Quote from: jhkim on Today at 02:41:35 AM

Quote from: SHARK on May 05, 2025, 10:37:45 PMIt was not unheard of with campaigns back in the day where some individual Orc, a small group, or even a tribe, were of some Non-Evil alignment. That differed from the rules, though also the rules encouraged the DM to be creative and make the game their own, so there was always room in a campaign for weird exceptions from the norm. That kind of dynamic has always been an aspect of the D&D game, from the earliest years.

Right.

There's this idea that having non-evil orcs in one's game is a weakening of the true original vision - only done by woke liberals.

Greetings!

Well, Jhkim, Context is critically important. Over the recent 10 to 15 years, it has always been Woke Liberals that have been promoting and pushing this kind of stuff. "Re-imagining" and "Reinterpreting" everything from campaign assumptions, Character Classes, Alignment, and Monsters, all from a very Woke ideological framework. Colonialism, Misogyny, Imperialism, Racism, and on and on. All with a desire to not merely discuss the events and such of their own campaigns, but demand and lecture everyone else on why they need to embrace these kinds of changes to their own campaigns as well. Always demanding and promoting a Woke interpretation of how everyone should be playing D&D.

THAT SPECIFIC IDEOLOGICAL TREND OF PROMOTING AND DEMANDING CONFORMITY TO WOKE PHILOSOPHY is what normal gamers have been reacting towards. Why? Because it isn't a matter of just a few jackass Woke Liberals encountered at some Convention game--it is that normal gamers encounter these people at every turn--at game conventions, online forums, game store game clubs, YouTube videos, YouTube Streams, and within editorial sections of various rulebooks and game modules.

Thus, normal gamers are absolutely sick, tired, and angry at hearing Woke BS lectured to them at every turn, so you get a harsh reaction towards anything that looks like Woke Liberals are promoting and demanding.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: bat on Today at 11:12:46 AMSHARK!, I know your comment was aimed at jhkim, yet I find myself sometimes surprised by the gonzo  elements that players bring in and if they roll well, I run with it. A very memorable Labyrinth Lord game years ago had an extra player, the wife of a regular who had never played an rpg before, yet was curious. She wanted to play a 'cook'. I figured this was a one off for her and took a thief and gave the class culinary skills. Deep in the dungeon they were  ambushed by a small warband of lizardmen and she offered them some hot chicken soup (the party was settling to rest) and she rolled very well and acted out offering them soup. The shaman of the lizardmen was able to communicate and they had allies/bodyguards as long as good food was coming their way.

Greetings!

Bat! That is hilarious and brilliant! *Laughing* That kind of creative and intuitive play is always so awesome! I love that! She sounds like she was a very nice and fun player.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: jhkim on Today at 02:41:35 AMI don't have a problem with evil orcs, but I also don't have a problem with non-evil orcs like Quij. It's up to the DM. There can and should be different kinds of orcs in different games and campaigns.

Minor point, but Quij wasn't non-evil as Robilar was evil and had many orc minions.  Even the link provided earlier has Quij's alignment as LE. (That brings an entirely different conversation on if orcs are LE or CE)

I was actually thinking about this the other day reading through OD&D. WOTC should create a 5.5e setting that utilizes the default assumptions of the edition in a way Eberron did for 3e. (Queue "Evil cannot create, it can only pervert" here) As it does seem very to have a very different vibe with the removal of default evil humanoids.

Looking only at OD&D

There's very little information on other humanoids outside of leadership. It's interesting to see how the various humanoids 'level up' with their leaders.
goblins - king is equivalent to hobgoblin
hobgoblins - as an ogre
gnolls - as a troll

Orcs on the other hand are given a lot of information. It mentions inter-tribal hostility as well as them living in both caves and villages. Half the time you'll run into an orc wagon train that's run by a high level fighter or magic-user. Their leaders will be actual dragons, ogres, or trolls, not 'fight as'.

I'm not sure in our gaming if I -ever- ran into an orc wagon train. Normally they were raiding one we were protecting.

They are definitely treated differently than all the other humanoids.

Default D&D is clearly not a Tolkienesque setting that alludes to a Christian worldview. I suppose I don't understand why in a setting where you have distinctly evil deities creating worshippers, why its such a terrible thing to say they are locked in to their alignment/behavior and therefore irredeemable?

