Now, I think we covered a lot of the aspects of Law pretty good last week. The point of a Lawful character is that they have some kind of structure or order to their lives, whether it be in the form of laws, personal codes of honor, or just OCD-like slavishness to routine and ritual.
Neutrality, on the good-evil axis, is a little trickier. Like all of the alignments, there's a lot of ways this can be played. But I think neutrality on this axis has the greatest potential for being played wrong.
Okay, obviously there's not really a "wrong" way to play your character, but there are definitely some interpretations of "neutral" that I think are a bit off.
For example, I've known people to play LN when really they were playing Lawful Good or Evil characters. Their actions had a clear bend one way or the other, but the player was hesitant to subscribe to good or evil, and therefore took the cop-out route. No, I'm not saying neutrality is a cop-out; it can be a valid character choice. But many characters will treat it as a cop-out, especially seasoned players who want to avoid all those smites and magic circle spells that target specific alignments. Of course, these are usually the type of hack-and-slashers who only have eyes for numbers and don't like to waste time roleplaying. If you have one of those in your game, you've got bigger problems, so I won't harp on it.
On the other hand, the wishy-washy aspect of neutrality could be an interesting character choice. Perhaps somebody who has never really had to face any kind of moral dilemma would be neutral like this, or maybe somebody who is afraid to "rock the boat" and will change their opinion based on those around them. A LN character with this kind of neutrality would likely then fall back on whatever rule system governs them. They trust their law to figure out the tricky ethics for them, and will go with that. Examples that come to mind might be a scholar (like a wizard or priest) who has spent most of his life reading and studying. He has a firm grasp of the laws that apply to him (like the rules of the mage college or the tenets of his religion), but he does not broaden his scope to consider more universal concepts of good and evil. As another example, consider a character with a simple peasant background; he knows to do what he is told and to respect authority (lawful) but maybe he has never experienced some of the moral gray areas that fill the world, and therefore is almost unable to make any kind of consistent choice (neutral).
The classic example of LN seems to be the mercenary. They will take any job, and not question the whys or wherefores, so long as they get paid. The problem is that many people who play mercenary-esque characters forget about the Lawful part of it. Sure, being a cool I-don't-care-so-long-as-I-get-paid bounty hunter type frees you from the restraints of being a "good guy" or a "bad guy," but it doesn't give you carte blanche to do what you want. Mercenaries have jobs to do (typically involving contracts), and they'd better damn well follow the rules of their contracts if they want to ever get another one. A smart GM, when faced with a merc, will make sure that the contracts involved are always very specific. And a good LN will know that they have to abide by any agreements they make, or else they will not be playing their alignment properly.
There are a lot of other issues with neutrality, but some of them are more appropriate to be covered in later installments. So for now, I will leave you to ponder what other options for LN might be out there.
P.S. In my campaigns, I have always allowed alignment shifts to happen through roleplaying if it seems natural and right within the lifespan of the character. This seems to happen a lot with characters who are "neutral" in the good-evil axis. If they go through a whole campaign hunting down pillaging orc raiders and overthrowing murderous necromancer lords, they tend to start making "good" choices even when not forced to. As always, remember that people grow and their opinions change. This is what keeps the character--and the game--alive and interesting.
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