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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 9737726" data-attributes="member: 6799660">To start with, there is value in a 'shorthand' for something, even if it is inexact. Likewise, cosmic forces of 'good' & 'evil' (or 'law' and 'chaos') can be fun, even if (perhaps sometimes because) they don't line up with the actual real deal -- certainly other fiction like Charmed and the Buffy/Angel-verse have repeatedly mined the notion that the cosmic forces of good aren't always the good guys. See also Babylon 5 for cosmic forces vying to 'win the argument' through battle with humanity and their analogs caught in the middle/used a pawns. Realistic answer is that you worship evil gods to appease them. And in IRL polytheistic religions, there seemed to be a fair amount of this -- at least with a god's more malign aspects. Take Greek myth -- even if not explicitly evil coded, Poseidon does quite a bit of drowning people and Artemis has hunters who stumble upon her bathing turn into deer and be eaten by their dogs and Pan and Dionysus turn people crazy with regular frequency. Making prayers and offerings to keep the gods' negative gaze from turning your way is just good sense. I think D&D turning polytheistic gods into more singular archetypes (where one is strictly good or evil) is probably the place where this nuance gets simplified.I feel like D&D worlds might be slightly more likely to produce mustache-twirling villain types than reality. So the answer could well be that promised power now in return for eternal suffering some time in the future (that might not come to pass, if you can transition to lich/demon/ageless thing/god yourself). That said, I think in-world there should be more disinformation suggesting that evil gods shower their own faithful with incredible reward in the afterlife, and it's only souls those folks have captured/bought/etc. that end up being tortured in the evil outer planes. In the end, though, this might take some worldbuilding. The evil outer planes are built with the notion of PCs going there and adventuring (so they have to be hellscapes) more than they are in explaining why anyone would ever commit to anything that might send them there. Likewise, a lot of the afterlives of good gods are just shy of pure bliss, said gods don't have rules against suicide, and every moment spent in your normal life is another moment you might get killed by a hellfire weapon and get dragged to Styx as a lemure or whatever. The default world might make not aligning oneself with a LG or NG deity and then offing oneself at first opportunity a foolish endeavor.</blockquote>

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