DnD book of the dead [Archive] - Wizards Community

DnD book of the dead [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
glorfon
10-18-07, 09:54 PM Ah, the great question. What happens when we die? Where do we go? What will we see? What will we encounter? Can we come back to life? Several cultures have had Books of the dead to answer these questions.(specifically egyptians and tibetans but there might be more). Is there anything like this for DnD? I want to kill my chracters and have them traverse the afterlife.
Shemeska the Marauder
10-18-07, 11:13 PM Is there anything like this for DnD? I want to kill my chracters and have them traverse the afterlife.

It was called Planescape. A (meta)setting devoted to the planes, the power of belief on the planes, its denizens, etc. The 3.x Manual of the Planes was pretty much a watered down, condensed version of the 2e Planescape line crammed into one book with some mostly superficial edition changes. God only knows what 4e will spawn.

The only problem with killing characters to have them traverse the afterlife is that in mainline D&D, with very slim exception, characters who die lose their memories of mortal life when they become petitioners (the generic term of the form that mortal souls become on the planes, which ranges from idealized versions of their mortal form, to wriggling worms with their mortal face attached, to the least form of some types of celestials or fiends, etc).

Generally speaking, unless a character has a patron deity who specifically wants them to retain their memories, the process of becoming a petitioner removes such lingering anchors to mortality because they hold the soul back.
ArcTan
10-18-07, 11:25 PM It was called Planescape. A (meta)setting devoted to the planes, the power of belief on the planes, its denizens, etc. The 3.x Manual of the Planes was pretty much a watered down, condensed version of the 2e Planescape line crammed into one book with some mostly superficial edition changes.

I would rather call it a remake of the original, pre-Planescape supplement "Manual of the Planes", actually (which would be logical, since the 3e book had "Manual of the Planes" on the box rather than "Planescape").

It incorporated many of the ideas from Planescape, of course, but its intention was to be the Manual of the Planes, not a Planescape Campaign Setting, and it served that function pretty well.

The only problem with killing characters to have them traverse the afterlife is that in mainline D&D, with very slim exception, characters who die lose their memories of mortal life when they become petitioners (the generic term of the form that mortal souls become on the planes, which ranges from idealized versions of their mortal form, to wriggling worms with their mortal face attached, to the least form of some types of celestials or fiends, etc).

Which is why a well-written D&D Book of the Dead would, of course, provide better options.

The oft-overlooked 3.0 supplement Ghostwalk was a good example. I recommend the OP take a gander at it.
goldomark
10-19-07, 02:13 AM The Ghostwalk book would be great for you. Ghost are the souls of the dead and they can choose to stay on the material plane and continu to adventure. It also features a city where all sorts of ghosts existe and can gain a tangible form. The book contains two classes for ghost characters.

It a great book full of ideas and can easily be adapted for you needs.
glorfon
10-19-07, 01:24 PM Ok, I'll check out both of them. Though admitedly I'm dissapointed that there isn't a book specifically about dying death the after life and resurection.
goldomark
10-19-07, 01:46 PM Well most people want their characters to live. This is why ressurection existe ;)
Sarella Starshine
10-19-07, 11:54 PM In general, those ideas are best left up to a DM to decide how they work. A book like that in D&D would have to try to cover at least all the races in the PHB (because while there is a common over-arching idea, each race will have thier own cultural views), including several different ones for humans, while at the same time, make them creative enough to avoid comparisons from real world religions/beliefs (which would utterly fail).

A very good benefit of 'let the DM decide' is it prevents players from using 'but its in the book, you must do it this way' crap that is very common (I mean, just look at numerous threads in 'players what to do' and/or 'DMs what to do' forums...there is always someone *****ing about a DM refusing stuff or a player wanting stuff a DM forbade).

