Jeff Rients' awesome alignment system

The problem I see is that PCs of different alignments will likely kill each other as soon as they can.

I think that Jeff's system really avoids that. Since (for example) a lawful character can be a scum, and a chaotic character can be a sweetie, there is no reason that the different alignments will necessarily be at each other's throats. Alignment is primarily eschatological. That is, alignments don't really come into play until Ragnarok. Until then, a lawful fighter and a chaotic fighter could be the best of friends. They could laugh, drink together, guard each other's back on adventures, etc. On top of all that, they could with good humor say to each other, "On the last day, I'm going to do you in! Until then, let's kill some monsters so we can steal their treasure so we will have money to buy wine and women!"

That has not happened in actual use. I don't define beating up orcs for beer money as an example of an alignment-driven conflict. A quest with cosmic ramifications could lead to such intra-party conflict, but I usually run games involving scoundrels and miscreants adventuring for personal gratification.

Jeff's approach works fine if you prefer alignment to relate only to "cosmic" matters and there's plenty of precedent for treating it that way. On the other hand, if you prefer to treat alignment as having a stronger "ethical" significance, then you need something more finely grained than that. Clearly, the "Gygaxian" strain of OD&D considers ethics as important as "us" vs. "them" in a cosmic battle royale.

Both approaches have lots of support in OD&D (even in the 3 LBBs), so I don't think there's a single "right" approach.

I'm kind of thinking of World War I (amongst others), in which officers of opposite sides would have genuine regard and affection for each other. Yet some had an alignment of "Allies" and others had an alignment of "Central Powers".

Men of sterling character and nobility were to be found amongst the Allies and amongst the Central Powers.

Men of the blackest character were to be found amongst the Allies and amongst the Central Powers.

Thus, good men and bad men fought on the same side against the other side that also contained both good men and bad men. An Allied good man would help Allied bad men kill a Central Powers good man. Why? Because of differing alignments (Allies vs Central Powers).

That's kind of how I see Jeff's Kirby Norse gods vs. Cthulhoid gods alignment system. Good and evil are almost completely different things. I doubt that a worshipper of Yog-Sothoth would say, "Yes, I am evil. I fight against good." Rather, the worshipper of Cthulhu would think that he was in the right against those insufferably dictatorial Norse gods:

"That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom." ("The Call of Cthulhu")

That's how the Cthulhoid worshippers would see themselves. They would probably see the Norse deities as arrogant task-masters who would do little else than enslave mankind and order him about.

In game terms, about the only time alignment would cause conflict would be if a group of Cthulhu cultists and a group of Thor cultists wanted to rumble a bit early.

Only if you assume that World War I is the only possible state of affairs in the campaign.

I don't recall too well the Northern Myths but I would say that Thor and Loki are of the same alignment. They are both under he same sphere of influence of Odin. They would be "law" for example, and the Giants would be chaos.

Here you see how alignment is just which "side" you are in a very very broad sense.

One interpretation of alignment I liked a lot is one that Melan mentioned, based on the Wild West.

Law would be Civilization.

Chaos the Indians.

You got good men and bastards on both sides, but the are clearly enemy groups.

In my WWI analogy, WWI = Ragnarok. The campaign would take place before Ragnarok started. It would be like Europe pre-1914. There might be a certain rivalry between (for example) Frenchmen and Germans, but they weren't at war with each other. Frenchmen and Germans mixed freely. Thus in the campaign Lawfuls and Chaotics would mix freely.

I like the idea that a rude, crude Conan-type barbarian could be Lawful solely because he'd side with Odin, while a highly-civilized aesthete who loved small children and fuzzy animals could be Chaotic solely because he'd side with Cthulhu.

If you further differentiate alignments:

Law: in favor of the Empire. You think the Empire should rule the world.

Evil and Good could be inner struggle bewteen groups that think the Empire should rule, but have different views on how they should do it.

Chaos: the savages. None like the empire. Good and Evil are different ways of being a savage, but both think the Empire should not rule.

If the Empire is corrupt and decadent, maby the Lawful Good after fighting to "restore" it.

I'm not saying jeff's sytem is not good. It's very cool. I was just trying to debate.

i have used a system similar to this in previous games but with more series of questions mostly inspired from Ultima: Quest of the avatar... i have even used this kind of system for creating characters that gets real interesting...

I think "Dark Knight" summed up alignment pretty well. Batman and the Joker are both violent, criminals, but Batman has a code. He goes beyond the law to protect the greater good and maintain order. The Joker has no code. He does whatever he feels like at the moment.

Batman is lawful
The Joker is chaotic