AD&D and 2e both opened up options for playing regular orcs as PCs.

And sometimes theyve been depicted as not all that different from humans even in AD&D. At other times they seem to be their own fractious culture that just seems to love a good brawl. Sometimes they come across as slightly advanced cave men. Really depends on who is writing today.

Pretty much like everything else. Depends on the writer.

Warhammer just distilled that onto the sum total of what an orc is. They love to fight and understand little else.

In the early campaign I played with Jan and the gang way back orcs were depicted as having more variety. Its just that you tended to run into the evil ones alot because they were the ones running around causing trouble.

Quote from: Ravenswing;811394... because there are people out there -- even D&D players -- who are more into roleplaying than in designing characters for maximum tactical advantage.

My original assumption was that there probably WAS some tactical advantage to taking a Half-Orc. That the choice was primarily min-max related.
Such as:

Quote from: Lynn;811392A half orc good guy might well be able to penetrate enemy lines as its conceivable that a half orc might be a "force of darkness"; a human barbarian wouldn't be able to do that.

And this from a random D&D wiki that googled up when I searched 'D&D orc PCs?':
"Here's what they're supposed to be: Half-Orcs have the smarts of a human and the strength of an Orc."

Quote from: Simlasa;811396Players could pick Orc as a race in 3.5, yes?

Well, not in the Player's Handbook. As I understood it, they were supported but only as a relatively exotic option that allowed you to play just about any suitable monster as a PC, from gargoyle to minotaur.

Tunnels and Trolls never cared, so they have orcs who are as good or bad as any other species, if culturally a little more feisty! It avoids having the half orc as rape thing.

I liked how 13th Age actually said that orcs are not an actual species, they are a magical cultural effect when humans (or maybe other humanoids) face terrible conditions, war, crisis etc.. they start turning into orcs as their civilised traits fade. Works well in a magic soaked fantasy setting and again avoids the rape thing.

D&D 5e simply addressed it head on, some orcs and humans get on and have kids, sometimes rape happens. Which was fine and adult and means that good orcs must be possible, even if the culture tends to the 'bad side'

RuneQuest Glorantha solved the whole "greenskinned men who are monstrous' thing by making the trolls, trollkin, cave trolls etc. fill the niche, with a fully developed culture and their own morals. In fact, if you want to you can port the whole Glorantha troll pak into a D&D game and rename them orcs, goblins, ogres etc..

Quote from: Simlasa;811388I guess that's where it stymied me... because in the majority of games I've played either there aren't any orcs at all or they're painted in shades of gray and ARE a viable PC race... such as in Earthdawn.
I was missing the element of D&D-think.

That's kinda' how I've always thought of it. I have a half-orc cleric waiting in the wings for my group's current campaign in case my gunslinger's ticket gets punched, and I basically just plan to play him like an ork (including the gahad, which is one of my favorite little touches from Earthdawn).

Quote from: tzunder;811475I liked how 13th Age actually said that orcs are not an actual species, they are a magical cultural effect when humans (or maybe other humanoids) face terrible conditions, war, crisis etc.. they start turning into orcs as their civilised traits fade. Works well in a magic soaked fantasy setting and again avoids the rape thing.

Hmm, I like that.  Now that I know there's at least one thing good in 13th Age, I may take a closer look.  It's like a magical/cosmological version of Howard's Evolution/De-Evolution cycle, where cultures of men rise and then fall back into barbarism and maybe all the way back to apedom.

Quote from: Simlasa;811268I saw someone on G+ asking for a half-orc write-up for DCC.
This got me thinking about why someone might want to play a half-orc... but I didn't come up with much.

Since the guy asking was looking for unseen/unofficial rules (and looking to make up his own if he didn't find any) I can't assume it's just because of some precious rules/mechanics bonus.
 
It seems to me that if you wanted to run a strong/brutal character you could go with a plain old fighter and play him as a barbarian.
Or, if you like orcs go for a purebred/vatbred one... with all the social pariah baggage that might come with it.
Why half-orc? They're still visually non-human so likely to suffer prejudice... likely from both purebreed races. Is there some widespread concept of half-orcs I'm not tuned into?
Is it because playing a straight orc would just lead to too much trouble?

I don't get it, any thoughts?

I like half-breeds. They afford an immediate and obvious hint of backstory which can be extrapolated upon - or not - according to the demands of play, and they generally have some sort of interesting mechanical aspect to boot. In AD&D/OSRIC, for instance, I quite like the concept of the Cleric/Assassin and I'd like to muck around with that, see how it plays and what I can do with it.

My first half-orc was rolled for a third edition group where I (as the only experienced player in a group of newbies) was asked to "take the cleric bullet" by the DM, who felt that a competently-played healer/second wave fighter would be necessary to hold the others together. The half-orc was a good mechanical fit (no Wis penalty and quite good in a scrap) and I liked the idea of this grumpy, slightly monstrous-looking priest being packed off to supervise a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears adventurers. It all felt a bit Labyrinth.

I also tend to play the token evil PC when I can find someone else to take over DM duties, so I figure I might as well play an 'evil' race - and drow are overdone.

