Providing a scanned copy of the most recent Player's Handbook probably isn't the best idea for something like this. Any of the System Reference Documents from the 3rd Edition era could stand in its place without many material changes.
>Next comes one of the worst and one of the best parts of D&D’s character system. D&D’s Race system is, frankly, kind of gross. The idea that a person’s race tells you something about their character is a sign of the racist elements in the fantasy tradition before and around D&D.
...Really?
This type of thought coming from MIT makes me question my sanity.
If one is examining D&D and fantasy tropes in the context of society's attitudes towards race at large, as well as Tolkien's cultural milieu
> If you read Tolkein, it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that the tall pale people from the north are good and the dark ugly people from the south are bad. This reproduces the attitudes of the colonial era in which Tolkein came of age and its one of the worst aspects of his legacy (and that of many other contemporary and prior fantasy writers).
It seems rather par for the course. And it makes sense. In both fantasy and sci-fi, inhuman species are often caricatured by their "race" and usually don't get enough time to flesh out three-dimensional characters. Because it's hard to imagine completely alien societies with personalities that span as full as range as humanity's.
Apart from the point where Sam muses about that specific point - expecting Heroic fantasy to be the same as a modern day booker prize novel is not helpful.
Just as a lot of the tropes of classical Athenian Theatre are alien to us nowadays doesn't mean its not great art.
I'm not disputing that the works of Tolkien are classics immemorial. I'm just saying that it's always good to take note of the biases of any creator- and they needn't be biases that run counter to "political correctness", either.
Specifically to race in fantasy, I agree that LoTR wasn't really the place for that. However, D&D is actually the perfect place- RPG sourcebooks are expected to worldbuild, and describe fantasy worlds in detail. So it's a useful thing to think of when exploring an RPG.
Id agree but 4th and 5th very much went down the what role your building the character for (tank dps healer controller etc) and stopped some of the more fun parts coming up with a concept and building character to suit.
(Edit - including a snippet of the 'commentary' below):
ZINN: You’ve spoken to me before about Mordor’s lack of access to the mineral wealth that the Dwarves control.
CHOMSKY: If we’re going to get into the socio-economic reasons why certain structures develop in certain cultures… it’s mainly geographical. We have Orcs in Mordor — trapped, with no mineral resources — hemmed in by the Ash Mountains, where the “free peoples” of Middle Earth can put a city, like Osgiliath, and effectively keep the border closed.
ZINN: Don’t forget the Black Gate. The Black Gate, which, as Tolkien points out, was built by Gondor. And now we jump to the Orcs chopping down the trees in Isengard.
CHOMSKY: A terrible thing the Orcs do here, isn’t it? They destroy nature. But again, what have we seen, time and time again?
ZINN: The Orcs have no resources. They’re desperate.
CHOMSKY: Desperate people driven to do desperate things.
ZINN: Desperate to compete with the economic powerhouses of Rohan and Gondor.
Because D&D races might as well be called species. These are not ethnicities, they are entirely different biologies. So having a problem with D&D races stems from an oversensitivity to the word race.
which part?
that racist elements exist in a game that characterizes and increases/decrease stats depending on race
or that different races in D&D simply don't operate well together?
these all seem true to me
these all seem racist to me
these all seem reasonable given the fantasy aspect of D&D and what I am used to from stories
So are they trying to say an Orc could be just as good of a ballerina as an Elf? This is much more likely to be true in 5th edition anyway (which they chose) than 2nd edition where things like Dwarf wizards can't even exist. So we have made some progress in the realm of D&D racism (should probably be specism anyway though)
"Dwarves are good at building things not because of some essential genetic racial qualities, but because they are raised in a culture that values building and passes on a certain set of traditional practices around it."
Dwarves (and Elves) can also see in the dark and can live for many hundreds of years. In many ways a character's race is a set of advantages derived from genetic qualities.
This isn't race in a human racial sense. The word "race" is used, when biologically speaking it should likely be species.
I'm not sure if the author of this page understands what "race" means in D&D terms. It's basically species. Dwarves aren't just little people. They're literally not inter-fertile with humans. Now, fair enough, much of the "race" difference manifests itself as differences in cultural background - cultural norms, language, etc. But it's not the same way people use the term "race" in the real world.
It is, and isn't. "Dwarf" is a different species than Humans, true, but D&D also use the "subrace" classificatin for things like Mountain Dwarves, etc.
