Personal Codes of Honour

"My character is obviously lawful good. He follows a personal code of honour!"

Uh, no. Simply following a personal code of honour does not make you either lawful or good. In fact, any character can follow such a code, regardless of alignment.

Firstly, let's deal with the code=good argument. This is easily dealt with. Consider the character of Leon in the film of the same name (unless you're American, in which case it's "The Professional"). This character, at least at the start of the film, is an assassin for hire. He kills people for his own benefit, which is clearly evil. But his code is "no women, no children". Which does, indeed, amount to a personal code of honour. (Leon is, actually, a fairly interesting film from an alignment point of view, since the title character is obviously shifting towards good - or at least neutrality - as the film progresses, but remains a killer for hire.)

However, the code=lawful argument is harder to deal with. It seems obvious that a character who will bind himself with arbitrary rules should be lawful, and indeed many lawful characters follow codes. However, the key problem is the "personal code" part. The existence of the code says nothing about how the character interacts with others.

Consider, for instance, the knight errant. His code requires him to travel the lands righting wrongs, seeking out and vanquishing evil, and bringing hope to the masses. But his code says nothing about establishing a common set of social rights and responsibilities, nor does it suggest that he believes that this is the right way for anyone other than himself to live. Indeed, part of his code could be directed to removing the local tyrant, without any notion of replacing the tyrant with any other authority.

No, the knight errant's code is not inherently lawful, but more likely neutral, or perhaps even chaotic.