I haven't killed anyone in the game so far (LVL 19) and I'm stuck with evil karma. :/ klepto ftl.

I've indiscriminately killed a coyote family with dynamite on more than one occasion. But things like some little scurrying gecko, or a baby molerat, I leave alone. They're so cute and they don't bother me.

However, I see how being evil is hard. I took over Goodsprings with the Gangers and felt bad about it too. I was the one that killed Doc Mitchell and Sunny - eventually dragging the Doc to my former gravesite. Wasn't I the bastard. Felt bad about it and actually helped fend off the gangers on two attempted gamesaves.

It was easier to be evil in F3 because the protagonist's detachment to the gameworld. He was a cannibalistic, thieving, murderous, back-stabbing, scumbag slaver who wanted nothing but to paint another's entrails onto a wall. He killed Grandma Sparkle (dumping the body in the Potomac), assisted in the ghoulish takeover of Tenpenny Tower (smashing Herbert Dashwood and Tenpenny both with a sledgehammer), massacred the denizons of both Megaton and Rivet City (subsequently nuking the former), cannibalized everyone in Vault 101, frenzied the antqueen into killing Doc Lesko, sold Bryan Wilks to slavers, let a band of ghouls gang-[censored] Garza, etc. It was fun, and I was hoping to emulate him in NV, but not until I've played enough to detach myself from the game's characters.

I feel horribly wrong being evil. But not being stupid evil like you did. I'm evil because I'm rude to people and always take the evil way out of a quest. Not just kill everybody.

I haven't had this problem in New Vegas as I haven't yet tried to make an evil character in the game. Although I've had difficulty playing evil characters in some other RPGs, but often, the issue isn't that it doesn't feel right being evil, but that to be evil, the game seems to expect you to be your typical mustache twirling, evil laughing villain who shoots people just to watch them die, eat's puppies for breakfast, and drives recklessly. But that's usually not the kind of evil character I try to play. When I play evil characters in games, I try to play the sort of villain that has some sort of logic to his actions. Usually I try to play the sort of character who wouldn't think twice about shooting you in the head if it suited his interests, but wouldn't just kill you just to show how evil he is, that sort of thing is bad for business, after all, but in many games, it seems that if you want to be an evil character, you have to be evil for the sake of being evil. The game might end up considering the sort of evil character I'd make good, or at most, neutral due to lack of options in this area.

In New Vegas, though, the main difficulty of playing an evil character seems to be that lots of enemies give karma when you kill them. I guess the logic behind this is that these tend to be people like the Fiends, and killing them would be doing the world a favor, but the fact is that the game can't tell if you're going out of your way to risk your life in order to make the wasteland a safer place for everyone, or just defending yourself, and since the characters who give you karma tend to be ones who attack you on sight, you may well end up killing them just to defend yourself, whether you're good or bad. Not only does this make it hard for players to be evil because after they lose lots of karma due to stealing or murdering, they'll just end up earning it back due to killing raiders. Plus, it comes off as kind of messed up when you consider that what the game is trying to tell us seems to be that running is what an evil or neautral person would do if he was attacked by someone.

At least in Fallout 3 the karma wells required you to pay some sort of price by donating caps or water. In New Vegas, you can actually get paid for killing enemies you get karma for killing because you can loot them and sell the loot. And it was purely the player's choice whether you'd donate caps or water, in New Vegas, raiders don't on the other hand don't exactly ask before trying to kill you.

One thing I'm grateful for is New Vegas doesnt have a Karma award, I still have a few neutral and evil trophies locked on F3. Doing evil things just isnt cute to me ._.

Stupid evil was fun in F3 though. I didn't feel connected to the characters, so it made being "stupid-evil" more satisifying.

Indeed. Your karma isn't directly related to if you are evil or not. As this example shows, tricking everyone into thinking you are a saint, yet will kill them if they cross you in the wrong way.

Bad Karma != Evil

My sociopathic Alien uses then massacres every human he sees and his karma is ...neutral. LOL
My pro NCR soldier is a typical good guy who only steals food to eat and hes somehow very evil?

Karma is broke.

