After vs Life

[Keltest]

Ask and ye shall receive

Manual of the planes , 1987.

The outer planes are discussed on page 73. They are described as 'hospitable to life' There is nothing in there about the inhabitants dissolving into the plane; these outer planes are eternal afterlives for mortals who are done with mortal-ing; eternal torment for the evil, eternal bliss for the good.

I am willing to accept Rich's statement that he is adapting the existing worldview of D&D -- which means, if his own memory is correct, that the standard cosmology has changed since then.

This would not be surprising.



Some details of that specific evolution are given.


So, no. The view of the planes and their afterlives Rich proposes may be standard D&D cosmology but that cosmology has evolved over the decades -- I am wondering when this change occurred and which source document this philosophy explicitly occurs in.

...

As regards experts, just recently I took the same car into three different mechanics and got three radically different estimates for repairs, ranging from $0 to $1400. That's quite a spread.

Because of this, I am extremely leary of 'expert opinion' and prefer to get two or three expert opinions rather than rely on only one, unsupported. And even then, I will only rely on 'expert opinion' if the source material is either A) inaccessible or B) incomprehensible to the layman. Rocket science is incomprehensible, D&D isn't.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

One of the major problems with the D&D afterlives is that theyre so wildly inconsistent between sources even in the same edition. For example, in one of the 1st edition monster manuals, Manes and Lemures are described as being formed from the souls of evil people who die, which is fairly incompatible with them living in their afterlife forever. Furthermore, some setting ALSO have it so that so that dead souls do not go to an alignment specific afterlife, but instead go to the realm of their god, no matter what their alignment is.

Yes, it doesn't make sense. No, you are not the first person to notice this. No, it is not Rich's fault.

[pendell]

Yes, it doesn't make sense. No, you are not the first person to notice this. No, it is not Rich's fault.

Agreed. And this is all flavor text, anyway; so far as I am aware there is no mechanical impact of these disparate views of the afterlife, so it can safely be ignored or reflavored at the DM's whim.

And we're all agreed that destroying the world is a bad idea, right, afterlife or no afterlife?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

There is nothing in there about the inhabitants dissolving into the plane;

Is taken me a mere five minutes to find a contradiction to this statement in page 84. I do not, however, have the time to do your research for you anymore than I had it when I last told you to go look for the details yourself, so I will not continue to look through the entire manual for other such cases.

Suffice to say, your blanket statement is wrong, and I continue to believe that Rich knows D&D cosmology than you do.

Yours,

Grey Wolf

[pendell]

Is taken me a mere five minutes to find a contradiction to this statement in page 84. I do not, however, have the time to do your research for you anymore than I had it when I last told you to go look for the details yourself, so I will not continue to look through the entire manual for other such cases.

Suffice to say, your blanket statement is wrong, and I continue to believe that Rich knows D&D cosmology than you do.

Yours,

Grey Wolf

The specific reference you mention applies specifically to Nirvana, NOT to the other planes. I read very carefully the comments that applies to the planes in general, and while the destruction of a soul as a separate individual is a feature of SOME planes it is not a generic feature of ALL the planes.

I am not asking you to believe I am more knowledgeable about D&D than Rich Burlew is -- if we were to both take a standardized test, I have no doubt that he would score more highly than I do, probably much more highly. The question I am specifically asking is when this change was introduced and applied to ALL the planes, not specifically Nirvana or the evil-aligned planes.

... Heck, not even the evil-aligned planes necessarily destroyed people; evil-aligned people on the bottom layers of the abyss become bodaks.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Lombard]

Heh, the description of the way the afterlives work sounds very Henry T. Ford industrial.

Which kind of makes me wonder if there are any imperfections in the process and if it generates 'pollution'. What happens for instance to the 'good' parts of a soul that on the balance of things ended up in an evil afterlife? Presumably those are 'boiled off' during the long process of conversion to the pure evil energy source? Do they then turn into little good particles that are just floating around and somewhat in conflict with the very nature of the Evil Outer Plane? Does the plane or the process have any way of handling or excreting these unwelcome particles, which are being generated on a large scale? I'm concerned about the environment!

[Mightymosy]

Okay. I thought I was going to bow out of this thread but I was struck by another passing thought.

Remember this strip ?

Malack planned to create a vampire society using humans as cattle to feed the vampires.

