Yeah, I guess it was simpler for the devs to make it black and white, if you were in prison then you're not innocent or you had no mitigating circumstances, as far as the powder gangers are concerned they basically just replaced the raiders from FO3.

Oh, I forgot add, I gained karma for letting benny free "sighs"; if I'd known before hand I would have shot him!

If you think about it from their point of view you're really the murderer. I mean you can find notes from the Gangers talking about their lack of supplies and need to pool resources for survival. Everyone is in a post apoc setting trying to live day by day, they just take a more machiavellian approach to solving the problems. If put in their situation I know very few people who would act noble. If you really want to get philosophical then you can't abandon the fact that good/evil are based on perception and cultural mores more as a way to convince people to act civilized which would be mostly forgotten when the survival instincts kick in.

That seems to be the realistic approach, though. As Robert Downey Junior said: "You can't go to penitentiary and really understand it, and come out a liberal. You can’t. I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone else, but it was very, very, very educational for me, and has informed my proclivities and politics every since."

Most of the people living in the wasteland have shortages of supplies/resources, yet the majority of them remain civilized. It takes a morally depraved type of person to go out and blow up people because of it. You didn't see the formerly imprisoned sheriff at the penitentiary go out and attack people; he remained to serve his time because he thought it was the right thing to do, but would otherwise likely have gone to Goodsprings or Primm (if liberated) and sought honest work.

There are always exceptions to the rule. At the same time realize that it is a game created by a civilized society by people not in an apoc/post apoc world who can only really make guesses about human reaction. They are also restricted by different agencies from really going all out with the experience. I'm not saying there are no good hearted people out there, but if you were in a wasteland would you really take the risks involved in trust and end up on a pig pole? Or would you sit around and starve if you saw someone walking down the road with a bag that might have food in it? Its situational and depends on personal values but most people won't. These days its argued poverty creates crime. A wasteland is a world of extreme poverty, its a little much not to expect extreme crime as a result.

No I know what he means, my guy is a nasty piece of work, but I dont want good karma for scoring a sneak critical on a powder ganger or a ghoul, powder gangers are bad people but so am I so therefore they are my people, I've killed people like Manny, and that singer In novac I don't know his name, the named woman who works in the Mojave express and alot others and I havent recieved no bad karma from them, these people may not have actually done anything bad against mankind but unless they are attacking me for some reason they are civilians and I should get my bad karma, but I dont, instead I get good karma from sneak attacking a ghoul,. :brokencomputer: stupid thing is broken

Actually you can make guesses. The entire world aint' exactly nice and squishy all over and even in places which are subjected to extreme poverty it's still only a relatively small number of people who can commit truly grievous acts of cruelty and not be haunted by it. I don't mean haunted by just feeling bad about what they have done, I mean seriously [censored] up for the long run and having trouble living with themselves. Morals and ethics can vary quite a bit by culture, but there are some things we are psychologically hardwired not to do and for most people, the emotional and psychological consequences of doing them are devastating. That's when you start getting into the extremes of such concepts as universal karma and cognitive dissonance.

Don't get me wrong. People can be monstrous when they are panicked, scared or threatened and do things they regret deeply, but it really takes one screwed up pooch to willfully kill and maim innocent person who is not an immediate threat and not be scarred for life. In general people will puff out there chest, yell, threaten and so-on at the drop of a hat, but in most cases they are ultimately just hoping you will run away before they do.

Sounds like you're more of a neutral character anyways.

But yeah, it seems weird to get Karma. Maybe it's putting them out of their misery?