I don't like talking about being evil or good when it comes to behaviour in RPGs. They're just labels and hard to grasp.
I'd like to talk more about being selfish or altruistic. Help yourself or help others.
That looks close to a psy point of view of good and evil, the impulses to satisfy your desire, by opposition of control to satisfy the community.
But that also pinpoints the ridiculous approach that had D&D, doing evil for the benefit of doing evil makes no sense.
No, even if sometimes it can looks like that, it's much more because there's a benefit. A troll trolling a forum rarely do it for being evil, but for the fun or satisfaction he can take from it.
I'd like to have games where it's really difficult to make decisions like that and where being altruistic gives you disadvantages wher being selfish would give you an advantage.
It's minor things like refusing some gold as a reward for a quest. That's not a difficult decision if you have enough money anyways. Refuse receiving a unique item that would give your mage a significant spell bonus? That's a lot harder.
Rescuing an NPC but paying with losing a finger which means a permanent malus on dexterity? Tough. Killing an NPC without witnesses for looting that shiny unique armor?
Rescuiing an NPC but sacrificing one of your beloved companions?
I like to play selfless heroes as well, but it would be a lot harder - and thus more satisfing - if I had to make choices like these.
It would be nice if from time to time selfish choice gives you short-term advantages but long-term disadvantages and vice versa. This souldn't be the general case though.
From your examples it turns to be a bit more oppositions between being greedy and doing some good action. It looks a bit like for you the idea of not doing a good action isn't evil, or you can bear it as non evil. For you, pick the sword and fail save the guy who dies, is different than kill the guy and pick his sword. But is it really different?
In my opinion it's a hard design choice. It opposes two elements many RPG players like a lot, greed and being good, for many players give up on one would generate an unhappy player.
A pure pointless evil choice isn't pointless, it removes the feeling to be forced to be good. And when you really have a choice even if a bit fake, then the good choice let you feel a bit more that you was good.
The interesting aspect is morale dilemma. A choice is really interesting when it involves a topic interesting the player at this point of the game, and for which choose among multiple choices is a dilemma. So the problem is to build and prepare the dilemma. I doubt a game can have plenty good dilemma choices. If a morale dilemma isn't well prepared, the player will pick more or less randomly. PoE failed multiple time on that, at least for me, and not always.
Is good versus greed a good morale dilemma choice? I don't think so, at best it evokes from distance the subject of price accepted for achieving a major sacred mission as save the world or some daughter. It's too vague.
