D&D 5E Brainstorming a Setting's Plane of Hell Based Off of the Seven Deadly Sins


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I've never actually read Dante's Inferno, I'm just sorta-familiar with the concept, as most people are with classics that well-known.

I would definitely not include a Layer for Atheism or Suicide. I was not aware that those were in Dante's Inferno. I was more going to base it off of the more well-known 7 Deadly Sins (translated into D&D terms), not anything from Dante's Inferno, really. I was just pointing out that the 9 Hells come from the 9 Circles of Hell in Dante's Inferno, not saying that I was going to base the 7 Hells after any part of Dante's Inferno, really.

So, yeah, having Atheism and Suicide be "deadly sins" is definitely problematic (to say the least), and I would not include that in this plane of hell.

I was going to be careful with Lust. I was more going to do it as overindulgence in the carnal pleasures than the stereotypical "extramarital sex is a sin". Kind of like Gluttony being overindulgence in food (which also has the potential to be problematic if it comes to fat-shaming, which I will absolutely avoid), to the point where that's all that you think about (think Yeenoghu and the Gnolls' never-ending hunger), but applied to sex, drugs, and music. Do you think that would be less problematic?
Suicides were considered "Wrath against one's self" and were accordingly placed in that circle. Not that you need to follow that of course.

The Wikipedia article on Dante's Inferno is very good at detailing what each circle and each subdivision was for, philosophically. Oddly, Dante kept to the deadly sins for the first four circles (excluding the first circle, Limbo), but after that he mixed them up a bit for the lower levels. It wouldn't be to hard to lift the upper circles wholesale, and the re-do the lower circles to match the remaining deadly sins...
 

RoughCoronet0

Dragon Lover
I actually have been contemplating the idea of a seven deadly sin’s themed plane for my world’s demons, mainly because my world’s devils are no longer going to be exclusively evil (more of them are just Lawful neutral with their Princes having portfolios that are darker themes but are often seen as more harsher truths or necessary evils then actually completely evil).
 

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