Regarding Quij the orc... I think I didn't write clearly earlier. It's not so much his listed alignment that's I meant, as opposed to PC-to-orc relations. Having a PC with a poncho-wearing orc sidekick whom he trusts seems contrary to the general vibe of "orcs are filthy enemies to all humanity who need to be wiped out".

Again, nothing wrong with games where orcs always need to strictly be killed - but it's clearly not the only old-school way.

Quote from: Tristan on Today at 12:57:58 PMLooking only at OD&D
...
Orcs on the other hand are given a lot of information. It mentions inter-tribal hostility as well as them living in both caves and villages. Half the time you'll run into an orc wagon train that's run by a high level fighter or magic-user. Their leaders will be actual dragons, ogres, or trolls, not 'fight as'.

I'm not sure in our gaming if I -ever- ran into an orc wagon train. Normally they were raiding one we were protecting.

They are definitely treated differently than all the other humanoids.

Default D&D is clearly not a Tolkienesque setting that alludes to a Christian worldview. I suppose I don't understand why in a setting where you have distinctly evil deities creating worshippers, why its such a terrible thing to say they are locked in to their alignment/behavior and therefore irredeemable?

I think the posters who are talking about redemption are talking about Tolkien orcs, not OD&D or AD&D orcs.

OD&D orcs have more information than some other OD&D monsters that are just stats, but they're still not described much compared to later editions or other games. Under the alignment table, they are listed under both the Neutral column and the Chaotic column. They live in caves or villages, as you say, and evidently have a lot of wagon trains. They are illustrated as this:



I'm not sure how that comes together as far as a full picture of what they are like. What are they typically carrying in those wagon trains? Where are they typically going from and to?

For what it's worth, I never saw orc wagon trains either. I think DMs mostly ignored most of this and pictured orcs as in Tolkien, or alternately made up their own ideas about what orcs are like.

I just find it weird that Gygax had an orc in a poncho, and I wonder if it was the OG inspiration for the Mexican orcs of today.

Quote from: jhkim on Today at 02:27:27 PMRegarding Quij the orc... I think I didn't write clearly earlier. It's not so much his listed alignment that's I meant, as opposed to PC-to-orc relations. Having a PC with a poncho-wearing orc sidekick whom he trusts seems contrary to the general vibe of "orcs are filthy enemies to all humanity who need to be wiped out".

Again, nothing wrong with games where orcs always need to strictly be killed - but it's clearly not the only old-school way.

I think the posters who are talking about redemption are talking about Tolkien orcs, not OD&D or AD&D orcs.

OD&D orcs have more information than some other OD&D monsters that are just stats, but they're still not described much compared to later editions or other games. Under the alignment table, they are listed under both the Neutral column and the Chaotic column. They live in caves or villages, as you say, and evidently have a lot of wagon trains. They are illustrated as this:



I'm not sure how that comes together as far as a full picture of what they are like. What are they typically carrying in those wagon trains? Where are they typically going from and to?

For what it's worth, I never saw orc wagon trains either. I think DMs mostly ignored most of this and pictured orcs as in Tolkien, or alternately made up their own ideas about what orcs are like.

They were carrying 200-1200 GP per wagon. 1-8 wagons with an additional 10 orcs per wagon plus a 7-9th level fighter or 9-11th level wizard

It isn't just the Tolkien orcs that people discuss this with, however. I have seen many posts at various places about how uncomfortable people are with the idea of "purely evil races" because they somehow equate it to some type of real world human. This is the thought that permeates the 2024 edition.

My comment is mainly to address that thought process, as the Tolkienesque thought process is still involved.

As far as Quij goes, I've done some looking. From Rob's accounts he's a normal orc just intensely loyal to Robilar. Robilar used orcs because they were cheaper than humans to pay for troop wise, and upkeep costs were strictly enforced.

"Did Gary really elevate Quij to "hero status" (4th level) after this encounter?"
Yes, he was elevated by EGG due to the circumstances of him slaying the troll single-handedly, which of course "meant" that he was an exceptional orc.
"What kind of stats did Quij end up with?"
4th level orc with 12 hp and chain armor and shield and sword, nothing spectacular for OD&D."

I concur that orcs are shown in Monsters & Treasure as both Neutral and Chaotic, but by the time of the Greyhawk supplement, they are Chaotic Evil on that chart.