So how exactly is this different from what the gods are doing? Both Malack and the gods seem to use humans as cattle to feed themselves -- so why is Malack evil but the gods good? In OOTS terms, at any rate?

I don't want this to become a "moral justification" issue so I want to frame the question specifically within the D&D alignment axis: How can lawful good/chaotic good gods, who by definition cannot do anything other than good, farm humans as cattle? Isn't this by-the-book DND evil if it's done by vampires to humans, or humans to humans? So why is it good when gods do it?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

If we only look at the good afterlife we have been shown in the comic, then:

The differences you are looking for, in descending order of importance:

- there is no mention of pain or suffering, at the very least not any pain or suffering that is being caused by the souls being "consumed" by the gods or being turned into "good soul energy"

- any soul can choose when they ascend the mountain and become "good soul energy".

- while doing so, they get infinite free one-night stands and other nice stuff


Evil afterlife might be an entirely different thing and could very well be very similiar to what Malack planned to establish in the mortal realm.
What "real" D&D afterlife would be, I have no idea because I never played or read it.

[Emanick]

For the record, I'm with pendell. I find the whole concept of the OOTSverse afterlife as The Giant describes it so abhorrent that at this point I'm actively looking for ways to nitpick it so that it doesn't interfere with my enjoyment of the story going forward.

I can accept that the Good gods are forced to use Good souls as fuel in order to prevent the Evil gods from permanently "winning" a sort of cosmic arms race, but it still sounds like a nightmarish dystopian scenario that I wouldn't want to be involved with for literally any price.

[Millstone85]

Can we all just agree that most people don't want to kill themselves in the hopes that the afterlife will be peachy keen? That most people, I would hope, regardless of their belief system, would find destroying the world to be a bit abhorrent?

And we're all agreed that destroying the world is a bad idea, right, afterlife or no afterlife?

I must dissent. If the afterlife is equal to or better than life, and known as such, it does put into question the solemnity of "death". With a really peachy afterlife, the OotS gods' plan would amount to a mass evacuation as the planet goes kaboom. Traumatic for everyone, yes, but not what the words "let's kill everyone" should evoke here on our Earth. The Giant apparently saw that narrative hazard and avoided it by giving the afterlife major flaws, or by keeping those already present in D&D.

FWIW, I believe that eternal existence would eventually be so boring that it would lead to the death of personality regardless

IMHO, I would consider that an achievement. To have experienced so much, to have had a life so complete, that you consider yourself sated of existence. I would climb up Mount Celestia then. Of course, it only works with the ability to learn and grow.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

<snip>Of course, it only works with the ability to learn and grow.

No, not at all. Many, many philosophies both real (which I won't expand upon) and fictional (see below) rely on the ability to forget, not learn. I cannot counter the "ability to grow", because "grow" is such a plastic word you could fit it to anything, and indeed, I can easily claim that while Roy can't learn new things at the Mountain, he, like his grandfather, can grow in the process of realising that all the Earthly attachments are nothing but impediments to his soul's development.

Put another way: in Schlock Mercenary, there is a species that is functionally ageless. It seems that in that universe the only successful eon-long technique for existence is to render yourself capable of purposely forgetting your own life (in what is described as "a state of permanent innocence, naivete, and senility." I find this scenario far more likely than your idea that you can cope with continuing to learn, forever - indeed, I suspect that if ay of us tried, we would end in the same scenario described in the first few panels of the page I linked.

In either case, personality death has occurred, by the way - subsumed into the plane of Good over the course of millennia, or changed into a different person over the course of millennia, whomever they are at the end is not the same person they were at the start, and while you are entitled to think one is more heavenly/hellish than the other, I don't see a major difference between them, myself.

Grey Wolf

[woweedd]

You know, from how Rich has been describing the Afterlife in this thread, it sounds like a pretty horrible place to be. It's just a temporary respite until you reach oblivion and you and everything about you is destroyed. It might as well be nothingness for all intents and purposes. It seems like everyone of the OOTS world's ultimate destiny is o be part of a Hive Mind where all traces of the being they once were are gone to the point where they might as well be dead. It sounds horrific. I can't see why anyone could enjoy it.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

You know, from how Rich has been describing the Afterlife in this thread, it sounds like a pretty horrible place to be. It's just a temporary respite until you reach oblivion and you and everything about you is destroyed. It might as well be nothingness for all intents and purposes. It seems like everyone of the OOTS world's ultimate destiny is o be part of a Hive Mind where all traces of the being they once were are gone to the point where they might as well be dead. It sounds horrific. I can't see why anyone could enjoy it.