I prefer the neutral path to noble path, mostly becuase I like most of the NPC's in NV, and that I'm more prone to it.

Reasons however playing evil and to a lesser degree good can bite you.
I've tried many characters so far, outside of kharma and some game mechanics my one "evil" character just found many of the factions and people within neutral.
Goodsprings pretty much leaves you killing everyone, despite the goodpath requiring you to work your but off to get them involved, which on hardcoe hurts due to the missing doc factor.
The prison camp pretty much is just an emergent society to be anywhere near evil in defending it.
The legion no matter what I try to justify it, a female pc would not work for it's just , the fiends outside of cook cook are pretty much just foul ups at worst derserving putting down humanely but so far I've found little role play with them.
The only faction I really like with a Merc build is the Khans, but then as a good guy I feel the same tbh, as they really are the best intresting minor faction.

Roleplaying any good or evil build is made difficult however if you plan on taking on factions, due to psychic faction trackers with tremendous HP and DT.
Who's appearance can't be justified for any reason given the current state of the wastelands political situation imo, unless leveled to fit pc level minutely, not some elite hit squad that would in reality be saved for any of the other situations currently taking place in game.

I thought that too... adorable! Then I lobbed a plasma grenade in there.

Always 'good'...being nasty and evil doesn't come naturally to me.

I have no qualms killing off someone who has scammed me into doing 'bad', but intentionally setting out to be self-centred or assisting/promoting the worst of human behaviour isn't really my thing. Sometimes there is no choice in the matter, and sometimes I'll just walk away from a quest to avoid the inevitable bad end result.

Funny, I must strive to be good. But I'm a terrible person... or so I am told.

I think it's fun to be evil, actually. More fun than it is to be good. I can do both extremes, but I do have a problem remaining neutral.

I feel bad killing animal babies. Even Deathclaw babies. But taking out guys on Caesars crosses, destroying whole towns, being evil just in general, meh it depends how I feel. I can do it or not.

Wow, I got the same problem with you. I also try to be neutral, try to do something that benefits only for myself ... But it seems evil karma I have received is not as much as good karma.

I jsut can't really play an evil character, it makes me feel bad. I can't kill coyote pups, unless they attack me. I can't massacre goodsprings, they've helped me out too much. I can't side with Caesar because hes a slaving f%@k head. etc etc etc.

Bleh i have to agree with the OP I can't play evil characters for any extended period of time. It kills the whole immersion aspect of the game for me because I find it difficult to relate to that character.
Im the kind of guy that when I do quests I generally don't ask for rewards in the end because I feel like a jerk if I do. While I don't mind killing particularly annoying people (like the Lottery winner in Nipton that guy got on my nerves REAL fast) I honestly can't find myself killing people like the guys in the NCR. On my first playthrough I really REALLY wanted the ranger sequoia

Yeah, I try playing evil characters, the difficulty is not the game mechanics but me, I'll attempt to go through the game not caring about the plight of the NPCs, even when it comes to dialogue I find it difficult to select the rude and obnoxious responses(though with some NPCs this can be an easy selection), I have to remind myself it's only a role!

On my first play through I always play a character who is as good and heroic (by my standards) as I can possibly manage. Being evil really ruins the immersion. You don't get to connect to the characters and their story if you play as a mustachio twisting super villain that doesn't care about the people around you. But I also try a second and third play through as a more mercenary neutral type and at least once as a really deeply depraved sociopath. If you live your life trying to be a decent person, it can be really cathartic to just violently destroy anyone at slightest provocation. Preferably with fire and explosives.

I have trouble being 'evil' too. Funnily, I didn't in Oblivion, where I modeled my character on a Voldermort-type. But even then it wasn't an openly evil character - he wanted to be perceived as good, hiding his true nature, until he was so powerful it didn't matter.

And although none of my characters like (avoid if at all possible) to kill the coyotes and young animals etc, I did sort of create a less good character who is basically an assassin. She kills, but for money. if she is asked to kill someone, she will. She won't just kill townsfolk. Self defense, or a 'job'. Doesn't matter too much who the client/target is.