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Lawful people want the world to be predictable.
Chaotic people want the world to be unpredictable.
L/C-neutral people don't care whether the world is predictable or not.

Good people selflessly help innocents.
Evil people selfishly hurt innocents.
G/E-neutral people avoid hurting innocents but don't go out of their way to help either.

I've found that simple definitions like these suffice for 95% of cases in a heroic fantasy game.  For the borderline stuff, just pick one that seems close (or when in complete doubt, call it true neutral) and play on.  It doesn't have to be complicated.  This is a game, not a philosophy seminar.  I was a philosophy student, and I've mostly played with philosophy and law students, and still I've never encountered a serious problem with the alignment system at the table.

Nov 21, 2012 -- 5:27PM, Steely_Dan wrote:

Nov 21, 2012 -- 5:21PM, Dwarfslayer wrote:

Nah screw you

...screw me...wow...such umbrage, I think I will...no one quite pleases one's self like one's self...thanks...


As for alignment, seriously, there is so much to dig about it, go for it, go for the gold, baby! 

Reread the quote, he is saying that you are saying "nah screw you, go read a book" when confronted to explain your position.

The dynamics of Law, Chaos, Good, and Evil should be covered in alignment.  I feel eliminating the Law/chaos aspect of it, would do a disservice to the game.  Just my take, though...

The complaints around alignment and mechanics always seem to resolve around a dm "punishing" a player for not playing to alignment.   This can happen even if the alignment is meant to be fluff - the dm can always reduce rewards because the player isn't playing to alignment. 
But, those who like alignment point out that it can be a valuable tool to help get into a characters motivations and under their skin.   Which means a compromise is trivial - make it an optional background element.  After all, adventuring is such a life changing experience, even the holiest paladin may find himself cutting corners in the name of his g*ds justice.   And, for those who see morality as a complex context specific attribute, by calling it a background the player is explicitly allowed to play the character against background if there are mitigating circumstances.  Use the unaligned for any one who chooses to not have that background - and make it clear that those people who don't think about morality fall into unaligned - probably being sorta good, but more good to those are friends.  This allows those who don't want to get into a lot of arguments about whether killing disarmed combatants is a good or evil act to just play without feeling punished by their dm.
And, if your a dm who wants to encourage good roleplaying?   Don't argue if something matched a platonic ideal of good vs evil - as the player why the character did something.   Good role players will have an answer, bad ones won't.    Punish players who don't think about their characters actions, not those who make different characters than you would. 

As for me, after playing with someone who wanted his paladin to fall into a "ends justify the means" mindset and see where that lead the character, I can't see using mechanical means to limit the powers.  After all, if someone wandered down that path, but then suddenly lost their abilities one day, they'd change. their tune.   Better to see where the characters limits are without the safety net that their god will just take away their powers if they step too far out of line.   If that means creating a patron devil of fallen paladins, so be it.