DISCLAIMER: I am a person with beliefs and opinions. What follows is a small selection. Please do not think that these few sentences is the sum of me, and please do not assume that I have not thought through any of it. I could go on for hundreds of pages about philosophy but have instead tried to boil one small part of my personal code down to a few paragraphs. Also, please, for the love of keeping threads below a dozen pages, don't take that bit about 'my own personal code' as some sort of admission to believing in moral relativity. If I didn't believe my philosophy was right, I would have a different one and believe that was right, and it's the same with everyone who has thought about these things at length. We'll just go in circles for hours if we start that game of semantics. Another good thing to keep in mind is the difference between morality and ethics—they're not homynyms. It's getting late and I might make some sort of grammatical or logical error somewhere, but I'll try to keep it to a minimum.
Wall-o-Text starts here, so if you're easily bored, skip to the last paragraph:
I see there are quite a few people here who believe in moral relativity. I disagree. I believe in certain moral absolutes. However, let me qualify that with the idea that intentions are what matter, not the actions themselves. For instance, moving your arm forwards is not a bad thing…unless perhaps you were holding a sword and pointing it at someone. The action itself was neutral. It had no particular meaning. What was important was the intent and the result. If you did not intend to stab the person, you might be convicted (by society) of manslaughter, while if you did intend on harming them, you might be convicted of murder. Some may say that it only matters insofar as society knows or cares about it, but I (believing in moral absolutes) say that even if you're the only person left in the universe who knows what happened, it still matters. If you just murdered someone because you didn't like them, it was wrong, even if nobody else knows it. If they were trying to (for the sake of argument) blow up an orphanage and stabbing them was the only way to stop them, it was perhaps not right, but it was certainly the better of the two choices you thought you were limited to.
Another example: Let's say that you're a warden walking along the road in Denerim and someone begs for money. What do you do? What is right and what is wrong? Is giving them money right? Is telling them to go get a job right? Neither. What you do is never right or wrong. It's why you do it. If you give them some money so they'll leave you alone, that's not a good deed. That isn't morally right. If you give them money so they'll think better of you, that isn't a good deed. If you give them money so some game will 'reward your charity' with some sort of perk or something, that isn't a good deed. You were being selfish, even in giving. Now, if you honestly believe that person is down on their luck and that your charity will help them, then I would consider your deed good. You were trying to help someone. Helping people = good. Helping people only as a cover for helping yourself = neutral or bad, depending on how far you go with it. Now let's say that the beggar spends the money you gave him/her to buy a weapon and start mugging people. They used your charity for a bad thing, but that has no effect on whether or not your deed was good or bad. Other people make their own decisions and you cannot change that. You only have control over yourself and your own choices. Or let's say you gave them money for a selfish reason, but they use it to provide for their family. You didn't do a good deed, but something good came out of it anyway. The beggar made it good. Let's go to the other end of the spectrum and say that you read a FAQ and know that the beggar is going to become a bandit if you help them. So you deny them the money because of that. Well, the beggar might be angry at you, but technically you did it for the right reason. If you deny them because you're stingy or just dislike them, that's a bad reason. If you deny them because you believe they should 'get a real job' and solve their own problem (after all, it's not your fault they're poor), that's a good reason. You might be considered naive or bad by some people, but hey, if you honestly think that's right, go for it. It was done for a good reason.
To go with a more extreme example, let's get back to killing people for a bit. If you're killing people to protect someone else, then you're doing it for a good cause. If you're killing people because you want to get loot or acclaim in the game world, that's a bad thing. If you're killing people because they disagree with you, that's bad. So on and so forth. On the other side of the 'killing people' coin, you have the ability to let someone die. You didn't kill them yourself, but you let them die. Okay, now, same thing: If you let them die because you didn't like them, that was a bad thing. If you let them die because you felt that they had to for the greater good, then that's a good reason. Maybe you were mistaken about them and they really deserved to live, but your intention was good.
What I'm trying to get to here is that actions themselves are always neutral. No action is good, no action is bad. It's the intent that is good or bad. That being said, you must always keep in mind that you are the easiest person you will ever fool. Search your intentions regularly. Ask yourself why you're doing something, instead of just doing what you think is correct right now. Far too many people have 'decided' what is right and wrong and then just blindly charge into it without ever looking back or around at the consequences. Trying to be good is a lifelong struggle for billions of people, and has been for all of recorded history, but in the end, it's the right thing to do. =P