Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
No. If you're a masochistic worshipper of the god of pain in life you are probably sufficiently delusional as to rationalize to yourself spending eternity in a put full of flaming spikes would be awesome, but that isn't actually true, and the suffering is exactly as bad as a neutral observer thinks it would be. Someone who's brain chemistry is actually sufficiently messed up to enjoy spending time immolating while being impaled is sufficiently mentally disturbed as to preclude any alignment other than chaotic neutral.
That seems like a cop-out to preserve a more traditional (and, to be fair, saner) view of morality in the face of the claims D&D makes. But the setup the game presents (or at least the Great Wheel cosmology that is most directly tied to alignment) is very much that all the afterlives are supposed to be rewards. Some of them are structured differently, but the Evil afterlives aren't punishments, they are rewards for being Evil that are desirable to Evil people.

In particular, the notion that a sincere devote of the God of Pain isn't actually Evil seems to me to be basically a rejection of the validity of the alignment system (which is not necessarily a position I'm opposed to, but seems inconsistent with the thrust of your argument).

The real issue I find D&D has is that it presumes people like this are common.
Well that's basically the issue with alignment. Once you postulate that the Drow and Orcs are culturally Evil in some meaningful sense, you're left with a very difficult dilemma. Either "Evil" means something radically different from its real-world meaning (e.g. A Practical Guide to Evil, where "Evil" is basically just a team), or you start getting into the bizarre implications of D&D morality. If Drow culture is "Evil", then not only do the individual Drow have to be Evil, but the Drow afterlife has to be such that it makes sense for them to choose to be Evil. Or Lolth has to have such tight control over Drow society that she can force them to be Evil against both their wishes and their best interests.