a communist for fun, but for a green card, I'm going to carve him up real nice.

And no, he didn't have a southern accent. I don't know where that came from. I kill a communist for fun, but for a green card, I'm going to carve him up real nice. One of my fellow role players suggested Agent Smith from the first Matrix movie. You think he's following the rules of the Matrix, but later on he reveals he wants to be free of it. And I thought that was an interesting concept, and I thought that was worthy of discussion. So neutral evil, like lawful evil, will harm innocents and won't help people without a reward. evil, like lawful evil, will harm innocents and won't help people without a reward. But neutral evil characters are never really compelled to keep their word unless it really benefits them. They will use torture for information and sometimes even for pleasure. They kill for pleasure sometimes. They manipulate others to get what they want. They follow the law unless

breaking it's in their best interest and they won't get caught. So your brother comes to your house and says he killed someone. Hey, you might turn him in if it benefits you. You might help him kill more people or you might help him take revenge. Friends call you driven and vicious. Others call you insensitive, uncaring, depraved, corrupt, immoral, and wicked. But let's get to the last one, chaotic evil. Chaotic evil characters act with arbitrary violence spurred by their greed, hatred, or bloodlust. They have no respect for rules, other people's lives, or anything except their own desires. They will kill you for a sandwich.

Personal freedom is paramount to them, even if you have to imprison or kill others to get it. They are arbitrary and violent, unpredictable psychopaths. Some of them, to quote the movie, want to watch the world burn. They're the bane of everything good and organized. Laws are for the weak. They are megalomaniacs, vile and depraved monsters who live to corrupt others. Because people are just pawns or toys or playthings to them. So how do you roleplay chaotic evil? Well, the examples, the Joker, that's the one that everybody always brings up as the very definition of chaotic evil. That same friend from my gaming group mentioned Agent Smith from the third Matrix

versus the first one. He's trying to destroy everything and bring the entire Matrix down around it. He no longer follows the laws of the Matrix and he disregards them entirely. Another example somebody came up with was Sweeney Todd. Someone else mentioned Agent Kruger from Elysium. as long as it meets your goals. They do not respond well to authority. They do not feel compelled to follow any law, period. They'll betray family members and friends whenever it's convenient, even if it's just because they have something that the chaotic evil character wants.

Brother comes home to your house and says he killed someone. You might kill your brother. You might say, hell yeah, let's go kill some more people. Friends call you, what friends? You don't have friends. You just have people that you work with temporarily. Others call you inconsistent, volatile, capricious, cruel, malicious, and untrustworthy. Listen, alignments are guidelines on general moral and personal attitudes. You are not handcuffed to an alignment's description, nor are you constrained by some idiot behind a microphone telling you what alignment means.

Each alignment is really a broad spectrum of personality types, and you don't have to follow it like there's barriers on either side of the road. You're free to use alignment as a starting point for your character, but I want to propose something different. Ask yourself to describe your character's personal belief system in a sentence or two. Once you've done that, take a look at the one-sentence definitions that are in the rulebook. Try to pick the alignment that's closest. It may matter if you're in a class that's beholden to a particular alignment, like paladins or clerics. It may matter in a roleplay heavy game, but even if you've got to stick close to an alignment, make the choices you want to make for your character. If alignment becomes an important issue and you're making

decisions that go against your alignment, and your alignment matters based on your class, then your DM will talk to you about it. Lastly, a few notes for DMs. You have to decide how important the law versus chaos and good versus evil axes are in your campaign. For the most part, in modern systems, alignment doesn't matter. Yeah, there are spells that work against one alignment extreme or the other, like protection from chaos or detect evil and good, that kind of thing. Yes, you can use those as designed and still have a great time, but for the most part, alignment can vary greatly from PC to PC. And just because it says chaotic neutral on the page, that doesn't necessarily mean that your

players will always act like a chaotic neutral. Let a character's decisions and actions drive what their alignment is. If the alignment for that character matters greatly, if the player is playing a character that alignment really matters and that character is making decisions that we could cause that character to drift away from that alignment, have a conversation with the player to make sure they understand what the repercussions could be. Otherwise, let your players play the type of characters they want to play that fit into your world. Just have a great time. Don't worry about one character saying LN for alignment and the other character's sheet saying NG.

Next week, we'll talk about character arcs. And the following week, we're going to talk about how to give your character or NPCs multiple dimensions. I hope you tune in. Once again, I want to thank this week's sponsor, Sew What Sewing Supplies. You don't like needles? Darn. Thank you so much for tuning in to Taking 20, Episode 22, Parts 1 and 2, Roleplaying Your Alignment. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game.