Early on either a guard or Kilian himself told me keep your weapon holstered, none of that nonsense unless it's in self defense.

Well in a casino I got caught robbing people(holy crap the gamblers got big pockets, 190 cap hauls as a norm!) and the victim attacked me. I felt this gave me free reign to unload on em. The guards in the casino seemed to see it the same way as they didn't attack me back.

I meet with Gizmo and arrange to kill Killian. After this meeting, ALL the junktown guards are after me. Do they somehow know that I'm now affiliated with Gizmo and his gang? That I'm gunning for Killian? It made no sense. They seriously were leaving me alone before and after this meeting they're all on me. Unprovoked too.

Anyways, I slaughter any guard or anybody else that comes after me. Make my way back to Killians joint. I show him the evidence, get my experience points and shotgun for helping him. I agree to help him take out Gizmo. Immediately after this encounter where everything was settled and I'm in good with Killian, the guard that's in the room with Killian takes a shot at me for some reason. It made no sense. Before I can fire back, killian himself for some bizarre reason starts attacking me too. We JUST agreed to a deal, I was helpin him, now he's attacking me for no reason? I kill the guard, I kill Killian.

On the plus side, I get 500 experience pts for helping him nail Gizmo and then I think it was 400 more points for doing the hit. On the negative, I didn't really want to kill him. I got a crapton of supplies from al those dead guards that I was wanting to sell for big money.

What did I do wrong? Is this some odd glitch? Should I have not killed any gamblers? I don't get it at all.

It's hardly self defense here, as you were caught stealing, which will result in the mark attacking you if you get caught. Given how Killian's gang are obsessed with keeping law and order, it's no wonder that they are hunting you, given that you just murdered someone in their town after trying to rob them. If anything, I'm surprised Killian wanted anything to do with you after you became Junktown public enemy number one.

-edit- Was about to edit this in, but almabrds is right; committing a crime (murdering or being caught stealing) causes people to attack you, even if they weren't the person you were targeting.

Your mistake was attacking the gambler. While you can kill some people without consequences (probably due to bug, if you ask me) most of the time people will know what you did, and attack/flee when they see you.

Not to make too fine a point on it, but I can't think of a single legal system that would recognize a thief shooting the person that they tried to rob because the mark started attacking them, and Junktown's guards seem like they are trying to hold on to some of the pre-apocalypse days of law (maybe not so much with how it is enforced, but still), so it's not exactly nonsensical. As to everyone else getting in your face about it, you have to bear in mind that this is a society where keeping any semblance of order is vital, given that the apocalypse has happened and violence is more present in everyday life by necessity, and while there are people who take it on themselves to enforce some semblance of law, people who don't take some form of action to protect themselves and their community are at constant risk of someone deciding to screw all of the old rules and start laying waste to everything in sight. Anyone committing a crime threatens the little peace that those living in the world cling to, resulting in some people getting involved as opposed to sitting back and trusting that the cops will take care of it.

Hell, look at what you are doing. One robbery victim fights back, the community tries to get rid of the threat, and you decide to go on a rampage. To put the proverbial cherry on the sundae, you are just one person, and they have to live with the fear that any individual or gang will raise hell at any given moment, and they frequently do. Doing nothing in that scenario isn't smart to them, it's the equivalent of staying prostrate when one wakes up in the desert to the sound of a pride of lions finishing feasting on the person lying next to them and moving to devour them next.

Yeah, it makes sense. My whole thing was in towns like Shady Sands when I got caught stealing the repurcussions were felt immediately. It threw me off here cuz the guards didn't start shooting me until after that meeting, it was very odd. It's like I had immunity. Made me think I could do it as much as I wanted, which I did haha.

