Even when KOTOR's designers attempted to cast some doubt on whether the council's decision to abstain from conflict was wise, they couldn't really get around the fact that none of the jedi devoted to pacifism ended up as sith.
As I read the histories given in KOTOR and KOTOR 2, it seemed that the Sith Lords inevitably came from the Jedi Order. Everytime they would defeat a Sith Lord that was the harbinger of X, he came from the Jedi Order. The ntime passes and then eventually someone else in the Jedi Order, who is recognized as special or very skilled, falls again.
Makes me think that the Jedi Order is the one original cause of the Sith Lords in the first place. Strangely their scenarios setup this problem but it is as if Lucas Arts and those that developed the Force mentality never recognized it.
The Jedi Order does state as a policy that emotion is bad and therefore must be repressed. That also includes compassion and empathy. Inevitably you are going to have some Paladin type character, like Anakin, fall to the inner human desire for justice or vengeance, and the only way he can deal with these emotions will be to turn to the allies of the Dark side of the force. The Jedi Order demands inhuman compliance and perfection from very human (or just alien) people. Now the aliens like Yoda might be fine with that given how long they live, but when it comes to the subject of humans, in a more or less human empire, then these standards have to be seen as inevitably leading to conflicts between human nature and the stated ideals of the Jedi Order.
When a person represses instincts and desires, whether of love, violence, hate, or etc then they are never dealt with and thus explode when the person can no longer control them. It makes little sense why people think that you can construct good men or women by first taking them from their parents and then indoctrinating into them a belief and loyalty to the Cause of the Jedi. Should their loyalty to the Jedi Order ever be tested against their loyalty to family ties, their first ties of love, you are going to have a conflict of interest.
Often the Jedi Order tries to lock down knowledge and ancient secrets, saying that the younger generation of Jedi are not ready for it. This creates a sort of secret society and breeds mistrust amongst the young. How can the new trust the old if the old is still keeping secrets that they don't think the new generation is worthy to know? This doesn't seem very sharing of the responsibility, thus it can create resentment and fracturing of unity.
The weird thing is, it is often suggested that only the best and most talented fall from the Jedi Order to the Dark Side. yet the obvious question then becomes, if such people were the best of the Jedi, then why did they always fall to the Sith? Is the Jedi Order inherently controlling concerning talent and what to do with it, because they really aren't one big family? Do people just rebel cause they got fed up with how they were treated in the Jedi Order?
Concerning role playing for games, I tend to think that the player is role playing the role given to them by the creators of that game. You could come up with your own roles and combinations of actions but they tend to lack context and support. Because the game wasn't designed specifically with that option in mind, it won't flow as consistently. Hence why games shouldn't have too many NPCs. Each NPC is one more loose variable. Each new personality route for the PC adds in more possible conflicts and adaptations needed.
One way to solve this is to create different personalities for the player to role play, as in Planescape Torment. Another way is to create different types of actions, as was present in KOTOR. Selfish actions vs altruistic good actions, not tied to a specific personality construct. Then there is Jade Empire, which I think did a very nice job of constructing not only different types of actions but also different consequences for those actions. It helps to role play evil when you can see the actual difference your action makes in the game world and on characters. You could either help a character with their wounds or give them cheap medicine so that they hurt themselves permanently.
Mask of the Betrayer is said to reduce the number of NPCs compared to Neverwinter Nights 2. This will allow for more complex development of joinable NPCs and the relationships between NPCs. It is always hard to create party dialogue when the party members keep switching in and out. You could produce friendships or betrayals of one NPC to another, but how do you fit this in if the player doesn't have them in the party? That's one obstacle. I also liked how NWN2 started off, with a core set of characters with some nice intra-party dialogue that really brought these characters to life. In a sense, this makes it more meaningful to role play evil if you have some attachments to people.
Uchiha Itachi from Naruto is always a nice example of evil actions. The pursuit of power by killing your entire clan, that is always a nice touch.