It seems a very narrow window that they were neutral at all.

Nearly all humanoids could be friendly if the reaction roll went well. That doesn't meant they won't stab you in the back at soon as it makes sense to.

Quote from: Socratic-DM on May 05, 2025, 11:09:47 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on May 05, 2025, 08:22:33 AMJust because you are yourself the victim of a crime does not absolve you of responsibilities you commit afterwards, so the orcs are still fully responsible for wrongdoing with Morgoth and Sauron guilty of accessory. This logic applies quite well to our current political climate; a lot of people drinking a whole lot of political Kool-Aid are effectively political footsoldiers. They don't want to take personal responsibility for their actions, but they are still morally culpable for the wrongdoing, and just because you don't like someone doesn't give you a license to commit crime against them.

Interesting invocation of modern politics...
I will note you might be in the J.R.R Martin camp of criticizing Aragorn's policy decisions. because he does in fact politically pardons the minions of Sauron, just not the orcs. such as the Easterlings and the Haradrim. mind you both cultures that had been corrupted and controlled by Sauron for centuries and had even Morgoth worship as a stable of their cultural practices. even they get more consideration to their circumstances than the Orcs.
why are we holding ancestral guilt for one but not the other?

...

The fact of the matter is wordcount and rambling wasn't the issue here, he devoted more lines to giving closure to aspects of the setting we had less direct exposure with than the orcs, but couldn't be bothered with the orcs?

The pragmatic editorial explanation doesn't really answer this one.

The fact of the matter is he did choose to skip out on giving orcs any sort of closing. Instead he basically used authorial prerogative to effectively delete them from existence, so presumably Tolkien did have a reason to write the ending this way. I don't know for a fact what that reason is, but I can think of good ones to do so. Well, acceptable ones, anyways. There probably are good ones out there that I don't know or haven't thought of.

I think that Martin's criticism is probably halfway-fair. In a vacuum, I would like to see a less fairy tale sunshine and rainbows ending. However, Martin hasn't actually written the end of A Song of Ice and Fire, yet. The series has been on hiatus for almost 14 years, and I think we can all agree that an ending with a gaff (if you can call this that) is automatically better than an ending which does not exist. The expression, "remove the log from your own eye before removing the speck of dust from your brother's," comes to mind.

Although while we're on the topic of ASOIAF, it's my editorial opinion that ASOIAF is a practically impossible series to end well, and this has been my opinion since I first finished reading A Game of Thrones. The best high fantasy endings build themselves off of a morality conflict coming to closure, and a majority of the characters in ASOIAF have amorphous morals which resist closures. If you doubt this...watch Space Battleship Yamato 2199. The ending is a screaming hot home run and it is entirely built off the morality disparity between Desler and Okita. [/Tangent]

Quote

QuoteElvish souls don't die the way the other races of Middle Earth do; they are bound to Arda, to the point that they live forever unless they are killed and even when they are killed, they can be reincarnated in some circumstances. Presumably, elvish souls will cease to be when Arda ceases to exist, which really puts a dampener on how much value penance can actually provide. The only carrot possible for penance is a return to the Undying lands, but otherwise they will be stuck in an indefinite life and reincarnation cycle until the end of Arda

This would promote a rather hedonistic and materialistic mindset among the elves as they basically just have a form of mechanistic determinism with extra steps.  which of course we don't see, and puts a rather nihilistic note on the story, which I don't think Tolkien was going for.

But that is rather beside the point because You are mistaking speculative information within the setting for factual, in so far as Elves fates after Arda is "destroyed" if it ever even is properly destroyed. while yes their souls are tied to Arda and don't pass on (I've already noted this before) It's never spelled out or made clear what happens after Arda for them, Dwarves believe they are responsible for rebuilding Arda after it's destruction, despite their souls being just as tethered to the direct fate of Arda, so in no way is this implication set in stone or affirmed as fact anyway that they all cease to be after some specific event or time.

Also there is that pesky detail that we never see orcs or former orcs in the halls of Mandos. or even a slight hint to that idea.
/quote]

Well, are we taking the, "this is a flaw" tack or the, "this is a fan theory," tack?

I do think this pushes towards being a flaw. While Tolkien would point to fundamental personality and taste differences between humans and elves, you are ultimately correct that this outlook should tend towards hedonism.

