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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hamishspence" data-source="post: 3367102" data-attributes="member: 41555">First: this is a contentious issue. Please treat it as a "Play" topic rather than a "real life" topic: I don't want big morality arguments over it. Thank you.How do you think afterlife issues should be done: what redemption opportunities should be allowed, which fantasy novels do it best, and what are the advantages or disadvantages of the Forgotten Realms system over the Greyhawk one?From what I can see, there is very little chance for bad guys to change to good guys after death. Fiendish Codex II introduces the best opportunity: the Hellbred concept: "You are reincarnated to give you one last chance"Terry Pratchett and Anne Rice both have a limited redemption concept: In Pratchett's Discworld one can be reincarnated, after repentance. In Anne Rice's "Memnoch The Devil" Hell is purgatorial, and one can progress to heaven once one's soul is matured through experience and understanding.By contrast, in D&D, Hell makes bad guys into fiends, the Abyss also does, or sometimes bad guys are obliterated.In the Realms, souls spend eternity with their god, or in the City of Judgement.In the City of Judgement, False souls serve a apparently eternal sentence of punishment, and Faithless souls serve a painful, eventually lethal sentence.In the Realms novel "Crucible: the Trial of Cyric the Mad" we see how and why Kelemvor instituted this system. There is a gleam of hope in the sentence of one villain, made to serve time as a rat "As long as any coin you ever gave in deceit is counted as money anywhere in Faerun, you will wander the streets of my city in that form" strongly implying the sentence is finite.None of these systems seems designed to make bad guys better. I'd say the introduction of the Hellbred is a very good way to rectify this problem.</blockquote>

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