What if alignments were a continuum and not mutually exclusive?

[kyoryu]

Sounds to me like alignment-as-radar-chart adds a whole lot of bookkeeping for not a lot of value.

Why? There's enough wiggle room that someone that's just slightly out of whack doesn't need to worry about it. It's only when you see significant shifts in behavior that you'd bother adjusting.

"You're neutral, but you've been pretty quick to go to <evil actions> recently. Keep it up, you're going to shift to evil."

"Oh, okay, you've kept it up, switch that N to an E."

You don't need bookkeeping.

The difference between "CN with an E bent" and "CE with an N" bent is pretty small, and there's enough overlap that you can just leave the alignment alone until it gets extreme.