If I decide that my setting has a purgatory-style plane for those souls who have yet to be taken to various other planes for permanent residence and this plane is populated by angels, demons, and devils (who are there for various reasons from dragging the unwilling soul to hell to offering redemption and a spot in heaven), and some book says that when a person dies they automatically go to the plane of thier god, I don't want some bratty player insisting that the book's view is the correct view of MY world ;)
ArcTan
10-20-07, 02:38 AM Yes. You basically just cemented the reason I'm bitter about the "Planescape canon should be EVERYONE'S canon!" attitude that Shemeska displayed in this very thread.

Manual of the Planes probably would've been far more useful for far more people if it had actually given the other cosmologies in there a fair shake instead of shoving them all into short chapter-length bites and spent the vast bulk of its time rehashing the old Great Wheel and making sure we all knew it was the "official" way to use the planes.
Naderion
10-20-07, 12:47 PM The great wheel is far older than planescape, as far as I know. The 2nd Ed. Manual of the planes is from 1987 and planescape was first published in 1994, seven years later.
Shemeska the Marauder
10-20-07, 07:23 PM Yes. You basically just cemented the reason I'm bitter about the "Planescape canon should be EVERYONE'S canon!" attitude that Shemeska displayed in this very thread.

When a general question is asked, most often you give the default answer, not some random thing that only applies to your home campaign. In terms of cosmological questions, that's going to involve an assumption of the default D&D cosmology of the Great Wheel. Planescape may have fleshed it out, being a entire product line devoted to doing just that, but that default existed before and after that product line itself.

For instance if someone asked about a FR question, I'd answer it with respect to the baseline assumptions and canon for FR, not Eberron, not Shadowrun, not nWoD, etc. If the question isn't phrased in asking for anything under the sun that might potentially answer a question, I'm going to answer with the default assumptions. Don't be angry at me, be angry at the design traditions of D&D that are older than I am.
ArcTan
10-20-07, 09:04 PM I'm just saying, again, that it was a *good* thing the 3e Manual of the Planes "watered down" the Great Wheel -- and the extreme degree to which the Great Wheel had become specific and detailed rather than vague thanks to the Planescape setting -- and that it was a *good* thing that the MotP presented the Great Wheel as one vague, general idea for a planar cosmology among many.

It's my opinion that it was a *bad* thing that it didn't go far enough in this, actually. But criticizing the 3e MotP, which was, all in all, a pretty good book and better than it could've been (compare to the travesty of the 3.5 Planar Handbook) for what were specifically its *good points* annoys me.
Thanael
10-22-07, 10:50 AM Ok, I'll check out both of them. Though admitedly I'm dissapointed that there isn't a book specifically about dying death the after life and resurection.

If you check out the 3E Manual of the Planes and are intrigued by the Great Wheel Cosmology, try to check out Planescape.
Thanael
10-22-07, 10:53 AM I'm just saying, again, that it was a *good* thing the 3e Manual of the Planes "watered down" the Great Wheel -- and the extreme degree to which the Great Wheel had become specific and detailed rather than vague thanks to the Planescape setting -- and that it was a *good* thing that the MotP presented the Great Wheel as one vague, general idea for a planar cosmology among many.

So when someone asks is there a D&D book about the afterlife, you prefer there the answer: "there are some guidelines/options but not much, best to come up with it yourself" to "yes there was a whole campaign setting that dealt with it and detailed the baseline concept, check out such and such for introduction".:confused:
ArcTan
10-22-07, 02:51 PM Yes, for the reasons Sarella Starshine gave.

Note that the Planescape setting and the Great Wheel setting, which tries to give an "official" answer for how the afterlife works that makes sense for ordinary core D&D, therefore makes the afterlife almost useless for adventuring -- in order to make sure that dying matters to D&D characters and that D&D characters don't want to be dead, you get a system where "Petitioners" lose all their memories and most of their class abilities after death and are therefore not something anyone would actually want to roleplay as for any length of time.

I'd prefer if the "guidelines/options" were more detailed and more in-depth, yes -- if D&D publication was about fleshing out lots of different options rather than having one, single *official* option and other "variants" as a sidebar. But I think the 3e MotP is still more useful than handing someone the Planescape campaign setting because it at least *has* options.
Kain_Darkwind
10-22-07, 03:02 PM Yes, for the reasons Sarella Starshine gave.