D&D is hardly the only or even first offender in this regard (it's a common and much talked issue in the larger Fantasy/RPG milieu).
Given the descriptions usually associated with subraces like the Drow or Mountain Dwarves I'm not sure if the racial stereotyping is a lot more offensive than the fact that the groups as portrayed have non-existent or stone-age economies. You know why Dwarves aren't portrayed as reading books? Because they're not portrayed as owning books or anything beyond pickaxes for that matter.
Games and game worlds can and have been designed differently but this is how D&D is. There's definitely space for critical commentary, but complaining about it or calling it "evil" is like complaining about the physics in a "Transformers" movie. If you want an accurate simulation of reality, there's reality. Or GURPS.
There's a lot of little things that D&D invented and have quietly become standard gaming tropes, and I think that slightly incorrect usage of "race" might be one of them.
Other games have both "races" and cultures, which makes things a bit clearer.
> I think that slightly incorrect usage of "race" might be one of them.
D&D "race" isn't exactly like "race" in the real world, but I don't think its an incorrect use of the term so much as deliberate, context-specific jargon because there is no existing readily recognized term that exactly captures D&D race (which isn't species -- though some D&D races are also distinct species from some or all of the other D&D races -- since there are D&D races which both can produce fertile offspring and do voluntarily produce offspring together) and "race" is the nearest readily recognized term.
> Other games have both "races" and cultures, which makes things a bit clearer.
D&D has both races and cultures (and in some settings in some versions of the rules, the latter also can have game mechanical effects), though only the former is somewhat "generic" across different game worlds, and the latter is gameworld specific.
Even if on the surface the in-universe beings are from another species, that isn't necessarily a get out of jail free card. People can and will read between the lines.
This happened in the context of sci-fi when The Phantom Menace came out. I remember reading criticisms of both the Gungans[1] and the Trade Federation aliens as weakly veiled racial stereotypes.
But the Phantom Menace stuff is terrible because it's very similar to real-world racial stereotypes.
Except for the orc problem (ie, sentient beings we are free to kill), I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with having fantasy races with very broad physical and social similarities. Humans are distinctly weird in a lot of ways if you step back and think about it.
Then again, both Orcs and Elves can breed with humans. Playing up the racial part of fantasy settings can be very a very interesting avenue for discussing racism, apartheid etc. The mis-understood neutral good half-orc, the result of a war crime rape, or an illicit love affair? In other settings, where for instance orcs might prefer the succulent taste of human flesh: is it acceptable if you only eat the flesh of warriors defeated in honourable battle? Etc, etc.
It's just a game, but it can also be so much more than just a game...
> Dwarves are good at building things not because of some essential genetic racial qualities, but because they are raised in a culture that values building and passes on a certain set of traditional practices around it.
Really? Let's say that the DM chose to run a game with mermaids in it. Would anyone question the (theoretically) superior swimming ability of mermaids? Let's see how a similar statement reads:
Mermaids are good at swimming not because of some essential genetic racial qualities, but because they are raised in a culture that values swimming and passes on a certain set of traditional practices around it.
It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?
Edit: And if you're going to deride D&D for that, why not praise it for its lack of sexism (I'm talking about the stats system, not the art here)? The higher amount of testosterone in a man's body makes it much easier for him to gain muscle, but the D&D stat system allows both male and female characters "equal opportunity", so to speak, by not adding or subtracting stats based on gender choice.
Congratulations you removed all the context and qualifiers ("if you approach it from a very generous mindset,... You can soften the racism of deriving personality traits directly from a character’s race") in his statement and made an absurd analogy.
This being fiction and not reality, the dwarfish ability to build underground structures is actually literally innate. Not genetic perhaps, but somehow bound to dwarves racially. Remember this is the same game that prohibited halflings from being magic-users (well, it used to. I haven't read 5th ed). Whatever the reason, the game presents certain abilities as actually being racially innate.
It's not reality. It's a fantasy world. Additionally, it's a literary fantasy world. Real-world concepts of race don't apply.
If you think it's a terrible concept, by all means play a different game, build your own world, whatever. But just because the author doesn't like D&D doesn't mean it's wrong.
Let's say a merperson was raised in the absence of adult merpeople. Is there any way they could learn in one lifetime all of the different ways that a mer-society can take advantage of the sea? Genetic and cultural inheritance are both really important.
