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Original post by Sandman My advice would be to let the player decide what his character's alignment is. The game can keep track of what his alignment appears to be to the game world. This means that you can modify the NPC's reactions to the player according to alignment, but you can't modify the player's reactions - the player still needs to be free to choose the Evil option no matter how saintly the game thinks he is.

Rather, let the game track what the PC(s) reputation is, rather than alignment. It is quite possible to be working towards a very evil goal while maintaining a basic front of good. I dislike using strict "alignment" systems myself, and instead focus on writing and content. I'd have to spend the next three hours to explain how I'm doing so, and I'm not doing that tonight, so I'll leave it at that.

I'll agree, alignment, or rather moral value and "good and evil" are hard to build simplified mechanics for, without either half ignoring the mechanics to fit the story, or compromising the story in order to fit the mechanics.

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Original post by Sandman In my experience, games often award good/evil points in incomprehensible ways. You might do something believing yourself to be doing the right thing, only to find that the game hates you for it, and vice versa.

I can attest to that. In Kotor 2, I played a fully good charactor. On one of the planets, I encountered a group of mercanaries (Mandalorians), who were forming a rebellion against the queen. I had to choose sides, and was unsure of who was good and who was evil. Since the Mandalorians were kind to me, had shiny armor, and told me the queen was a tyrant, I helped them. Apparently they were the bad guys, but I didn't know that until the game forced me to execute the queen and kill her Jedi guard.
Because I killed the Jedi and the queen (forced to, because of a decision I made an hour prior), my 'alignment' bar flipped completely, from ~80% good, to ~60% evil, and because I was near the end of the game and evil, the game locked me into that path, forcing me to slaughter an entire enclave of good Jedis, which, ofcourse, pushed my alignment more toward the Dark Side, while I struggeled to find oppurtunities to save my alignment (Slaughtering the Jedi council doesn't look good on your resume, unless you happen to be a Sith).
By the time the game ended, I was almost dead center neutral (only like ~10% good), from one mistake/choice (me getting the politics confused, and being distracted by shiny armor). I ended up getting a lame ending, since I wasn't good enough to get the "Good guy ending", nor was I bad enough to get the "Bad guy ending".