I really don't see much point in continuing this direction of conversation. You do know significantly more about Tolkien than I do, but at the same time we are way past the visible parts of The Lord of the Ring's lore, and it isn't surprising at all to find plot holes when you delve this deep into a fictional world. When you go this deep into a setting's metaphysic, it becomes less about avoiding plot holes altogether and more about framing events so flaws aren't obvious or obtrusive.

Quote from: Fheredin on Today at 07:05:00 PMI really don't see much point in continuing this direction of conversation. You do know significantly more about Tolkien than I do, but at the same time we are way past the visible parts of The Lord of the Ring's lore, and it isn't surprising at all to find plot holes when you delve this deep into a fictional world. When you go this deep into a setting's metaphysic, it becomes less about avoiding plot holes altogether and more about framing events so flaws aren't obvious or obtrusive

Yeah I more or less agree, both our arguments have about run their course, I will note Tolkien never decided what Orcs were in his life time, and offered multiple answers to fans and others who asked the topic. I happen to prefer a specific answer given I think it conflicts less with the established metaphysics and lore as it exists. but nobody actually has an answer and that is always something should be kept in mind when talking about the setting that Tolkien created. The man himself hadn't properly decided on a number of things.

QuoteWell, are we taking the, "this is a flaw" tack or the, "this is a fan theory," tack?

I do think this pushes towards being a flaw. While Tolkien would point to fundamental personality and taste differences between humans and elves, you are ultimately correct that this outlook should tend towards hedonism.

The "tact" I was getting at here was more that Elven culture doesn't support the idea that they have some final death or cease existing. there are places in the Legendarium that is hinted at, but it's not set as fact so much as myth, how Arda ends and if it recycles are rather vague aspects of the Legendarium that are explicitly left as myth and rumor by Tolkien (aka he doesn't have nor care to entertain a proper answer)

And it's clear the elves don't have a culture tat expresses a specific answer either.

Which leads to an interesting sub topic that honestly might deserve it's own thread- That being Elves as a subversion of immortality.

Often Tolkien's imitators tend to depict elves as aloof and detached from the fate of mortals or the world as a whole, when this is quite the opposite on a macro perspective in Tolkien's case. Elves value the world more than any other race.

Because unlike humanity, elves have to bear the consequences of everything they do in and to the world, humans don't, humans aren't fated to Arda and go off to who knows where. This is why elves are such a generally conservative and cultivation focused culture, because anything that happens they will live long enough to face the consequences of that specific choice. They're like the ultimate anti-boomers.

This is why elves in the setting are utterly baffled by humanity's jealousy of immortality, because they don't view it as a perk.

QuoteI think that Martin's criticism is probably halfway-fair. In a vacuum, I would like to see a less fairy tale sunshine and rainbows ending. However, Martin hasn't actually written the end of A Song of Ice and Fire, yet. The series has been on hiatus for almost 14 years, and I think we can all agree that an ending with a gaff (if you can call this that) is automatically better than an ending which does not exist. The expression, "remove the log from your own eye before removing the speck of dust from your brother's," comes to mind.

Although while we're on the topic of ASOIAF, it's my editorial opinion that ASOIAF is a practically impossible series to end well, and this has been my opinion since I first finished reading A Game of Thrones. The best high fantasy endings build themselves off of a morality conflict coming to closure, and a majority of the characters in ASOIAF have amorphous morals which resist closures. If you doubt this...watch Space Battleship Yamato 2199. The ending is a screaming hot home run and it is entirely built off the morality disparity between Desler and Okita.

I have not read Martin's work outside of short stories and anthology stuff. I've been burned too many times by starting series that never finished properly, so I refuse to pick up series that haven't finished. (unless the author is dead, like Frank Herbert)
Likewise I also refuse to give HBO any of my money so I don't care about that overrated show either.

I can't exactly have criticisms of him from a textual perspective, because I've really never read his stuff in earnest. but I do agree, don't throw stones at endings when you can't even write your own damn ending.

Unrelated and not to start another thing altogether, but I'd say Lord Of The Rings doesn't exactly have a "happy ending" it certainly has a positive one, but you are seeing the curtains close of an era of magic and heroics, banished to the annals of time to exist as as merely rumor and myth... There is something rather poetic and sad about.