In all seriousness though, Tolkien's worldview was more medieval than colonial. The north/south, high/low dynamic is a different dimension than the relationship between Europe and North Africa. It's altitude rather than longitude. Putting everything in relationship to the heavens is a touchstone of medieval culture.
Twisted (cf the article's 'ugly') things were considered a visual metaphor for evil by Dante. Dante imagined that beings who were living out their function/purpose with excellence were rooted in the ground but pointed at the stars [ie 'straight]. Men and women who succumbed to temptation were pointed at the stars by design but through concupiscence [getting caught up/busy; becoming obsessed/addicted], such 'crooked' people were turned inward on themselves and could no longer appreciate the things above them.
Note that women characters in D&D did, at certain points in the evolution of the rules, did have modifications so that their stats differed from male characters.
Well, mermaids do have obvious genetic differences (the fish tail and ability to breathe in water) that would make them better swimmers than humans and humanoids.
But I'm struggling to come up with what genetic characteristics about D&D dwarves you assume would make them inherently good at building things. There's nothing obvious that I'm aware of.
Before people get too worked up about its implications please realize this course is taught by two researchers. The syllabus quotes Arthur C. Clarke, Rowling, and Tom Waits. I wouldn't interpret this as MIT being overtaken by pseudo, feel-good social science.
Rolling new D&D characters was one of the first non-trivial programs I ever wrote. It was on a VAX-VMS in basic, but hey that still counts as programming, no?
Unfortunate they use D&D with its simple and rigid class system.
A classless system like Runequest is much better to express the wide range of possible fantasy trope characters (trope=young boy knows nothing, explorers the world, becomes famous, has powerful enemies, and saves the world by defeating them)
Even more interesting would be a career based system like Traveller, with the restriction of maximum homeworld techlevel 8. So you could start promising with good education and social standing, go to a medical school, but decide to become criminal after school, go into jail to learn even more skills, and start your role playing at career at best age of 29 or 33. Or you can even continue pre game careers, and start as an old wise man, who knows a lot, but where age already took its toll to strength, constitution and agility.
Some games offer much wider ranges of tropes for characters then D&D.
Traveller's system had the odd effect of making the best characters (those with the most skills) also really old. It was odd as a teenager roleplaying a 48 year-old military veteran. My main thought was always "why am I out adventuring instead of just getting some rest?"
Ask any old military veteran. To old to rock'n'roll, to poor to rest. You have 10 years to earn enough money for retirement. Is that a reason to risk an adventure, that could earn that money? Also children out of school, wife divorced, thats an other reason to try a new start somewhere far away from the old shit.
A balancing rule is, that older characters earn less experience, and therefor younger learn faster by adventure.
So... there actually wasn't an experience system in Classic Traveller. MegaTraveller had one but I don't think it actually had any relation to age or existing skill levels, just whether the character accomplished tasks or not.
Anyway, Traveller was unusual in that it used age in a slightly meaningful way, but it definitely got away from the trope of all PCs being young and/or inexperienced.
Wait, did you ask for a huge lecture on the canonical background universe for Traveller? No? Darn.
Anyway, Traveller is the least futuristic science fiction setting ever (maybe). In game mechanic terms you have to start rolling for age-related characteristic effects starting at age 34 - you could lose strength, dexterity or endurance. At older ages you could lose intelligence too. But overall it assumes human lifespans more or less like they are today.
Yes, if you are wealthy and live on a high tech world. But Traveller Tech Level is defined as the maximum level an economy can sustain with a population of 10 ^ TL. So 10 people, even with books of knowledge will be at TL:1 bronce age within a few generations. 100 people at iron age and so on till Tl:8 is our current knowledge, its not 9 because most parts of population does is to poor and not yet educated to participate in the economy.
And Tl:9 of course offers the first future techs, e.g. fusion reactors. Tl:A reliable interstellar travel and automatic factories, and huge progress in the high times of big trade empires spanning years of FTL travel, and the collapse of civilization, technology and dark ages, when ever those empires fall.
Living at Tl:F and being wealthy could buy you a lot of years, before you need to worry about age. But I was restricting my idea of a "better" assignment to Tl:8. So you can imagine every career path here and now, e.g. odd ones you never want to live in real life like the doctor who works for crime syndicate (above example), but that is fun in a role playing game, or would make a good trope in a novel or film.
Where D&D’s race system is somewhat yucky, its alignment system is awesome. Once you learn it you’ll find yourself applying to real people. The alignment system consists of two axes: one ethical and one moral.
