If, for example, you decide that law/chaos represents the existence (or lack) of a personal code of conduct, Lawful Neutral would represent one who actively works to maintain balance, True Neutral would represent someone who doesn’t side with good or evil, but doesn’t strive for balance either, and Chaotic Neutral, as noted before, would represent force of pure impulse.

However, one could also decide that, instead, Lawful Neutral is a pure representative of law, and therefore a “judge” archetype, True Neutral is the previously-mentioned character who actively strives for balance, and Chaotic Neutral is either the loony or merely a rebel or petty criminal who doesn’t care to side with good or evil.

In a nutshell, it all depends on whether your definition of “neutral” designates an aversion towards both good and evil or an apathy towards both good and evil.

-Quick, but gritty combat.
-Powerful, but not nation-shaping, and dangerous to attempt magic.
-Flexibility in skills characters can acquire, rather than forcing them along the path of an archetype.

Still following the Rule of Cool you mentioned, of course. Are there other things you think would be more pleasing to a realist fantasy gamer?

‘Some men aren’t looking for anything logical. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.’

They are either evil for the sake of evil itself, or they commit evil acts because it is a means to (what they see as) a good end, e.g. the joker trying to ‘free’ the people of Gotham. However as they are CHAOTIC (and as such, generally unpredictable and rather, well, chaotic) they generally have to be very lucky or very intelligent or very, VERY unpredictable (or a mix of the two/three) to be a successful villain.

perhaps a chaotic villain as a main antagonist in a RP setting is nigh but impossible without some serious planning, but as The dark Knight has shown us, it can be done.

I started MUDding about two decades ago. I immediately said, “Hey, these MUDs have complex rules that provide depth. If we could have this at the tabletop, we’d have the best of both worlds.”

So, yeah, that vision is a great vision. In the meantime, the existing codebase of MUDs, MUXs, MUSHs, etc. provide a starting point.

Preservers minimize their effects on the world around them, but suffer from terrible xp progression. Can’t remember what the offsetting perk was though…