TheRPGSite

Inspired by the recent orcs thread (https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/orcs-removed-from-the-dd-6e-monster-manual!/), it's made me think about all the different sorts of orcs that have appeared in various games.

In this thread, rather than trying to front-load with many different orcs in the original post, I thought I'd just put the origin of orcs first, and post more about other orcs in later posts. Tolkien is the popularizer of orcs, but he was inspired by the mention of "orcneas" in Beowulf.

(https://darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/orcs-beowulf.jpg)

In the Francis B. Gummere translation, the passage goes:

QuoteGrendel this monster grim was called,
march-riever mighty, in moorland living,
in fen and fastness; fief of the giants
the hapless wight a while had kept
since the Creator his exile doomed.
On kin of Cain was the killing avenged
by sovran God for slaughtered Abel.
Ill fared his feud, and far was he driven,
for the slaughter's sake, from sight of men.
Of Cain awoke all that woful breed,
Ettins and elves and evil-spirits,
as well as the giants that warred with God
weary while: but their wage was paid them!

He translates "orcneas" as "evil-spirits". But they're in the same category of monster as giants ("eotenas" similar to "jotun") and elves ("ylfe") - as well as Grendel and his mother.

The Fantasy Bestiary suggests two possible etymologies. One is "demon-corpse" that implies an undead creature like a ghoul or zombie. This may relate to the god of the underworld "Orcus" in Etruscan and Roman mythology. The other implies a sea-monster -- from "orcen" related to the modern-day "orca", also known as killer whale.

https://fantasy-bestiary.fandom.com/wiki/Orcneas

It is interesting that Beowulf puts elves and orcs as the same category of monster, but Tolkien makes them into polar opposites, even if orcs originated as a corruption of elves. More on Tolkien in a later post.

Getting the Noble Savage Greenskin out the way, while D&D had Orcs as player characters. I think it was Earthdawn that really dove into making Orcs a people. There were reasons why Orcs seemed hot headed and bad tempered. "Gahad"

QuoteThe ork's reputation for violence grows from his passionate nature. You may say that your heart is full of love, or full of spite. When you say this, you are speaking poetry. When an ork says it, he means it. If you arouse an ork to desire or fury, they feel it in their heart as intensely as other races would feel a fever in their head or poison in their gut. Orks call this sensation gahad. If an ork's gahad is awakened, expect them to act on their emotions. They can try to resist the gahad, but resisting sets their brain to boil and curdles their stomach. This is not a simple metaphor — it hurts when an ork resists his gahad. Orks believe that such resistance shortens life — an able-bodied ork who suddenly drops dead at forty is said to have swallowed his gahad one time too many.

Orcs in Earthdawn were viewed by the other races as violent savages, and most Orcs resent their treament, contributing to the hostilites between the race and others.

I like them as pig faced cannibals hell bent on destruction. 

At this point, implementing whatever version of orcs pisses off the most half-shaved-head blue-haired "people" (communists aren't people) possible is the goal.

Regarding Tolkien's orcs --

I don't think I need a general introduction, but I think the interesting point about Tolkien is that his orcs are savage but not technologically primitive. They are the military-industrial complex. He expresses it most clearly in The Hobbit:

QuoteThey make no beautiful things, but they make many clever ones. They can tunnel and mine as well as any but the most skilled dwarves, when they take the trouble, though they are usually untidy and dirty. Hammers, axes, swords, daggers, pickaxes, tongs, and also instruments of torture, they make very well, or get other people to make to their design, prisoners and slaves that have to work till they die for want of air and light. It is not unlikely that they invented some of the machines that have since troubled the world, especially the ingenious devices for killing large numbers of people at once, for wheels and engines and explosions always delighted them, and also not working with their own hands more than they could help; but in those days and those wild parts they had not advanced (as it is called) so far.

In the Lord of the Rings we see them use machines like their great siege engines or the mechanics of the Black Gate. They use some sort of bomb to blow up defenses at Helm's Deep. (The movies have a scene to show this as something from Saruman that the orcs knew nothing of, but that was invented for the movies - and the quote above makes clear that Tolkien saw them as inventors.)

Often forgotten is how they have a draught that dulls pain and a salve that effectively seals wounds, though it leaves a nasty permanent scar (used on Merry).

In later Tolkien-based fantasy, orcs and goblins are considered two different species, and goblins are sometimes shown as crazed inventors. However, Tolkien used orc and goblin as alternate names for the same creature.

I was working on a book about various orc metaphors for The Arcane Confabulation but given the climate a few years back I decided to put it on the back burner.  Orcs as the other, orcs as us, orcs as oppressed minorities, orcs as oppressors, orcs as children of darkness, orcs as rabble, orcs as the evils of war, orcs as constructs, orcs as a force of nature, nature, orcs as the world's antibodies, and so on and so on.