This author is, frankly, an idiot. To suggest that ethics and morals are orthogonal, or that each is well-described by a three-point linear system... is utterly absurd. It's such a ridiculously bad roleplaying mechanic that those roleplaying games that are more about roleplaying a character than incrementing a number have no such mechanism.
Given that the author seems to value not straitjacketing a character and celebrating individuality, it's very, very odd that the alignment system should be lauded.
I find the alignment system interesting and conducive to working on your role playing. But if you don't want to be role playing in a straight jacket I would pick chaotic neutral :)
Seriously though, few role-playing games have an alignment system, especially the ones that promote themselves as being more about roleplay than levelling.
I remember one story about a guy whose group played 'evil' D&D characters, and one of them pointed out that what their characters were doing was 'naughty', but not actually 'evil'. So they tried out playing actual 'evil' characters. I can't remember all the examples he gave, but one of their plots was the kidnapping and raping of a princess. He said that campaign didn't last very long and his group found it pretty disturbing. I guess the point of this anecdote is that a lot of evil characters get played that aren't really 'evil' or close to it.
Alignment systems might help roleplaying neophytes, but if you've been around the block once or twice, they really are quite limiting. Is that noble warrior 'good' because he works tirelessly and selflessly to promote the cause of his kindred? Is he 'evil' because he knowingly and tirelessly oppresses others to do so? Is he 'neutral' because he can't be placed unequivocably in either camp? Why not just let him be a complex character on his own?
Well that's why I suggested chaotic neutral as an alignment for your requirement. I think this would work well for your goals. It can be fun & challenging to play other alignments too however. Like an alignment that least resembles yourself or your natural personal tendencies.
Have a look.
A Chaotic Neutral character is an individualist who follows his or her own heart, and generally shirks rules and traditions.[citation needed] Although Chaotic Neutral characters promote the ideals of freedom, it is their own freedom that comes first; good and evil come second to their need to be free. Chaotic Neutrals are free-spirited and do not enjoy the unnecessary suffering of others. A Chaotic Neutral character does not have to be an aimless wanderer; it may have a specific goal in mind, but its methods of achieving that goal are often disorganized, unorthodox, or entirely unpredictable.[citation needed] If a Chaotic Neutral joins a team, it is because that team's goals happen to coincide with its own at the moment, but it invariably resents taking orders and can be very selfish in its pursuit of personal goals.
A subset of Chaotic Neutral is: "strongly Chaotic Neutral", describing a character who behaves chaotically to the point of appearing insane. Characters of this type may regularly change their appearance and attitudes for the sake of change, and intentionally disrupt organizations for the sole reason of disrupting a lawful institution.[citation needed] This includes the Xaositects from the Planescape setting, and Hennet from the third edition Player's Handbook. In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Chaotic Neutral was mistakenly assumed to refer to this subset.
62 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 118 ms ] thread...Really?
This type of thought coming from MIT makes me question my sanity.
> If you read Tolkein, it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that the tall pale people from the north are good and the dark ugly people from the south are bad. This reproduces the attitudes of the colonial era in which Tolkein came of age and its one of the worst aspects of his legacy (and that of many other contemporary and prior fantasy writers).
It seems rather par for the course. And it makes sense. In both fantasy and sci-fi, inhuman species are often caricatured by their "race" and usually don't get enough time to flesh out three-dimensional characters. Because it's hard to imagine completely alien societies with personalities that span as full as range as humanity's.
Just as a lot of the tropes of classical Athenian Theatre are alien to us nowadays doesn't mean its not great art.
Specifically to race in fantasy, I agree that LoTR wasn't really the place for that. However, D&D is actually the perfect place- RPG sourcebooks are expected to worldbuild, and describe fantasy worlds in detail. So it's a useful thing to think of when exploring an RPG.
It's really a joke, but hysterically brilliant.
(Edit - including a snippet of the 'commentary' below):
ZINN: You’ve spoken to me before about Mordor’s lack of access to the mineral wealth that the Dwarves control.
CHOMSKY: If we’re going to get into the socio-economic reasons why certain structures develop in certain cultures… it’s mainly geographical. We have Orcs in Mordor — trapped, with no mineral resources — hemmed in by the Ash Mountains, where the “free peoples” of Middle Earth can put a city, like Osgiliath, and effectively keep the border closed.
ZINN: Don’t forget the Black Gate. The Black Gate, which, as Tolkien points out, was built by Gondor. And now we jump to the Orcs chopping down the trees in Isengard.
