Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
So I ask this of anybody who cares to answer (though OldTrees1 is in particular invited to respond): "Why should I be moral?"
In most fantasy settings, including D&D, one answer to this question is 'so that when I die I don't spend an extremely lengthy period of time suffering horribly.'

If there is an explicit afterlife in a fantasy setting, and if that afterlife lasts longer than the mortal life (which is almost always does, whether it's 'eternal' or not), then mortal existence is basically a test that determines outcomes for the actual majority of a being's existence which will in fact occur after death - even with an afterlife that ends after 10,000 years, the average human still spends 99% of their existence in it. Consequently, the reason to be moral is to secure the best possible consequence for this majority period.

Now, D&D is tricky in that some small portion of evil people, like 0.01% or something, actually manage to beat the system. While 99.99% of those who perish with the evil tag applied to their alignment are doomed to an extremely long period of abject misery and suffering as a Larva, Lemure, Manes, or other low-level denizen of the Lower Planes until they are ultimately destroyed in the Blood War, a lucky few manage to escape this fate and ascend the fiendish hierarchy. 'It is better to rule in hell than serve in heaven' is arguably true in D&D, but only for those souls that manage to win the evil lottery. Most people who end up in Hell are getting the full course torture package. However, almost everyone who self-acknowledges as 'evil' in D&D parlance thinks they'll be one of the lucky ones, which means that willful embrace of evil, in D&D, involves an immense level of delusional thinking. Which is just very strange.