Quote from: tzunder;811475I liked how 13th Age actually said that orcs are not an actual species, they are a magical cultural effect when humans (or maybe other humanoids) face terrible conditions, war, crisis etc.. they start turning into orcs as their civilised traits fade. Works well in a magic soaked fantasy setting and again avoids the rape thing.

I like that.
My own approach to orcs, when I've had them in a setting, is to say they're created by wizards... a kind of chimera... not a real 'race' and usually without sexual organs... so generally not capable of breeding. But still playable as PCs.
Beastmen/broo/chaos mutants are my preference for the raping/pillaging monsters who leave halfbreeds wherever they roam.

Quote from: Omega;811417Warhammer just distilled that onto the sum total of what an orc is. They love to fight and understand little else.

I kinda prefer 40k's "biological combat robot", "galactic immune system" take on them - you can't get rid of them, they can bootstrap their entire society from just one spore, you can't develop an intersteller society without being able to see them off, they can't be corrupted because they've already got everything they want, but they can't take over anything long-term because they can't co-operate that well - but yeah, GW do good greenskins.

Quote from: Ladybird;811730I kinda prefer 40k's "biological combat robot", "galactic immune system" take on them - you can't get rid of them, they can bootstrap their entire society from just one spore, you can't develop an intersteller society without being able to see them off, they can't be corrupted because they've already got everything they want, but they can't take over anything long-term because they can't co-operate that well - but yeah, GW do good greenskins.

Spores?

Quote from: Randaconda;811742Spores?

Ork biology got thoroughly detailed in GorkaMorka.

40k Orks continually give off spores, which embed themselves in the ground and can pick up on the Ork psychic field. If they can't detect any orkoids near enough, they grow into fungus and give off more spores; as the colony increases, it will produce Snotlings to tend the spores, then Gretchin to start building stuff, and then full-on Orks when there's enough around to support them.

Orks that get old enough go off to die somewhere, giving their last batch of spores a great environment to grow in.

Quote from: Ladybird;811751Ork biology got thoroughly detailed in GorkaMorka.

40k Orks continually give off spores, which embed themselves in the ground and can pick up on the Ork psychic field. If they can't detect any orkoids near enough, they grow into fungus and give off more spores; as the colony increases, it will produce Snotlings to tend the spores, then Gretchin to start building stuff, and then full-on Orks when there's enough around to support them.

Orks that get old enough go off to die somewhere, giving their last batch of spores a great environment to grow in.

Oh, right. Thank you, not familiar with much Warhammer stuff. Sounds pretty interesting.

Quote from: tzunder;811475I liked how 13th Age actually said that orcs are not an actual species, they are a magical cultural effect when humans (or maybe other humanoids) face terrible conditions, war, crisis etc.. they start turning into orcs as their civilised traits fade. Works well in a magic soaked fantasy setting and again avoids the rape thing.

  I need to recheck my copies of 13th Age material; I hadn't picked up on all of that. I knew that orcs weren't 'natural' and that half-orcs were likewise a spontaneous reaction (and so are half-elves, of a different sort).

  This approach to orcs actually works well with Tolkien's original concept combined with some of his musings about how Morgoth had disseminated his power throughout Middle-Earth.

  One variation I've considered takes a similar approach combined with the Professor's musings on orcs as 'uplifted' beasts--orcs are the product of a magical mutation plague that converts animals to programmed soldiers of a dark power. The 'common orc' is typically created from a mixture of ape, bear and/or boar stock; gnolls are what you get when hyenas, jackals and other canine species are infected.

   Half-orcs? The plague can jump the sapient/nonsapient divide to infect humanoids, but they retain their rational souls and free will.

Generally speaking, in any game where I think I could theoretically want half-orcs (that is to say, a world where orcs weren't just irredeemably evil), I would just rather allow for PC Orcs instead (or goblins!).

Quote from: Simlasa;811268I saw someone on G+ asking for a half-orc write-up for DCC.
This got me thinking about why someone might want to play a half-orc... but I didn't come up with much.

Since the guy asking was looking for unseen/unofficial rules (and looking to make up his own if he didn't find any) I can't assume it's just because of some precious rules/mechanics bonus.
 
It seems to me that if you wanted to run a strong/brutal character you could go with a plain old fighter and play him as a barbarian.
Or, if you like orcs go for a purebred/vatbred one... with all the social pariah baggage that might come with it.
Why half-orc? They're still visually non-human so likely to suffer prejudice... likely from both purebreed races. Is there some widespread concept of half-orcs I'm not tuned into?
Is it because playing a straight orc would just lead to too much trouble?

I don't get it, any thoughts?

The biggest advantage to playing a half-orc in 1E is that PC half-orcs are assumed to be from the 10% that pass for humans. So unless or until their parentage becomes known, human communities will consider them human. When I play them, I assume the characters don't want anyone to know about their family trees.

As a DM, I had one noble who was a half-orc hell bent on keeping his biological daddy's identity secret, since if word got out that mommy had carnal knowledge with an orc, he would be declared a bastard and the knives would come out for him. He looked human, but his mother had a box of love letters to her orcish beau that the PCs found. At which point they extorted money and favors from him lest they make the letters public. This led to a long series of assassination attempts and other skulduggery as the blackmailers and their victim tried to screw over the other.