Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
Personally, I want to make an “ecologically friendly” Alignment system, where using things well, and not being wasteful, is good, such that cannibalism, animating the dead and experimenting on prisoners is a good act, whereas leaving prisoners to rot useless in cells or cremating the dead is evil. A system that uses a clear, fundamental principle, where there’s little to no room for argument about what the system will call “good” or “evil”, or the extent of that Alignment.

And, ideally, one which has nothing to do with the actual morality of the players involved, so that nobody mistakes one for the other, and there’s no hard feelings on the “ecological purity Alignment system” calling your refusal to eat your dead party member evil, and your leaving hundreds of goblin corpses behind unanimated a very evil act.
Real world holy books are filled with rules and examples. There are still countless examples of vicious sectarian disputes and even violence over how to interpret passages, as well as no small amount of searching for justifications for why the behavior you want is totally okay. (See the AD&D cleric reading a passage prohibiting the shedding of blood and taking away "so bludgeoning them to death is cool".) You're welcome to try making a rules system that's immune to lawyering, but given that only the simplest of models can maintain that good luck to you.

Which gets to the biggest flaw with KoN's idea. You could divide the alignment chart into as many subvalues as you like. Politics, religion, and message board arguments are chock full of disputes as to what acts are actually good and what goods are a higher priority when two are in conflict. If there's any mechanical effect to Good vs. Evil behavior beyond the most basic consequentialist "people won't like you if you behave like a jerk", people will act based on their ideas of good vs. evil which may disagree with your ideas of good vs. evil. If someone's alignment score takes a ding because their idea and yours disagree, you just opened the door for the sorts of discussions usually reserved for very tense thanksgiving dinners. And that's before you include the players looking for tortured justifications because they want both the super powerful good aligned sword, and to be able to point it at the king until he empties the treasury into their bags of holding.