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A player toxic shaman... would then abandon the run to sabotage the waste processing of the compound which causes an environmental catastrophe in the area, drastically increasing the player shaman's powers, but laying waste to your carefully designed setting. Instead of worrying about police response times in case of PCs triggering the alarm, you now have an ecological disaster scenario at hand, with many NPCs rushing home to save loved ones or being evacuated. And you can't move on to adventure two, because the players never stole the loot.
...and that's what I'm reading from a lot of the negative feedback for evil playthroughs. Players expecting they could commit a very specific sort of evil, like burning the mill with Barcus attached, or whatever, and then get disappointed because the game wouldn't have it. I wanted to blow up the loos for grease mephits and extra-loot, but not even smokepowder barrels did any damage. There are complaints about cutscenes or NPC feedback not acknowledging certain deeds or said deeds not having the expected repercussions. There are similar gaps for the Githyanki playthrough where you're sometimes treated like a human Tav, since being a second full Githyanki would have required an entire additional variant story arc with cutscenes, NPCs reacting differently, and potentially even more endings. You won't hear the player of Joey Tav complaining, because they got their heroic tale.
I see what you're saying here. While this can be common on tabletop I feel like it happens less in videogames. Most RPG's simply don't have the systems in place to track all the freedom they give the player. Most RPG's don't give the player that much freedom outside of character creation. With the exception of some games like old school Elder Scrolls and now BG3 there really aren't enough RPG's that give you so many options to direct the story and choose meaningful answers.
I guess since the pickings are so rare I get excited just to see so much depth in what IS available to do in the game.
Then the last problem is that the official continuity of a franchise will probably canonise the "good" ending if they continue the story, meaning any disruptive actions are erased from memory, leading to more disappointment.
I honestly think this is a problem with making a sequel to any game with multiple endings. The endings to Stellar Blade for example were so vastly different that I'm quite curious how they're going to even make a sequel. In terms of RPG's with multiple endings I've always found that the best sequels are the ones with a new cast that takes place many years into the future where events from the first game can be referenced without directly spelling out what may or may have not occurred in the first game so it doesn't break the players head canon.
I can think of a few games that have done this well, but I honestly think that's the best way to handle it.