Many people seem to enjoy their current, RL existence, even though each and every one of them live in what "sounds like a pretty horrible place to be", where their life is "just a temporary respite until you reach oblivion and you and everything about you is destroyed", and "[i]t might as well be nothingness for all intents and purposes". Indeed, "[i]t sounds horrific. I can't see why anyone could enjoy it.". And yet, somehow, we do.

Terry Pratchett put it best in Reaper Man:

Death stood alone, watching the wheat dance in the wind. Of course, it was only a metaphor. People were more than corn. They whirled through tiny crowded lives, driven literally by clock work, filling their days from edge to edge with the sheer effort of living. And all lives were exactly the same length. Even the very long and the very short ones. From the point of view of eternity, anyway.
Somewhere, the tiny voice of Bill Door said: from the point of view of the owner, longer ones are best.

The only difference between our existence and OotS existence is that they are assured a second life after the current one, where good people are happy for as long as they want before voluntarily going into oblivion.

GW

[Millstone85]

In either case, personality death has occurred, by the way - subsumed into the plane of Good over the course of millennia, or changed into a different person over the course of millennia, whomever they are at the end is not the same person they were at the start, and while you are entitled to think one is more heavenly/hellish than the other, I don't see a major difference between them, myself.

Well now, that is the deeper philosophical problem of the continuity of the self, or however it is called. Can we really be sure that personality death does not occur in our decades of existence, maybe even more than once? We talk about one's inner child, but how much of him or her is really left in there? Anyway, it seems subsumed souls do not have a self anymore, old or new.

[Reddish Mage]

Really, you're coming at this entirely backwards. You're saying the afterlife shouldn't have flaws, and therefore Roy should be OK with everyone dying. I'm saying that I require Roy to be not OK with everyone dying in order to continue the story, and therefore the afterlife must have flaws (and here they are). Since the goal here is for me to continue to tell the story I have imagined, my position wins.

I think you're missing a great opportunity here. Roy is shown what is, apparently, a perfect afterlife (except the evil adventuring party pops in from time to time), and then announces he doesn't want to trade his existence for that one yet.

That can be taken as a profound philosophical point about material existence having its own value for being an imperfect struggle that ends in death, and that happens to sync with a number of real world philosophers...

Or you can suddenly add minutae to make a specific point about D&d afterlives not being so great.

I think the latter is disappointing, because it removes the profundity of the first point that was bringing people to this thread earlier, because their mind had just been blown.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Well now, that is the deeper philosophical problem of the continuity of the self, or however it is called. Can we really be sure that personality death does not occur in our decades of existence, maybe even more than once? We talk about one's inner child, but how much of him or her is really left in there?

Yes, I know, that's my point. If you define "hell" as "death of personality" (which was done here, the point I was trying to rebut), then you have gone through hell at least three or four times by the time you hit 80. Asking "why don't mortals rebel against this state of affairs?" is like asking "why don't children refuse to grow up?".

Let me put it another way: I think that everyone in this thread that describes the cushy afterlife in which one can get over all of their unfulfilled mortal desires by sheer filling of said mortal desires as "hellish" is being way, way, way overdramatic. Oblivion is what await us all, in one form or another, and to achieve oblivion by means of the Celestia Mountain as described in OotS is not even close to the top worse ways I can think of.

EDIT:
Another example I can think of. In Elenium, by David and Leigh Eddings, one of the antagonists is is some ways very much like Xykon: Otha, the immortal sorcerer Emperor of Zemoch. We met him when he wasn't any of those things, just a simple shepherd. And we meet him, again, at the end of the book. They are not the same person, and even what they have in common (cruelty) has changed over the years. Xykon is the same: he thinks that he has evaded the fires below, but in doing so, he has lost everything he loved about being alive (e.g. coffee). You tell me if his existence is any better than Roy's mom in Celestia's. Sure, Xykon can still learn, but he cannot enjoy anything other than power. There is such thing as a fate worse than death, and Xykon seems to be running towards it.