Note that the Planescape setting and the Great Wheel setting, which tries to give an "official" answer for how the afterlife works that makes sense for ordinary core D&D, therefore makes the afterlife almost useless for adventuring -- in order to make sure that dying matters to D&D characters and that D&D characters don't want to be dead, you get a system where "Petitioners" lose all their memories and most of their class abilities after death and are therefore not something anyone would actually want to roleplay as for any length of time.

I'd prefer if the "guidelines/options" were more detailed and more in-depth, yes -- if D&D publication was about fleshing out lots of different options rather than having one, single *official* option and other "variants" as a sidebar. But I think the 3e MotP is still more useful than handing someone the Planescape campaign setting because it at least *has* options.

"You have many options and can do whatever you want" is an incredibly useless answer when someone asks about a particular facet in DnD. That's the beauty of a core setting with a default assumption. It doesn't stop anyone from doing it different, but it supports those who need or desire a little more structure too.
sciborg3
10-22-07, 03:45 PM I think that it becomes a question of a fleshed out default vs. presenting good options. Between MotP and Ghostwalk, you have the most definitive D&D takes on the afterlife AFAIK.

The MotP was a good book that did a admirable job of balancing previous takes on the Great Wheel. Ghostwalk was too limiting for me, I just didn't find the afterlife concepts interesting personally.

Petitioners losing their memories was meant to give some weight to the afterlife, otherwise it would be more of a change of location - it meant dying had a price even in a world (multiverse) where raising the dead wasn't all that hard. It's not the only option, and I don't recall if prior to Planescape this is what happens.
ArcTan
10-22-07, 07:45 PM "You have many options and can do whatever you want" is an incredibly useless answer when someone asks about a particular facet in DnD. That's the beauty of a core setting with a default assumption. It doesn't stop anyone from doing it different, but it supports those who need or desire a little more structure too.

"Here is a fleshed-out take on four or five different options that represent the broad spectrum of what someone might want to do" is a *great* response, though, and far more useful than "Here's one ginormous campaign setting entirely focused on one very specific possible answer to your question, and if it happens to not be what you want... you have to make it all up."
Taeldrin Laesrash
10-22-07, 08:40 PM "Here is a fleshed-out take on four or five different options that represent the broad spectrum of what someone might want to do" is a *great* response, though, and far more useful than "Here's one ginormous campaign setting entirely focused on one very specific possible answer to your question, and if it happens to not be what you want... you have to make it all up."

It helps for there to be an assumed process; does adventure and campaign design really need to be more complicated? It helps out new DMs, and it helps out people who won't really use the planes at all (Where the soul is just gone until you cast Raise Dead). It helps reduce the workload of a DM who can't come up with a cosmology in time to accompany his one-shot adventure.
ArcTan
10-22-07, 09:05 PM It helps for there to be an assumed process; does adventure and campaign design really need to be more complicated? It helps out new DMs, and it helps out people who won't really use the planes at all (Where the soul is just gone until you cast Raise Dead). It helps reduce the workload of a DM who can't come up with a cosmology in time to accompany his one-shot adventure.

Yes, and there is an assumed process in the PHB and DMG, where the afterlife is just this murky thing that happens to dead people and exists for the sake of adjudicating what happens when someone dies and is resurrected.

If you actually want to do a game *about the afterlife*, then there should be multiple options presented. This was, in fact, WotC's early philosophy about books involving "planar" material -- D&DG and MotP both reflect this -- before these books started getting written primarily by freelancers.
Kain_Darkwind
10-22-07, 10:34 PM "Here is a fleshed-out take on four or five different options that represent the broad spectrum of what someone might want to do" is a *great* response, though, and far more useful than "Here's one ginormous campaign setting entirely focused on one very specific possible answer to your question, and if it happens to not be what you want... you have to make it all up."

