this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2024
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Would you care to give a correct definition?
Evil in the context of modern d&d is selfishness, putting your own interests above others
Keeping in mind I working with old 2E books, but the classic variety of C/N I've always read in was the person person who doesn't care about the means or the ends, just that the result benefits me or my accomplices. Benefit or harm to random others is an irrelevant side effect.
C/E would be the sort that is exemplified by the social climbing boot licker, others are an expendable resource used to benefit the self and your goals, but beyond that are just pawns.
This in itself is evil, because it puts the interests of others below your own. The old school characters were 'neutral' because they either still cared about someone in the end (even if it was their friends only), because they still drew a line somewhere when exploiting others, but mostly because they existed in the same books as comically evil kill-everyone villains and demons and it was easy say "well they are not as evil as Yeenoghu, so neutral it is"
This one would not necessarily be chaotic, after all a social hierarchy is still a form of order. It would depend on whether they truly believe that they have a "place" in the hierarchy where they belong, or whether they see it just as a means to an end.