Grey Wolf

[woweedd]

Many people seem to enjoy their current, RL existence, even though each and every one of them live in what "sounds like a pretty horrible place to be", where their life is "just a temporary respite until you reach oblivion and you and everything about you is destroyed", and "[i]t might as well be nothingness for all intents and purposes". Indeed, "[i]t sounds horrific. I can't see why anyone could enjoy it.". And yet, somehow, we do.

Terry Pratchett put it best in Reaper Man:


The only difference between our existence and OotS existence is that they are assured a second life after the current one, where good people are happy for as long as they want before voluntarily going into oblivion.

GW

What you're getting into is a philosophical idea called The Ship of Theseus. Basically, Theseus has a ship. However, as time goes on, his ship falls apart and he replaces the p[arts of it until, within 10 years, none of the original parts remain. Thus, if none of the parts that originally made it up are still in it, is it still the ship? And similarly, given that the Human body and brain replaces its cells to the point that in 10 years, you have a completely new set of cells, is it still the same brain and body you started with? That said, I disagree with your calculus. Yes, people change but even when a child grows up, they still keep parts of their personality and memories. Also, free will, that's kind of a being one. Meanwhile, it seems like the end goal of D & D and by extension OOTS Cosmology is to become a blank personalityless caricature with nothing but your alignment left.

[HolyCouncilMagi]

You know, I think it's less horrible than people credit it with, and that's because the explanation kind of oversimplifies it. Sure, a person in the Chaotic Good afterlife wouldn't find losing their individuality to be much of a reward... But they also probably wouldn't see it that way. When you ascend to the top of whatever alignment-appropriate equivalent to the LG mountain is found in other afterlives, you become a being of pure [insert alignment here], which is probably the single most awesome thing ever. It's like Belkar's description of the spice he had in the desert, only in more appropriate form for other non-Chaotic Evil alignments, and forever. When it's infinite one-night stands and perfect food and exactly equal combat or competition matchups with none of the non-challenge parts that made the real world's versions compelling, yeah, you can keep it up for years or decades or even centuries, but eventually you will get bored. But as you ascend the alignment mountain, that stops being a problem, because you aren't reveling in, say, Lawful and Good acts and feelings, or Chaotic and Evil acts and feelings, you're experiencing pure Chaos and Evil or Law and Good or whatever. Even if you had your individuality, to an extent it wouldn't matter; you'd just get a pure perpetuation of that greatest feeling. For the Lawful Good, it'd be the greatest possible feeling of fulfillment from helping others, and the greatest possible feeling of triumph after defeating or redeeming Evil, and the greatest euphoria of having ensured peace and order, and every other greatest possible feeling of all Law and Good combined into an eternal, pure wave washing over you, never getting redundant or boring, never being interrupted by anything else, just that one concentrated perfect feeling for all of eternity. So that Chaotic Good person wouldn't feel like they lost their individuality... They'd feel like the single most individual, free-to-be-whoever-they-want person in all of existence. And they'd feel like everybody they cared about was that way, to boot.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm with Roy on this one... No matter how perfect that is, I would want to live a fulfilling and varied life to the maximum that I can first. But at the end of it all, I don't think I'd want to become a lich or anything to avoid it forever.

(That said, I have to agree on the "no growing or learning" thing... I'd probably ascend past the "infinite one night stands and always-right debate halls and perfectly challenging monsters" right away, right after filing a complaint to customer service that if this is their idea of paradise, they should all be fired.)

[zimmerwald1915]

You know, I think it's less horrible than people credit it with, and that's because the explanation kind of oversimplifies it. Sure, a person in the Chaotic Good afterlife wouldn't find losing their individuality to be much of a reward... But they also probably wouldn't see it that way. When you ascend to the top of whatever alignment-appropriate equivalent to the LG mountain is found in other afterlives, you become a being of pure [insert alignment here], which is probably the single most awesome thing ever. It's like Belkar's description of the spice he had in the desert, only in more appropriate form for other non-Chaotic Evil alignments, and forever. When it's infinite one-night stands and perfect food and exactly equal combat or competition matchups with none of the non-challenge parts that made the real world's versions compelling, yeah, you can keep it up for years or decades or even centuries, but eventually you will get bored. But as you ascend the alignment mountain, that stops being a problem, because you aren't reveling in, say, Lawful and Good acts and feelings, or Chaotic and Evil acts and feelings, you're experiencing pure Chaos and Evil or Law and Good or whatever. Even if you had your individuality, to an extent it wouldn't matter; you'd just get a pure perpetuation of that greatest feeling. For the Lawful Good, it'd be the greatest possible feeling of fulfillment from helping others, and the greatest possible feeling of triumph after defeating or redeeming Evil, and the greatest euphoria of having ensured peace and order, and every other greatest possible feeling of all Law and Good combined into an eternal, pure wave washing over you, never getting redundant or boring, never being interrupted by anything else, just that one concentrated perfect feeling for all of eternity. So that Chaotic Good person wouldn't feel like they lost their individuality... They'd feel like the single most individual, free-to-be-whoever-they-want person in all of existence. And they'd feel like everybody they cared about was that way, to boot.

