I still think Planescape would have been a better game if your actions were judged by the people they affected/could know about them on a case to case basis, rather than against an alignment system.

Meaning that all of the options play quite nicely into modules that take advantage of it and for online play.

I thought those were there to help people get into character and stay there. Not to give people the most well defined character ever.

IMHO role playing gets a lot more interesting when you have room in which to work.

well yes, but as AFnord already pointed out, even good and evil is very subjective, and what on earth does it mean to be neutral? Unless you're sitting in place without doing anything, you're ... well, you're not neutral!
NWN was always intended as a framework for modules with a strapped-on campaign. So yes, modules use those options very well for the most part.

That's a different set of problems than what I'm referring to. There are degrees of good and degrees of evil and degress of neutrality. You're not generally going to want to roleplay a character that never sides with anybody ever, and the general definition of neutral doesn't require one to do so. One could of course choose to never side with anybody else.

You have an entire spectrum that's divvied up between 3 levels, although neutral probably doesn't represent as much of it as good and evil each do.

And that's before you start dealing with the other aspect of alignment. Also, alignment itself is just an alignment, unless you're roleplaying a goody two shoes or ultimate villain, you'll probably have a good character steal or commit some infraction at some point or have a villain help somebody out for their own good.

Yes, and that's just where the system gets utterly useless, not to mention character development. Yes, the D'n'D tries to solve that by aligment shifting - which only shows how horribly pointless the system is. Players should know themselves who they wish to roleplay. Since human character can be described very hardly as it is by real-world means, there's no point in narrowind it down - it'll either be too restrictive or broad to the point of uselessness.

What you're saying here applies to any and all systems that allow people to define their own characters. It also ignores the fact that the DM can just conjure a dragon to smite anybody that's ignoring their character too many times.

I only said that I like the concept of alignment - to me it seems like something that works in the paper, an easy way to describe a character and his range of actions, a basic guideline. I'm not into pen-and-paper, so I don't know if it works or not (are there real RULES using it, except the ones related to your class choice? Like "if you're neutral good you gets +2 in your rolls when you're doing goody stuff in a neutral way"?).
My experience with D&D is basically Planescape: Torment and the Planescape scenario, because the game made me interested in it. I like, for example, how the planes are divided based on the alignments.

Not exactly true either. Vast majority of traits are fairly easy to define: You get strength, sure, how much you can lift, how strong you can punch, how far you can jump perhaps, simple right? Same applies to dexterity or stuff like that too, it's really easy to narrow down. Stuff like intelligence and charisma are a bit harder, but they're still pretty easy to nail down fairly accurately. Skills, like how well can you use which weapon etc...

However, how do you do that with aligment? What is good? What is evil? What is neutral? That's a debate I've had far too many times, and it ... Well it just doesn't work like that. I'm not saying all aligment systems necessarily need to be bad, but when I have to pick between 9 aligments that are either too restrictive to grasp an actual human psychiology or too loose to do anything, I'll rather opt for none at all. The only way I could see around that is that whoever 'creates' the character also provides a background and set of character traits, but I think that would lead to even more arguments. You can't have those about Strength, if you're not strong enough to lift that fucking huge rock, you just won't. But what happens when your good character decides to kill a family and use their blood to start a ritual which is the only way to stop an invasion. Strict DM would say your character can't, because he's good! Good doesn't do that, good looks for a way out! And... Uh... No, just no.

I'd say Fallout. I think it was good that Steve Jackson Games withdrew and BI had to invent their own system. Being tailored to Fallout SPECIAL fits perfectly, much better than GURPS would have.

I wouldn't say that either Baldur's Gate games have actually good character creation systems, since they use AD&D. But since that one is better suited for computer games than actual P&P, it's actually pretty alright.

ROA doesn't have a very good system. It stays too close to the P&P game, which causes it too have many useless talents and spells. Also, it shares it's flaws, like the negative characteristics (which were thankfully incorporated into disadvantages in the 4th edition).

That's rules lawyering and nothing you can create is going to stand up to people that are deliberately looking to break the system.

Just because people at re capable of rules lawyering something like this does not make it a bad system. It means that people like to argue. The ability to contrive circumstances where it might not be obvious is just that a contrivance. If you wish to play characters with any depth, they're going to have to be placed into situations where they have to make uncomfortable decisions about whether or not they do something when it comes up.

And yes, you can do that with every stat if you so choose. For instance why does strength often imply a large frame or a lack of dexterity? In real life there's some pretty damn strong guys that are also tiny.

You've basically listed the best RPGs on GOG and it comes as no surprise that they also have great character creation systems. I think the two are be closely intertwined.

On the alignment topic, the real reason they exist the way they do in D&D is because Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos are actual fundamental forces of the universe. In a real-world setting, they'd just be oversimplified descriptors of behavior and intent, but in D&D they have actual real power. Spells and abilities can affect people dependent on their personality, so it's important to know how and on whom those spells and abilities should work. Protection from Law and Smite Evil are real things that can happen regularly, after all. It even says in the book that the alignment system is just shorthand and that most real people don't fit cleanly into the grid.

It also helps with intelligent items, because many intelligent items will only allow people with similar goals to use them. If you get a Sword of Glorious Disemboweling, that thing is going to want to disembowel people, it's not going to want to cut down trees or train army recruits. Give that thing to a berserker and let them have fun together.

I like D&D alignments when you're using them in D&D settings, but if I was making my own RPG, any alignment-type system I created would have only the smallest passing resemblance to the D&D one.

And I think you still don't understand what I'm trying to say. Understandable, since I was writing it at 2 AM. Yes, there will always be a room for interpretation. However, there is a immense gap between describing strength and describing what is good. It's just... Not really good at shaping a character in the form that DnD chose, not at all.