Gods and Religions, Part 2: Death, Undeath, and the Afterlife

Death - it comes for us all, eventually.  Sorry, that's not how I usually start my articles.  Welcome to part II of Gods and Religions!  Usually, an adventurer's main interaction with death is in the dealing thereof, but sometimes - hopefully not too often - the characters get to meet death face-to-face.  If they are lucky enough and rich enough (or know a druid and aren't afraid to come back as a different species) they might even get to come back from the dead.  This can make death seem like just another game mechanic, but it is so much more important than that.

A religion's attitude towards death can have a profound effect on the beliefs and attitudes of the individual and on society as a whole.  And that's just in our world!  Imagine how much more important religious ideas about death become when the afterlife is not just a matter of belief but of verifiable fact (heck, you can just plane shift there!), when there are a number of spells that can bring the dead back to life, and when dead bodies returning as undead monstrosities is a very real danger.

With that in mind, there are some questions you need to ask yourself about death when you are creating the gods and religions of your world.  Questions like:

Can dying in a certain way have consequences for a soul?

Einherjar - brave souls who died in battle - are fêted by Valkyries in Valhalla. Walhall by Emil Doepler, via Wikimedia

Most belief systems have the concept of a 'good death' vs a 'bad death'.  Suicide, for instance, is often considered a bad death, but dying for your faith is a good death (see for example the many hundreds of early Christians who were martyred by pagans and became saints as a result).  For the ancient Greeks, drowning in the sea was a particularly bad death because your body often could not be recovered.  In most cases a good death means a fast track to the nice afterlife, but a bad death means a longer waiting period, or even being condemned to the shitty afterlife that no one wants to go to, even for a quick visit.  In pagan Norse belief, for instance, a brave death in battle might see you whisked by Valkyries up to the halls of Valhalla for an afterlife of feasting and drinking, or to the field of Fólkvangr where Freyja's hall of Sessrúmnir stands (and where women who die a noble death also go), but dying of disease or old age gets you sent to the dark halls of Hel.

Consider having the idea of a 'bad death' manifest mechanically in-game with tougher resurrection costs.  Maybe a character who dies in a way that their god considers 'bad' cannot be raised by the raise dead spell and require the more expensive resurrection or even true resurrection.  

At the very least, having a concept of a 'good death' vs a 'bad death' can affect the risks a believer might be willing to take.  With the promise of divine reward, maybe a character will be more willing to fight to the death in battle.  With the threat of a tougher afterlife, maybe that same character will be a little more cautious fighting at sea, where the risk of drowning and having their soul sucked into a black abyss is very real.  Or maybe a character dying of disease will throw themselves recklessly into battle in hopes of reaching a better afterlife.

Speaking of the afterlife...

Expanded Reincarnation Tables - Back from the Dead with a Brand New Body

I don't care how you die, the most fun way to come back is reincarnation.  Sure, spells like raise dead and true resurrection bring you back just as you were before, but with reincarnate, you could come back as anything!  Well, so long as your definition of 'anything' is 'bugbear, dwarf, elf, gnoll, gnome, goblin, half-elf, half-orc, halfling, human, kobold, lizardfolk, orc, or troglodyte'.  I really like the element of chance involved in reincarnate; it feels right to be rolling on some big percentile table when you come back from the dead in D&D.  But it feels like there should be more options for what you come back as, for better or for worse.  So when one of the characters in one of my ongoing campaigns died (you'll see who in a later update), I decided the time was right to make my own table.  Well, tables.

I took some inspiration from the old AD&D version of reincarnate, which gave you a chance to come back as a centaur, a satyr, a badger, or any number of other woodland creatures.  It makes sense for a druid spell.  So on my tables, you have a chance (albeit a much smaller one) to come back as an animal or fey creature.  I even added plants and vermin, something I feel druids would appreciate, though the recipient of the reincarnate might feel a little less comfortable with it.  I think the possibility (however small) of coming back as a flower or a cockroach really adds to the sense of risk that this inexpensive shortcut back to the world of the living should have.

"Okay, maybe we should have sprung for raise dead, but I think we still have what it takes to bring down that lich!"

Illus. Paul Bransom via Wikimedia

I also wanted to expand the number of races you could come back as, making full use of the Advanced Race Guide.  This is where more of my own personal opinions went into this table, because there are some races in the the ARG that I am wholly against.  Some, like the half-vampire dhampir or the sci-fi android I left out because I think they are dumb and I would never let my players play them.  Others, like the half-wyvern half-kobold wyvaran and the four-armed kasatha, I think are overpowered, cheesy, and dumb, and I would never let my players play them.  But, hey, feel free to modify these tables to include them if you like them.  I won't judge.  I would have excluded the notorious Mary-Sue-bait catfolk race from my campaigns had one of my players not convinced me that they could be played realistically, like asshole cats, not just as special snowflake fetish-fodder.

I also, of course, put my own homebrew races in there.

So there are a lot of things a player could come back as using these reincarnation tables.  Even some monsters are available as rare options!  Take a look, and use them in your game if you like.

Traps 102 with Dr. Henry Jones, Jr.

Paramount Pictures

Last week, in Traps 101, I used Raiders of the Lost Ark to demonstrate a few basic things that traps can do in a dungeon.  I mean, besides maiming and killing.  This week, I'm also bringing in examples from Temple of Doom and Last Crusade, the only other Indiana Jones movies I recognize as canon (not that Crystal Skulls had any traps in it anyways).

Indiana Jones is an adventurer's adventurer, so it really makes sense that the temples and ruins he navigates are dungeons any GM would be happy to have created.  They have a cinematic quality to them (naturally) that boils the elements of a good dungeon down to a few tightly-implemented set-pieces.  For that reason, the Indiana Jones movies ring true as great D&D-style adventures despite the fact that there are no fantastical monsters and Indy himself doesn't wear armour or wield a sword.

"You're strangely dressed for a knight..."                 Paramount Pictures

So what else can we learn about traps from the adventures of Professor Henry Jones, Jr.?

Killing Your Characters

It should go without saying that death is an important part of RPGs.  Not just the death of monsters and bad guys, but death of characters.  That isn't to say that character death should be particularly common (though in some games it is), but it should always be there, lurking in the background.  After all, the rules for death and dying don't just apply to the bad guys.  For an RPG to really feel engaging, you need the threat of death, or the players' actions aren't realistic: "Oh man, this dragon is hitting us pretty hard! If we don't kill it soon, we may all end up... going unconscious for 8 hours and then having to try again."

In this post, I'll talk about PC death from both sides of the GM screen, NPC death, and raising the dead.