CHOMSKY: A terrible thing the Orcs do here, isn’t it? They destroy nature. But again, what have we seen, time and time again?
ZINN: The Orcs have no resources. They’re desperate.
CHOMSKY: Desperate people driven to do desperate things.
ZINN: Desperate to compete with the economic powerhouses of Rohan and Gondor.
It's a fairly common criticism of fantasy—that entire races and ethnic groups are pretty commonly stereotyped.
these all seem true to me these all seem racist to me these all seem reasonable given the fantasy aspect of D&D and what I am used to from stories
"Dwarves are good at building things not because of some essential genetic racial qualities, but because they are raised in a culture that values building and passes on a certain set of traditional practices around it."
Dwarves (and Elves) can also see in the dark and can live for many hundreds of years. In many ways a character's race is a set of advantages derived from genetic qualities.
This isn't race in a human racial sense. The word "race" is used, when biologically speaking it should likely be species.
D&D is hardly the only or even first offender in this regard (it's a common and much talked issue in the larger Fantasy/RPG milieu).
Games and game worlds can and have been designed differently but this is how D&D is. There's definitely space for critical commentary, but complaining about it or calling it "evil" is like complaining about the physics in a "Transformers" movie. If you want an accurate simulation of reality, there's reality. Or GURPS.
Other games have both "races" and cultures, which makes things a bit clearer.
D&D "race" isn't exactly like "race" in the real world, but I don't think its an incorrect use of the term so much as deliberate, context-specific jargon because there is no existing readily recognized term that exactly captures D&D race (which isn't species -- though some D&D races are also distinct species from some or all of the other D&D races -- since there are D&D races which both can produce fertile offspring and do voluntarily produce offspring together) and "race" is the nearest readily recognized term.
> Other games have both "races" and cultures, which makes things a bit clearer.
D&D has both races and cultures (and in some settings in some versions of the rules, the latter also can have game mechanical effects), though only the former is somewhat "generic" across different game worlds, and the latter is gameworld specific.
This happened in the context of sci-fi when The Phantom Menace came out. I remember reading criticisms of both the Gungans[1] and the Trade Federation aliens as weakly veiled racial stereotypes.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jar_Jar_Binks#Allegations_of_ra...
Except for the orc problem (ie, sentient beings we are free to kill), I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with having fantasy races with very broad physical and social similarities. Humans are distinctly weird in a lot of ways if you step back and think about it.
It's just a game, but it can also be so much more than just a game...
I think it's a shame GURPS is relatively less known in the world!
Really? Let's say that the DM chose to run a game with mermaids in it. Would anyone question the (theoretically) superior swimming ability of mermaids? Let's see how a similar statement reads:
Mermaids are good at swimming not because of some essential genetic racial qualities, but because they are raised in a culture that values swimming and passes on a certain set of traditional practices around it.
It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?
Edit: And if you're going to deride D&D for that, why not praise it for its lack of sexism (I'm talking about the stats system, not the art here)? The higher amount of testosterone in a man's body makes it much easier for him to gain muscle, but the D&D stat system allows both male and female characters "equal opportunity", so to speak, by not adding or subtracting stats based on gender choice.
It's not reality. It's a fantasy world. Additionally, it's a literary fantasy world. Real-world concepts of race don't apply.
If you think it's a terrible concept, by all means play a different game, build your own world, whatever. But just because the author doesn't like D&D doesn't mean it's wrong.
In all seriousness though, Tolkien's worldview was more medieval than colonial. The north/south, high/low dynamic is a different dimension than the relationship between Europe and North Africa. It's altitude rather than longitude. Putting everything in relationship to the heavens is a touchstone of medieval culture.
Twisted (cf the article's 'ugly') things were considered a visual metaphor for evil by Dante. Dante imagined that beings who were living out their function/purpose with excellence were rooted in the ground but pointed at the stars [ie 'straight]. Men and women who succumbed to temptation were pointed at the stars by design but through concupiscence [getting caught up/busy; becoming obsessed/addicted], such 'crooked' people were turned inward on themselves and could no longer appreciate the things above them.