If I ask a question about a movie, I expect a from the movie answer, not a fanfiction answer, nor a movie novelization answer, nor an original source material answer.

The guy's question was about how it is done in DnD. Not about how he could do it in his game. A DnD core answer was sought, presumably so he could see how it stood up with what he imagined in his mind. I realize the League of DnD-Default Haters can't stand the idea of a singular base assumption from which the game builds off of yet can be changed in one's personal game, but let's not deny the hungry man his food just because you don't like him eating that. There are some situations in which a default core just works better than multiple fleshed out options.
ArcTan
10-22-07, 10:47 PM If you open up Deities & Demigods, none of the pantheons or cosmologies presented therein is said to be a "variant" or "non-official" cosmology -- the D&D one is presented as an equal to the Egyptian gods and the Greek gods and the Norse gods. That's as it should be, I think.

BTW, to the OP, D&DG is also a useful book for the fluff about different afterlives from different cultures, although the vast majority of the crunch about how to play a god as a character will probably not be useful to you.
awaken_D_M_golem
10-24-07, 06:16 PM What happens when we die? Where do we go? What will we see? What will we encounter? Can we come back to life?

If LG , you go to the LG plane and become a well treated, cute ball of light.

If CN , you go to Chaos-ville and be anything, except that you are small, but you can fix that by concentrating for a minute ... hey look, I'm a building, cool ... and then you are whatever passes through your mind ... like anarchic Dolphins.

If E , you go to a Night Hag's hovel; you look like a worm; she calls you "my pretty" in a tone worse than the bad witch in the Wizard of Oz; she herds you to a Malebrache; he gets you turned into a Lemure; you see nothing because you are blind; a frog thing from the abyss eats you; you only know this because it insisted on telepathing you that, for your last thought ever into eternity.

