Afterlife in Dungeons and Dragons

[Rae ArdGaoth]

I wasn't aware that people became... "petitioners" in the afterlife. Sounds quite crummy, really. But I always thought that... you know, worshippers of say, Pelor, went to his home plane where they basked in the sun for eternity. And dwarves went on to making great weapons with Moradin in his Hall. Something like that. And yes, I did consider the whole "divine magic is actually not from deities but from yourself" thing. But then, they have a whole book called guess what? Deities and Demigods. And players, with a nice enough DM, can actually become deities. I guess... just because the gods exist doesn't mean that they have to bring your soul to them in the afterlife, or that your soul even survives. Someone earlier made a good point: the gods haven't actually ever died, so what do they know? I guess I'm comparing it all too much to the real world. I for one would be 110% convinced of God's presence if people started raising from the dead and telling stories about heaven.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If nothing else, this thread is an argument that the afterlife model in "Ghostwalk" is actually preferable to the default one, even if it does appear to conflict with the former.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I guess I'm comparing it all too much to the real world. I for one would be 110% convinced of God's presence if people started raising from the dead and telling stories about heaven.

What if they rose from the dead and started telling stories about the Ethereal Plane, absent any sort of diety figures? That's a lot closer to what you see on "the other side" in D&D, unless you're dead a LONG time.

 

[Storyteller01]

Or maybe he's suffering from another quandry: If there are gods, do they really care?

(Just because you need worshippers doesn't mean you care about them...)

 

[Steverooo]

Worshippers, in D&D, don't necessarily become anything, after death. Some become Larvae or Lemures, etc., but nothing says what becomes of most. Here's what happened to one PC...

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=121744

 

[Tinker Gnome]

Thats one thing I like about Dragonlance, the gods actually seem to care. I know about the whole fiery mountain bit, but they still seem nicer than all the other gods in all the other settings. I mean one of them can often be found in a tavern drinking ale with some Humans!

 

[JustKim]

Worshippers, in D&D, don't necessarily become anything, after death.

Petitioners are canon. In the default cosmology when someone dies their soul travels to the plane that best matches their beliefs. Some are simply absorbed by the planes, and the rest become outsiders called petitioners. Many planes have special rules for what happens to petitioners, and it often includes becoming a specific type of creature with a new, unrelated identity- this is where outsiders that aren't created spontaneously come from. Petitioners who don't become something else lose their memories and identities and become slaves of their deity, unable to leave the plane. As outsiders they can be killed and cannot be raised, and are absorbed by their plane upon dying again, eradicated.

Although the story is interesting, it contradicts canon. That's fine, it's your game, but I have to assume people do use the canon cosmology by default. And in the canon cosmology, this bleak afterlife is all that awaits Drizzt.

 

[S'mon]

Existence of deities & existence of an afterlife are two completely different things. In most mythologies the gods & the dead inhabit completely different realms. In fact D&D's Great Wheel setup doesn't accommodate the dead well at all, though recently they've tried to squeeze them in as 'petitioners'.

 

[S'mon]

I wasn't aware that people became... "petitioners" in the afterlife. Sounds quite crummy, really. But I always thought that... you know, worshippers of say, Pelor, went to his home plane where they basked in the sun for eternity. And dwarves went on to making great weapons with Moradin in his Hall. Something like that. .

That's what they _want_ you to think...

Seriously, actual *in-play* descriptions of the Outer Planes that you find in outer-planar scenarios pretty well never show them as being full of the spirits of the dead; at most you get a few einheriar & such, not the billions or trillions of dwarven souls you might expect to be in Moradin's halls (given lots of alternate Primes where Moradin is worshipped, but only 1 outer plane). It's quite reasonable to say that the fate of the vast majority of the dead is a mystery without noticeable deviation from D&D canon-as-presented-in-play.

 

[Buttercup]

If nothing else, this thread is an argument that the afterlife model in "Ghostwalk" is actually preferable to the default one, even if it does appear to conflict with the former.

I was thinking the same thing. As for the two views conflicting, no problem! In fact I like the idea of the living having a completely incorrect belief about the afterlife.