Sounds like a big happy fulfilling blur when phrased like that, dunnit?

[Gift Jeraff]

I always figured the "True perfect enlightenment" Roy's Archon mentioned was alluding to dissolving into the plane, so I'm actually not surprised by this.

[Lissou]

I think you're missing a great opportunity here. Roy is shown what is, apparently, a perfect afterlife (except the evil adventuring party pops in from time to time), and then announces he doesn't want to trade his existence for that one yet.

That can be taken as a profound philosophical point about material existence having its own value for being an imperfect struggle that ends in death, and that happens to sync with a number of real world philosophers...

Or you can suddenly add minutae to make a specific point about D&d afterlives not being so great.

I think the latter is disappointing, because it removes the profundity of the first point that was bringing people to this thread earlier, because their mind had just been blown.

Well, Roy doesn't remember any of it, really. He doesn't remember seeing his brother, or that his mother looked young, or that he finally got to meet his grandfather. He remembers being vaguely happy. When it's something he can expect to happen to him either way eventually, there is no hurry. His life on OOTS-world however will have an end and then it will be completely over. Plus, he's invested in the gates. He's not going to want someone to just swoop in.

My point is that you can't use what happened to Roy in the afterlife as part of his reasoning because he isn't aware of it. That doesn't mean he would still make the same choice if he did remember (he probably would) but that's not what happened here.

[The Giant]

I am not going to spend time researching the history of D&D's treatment of dead souls. If you want to learn more about it, you're on your own. It's all inconsistent anyway, so even if you find a book that contradicts what I said, that doesn't mean there's not another one out there that agrees with me. And frankly, even if I'm remembering wrong and not a single book corroborates what I'm saying, so what? How does it matter to the story at all? Why is this even a subject anyone cares about?

I think you're missing a great opportunity here. Roy is shown what is, apparently, a perfect afterlife (except the evil adventuring party pops in from time to time), and then announces he doesn't want to trade his existence for that one yet.

That can be taken as a profound philosophical point about material existence having its own value for being an imperfect struggle that ends in death, and that happens to sync with a number of real world philosophers...

Or you can suddenly add minutae to make a specific point about D&d afterlives not being so great.

I think the latter is disappointing, because it removes the profundity of the first point that was bringing people to this thread earlier, because their mind had just been blown.

Yes, well, that's why I can't stand it when people need me to lock down specifics about how things work. The comic made the important point—that no one just wants to give up on life because they think a nice afterlife is waiting for them—but that's not good enough for some people. They need me to justify it because they, personally, wouldn't feel the same way as a given character if they were in the same position. And then more people jump in and pick at my first answer, arguing with me about this aspect or what that extrapolates to, until I answer some off-the-cuff explanation that will never matter to the story and everyone flips the **** out over it, claiming that I ruined the story forever for them. It happens every time; remember when I "ruined" Tarquin by saying that he's probably not as good a military strategist as he makes himself out to be?

If you don't want to see how the sausage is made, stop coming to the sausage factory and demanding that the sausage maker explain himself.