If you believe in Pazuzu, or the Pazuzu Ascension Method, you can't come back to life. Pazuzu toys with your soul for eternity. Think of a yo-yo, over an acid pool, and a Happy Day's episode; a laugh track of manes. When you have no more innocence left, you become literally toast.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
glorfon 10-18-07, 09:54 PM	Ah, the great question. What happens when we die? Where do we go? What will we see? What will we encounter? Can we come back to life? Several cultures have had Books of the dead to answer these questions.(specifically egyptians and tibetans but there might be more). Is there anything like this for DnD? I want to kill my chracters and have them traverse the afterlife.
Shemeska the Marauder 10-18-07, 11:13 PM	Is there anything like this for DnD? I want to kill my chracters and have them traverse the afterlife. It was called Planescape. A (meta)setting devoted to the planes, the power of belief on the planes, its denizens, etc. The 3.x Manual of the Planes was pretty much a watered down, condensed version of the 2e Planescape line crammed into one book with some mostly superficial edition changes. God only knows what 4e will spawn. The only problem with killing characters to have them traverse the afterlife is that in mainline D&D, with very slim exception, characters who die lose their memories of mortal life when they become petitioners (the generic term of the form that mortal souls become on the planes, which ranges from idealized versions of their mortal form, to wriggling worms with their mortal face attached, to the least form of some types of celestials or fiends, etc). Generally speaking, unless a character has a patron deity who specifically wants them to retain their memories, the process of becoming a petitioner removes such lingering anchors to mortality because they hold the soul back.
ArcTan 10-18-07, 11:25 PM	It was called Planescape. A (meta)setting devoted to the planes, the power of belief on the planes, its denizens, etc. The 3.x Manual of the Planes was pretty much a watered down, condensed version of the 2e Planescape line crammed into one book with some mostly superficial edition changes. I would rather call it a remake of the original, pre-Planescape supplement "Manual of the Planes", actually (which would be logical, since the 3e book had "Manual of the Planes" on the box rather than "Planescape"). It incorporated many of the ideas from Planescape, of course, but its intention was to be the Manual of the Planes, not a Planescape Campaign Setting, and it served that function pretty well. The only problem with killing characters to have them traverse the afterlife is that in mainline D&D, with very slim exception, characters who die lose their memories of mortal life when they become petitioners (the generic term of the form that mortal souls become on the planes, which ranges from idealized versions of their mortal form, to wriggling worms with their mortal face attached, to the least form of some types of celestials or fiends, etc). Which is why a well-written D&D Book of the Dead would, of course, provide better options. The oft-overlooked 3.0 supplement Ghostwalk was a good example. I recommend the OP take a gander at it.
goldomark 10-19-07, 02:13 AM	The Ghostwalk book would be great for you. Ghost are the souls of the dead and they can choose to stay on the material plane and continu to adventure. It also features a city where all sorts of ghosts existe and can gain a tangible form. The book contains two classes for ghost characters. It a great book full of ideas and can easily be adapted for you needs.
glorfon 10-19-07, 01:24 PM	Ok, I'll check out both of them. Though admitedly I'm dissapointed that there isn't a book specifically about dying death the after life and resurection.
goldomark 10-19-07, 01:46 PM	Well most people want their characters to live. This is why ressurection existe ;)
Sarella Starshine 10-19-07, 11:54 PM	In general, those ideas are best left up to a DM to decide how they work. A book like that in D&D would have to try to cover at least all the races in the PHB (because while there is a common over-arching idea, each race will have thier own cultural views), including several different ones for humans, while at the same time, make them creative enough to avoid comparisons from real world religions/beliefs (which would utterly fail). A very good benefit of 'let the DM decide' is it prevents players from using 'but its in the book, you must do it this way' crap that is very common (I mean, just look at numerous threads in 'players what to do' and/or 'DMs what to do' forums...there is always someone *****ing about a DM refusing stuff or a player wanting stuff a DM forbade). If I decide that my setting has a purgatory-style plane for those souls who have yet to be taken to various other planes for permanent residence and this plane is populated by angels, demons, and devils (who are there for various reasons from dragging the unwilling soul to hell to offering redemption and a spot in heaven), and some book says that when a person dies they automatically go to the plane of thier god, I don't want some bratty player insisting that the book's view is the correct view of MY world ;)
ArcTan 10-20-07, 02:38 AM	Yes. You basically just cemented the reason I'm bitter about the "Planescape canon should be EVERYONE'S canon!" attitude that Shemeska displayed in this very thread. Manual of the Planes probably would've been far more useful for far more people if it had actually given the other cosmologies in there a fair shake instead of shoving them all into short chapter-length bites and spent the vast bulk of its time rehashing the old Great Wheel and making sure we all knew it was the "official" way to use the planes.
