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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Geron Raveneye" data-source="post: 3748451" data-attributes="member: 2268">Huh, don't get me wrong now...and I HATE to drag real-world concepts into this, but I can simply switch "heaven" with Mount Celestia and "Hell" with Abyss in your argument, and arrive at the same conclusion, namely that the duality concept of Heaven and Hell in Judeo-Christian mythology supports moral relativism.The Great Wheel is nothing but a outerplanar geographic map that shows how planes are aligned towards each other based on the alignments they support. It's a specific shape because the creator of the concept liked the analogy. Of course standing in the Abyss, commiting genocide on a large scale (on what, by the way? Demons? Does that make me Good or Evil?  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f615.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":confused:" title="Confused    :confused:"  data-smilie="5"data-shortname=":confused:" /> ) will get me cheered by the local population. It will also mark my alignment as EVIL! Celestials will still frown on me, which translates into shafts of angelic lasers being thrown my way if I'm too much of a threat. And equally, if I'm standing on Mount Celestia, doing deeds of mercy, compassion and love, the local jokels will nod happily and tally me up as a GOOD person.The Great Wheel could be replaced by a chain of planes, a 20-sided die of infinite size with each side a plane, or whatever else whacky concept you like, and it'll still just be a landscape descriptor.(Next bit blacked out...contains some real-world religious content, please don't read if you're easy to be caught on the wrong foot with that kind of stuff <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> )[Spoiler]And by the way...the "only" reason why us Judeo-Christians assume that "Good" is correct and "Evil" is wrong is because we got told so by the "good" side, you know. There IS no "objective arbiter", simply because the Creator IS the source of all that is good and right, and so his opposite must per definition be evil. If you look at the natural world, it is full of deeds that, if commited by human beings against each other, would be called deeply evil (and often, they ARE commited by humans, and ARE called evil or sinful). If I look at it all from your point of view, there's a very simple situation. God says he's right, and Lucifer is wrong. Lucifer says HE is right, and God is wrong...but God had more troops and more power, so he won the argument, and the winner writes the history. In the D&D cosmology, Good and Evil are more equal in terms of troops and power, so the decision who's "correct" hasn't been reached yet.[/SPOILER]The only real arbiters of what is the "correct" choice, morally, are the DM and the players...and depending on the choices, the player characters will be labeled good or evil, and suffer the consequences. And in general, the consequence for being good is being rewarded after your death, while the consequence for being evil is being tortured, abused and treated as currency or food. Players know that...and the characters actually know that, too, since there are enough "objective" ways to ascertain that truth after you reach a certain level.</blockquote>

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