Here's what I really want to impress on all of you: I do not care how the afterlife works in my story. The cosmology, the details, the moral implications. It doesn't matter. It's all made up, and I am more than happy to handwave it because there is no story benefit to wasting time being more detailed. Vanilla D&D, as filtered through my memory? Sure, good enough. Next! The only reason there even is an afterlife in this world is because the planes and resurrection and the gods are all such a strong part of the D&D experience. I am not telling a story about the implications of the world's cosmology; I am telling a story about Roy Greenhilt, and his motivations and heroism. The afterlife was useful in that regard by allowing me to show some of his journey instead of telling it, and by allowing me to kill off my main character while still having him be part of the comic for the very long period that Don't Split the Party was running. Those are the absolute limits of my interest in exploring the concept of an afterlife, because it has no other real relevance. If I wasn't using the D&D afterlife (or a shade thereof)—and I hadn't accidentally introduced Eugene as a ghost so early in the comic's run, before the plot was nailed down—I wouldn't be using any afterlife. People would die, and that would be the end, forever. Because yes, as fictional concepts go, the afterlife is one that reduces dramatic tension in exactly the manner that spawned this thread.

Also, this:

Because you've been shown a stage being used to tell a story, and you're banging on the backdrop and pointing out the light fixtures above the stage. They aren't relevant to the story, to the point that there are going to be inconsistencies, and you're focusing in on them. You've been told "The sun is up", and you're complaining that there's clearly multiple light sources above the stage, and none of the matte backdrop is casting any shadows.

Rich is using the basic D&D ruleset for the afterlife, which is really not very well thought out. He's already pointed this out in other threads. You can't poke very hard at it or it all unravels, just like you can't walk into all the doors you see on the stage. You just have to accept that most people don't want to die, and killing people to use them as food is usually considered a not nice thing to do. All the information in this thread is irrelevant to the story, especially given that Roy's speech wasn't even heard by the gods. You're always going to find inconsistencies, because nobody wanted to spend that much time on the topic when it was written. If it makes you feel better, just re imagine the afterlife as something that suits you but still reveals how Roy's grandfather and Eric molded him into the man he is today, and the story doesn't change.

Emphasis mine. If you don't like what I described, imagine it differently. I promise we're never going to see what happens at the top of Mount Celestia in the comic anyway.

EDIT: What it comes down to is that the existence of a known, provable, observable, game-able afterlife system of any sort—OOTS version, D&D version, or any other type—would so thoroughly change human behavior in the living world as to render all of society and personal interaction unrecognizable to us, the real people reading the story. It is in any author's interest, therefore, to not think too much about it, lest these sorts of questions overwhelm whatever actual relatable human story they want to tell. Maybe if that sort exploration is the point of the work, that would make sense, but for anything else? The only reasonable option is to handwave it and get on with the work of telling a good tale.

[BenjCano]

It is in any author's interest, therefore, to not think too much about it, lest these sorts of questions overwhelm whatever actual relatable human story they want to tell. Maybe if that sort exploration is the point of the work, that would make sense, but for anything else? The only reasonable option is to handwave it and get on with the work of telling a good tale.

{emphasis mine}

Brandon Sanderson, Howard Taylor, and Dan Wells would disagree with you on that. One of the very first episodes of their Writing Excuses podcast was exclusively about costs and ramifications of magic in a fantasy setting. The way it was described is that if the energy you're getting out of a magic spell is cheaper than getting the same amount of energy you'd get from a donkey, than your medieval economy just fell apart, and you have to deal with that.

You also are kind of implying that someone CAN'T think about these kinds of consequences and ramifications and tell a good story. Maybe not your intent, but I want to emphatically say that this isn't the case. Anyone who's read a Sanderson novel knows that the limits and consequences and impacts and ramifications of magic becomes elements of the story, not tedious treatises on how the magic system works.


Sanderson et. al are not saying this because they're joyless nitpicks who let jerks like me quote them in situations like this. They believe this is an element of good writing, that it can be a source of conflict and storytelling and enrich creative works, not limit authors.

When it comes right down to it, in this system, with a real and verifiable afterlife of the kind described in the comic, the argument that one should prevent the gods from destroying the world and moving everyone to the afterlife is a harder one to make.

[Spoomeister]

Here's what I really want to impress on all of you: I do not care how the afterlife works in my story. The cosmology, the details, the moral implications. It doesn't matter. It's all made up, and I am more than happy to handwave it because there is no story benefit to wasting time being more detailed.

Man, do I wish I hadn't read this thread.

If you don't want to see how the sausage is made, stop coming to the sausage factory and demanding that the sausage maker explain himself.

Well put.