Naderion 10-20-07, 12:47 PM	The great wheel is far older than planescape, as far as I know. The 2nd Ed. Manual of the planes is from 1987 and planescape was first published in 1994, seven years later.
Shemeska the Marauder 10-20-07, 07:23 PM	Yes. You basically just cemented the reason I'm bitter about the "Planescape canon should be EVERYONE'S canon!" attitude that Shemeska displayed in this very thread. When a general question is asked, most often you give the default answer, not some random thing that only applies to your home campaign. In terms of cosmological questions, that's going to involve an assumption of the default D&D cosmology of the Great Wheel. Planescape may have fleshed it out, being a entire product line devoted to doing just that, but that default existed before and after that product line itself. For instance if someone asked about a FR question, I'd answer it with respect to the baseline assumptions and canon for FR, not Eberron, not Shadowrun, not nWoD, etc. If the question isn't phrased in asking for anything under the sun that might potentially answer a question, I'm going to answer with the default assumptions. Don't be angry at me, be angry at the design traditions of D&D that are older than I am.
ArcTan 10-20-07, 09:04 PM	I'm just saying, again, that it was a good thing the 3e Manual of the Planes "watered down" the Great Wheel -- and the extreme degree to which the Great Wheel had become specific and detailed rather than vague thanks to the Planescape setting -- and that it was a good thing that the MotP presented the Great Wheel as one vague, general idea for a planar cosmology among many. It's my opinion that it was a bad thing that it didn't go far enough in this, actually. But criticizing the 3e MotP, which was, all in all, a pretty good book and better than it could've been (compare to the travesty of the 3.5 Planar Handbook) for what were specifically its good points annoys me.
Thanael 10-22-07, 10:50 AM	Ok, I'll check out both of them. Though admitedly I'm dissapointed that there isn't a book specifically about dying death the after life and resurection. If you check out the 3E Manual of the Planes and are intrigued by the Great Wheel Cosmology, try to check out Planescape.
Thanael 10-22-07, 10:53 AM	I'm just saying, again, that it was a good thing the 3e Manual of the Planes "watered down" the Great Wheel -- and the extreme degree to which the Great Wheel had become specific and detailed rather than vague thanks to the Planescape setting -- and that it was a good thing that the MotP presented the Great Wheel as one vague, general idea for a planar cosmology among many. So when someone asks is there a D&D book about the afterlife, you prefer there the answer: "there are some guidelines/options but not much, best to come up with it yourself" to "yes there was a whole campaign setting that dealt with it and detailed the baseline concept, check out such and such for introduction".:confused:
ArcTan 10-22-07, 02:51 PM	Yes, for the reasons Sarella Starshine gave. Note that the Planescape setting and the Great Wheel setting, which tries to give an "official" answer for how the afterlife works that makes sense for ordinary core D&D, therefore makes the afterlife almost useless for adventuring -- in order to make sure that dying matters to D&D characters and that D&D characters don't want to be dead, you get a system where "Petitioners" lose all their memories and most of their class abilities after death and are therefore not something anyone would actually want to roleplay as for any length of time. I'd prefer if the "guidelines/options" were more detailed and more in-depth, yes -- if D&D publication was about fleshing out lots of different options rather than having one, single official option and other "variants" as a sidebar. But I think the 3e MotP is still more useful than handing someone the Planescape campaign setting because it at least has options.
Kain_Darkwind 10-22-07, 03:02 PM	Yes, for the reasons Sarella Starshine gave. Note that the Planescape setting and the Great Wheel setting, which tries to give an "official" answer for how the afterlife works that makes sense for ordinary core D&D, therefore makes the afterlife almost useless for adventuring -- in order to make sure that dying matters to D&D characters and that D&D characters don't want to be dead, you get a system where "Petitioners" lose all their memories and most of their class abilities after death and are therefore not something anyone would actually want to roleplay as for any length of time. I'd prefer if the "guidelines/options" were more detailed and more in-depth, yes -- if D&D publication was about fleshing out lots of different options rather than having one, single official option and other "variants" as a sidebar. But I think the 3e MotP is still more useful than handing someone the Planescape campaign setting because it at least has options. "You have many options and can do whatever you want" is an incredibly useless answer when someone asks about a particular facet in DnD. That's the beauty of a core setting with a default assumption. It doesn't stop anyone from doing it different, but it supports those who need or desire a little more structure too.
