List based on Article
- Choices with NPCs and how they will respond to you
- The ending you get at the end of the game
- What kind of skills you will develop as you level
This article is actually a interview with the developers of the game about the new additions to it including the karma system its a pretty interesting read.
http://home.ica.net/~mordeth/compendium/fallout/fall2interview.htm
Your Karma Ran Over My Dogma
IGN Are you unable to get as much information with negative karma?
Feargus Just to whittle it down into a very simplistic model, what we have is good guys and bad guys. People in the villages can detect karma, so if you decide to earn negative karma then your karma will appear as positive karma to the bad guys. So in essence, these bad guys will be more responsive to you if you have negative karma.
Eric So, if you go to the seedy part of town and you're a 'bad guy,' you'll get all the information you need. But if you go to a church social and you're a bad guy, nobody talks to you.
IGN OK, so say I played the game all the way through with really negative karma, and I was really evil, if I were to play the game through again with positive karma, would I get a different story, would I get more information, would I get a different ending? And is there more than one ending?
Feargus Here's how it works, there is one ending, so even though you've chosen to be an evil bastard, you're still this evil bastard that's supposed to save this village. So, I guess in AD&D terms you're lawful evil. You're mission is still the same. However, what the game also does at the ending is that it recounts how the world reacted to your playing of the game. So, over in Redding if you screwed the miners, in the end you'll see a slide show that explains what happened because of your actions. If you're a good guy then you'll go on to be a happy miner. If you're a bad guy, then you'll go into the mine and die. So, you still solve the game, in essence, but you get to see the consequences of what you did.
Eric To create two different endings of the game, you know, two different experiences within the same game is pretty unrealistic, so that it would be two different games. And you would probably end up with two really weak games, instead of one really strong one.
Feargus If you're the bad guy the ends justifies the means. You know, it isn't what I'm doing, I'll get there no matter how, no matter who I have to kill, what I have to steal from. But if I'm a good guy, then the means are important.
IGN Now does Karma In Fallout 2 play a much bigger role than in the first Fallout?
Feargus Yeah, a lot more. It had a direct effect on the abilities of your character. When you reach different levels of karma, your character has different abilities.
Eric You get perks.
Feargus You can do different things.
The Nuclear Age Revisited
IGN What else differentiates Fallout 2 from the first that will make it a better game?
Feargus What will make it a better game? I think this time, at least in the development process, we're being much more careful about things like karma, character development, and things like reputations for individuals and for towns. And taking all of these things into account into the dialogs they have. We didn't do such a good job of that in the first Fallout. It was there, but we had to learn as we were going through how to do it right, so this time we're doing a much better job. So the person will have a much different feeling when they're playing the game.
Best Answer
It's purely random.
It's so random that if you reload the game just before finding the event, it may not even trigger.