Future is now, man.
Warhammer.
Untold 10s of millennia ago, humans formed feudal states that allied with or fought against the states of other fantasy races. Magic was real and powerful, but technology was beginning to show. The generalized alignment of conflict was Order versus Chaos. Still, it’s a crapsack world.
40,000+ years later, humans have formed a high-tech interstellar empire, but are allied with or fighting against the empires of other fantasy races (quite possibly the successors of the feudal-era ones). Technology is real and very powerful, but there is still a lot of magic. The general alignment of the conflict is still Order versus Chaos, but now it’s a crapsack universe. But hey, now you can play using spaceship miniatures instead of infantry or fantastic armor unit miniatures.
So are you counting Cleric magic in this? Because I think living in a universe where you actually know who the gods are, know how to gain their explicit and powerful favors, know what happens to you when you die, and allows for the (limited) ability to go back and forth to the afterlife, is far more life-changing and culture-changing than whatever the wizards might get up to.
Tolkien’s universe is also intended to be our world’s pre-history. It was a huge influence on D&D.
I don’t think the universes of Warhammer Fantasy and 40k are connected.
Correct, the game and setting of Warhammer 40K was created independent of Warhammer Fantasy Battle. It was originally called Rogue Trader, but GW created a board game based off a comic book called Rogue Trooper, so at the last minute they changed the name to avoid confusing it with the board game. They also marketed it as a spin-off of the original miniature game, to build off of its success, but they still take place in unrelated settings.
I agree that having real gods that are actually Controlling our destinies, with Moral choices having provable influence on where you end up after death would lead to a massive Change of culture.
But to be honest, even D&D rarely thinks this through with their usual pseudo-medieval Worlds. How many People would actually commit crimes if there was indeniable proof that it would make you go to hell?
What would Society look like if there was zero reason for scarcity, as every decent follower of any of the gods could create basically unlimited food and water?
In such a world, society would be extremely based on what these entities expect from their followers, as the gods actively shape the world by choosing who they are giving these resources to.
If Magic is just another power source, it would probably have influenced how technology evolves, but not stopped it.
yeah but d&D gods seemed to be based on roman and greek gods … they just come down to meddle and the like sometimes the races just being proxies … I remember the conceit of Dragonlance was based on " what if instead of redeeming humanity god just took his ball and went home and you got the dark ages but without the religious aspect of it "
Shadowrun was just getting into the huge fight of the evil breaking through the plains when the fiction disappeared …
Lots. People commit crimes now with the undeniable proof that you can go to jail. People are terrible at long term planning and risk analysis and great at convincing themselves that they’re smart enough to figure it out later and avoid consequences.
People would either just focus on the now, convince themselves that they can avoid the consequences later or convince themselves that they’re powerful/smart enough to be something in the infernal afterlife better than a tormented soul or demon appetizers.
You mean a sort of priestly caste would evolve that would wield enormous, even dominating political; economic and social power & influence over the rest of the population ? Yes, yes I could see how that would be a radical difference with our own histories and societies 
But the operative word here is “can”. Yes, IF you get caught, and if you can’t BS your way out of it, and you can’t run away, THEN you will go to jail. But the whole thing starts with that “if”. With enough blind confidence in your own brilliance, you can drive semi-trucks through an if like that.
The risk assessment is very different when it’s a “you will, period” instead of “you can”. Like, you can’t bullshit the fundational laws of the universe itself and you can’t not get caught by the omniscient.
However…
Or that they can get away with it in various ways. Obviously the first and foremost loophole to “when you die you’ll go straight to hell” is “OK, so, plan A : not ever die”. Which isn’t all too far fetched in D&D world.
There’s also the tried and true John Constantine method of selling your soul to multiple high ranking devils (unbeknownst to each of course), knowing that none will let go of their lawful claim and in the end they’ll resurrect you rather than dealing with the fallout of your bullshit 
I think you highly overestimate people’s ability to assess future risk and highly underestimate their ability to rationalize something they want for immediate pleasure. Even for things that are certainties in this world, you see people dig themselves deeper into the hole all the time. “That’s tomorrow’s problem” is extremely seductive when you want something today.
There’s also the regular game world conceit that, for however common magic is for characters and big shots, the average goat farmer will never know someone who was raised from the dead or even spoken to after death. There’s sort of knowledge that this stuff goes on but usually not in a way that touches the common person’s life. Plus, the evil deities will be extremely adept at marketing themselves: Get what you want today, punishments are for other saps not for smart guys like you, etc. This isn’t a Christian ideal of one Big Guy sending the bad people to be punished; the Bad Guys have reason to make their own afterworlds attractive since their power probably comes from some level of worship.
Don’t forget the priests of evil gods telling you that hell isn’t that bad, don’t listen to those sanctimonious “good” priests and their propaganda. Just enjoy yourself, pray to Baal or whatever, and look out for yourself, which is what the self-righteous people are doing anyway if they were being honest about it. 
“Hey, how many succubi does Celestia have?”
That’s worthy of a mace drop.
Oh no doubt no doubt. INT is a dump stat anyway.
I have some monofilament fishing line. It’s on a spool rather than surgically implanted, so I guess I’m just not punky enough. Multifilament is thinner and more expensive than monofilament, anyway.
In my games, “hell” isn’t a place where evil people get punished, it’s just the place where evil people go after they die. It’s still a really sucky place to be, because any place populated exclusively by evil people is going to suck, but the point isn’t to “punish” people for their “sins.” It’s more like a reward for being bad - it’s a place you can go where you’re actively encouraged to torment people who are weaker than you, and you can almost always find at least one person weaker than you.
Also, the more strongly you embody your alignment in life, the more powerful you are in the afterlife, so there’s a positive reinforcement for people who are evil to be really, really evil, as it means they’ll wind up higher on the evil totem pole after they die. The vast majority of people in hell are there because they rationalized their shitty behavior as okay, and didn’t consider themselves evil - crooked merchants, corrupt officials, cruel spouses, neglectful parents - and for them being in hell is pretty bad. But if you raised an army of undead and plunged a continent into a century of strife and blood, when you die, you’re going to become a much more powerful form of demon, giving you more choice in what sort of other infernal denizens you can brutalize, and limiting the number of demons who are strong enough to brutalize you back. Which is why you get so many cackling, evil-for-the-sake-of-evil villains in D&D. If you’re going to hell anyway, the best move is to burn down a bunch of orphanages along the way, so you get that demonic promotion when a paladin finally catches up to you and runs you through with his holy sword.
Maybe, but since this is D&D, that clearly applies more to a WIS check than INT.
Remember, INT tells you that the wet substance falling on you from the sky is rain.
WIS tells you to seek shelter from it if you don’t want to get wet.
A brave man likes the feel of nature on his face. But a wise man has enough sense to get out of the rain.
Yeah, this thread eventually got me thinking along those lines as well - like, the various flavours of D&D “hell” are pretty much heaven assuming you’re an evil cunt to begin with. If you’re e.g. a scheming LE asshole who delights in fucking others over in a I’m-not-touching-youuu way and exploiting the small print of the rules to your advantage, then what better place to be in than [del]the seat of our noble house[/del] a place where not only can you do it, it’s absolutely expected and the best at it rise and post-live eternally with the towering fruits of their fuckery ? Or, if you’re an CE omnicidal maniac who’s just in it for the murder, wouldn’t “eternal hellwar and no one judges you over a little bit of the ol’ rape-to-death” be right up your alley ?