sciborg3 10-22-07, 03:45 PM	I think that it becomes a question of a fleshed out default vs. presenting good options. Between MotP and Ghostwalk, you have the most definitive D&D takes on the afterlife AFAIK. The MotP was a good book that did a admirable job of balancing previous takes on the Great Wheel. Ghostwalk was too limiting for me, I just didn't find the afterlife concepts interesting personally. Petitioners losing their memories was meant to give some weight to the afterlife, otherwise it would be more of a change of location - it meant dying had a price even in a world (multiverse) where raising the dead wasn't all that hard. It's not the only option, and I don't recall if prior to Planescape this is what happens.
ArcTan 10-22-07, 07:45 PM	"You have many options and can do whatever you want" is an incredibly useless answer when someone asks about a particular facet in DnD. That's the beauty of a core setting with a default assumption. It doesn't stop anyone from doing it different, but it supports those who need or desire a little more structure too. "Here is a fleshed-out take on four or five different options that represent the broad spectrum of what someone might want to do" is a great response, though, and far more useful than "Here's one ginormous campaign setting entirely focused on one very specific possible answer to your question, and if it happens to not be what you want... you have to make it all up."
Taeldrin Laesrash 10-22-07, 08:40 PM	"Here is a fleshed-out take on four or five different options that represent the broad spectrum of what someone might want to do" is a great response, though, and far more useful than "Here's one ginormous campaign setting entirely focused on one very specific possible answer to your question, and if it happens to not be what you want... you have to make it all up." It helps for there to be an assumed process; does adventure and campaign design really need to be more complicated? It helps out new DMs, and it helps out people who won't really use the planes at all (Where the soul is just gone until you cast Raise Dead). It helps reduce the workload of a DM who can't come up with a cosmology in time to accompany his one-shot adventure.
ArcTan 10-22-07, 09:05 PM	It helps for there to be an assumed process; does adventure and campaign design really need to be more complicated? It helps out new DMs, and it helps out people who won't really use the planes at all (Where the soul is just gone until you cast Raise Dead). It helps reduce the workload of a DM who can't come up with a cosmology in time to accompany his one-shot adventure. Yes, and there is an assumed process in the PHB and DMG, where the afterlife is just this murky thing that happens to dead people and exists for the sake of adjudicating what happens when someone dies and is resurrected. If you actually want to do a game about the afterlife, then there should be multiple options presented. This was, in fact, WotC's early philosophy about books involving "planar" material -- D&DG and MotP both reflect this -- before these books started getting written primarily by freelancers.
Kain_Darkwind 10-22-07, 10:34 PM	"Here is a fleshed-out take on four or five different options that represent the broad spectrum of what someone might want to do" is a great response, though, and far more useful than "Here's one ginormous campaign setting entirely focused on one very specific possible answer to your question, and if it happens to not be what you want... you have to make it all up." If I ask a question about a movie, I expect a from the movie answer, not a fanfiction answer, nor a movie novelization answer, nor an original source material answer. The guy's question was about how it is done in DnD. Not about how he could do it in his game. A DnD core answer was sought, presumably so he could see how it stood up with what he imagined in his mind. I realize the League of DnD-Default Haters can't stand the idea of a singular base assumption from which the game builds off of yet can be changed in one's personal game, but let's not deny the hungry man his food just because you don't like him eating that. There are some situations in which a default core just works better than multiple fleshed out options.
ArcTan 10-22-07, 10:47 PM	If you open up Deities & Demigods, none of the pantheons or cosmologies presented therein is said to be a "variant" or "non-official" cosmology -- the D&D one is presented as an equal to the Egyptian gods and the Greek gods and the Norse gods. That's as it should be, I think. BTW, to the OP, D&DG is also a useful book for the fluff about different afterlives from different cultures, although the vast majority of the crunch about how to play a god as a character will probably not be useful to you.
awaken_D_M_golem 10-24-07, 06:16 PM	What happens when we die? Where do we go? What will we see? What will we encounter? Can we come back to life? If LG , you go to the LG plane and become a well treated, cute ball of light. If CN , you go to Chaos-ville and be anything, except that you are small, but you can fix that by concentrating for a minute ... hey look, I'm a building, cool ... and then you are whatever passes through your mind ... like anarchic Dolphins. If E , you go to a Night Hag's hovel; you look like a worm; she calls you "my pretty" in a tone worse than the bad witch in the Wizard of Oz; she herds you to a Malebrache; he gets you turned into a Lemure; you see nothing because you are blind; a frog thing from the abyss eats you; you only know this because it insisted on telepathing you that, for your last thought ever into eternity. If you believe in Pazuzu, or the Pazuzu Ascension Method, you can't come back to life. Pazuzu toys with your soul for eternity. Think of a yo-yo, over an acid pool, and a Happy Day's episode; a laugh track of manes. When you have no more innocence left, you become literally toast.