[jere7my]

{emphasis mine}

Brandon Sanderson, Howard Taylor, and Dan Wells would disagree with you on that. One of the very first episodes of their Writing Excuses podcast was exclusively about costs and ramifications of magic in a fantasy setting. The way it was described is that if the energy you're getting out of a magic spell is cheaper than getting the same amount of energy you'd get from a donkey, than your medieval economy just fell apart, and you have to deal with that.

You also are kind of implying that someone CAN'T think about these kinds of consequences and ramifications and tell a good story. Maybe not your intent, but I want to emphatically say that this isn't the case. Anyone who's read a Sanderson novel knows that the limits and consequences and impacts and ramifications of magic becomes elements of the story, not tedious treatises on how the magic system works.

You'll notice Rich said "if that sort [of] exploration is the point of the work". You would be hard-pressed to claim that it is not an intentional point of Sanderson's work to explore rational magic systems; he certainly goes on about it often enough. And he does manage to tell serviceable stories within that framework; I've enjoyed just about everything of his that I've read (which includes the Mistborn books, the first two Stormlight Archives, and Steelheart).

But if you as a reader are unable to look beyond that sort of nickel-and-dime accounting and engineering version of magic, if you're unable to accept magic that is not only weird and wondrous but actually fails to make logical sense, you're artificially limiting your reading horizons. You're letting what M. John Harrison calls "the great clomping foot of nerdism" get in the way of enjoying a raft of exceptional stories—Chip Delany, M. John Harrison, Jeff Vandermeer, Jorge Luis Borges, Mervyn Peake, Terry Gilliam.... All authors ask their audiences to overlook some things to enjoy their stories; that's suspension of disbelief. If you dig and dig and parse and pick apart any story, including Sanderson's, you'll find the seams (though in Sanderson's case the first seams you come to won't be in the magic system). It's not a productive way to approach art.

[Porthos]

On an iPad so I'll try to keep this brief. I must say I am VERY surprised at some of the umbrage being taken here. The idea that souls eventually, after perhaps millennia, "become one with the plane" is ancient in D&D. In fact, way back in 1e one of the distinctions discussed in the original Deites & Demigods about elves and other folks were that elves had spirits that were endlessly reincarnated back onto the Prime while most (demi)humans had souls that would eventually find enlightenment by fusing with their plane/god/concept/whatever. And for folks who want to fall away from the idea, we're not talking about a decade. Not even a century. But, at least for the "good" gods, millennia.

In D&D afterlife, you can indeed be as individualistic as you like. But sooner or later (perhaps much much much later), you'll grow out of it and seek something else. And if the concept is utterly alien to you? Well, get back to me after 5,000 years whilst being in a plane of ideological harmony with you and see if you still feel the same way.

And even if you do, souls getting "reborn" into the Prime is a thing that more than one D&D setting embraces. As well as being made into archons, Devils, modrons, and whatever other things out there really really really want to be immortal. With everything that word implies.

[The Giant]

Brandon Sanderson, Howard Taylor, and Dan Wells would disagree with you on that. One of the very first episodes of their Writing Excuses podcast was exclusively about costs and ramifications of magic in a fantasy setting. The way it was described is that if the energy you're getting out of a magic spell is cheaper than getting the same amount of energy you'd get from a donkey, than your medieval economy just fell apart, and you have to deal with that.

With due respect to Brandon and Howard (both of whom I consider friends), that otherwise very good advice is only applicable if you are actually creating your world from scratch and expecting it to be approached solely on its own terms. That's not what I'm doing; I took an existing setting—one with inherent flaws—off the shelf and spruced it up a bit, originally for the purpose of commenting on it. It's not required that I fix the flaws with the setting in order to write a story in it, any more than someone writing a new Oz story needs to justify how the Tin Man works. This is what D&D settings look like; do you see the sort of hard analytical justifications you're looking for in the official Forgotten Realms novels? No, they just mumble some stuff about the Weave and move on.

In fact, that comment about the donkey is, itself, largely a reaction to the whole of fantasy literature, especially D&D. D&D destroys that medieval economy model, over and over in a hundred ways (permanent Walls of Iron, diamonds from the Plane of Earth) and then just handwaves the consequences with a shrug. And it works fine. They wouldn't feel the need to make that statement if it were not violated by almost every fantasy story ever written. It's a valid perspective, but it's hardly indicative of the sole way to write about magic.

