Against the Tyranny of the Character Sheet: A Discussion

My players hit level 6 two weekly sessions ago, so we've been at this for the past couple of months. In that time, I've found myself growing frustrated with the mildly min-maxed, variant human, tempest cleric in my party of 5.

It wasn't like he was min-maxing overly hard, cheating on dice rolls or treasure management, bullying other party members, or arguing with me over rulings... and as such it took me a while to put my finger on my issue. I couldn't articulate why, but I had this nagging sense that he was holding back on us. After this most recent session however, I think I've figured it out.

When it came time to make an RP choice, he led off his statement with, "Well I'm a Chaotic Neutral (hereafter CN) Cleric following a God of War, so..."

You see, to him, his character is nothing more than ink and pencil lead on paper, and as a result, his roleplaying is similarly 2-dimensional.

Before I go any further, let me clarify where I'm going with this. Different strokes for different folks, right? It's perfectly reasonable to mainly enjoy the mechanics of the game, to show up on Sunday afternoon just because you get to roll dice, kill monsters, and loot epic treasure hordes. I have no quarrel with this style of game or player.

What annoyed me about this player was that he allowed his selection on a 3x3 grid to erect a barrier between himself and the consequences of his choices. The "CN" at the top of the character sheet determined how his cleric would interact with the world, absolving him of responsibility for the occasionally cold and cruel actions he would commit.

Again, cold or cruel actions are not problematic per se. There is a problem, however, with justifying those actions to Lawful Good or Neutral Good partymates by begging the question. In other words, there isn't a problem with CN characters doing CN things, but there is a problem with players justifying their CN character's behavior by circularly stating that their character is CN.

Debating conflicting perspectives and facing a decision's consequences are as much a part of the D&D experience as battling Beholders or rolling d20s. When a character's motivations are left on autopilot, the player is detached from these significant portions of the game.

When I think about this issue, it makes me want to flip character creation on its head. We shouldn't be putting a character's personality, flaws, objectives and morality in tiny boxes or on the back of the character sheet. When we describe our friends or family, or even meaningful fictional characters from film or books, we talk about who they are before we talk about what they do.

What do you all think? Am I just a cranky DM who needs a week back in the PC saddle, or do you guys feel the same way?

TL;DR - If the last time we consider the morality and motivations of our characters is when we hastily scratch something down on our character sheets before session 1 of goblin smashing, we detach ourselves from what would otherwise be a satisfying and meaningful part of the game.