I see a lot of talk about how Alignment is the root of everything wrong in certain game systems. But surely Alignment is not all - well, Evil, is it?

What are some examples of good uses of the/an Alignment system you have either seen or used yourself to enhance the roleplaying and/or emotional impact in a game rather than detract from it?

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I had a female Gnome Barbarian with a penchant for fashion. She was Chaotic Neutral, and instead of playing her Chaotic Stupid (she actually had one of the higher INT scores in the party, at least among non-magic users), I played her Chaotic Aggressively Friendly And Fun-Loving. She befriended the local ice priestess so thoroughly that she ended up teaching GORP (The PHB told me that Gnomes like to use nicknames) her class. Thus, my barbarian ended up spending an entire late-game fight flying around, casting lightning bolts at the water elemental and healing people (unfortunately, while there were a couple other players who had protection from water, I was the only one who had thought to also include protection from lightning).

In an early arena fight with the Designated Bad Guys, she charged in and got KO'd in about one round by the higher level human (male) fighter. When she got revived by a party member, I had to do some fast thinking. Now, as a player, I recognized that having her go one more round with him would be fatal. But there was no way GORP was going to back down from a fight. So.... Well, suffice it to say that after we had won all the DBGs' stuff from them, I claimed his stuff as mine and sent it to him, along with an invitation to dinner.

As the PC-DBG relationship unfolded, I eventually got in touch with their boss, the evil princess, to broker peace. The only common interests between the princess and my barbarian was..... fashion. I brokered peace in exchange for a wardrobe makeover. Ummm. Have you ever summoned an elemental of darkness to make a dress of darkness for a spoilt princess who loves darkness? Even my CN Barbarian/Fashionista had to make a sanity check after that. But the princess loved it!

Anywho.... Eventually the party got into the Plot Device Tower and discovered we were all formerly evil but had lost our memories. We could get our memories back, become evil again, and get gestalted; or we could stay good as regular characters. It was very tempting. The whole group was going to go evil en masse, until GORP got talking and convinced them, all by herself, exactly why it was better to stay good. And then, at the last second of making the decision, she remembered her husband (oh yeah - she ended up marrying the evil underling), and reasoned that if she was evil, she could have more fun being on the "same side" as him. So now she's evil with one or two other people (it was a big group, in a game store).

But - being Chaotic Neutral - wasn't that kind of close enough to evil to begin with? The DM ruled that I kept my Alignment (probably spurred by the backstory I wrote up, where all the gods within one step of Chaotic Neutral wanted an agent in this world where they could not see, that would hit the "reset gods" button in the right way to maintain balance if necessary).

And so GORP finds herself technically in the Evil group, but still on good terms with the Good group. And also - well, there was an absolutely Good prince in this kingdom, to balance the absolutely Evil princess. I decided that they would make the perfect balance of forces to start out the new order of godhood. (Why in the world would I want godhood for myself? Where's the fun in that?) So I talked them both into being cryogenically frozen for safe keeping by my best friend the ice princess, until such time as we had the "reset gods" button.

But being Chaotic Neutral means being subjected to lots of ups and downs. And having your friends fight each other - by this time, I decided that GORP was getting close to a mental breakdown. The first major fight between the Good and Evil party was in a volcano. By this time, GORP was enough of an ice mage to be weak against fire. So I had decided that her first action was to run, screaming, into the lava. But we never made it to my turn, as PvP does not tend to end well, and suddenly there were rules disputes. So I will never know if her friends would have rescued her and/or made peace with each other.

But I'll be darned if that wasn't the single most intense roleplaying experience I've ever had, and the majority of it came from choosing my Alignment. And also fashion.