Am I the only one who didnt figure out what the guy was talking about when he said lottery right away and killed him for the ticket, only to feel REALLY guilty later...?

I just let him run off thinking "Man that guy is screwed up in the head.".

Then I sort of wanted to kill him.

It kinda made me think of the reverse of Shirley Jackson's short story right away. My character ----> "Just run you poor bastard"

Running into a desert full of radscorpions...the irony....

I had no idea what he was talking about the first time I saw him, for he came up to me while I was still a good distance from Nipton. I killed him but I did not feel guilty later. He was a powder ganger and I got the feeling he would not see his "winning" ticket as a chance to repent.

TBH, though Vulpes is obviously a complete monster that even Lanius thinks is extreme, the people of Nipton got what was coming for them... most of them. Robot guy probably not, and not Vital Essence guy either. But the mayor and powder gangers? Always a bigger (evil) fish, as Vulpes showed.

Morality is such a malleable thing, isn't it...

Eh, I just kill him for his 'reading glasses'. Not to mention it's a humorous irony to have won a lottery to live, only to be shot down within minutes of winning.

First playthrough, I had the Four Eyes trait.

I hadn't yet gotten my hands on a pair of glasses.

Oliver Swanick wears glasses.

Oliver Swanick is a powder ganger.

Oliver Swanick comes running up to me shrieking like a loon about a lottery.

See where this is going yet?

I needed glasses.

*I* won the lottery.

Next playthrough I found the glasses lying in Doc Mitchell's house. Swanick still gets it every time.

Yes, but it remains something we all have some vague semblance of.

Obviously not, as the people of Nipton demonstrated.

But still, the majority of the population sees Nipton as a wretched hive of scum and villany.

I think the thing is is that some people have a sense of morality and will abide, some know right and wrong but will put their morales aside for an indulgance of human pleasure, then there are people whos compass just plain fell out their pocket and broke. Nipton is the second group.

That's always the age old debate about human nature, says a lot about a person if they think most people are basically good, basically selfish or basically predatory. Especially since most sociopaths lack the empathy to imagine most people are not like them: they tend to have very mercenary, pessimistic views of humanity.


But on the original topic. I did my first two playthroughs as high-karma "paladin" types. Not BoS paladin but the "suffer no evil to live" lawful-good militant type of Paladin.

He was a powder ganger, he got a laser to the forhead.

On my legion playthrough I beat him to a pulp too, but that's because I was playing low-karma and had the kind of character that kicked puppies and peed on orphans, she'd have done it just to see what the inside of his brain pan looked like for fun.

I thought to kill him but thought he's better to die the (not so) slow agonizing death in the wastes. I hadn't felt bad for Nipton, they were a people that had already sold their souls, just a more powerful entity came to collect the tab. Though I still killed the entire Legion's forces there regardless.

Eh, it's like Freud, who seemed to believe that because he was sixually attracted to his mother, that everyone must be, and that because he was angry, we must all also be deep down. You cannot psychoanolyze everyone based on personal feelings. All I know is that everyone seems to believe whatever they are doing is right or wrong and are fully well aware that they are committing to whatever their conscious tells them.

I myself felt guilty for killing him based on circumstances. Had his ticket been of use to me and had he not just survived such a traumatic event, I would have felt nothing to slaughter him.

That's true, but that's also kind of my point. People tend to generalize from the self, so how they feel about human nature reflects *their* nature. If you have no empathy and are manipulative (IE are sociopathic), then you cannot conceive that other people are different from you, because that would require empathy.

It should be noted though that it doesn't go the other way... you can be empathic and kindhearted but still believe the worst about other people based on what you've seen/experienced of the world.

I didn't kill him, but I found him dead later on, out in the desert south of the Nipton Road Pit Stop. Three radscorpions nearby, just like Gungho1 said.

I didn't feel guilty, but I laughed when I found out what the Lottery was for after I shot him in the back. Oops

The first time I encountered him, I nearly shot him since all I saw was a Powder Ganger charging me from a ruined town. If I had had my gun out, I would have shot, but in the time it took for me to draw, he ran up and started the conversation....

Every other time I've seen him, I shoot him before he can start running towards me. He's just too annoying and a Ganger too boot. Good enough reason for me.

The irony of this scenario made me laugh very hard. Thank you.

No, I had a guess at what kind of lottery he'd won. I let him live on replays, too, because I find his laugh hilarious.

Smell that air.

the first time i listened to him, not getting what the lottery is, and who would give stuff out in the wastes...only to watch him run off into an area filled with viper gangs and radscorpions.
the second time, i killed him while he was doing his dance as you approach him, just to ruin his fun.
the third time, i killed him as he was running hapily after winning.
on my legion playthrough, for ironies sake, i honored the lottery..but still decapitated him

I did this too, however you know Doc Mitchell's house has a pair? Its next to a "Today's physician".

Yup, but I collect Reading Glasses.

Interesting, you do it to repair things with jury rigging? Or just because?

I asked him if he was a Powder Ganger...he said 'not any more, that's small-time'. I resolved to shoot him immediately. If he considers [censored], arson, murder, etc to be 'small-time', I'm not letting him live to indulge 'big-time'...or even 'average'. I've seen Powder Ganger work. Two dead brahmin, two dead guards, and the female one is laying naked in the road. They die. And anybody who seeks to go farther than that, is dying too. I'd kill them quicker, but a Gauss blast to the head is usually about as fast as it gets. Maybe a crowd of them and a gatling laser...