The BIG problem with alignment in my opinion is that it is so, well, opinionated. Different people have different opinions on what qualifies as good and evil (the fact that this is even up for debate proves that there is no such thing as absolute good/evil IMO), which leads to arguments at the table. For example, players perform an action that they think is in line with their good alignment but the DM considers evil, or at the very least not good at all, and an alignment shift is forced. The best solution my group has found is to simply go by the DM’s interpretations of good and evil, which the DM tells the group before the game starts, and if you want to do something that you arent sure how the DM will interpret, then ask before you do it.

I agree with your analysis on “realism” and applying modern views to a time where they were completely different. In my games and those ran by our good DM’s, we flat out say before the game starts “I don’t want to hear anyone arguing about realism. Anyone who does will be slapped. I don’t want to hear how something is unrealistic in a world where people can magically shoot fireballs out of their hands”.

Every DM in my group (myself included) scraps realism when it is for the better of the game. Is it “realistic” that women have the same physical stats as men and are more than just some man’s property in a medieval setting? No, but this IS a fantasy setting loosely based on the middle ages, so it is fair game to assume men/women are equal in all ways in this made-up world. How the PC’s are treated as prisoners is also one I have encountered. The PC’s get captured by the “evil” army, and are treated almost like prisoners are in the developed world these days. If it were “realistic” then the women (and often the men too) would be raped multiple times a day and everyone would likely have many sessions in torture chambers that would permanently cripple their characters. That doesn’t sound like much fun though, so that is something that is usually glossed over.

Finally, I completely agree with you about the joke that is the sensationalist, fearmongering mainstream media. IMO it is far worse than just Chicken Little, this farce is flat-out Boy Who Cried Wolf. Sometime in the future there really WILL be some massive threat to our very survival, yet people like us will just sit back and say “yeah, where have we heard THAT before?” and thus be unprepared for a real disaster. But what do the clowns in the media care, they are just like the CEO’s that ran their companies in to the ground to cause this economic collapse. They know what they are doing is wrong, but they also know (or at least are confident that) they will be long gone by the time anything bad happens, so what do they care?

D&D has a heritage of concerning itself with “good” vs. “evil” and early editions made the terrible mistake of trying to enforce that behavior upon players. If I read Garry’s article, and transpose all of his complaints about alignment onto a discussion of coercive personality mechanics, I find myself agreeing completely! (For an insightful essay on personality mechanics, see http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/personality.html .)

But there is a strong genre convention for “Good” vs. “Evil” which Mike lays out above. Sauron is Evil and Gandalf is Good. Period. Even Garry seems to imply that demons, devils, etc. are Evil with a capital E. In the sort of epic high-fantasy genre D&D emulates, Good and Evil are external forces, substances, or entities — they exist even in the absence of any character taking any action.

Every reasonable implementation of alignment I’ve ever seen embraces the “external forces” model and widely sidesteps the “personality mechanics” model. It’s called alignment because it describes which of the conflicting forces a character is aligned with, based on their actions (rather than trying to base their actions upon their alignment, which would be coercive and therefore unfun). The 4e alignment system is better not because it’s dumbed-down but because it doesn’t restrict players any more. There’s no ‘detect evil’ spell and paladins don’t have to be Lawful Good (except for certain deity restrictions, which I admit mar the system). It’s purely a storytelling tool for the DM to spin epic tales of Good vs. Evil.