This reminds me of when I aimed for a raider and the bullet missed and instead hit one of the brahmin. The brahmin all ganged up and came after me. We had to kill them. It didn't make a lot of sense to me, since I don't think animals should act that way because of a accident. Oddly, the caravan stilled arrived without the brahmin. I also had a similar thing happen when I accidentally hit a peasant in the wilderness during a random encounter and my hireling started unloading bullets on them because they were attacking ys. See, initially the peasants are friendly and want us to help them kill the raiders, but it goes wrong if a bullet somehow hits them. Somehow, they lose all sanity if you accidentally hit them. Again, it's not the way it should be, just like with hte brahmin.

At any rate, I think I know what the OP is saying. When he/she stole from one of hte gamblers and killed them when attacked, none of hte guards nearby reacted, giving him the wrong assumption it was ok. Anybody saying the guards outside the casino will attack him because of that are missing the point being made that he got no indication it was wrong at first. And when he got the mission from Gizmo to kill Killian, there was no indication prior to accepting the mission that the guards in junktown would immediately become hostile to him.

Wouldn't it have been smarter for Gizmo to inform him that all the guards would become hostile? And wouldn't it have been smarter if the guards in the casino responded immediately to stealing and if they don't then no other guards in junktown will either? The game should make it clear if you steal from someone and they attack you then you cannot kill them legally, otherwise, it should adopt a loser form of law/order which isn't so strict. The game needs to give more feedback, so a player knows what they can get away with. I think this is especially true for Junktown which is a town known widely in the fallout world as a place for thieves and cuthroats. If the laws are strict and the guards are like an all seeing eye then the player needs to be alerted of this before exploring in Junktown.

Anyway, I never got to explore Junktown much because after earning a reputation for being a hero and a champion for the people I couldn't even enter the main entrnace without the tguards trying to gun me down. They dont' like do gooders.

I hope this isn't logic that you use in the real world. ;)

"It was self defence! After he discovered me picking his pockets he tried to fight me so I had to kill him!"

Actually you can kill almost anyone without consequences if you know how to do it. There are two tried-and-true methods:

1) Activate dynamite or plastic explosives and set the timer, then pick the target's pocket and plant the device. This is my favorite, and it works like a charm except for two small quirks. Sometimes one explosive is not enough to kill the target, so you may have do it twice. Also, there's a bug in the game that causes it to crash sometimes when the explosives kill an NPC from its own inventory. This almost always happens once only, and restarting the game fixes the problem. Just make sure you save before you try it...and get far enough away. Oh, and don't get caught planting a bomb in somebody's pocket.

2) Use a whole bunch of Super Stimpacks on the target. Super Stims heal a large amount of damage, but after a short time there's a hangover effect that causes a loss of hit points. If you apply enough of them to an NPC (usually 20+, IIRC), the hangover effect will be enough to kill him. I've used this one before, but it's not nearly as much fun as the first option. Also, Super Stims are a little bit rare and expensive (far more so than regular stims, anyway).

I know about these methods, I play Fallout since 2002.

I was talking about some people you can kill with guns, and nobody seems to care. Doc Morbid in Junktown is one of them. You can shoot him down, at broad daylight, the only doctor in town (sure, his bodyguards try to protect him, but nobody cares about having a assassin at town. what the hell? why they build a prison, then?). Another one: the guard near the Children of Cathedral. Nobody gives a fuck if you murder him.

Specifically, one Super Stim for every 9 HP the target has. Another reason to have Awareness. Though I mainly use it in Fallout 2 to assassinate the head Hubologist and to kill the President those times I don't just go in with guns blazing. If I'm feeling particularly evil I'll use them on the Sheriff in NCR so I can take his Gauss Rifle.

And the freedom to follow through with that inclination is one of the things that makes Fallout great.

I'm having a similar issue to this, though a bit more particular. Seems after I have done the Gizmo quest (forced him out), I am unable to do anything about the Skulz. Approaching any of them immediately throws me into combat, and killing any of them makes the guards coem after me. They don't seem to mind when I just attack them either (or them on me). Very strange AI behavior going on.