You also are kind of implying that someone CAN'T think about these kinds of consequences and ramifications and tell a good story. Maybe not your intent, but I want to emphatically say that this isn't the case. Anyone who's read a Sanderson novel knows that the limits and consequences and impacts and ramifications of magic becomes elements of the story, not tedious treatises on how the magic system works.

As jere7my says, this is literally Brandon's modus operandi; one of the things he is best known for. Therefore, he is covered under my clause, "Maybe if that sort exploration is the point of the work."

When it comes right down to it, in this system, with a real and verifiable afterlife of the kind described in the comic, the argument that one should prevent the gods from destroying the world and moving everyone to the afterlife is a harder one to make.

You are welcome to feel however you want about that, but I'm not spending any more time on the subject. I don't feel the need to address it any further in-comic than that one speech balloon I already devoted to it.

[Porthos]

When it comes right down to it, in this system, with a real and verifiable afterlife of the kind described in the comic, the argument that one should prevent the gods from destroying the world and moving everyone to the afterlife is a harder one to make.

Not in the slightest. Not any harder than saying someone should prevent evil necromancers (or elf wizards on power trips) from casting spells that that will indiscriminately nuke hundreds of (mostly) evil dragons (and their relatives).

I seem to recall a certain story taking a look at that at least.

The only differences here, as I see it, is A) intent (which is a pretty big deal admittedly), B) scale, and C) doing this to stave off an even worse catastrophe.

That this is only being considered by TPTB as an absolute last ditch panic option, with great regret, should show just how big of a deal this is, and how this is the opposite of being made lightly. That is, it is taking the utter anhilation of everything for this to be even contemplated.

....

And even then, even then, the reaction is to recoil and look for alternatives.

Don't know about you, but that's good enough for me, storytelling wise.

[hamishspence]

Agreed. And this is all flavor text, anyway; so far as I am aware there is no mechanical impact of these disparate views of the afterlife, so it can safely be ignored or reflavored at the DM's whim.

Complete Divine gives "merge into the plane" as the reason for a mechanical effect - specifically, the time limit on spells like Raise Dead, Resurrection and True Resurrection.

[factotum]

Complete Divine gives "merge into the plane" as the reason for a mechanical effect - specifically, the time limit on spells like Raise Dead, Resurrection and True Resurrection.

Well, that makes no sense at all considering those three spells have very different time limits. Would somebody's soul really have merged so much with their afterlife plane in a matter of weeks (Raise Dead) that it could no longer be retrieved?

Going back to BenjCano's original argument, if taken to its logical conclusion, why doesn't everybody Good-aligned just commit suicide when they turn 18 or whatever? They know a better life is awaiting them, after all.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Would somebody's soul really have merged so much with their afterlife plane in a matter of weeks (Raise Dead) that it could no longer be retrieved?

Sure. It's a weak spell, and the moment the soul gets even a little cushy in the afterlife (say, the moment they discover the local equivalent of the endless one-night stands building), the spell simply lacks the strength to pull it back to this valley of sorrows. Indeed, all it takes is minimal rationalization of three stages of acclimatization to make the spells work with different time lengths.

Grey Wolf

[Millstone85]

Yes, I know, that's my point. If you define "hell" as "death of personality" (which was done here, the point I was trying to rebut), then you have gone through hell at least three or four times by the time you hit 80.

I do not define Hell as any sort of death and I am not sure the post you linked to did either. Actually, Hell in a D&D world like OotS seems more merciful than "real world" Hell, because instead of eternal torment the characters just get a veeeeery long torment until they are no more. True death, as it still ultimately happens in OotS, is preferable to eternal torment. And we probably agree on that. Where we seem to disagree is on death being preferable to eternal reward, or to prolonging this earthly life beyond its usual span. That brought us to talk about how we all already die a little every day and whether or not that makes a difference on the matter.

If you don't want to see how the sausage is made, stop coming to the sausage factory and demanding that the sausage maker explain himself.

I did want to see how the sausage is made. That is why I went to the sausage factory. There, I was fortunate enough to get an explanation from the sausage maker. The sausage making process did not turn out as intricate as I had expected. I was still thankful for the explanation and never demanded of the sausage maker that he change the process. I have since been discussing the process with other sausage enthusiasts. I am sorry if the sausage maker now perceives this discussion as having a negative impact on his factory's image.