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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9737083" data-attributes="member: 4937">I think that Green Ronin's "Book of the Righteous" does a pretty good job of dealing with this question.  I could also address this question in the terms of my campaign, which is truly polytheistic and not henotheism as is typically seen in D&D.  Most characters in my campaign world are not ONLY worshiping an evil god but worshiping an evil god corporately as part of their overall belief system.  They typically wouldn't see worshiping an evil god as wrong, because most of the population - humans especially - are neutral and see everything of terms utilitarian survival.  It's either of matter of wanting to propitiate and appease an evil deity so that he doesn't get offended at you and do the evil things to you, or else it's a matter of perceiving evil deities as more available as brokers of power who may charge more highly but are less picky about who they deal with what they give and especially who pay up more readily and quicker than the more judgmental good gods.  From the perspective of a neutral actor in the world, they don't really see the good gods as necessarily better than the bad gods.  What's really important is what they demand of you and how likely are they to reward or punish you.  It's not like good gods won't smite you, or bad gods won't give you something you want.  It's about how you are expected to make them happy in order to avoid the smiting and get favors.  You might first think that, but that not how I think people actually think.   People are terrible at long term planning and really good at rationalizing their own acts.  And they are really good at romanticizing their ability to endure future or hypothetical suffering and really good at deceiving themselves to believe that if things get hard they will suddenly find reserves of power and will that they aren't exercising at the present.   They almost always look at a problem and say, "Well, I'd be the one that would beat the odds."</blockquote>

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