Replace "race" with "species" and all is solved.
https://medium.com/@increment/the-first-female-gamers-c784fb... (this is a long but fascinating article)
But I'm struggling to come up with what genetic characteristics about D&D dwarves you assume would make them inherently good at building things. There's nothing obvious that I'm aware of.
http://indistinguishablefrom.media.mit.edu/syllabus/
A classless system like Runequest is much better to express the wide range of possible fantasy trope characters (trope=young boy knows nothing, explorers the world, becomes famous, has powerful enemies, and saves the world by defeating them)
Even more interesting would be a career based system like Traveller, with the restriction of maximum homeworld techlevel 8. So you could start promising with good education and social standing, go to a medical school, but decide to become criminal after school, go into jail to learn even more skills, and start your role playing at career at best age of 29 or 33. Or you can even continue pre game careers, and start as an old wise man, who knows a lot, but where age already took its toll to strength, constitution and agility.
Some games offer much wider ranges of tropes for characters then D&D.
A balancing rule is, that older characters earn less experience, and therefor younger learn faster by adventure.
Anyway, Traveller was unusual in that it used age in a slightly meaningful way, but it definitely got away from the trope of all PCs being young and/or inexperienced.
Anyway, Traveller is the least futuristic science fiction setting ever (maybe). In game mechanic terms you have to start rolling for age-related characteristic effects starting at age 34 - you could lose strength, dexterity or endurance. At older ages you could lose intelligence too. But overall it assumes human lifespans more or less like they are today.
I think at imperial tech level's life extending drugs where not uncommon for the well off - depends on how you build the traveller universe.
And Tl:9 of course offers the first future techs, e.g. fusion reactors. Tl:A reliable interstellar travel and automatic factories, and huge progress in the high times of big trade empires spanning years of FTL travel, and the collapse of civilization, technology and dark ages, when ever those empires fall.
Living at Tl:F and being wealthy could buy you a lot of years, before you need to worry about age. But I was restricting my idea of a "better" assignment to Tl:8. So you can imagine every career path here and now, e.g. odd ones you never want to live in real life like the doctor who works for crime syndicate (above example), but that is fun in a role playing game, or would make a good trope in a novel or film.
This author is, frankly, an idiot. To suggest that ethics and morals are orthogonal, or that each is well-described by a three-point linear system... is utterly absurd. It's such a ridiculously bad roleplaying mechanic that those roleplaying games that are more about roleplaying a character than incrementing a number have no such mechanism.
Given that the author seems to value not straitjacketing a character and celebrating individuality, it's very, very odd that the alignment system should be lauded.
Seriously though, few role-playing games have an alignment system, especially the ones that promote themselves as being more about roleplay than levelling.
I remember one story about a guy whose group played 'evil' D&D characters, and one of them pointed out that what their characters were doing was 'naughty', but not actually 'evil'. So they tried out playing actual 'evil' characters. I can't remember all the examples he gave, but one of their plots was the kidnapping and raping of a princess. He said that campaign didn't last very long and his group found it pretty disturbing. I guess the point of this anecdote is that a lot of evil characters get played that aren't really 'evil' or close to it.
Alignment systems might help roleplaying neophytes, but if you've been around the block once or twice, they really are quite limiting. Is that noble warrior 'good' because he works tirelessly and selflessly to promote the cause of his kindred? Is he 'evil' because he knowingly and tirelessly oppresses others to do so? Is he 'neutral' because he can't be placed unequivocably in either camp? Why not just let him be a complex character on his own?
Have a look.
A Chaotic Neutral character is an individualist who follows his or her own heart, and generally shirks rules and traditions.[citation needed] Although Chaotic Neutral characters promote the ideals of freedom, it is their own freedom that comes first; good and evil come second to their need to be free. Chaotic Neutrals are free-spirited and do not enjoy the unnecessary suffering of others. A Chaotic Neutral character does not have to be an aimless wanderer; it may have a specific goal in mind, but its methods of achieving that goal are often disorganized, unorthodox, or entirely unpredictable.[citation needed] If a Chaotic Neutral joins a team, it is because that team's goals happen to coincide with its own at the moment, but it invariably resents taking orders and can be very selfish in its pursuit of personal goals.
A subset of Chaotic Neutral is: "strongly Chaotic Neutral", describing a character who behaves chaotically to the point of appearing insane. Characters of this type may regularly change their appearance and attitudes for the sake of change, and intentionally disrupt organizations for the sole reason of disrupting a lawful institution.[citation needed] This includes the Xaositects from the Planescape setting, and Hennet from the third edition Player's Handbook. In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Chaotic Neutral was mistakenly assumed to refer to this subset.