Y'know. I think I jumped the gun trying to "participate" there. I'm gonna sit back and let jhkim go through the orc races in rpgs without interjecting.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 19, 2025, 09:11:55 PMY'know. I think I jumped the gun trying to "participate" there. I'm gonna sit back and let jhkim go through the orc races in rpgs without interjecting.

Did he already make a thread about telling us how orcs really aren't the bad guys?

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 19, 2025, 09:11:55 PMY'know. I think I jumped the gun trying to "participate" there. I'm gonna sit back and let jhkim go through the orc races in rpgs without interjecting.

Thanks for the Earthdawn entry, Ratman_tf. I only know of Earthdawn by reputation, and don't have a copy. I do know Shadowrun, which Earthdawn was sort of the prequel to. I hadn't thought about including Shadowrun, but now I think it was significant.

I'm thinking of maybe a timeline of ones I know:

1937: The Hobbit first published
1954: Lord of the Rings first published
1974: OD&D first orc entry
1977: Monster Manual describes orc and half-orc
1978: Player's Handbook makes half-orc a PC race
1982: Dragon #62 - creates orcish myth of seeking revenge for oppression
1985: Unearthed Arcana makes drow a PC race - notable as the first pure-blooded evil race for players
1987: Warhammer 40K - space orks as violent horde, comically likened to soccer hooligans
1988: The Orcs of Thar - orcs as a PC race for Basic D&D
1989: Shadowrun - orcs as lower-class tough guy PCs in magical cyberpunk
1993: Earthdawn 1st edition - orcs as savage, passionate PC race
1994: Warcraft
2001: World of Warcraft

I think these are some of the more influential examples. There are also a bunch of less mainstream re-interpretations of orcs, like Harnic orcs and Sovereign Stone along with Dungeons & Delvers.

this is doubly interesting because they also use giant as a descriptor for Grendel, he's also described as being a direct descendant of Cain as well. (of the old testament) if we are talking about giants as a word used in the bible it also has two possible etymologies in the hebrew old testament, Rephaim and Nephilim, Goliath and his ilk are described as Rephaim, and Rephaim as a more direct translation to english would be "Dead Ones" or "spirits who dwell in shoel" which really adds a whole chthonic bent to this and lines up with the etymologies pertaining to Orcs.



I'm starting to think the ancient Hebrews and Anglo Saxtons were describing something very similar and the connection the Anglos made to Cain and Biblical giants was also very intentional.

Quote from: jhkim on February 19, 2025, 06:37:32 PMHe translates "orcneas" as "evil-spirits". But they're in the same category of monster as giants ("eotenas" similar to "jotun") and elves ("ylfe") - as well as Grendel and his mother.

The Fantasy Bestiary suggests two possible etymologies. One is "demon-corpse" that implies an undead creature like a ghoul or zombie. This may relate to the god of the underworld "Orcus" in Etruscan and Roman mythology. The other implies a sea-monster -- from "orcen" related to the modern-day "orca", also known as killer whale.

https://fantasy-bestiary.fandom.com/wiki/Orcneas

It is interesting that Beowulf puts elves and orcs as the same category of monster, but Tolkien makes them into polar opposites, even if orcs originated as a corruption of elves. More on Tolkien in a later post.

First, the fantasy bestiary is wrong.  There is no question as to which of the two etymologies for the word Tolkien favored.  He tells us himself (in the "Notes on Nomenclature" he prepared for the Danish and Swedish translations of the Lord of the Rings).

QuoteOrc. This is supposed to be the Common Speech name of these creatures at that time; it should therefore according to the system be translated into English, or the language of translation. It was translated 'goblin' in The Hobbit, except in one place; but this word, and other words of similar sense in other European languages (as far as I know), are not really suitable. The orc in The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, though of course partly made out of traditional features, is not really comparable in supposed origin, functions, and relation to the Elves. In any case orc seemed to me, and seems, in sound a good name for these creatures. It should be retained. It should be spelt ork (so the Dutch translation) in a Germanic language, but I had used the spelling orc in so many places that I have hesitated to change it in the English text, though the adjective is necessarily spelt orkish. The Grey-elven form is orch, plural yrch. I originally took the word from Old English orc [Beowulf 112 orc-neass and the gloss orc = pyrs ('ogre'), heldeofol ('hell-devil')]. This is supposed not to be connected with modern English orc, ork, a name applied to various sea-beasts of the dolphin order.

Second, the grouping in Beowulf is not a puzzle at all. These monsters are the descendants of Cain (and "cousins" of Grendel), and have been transformed by the Christian chronicler who preserved the tale.  We have no way of knowing whether the Anglo-Saxon sources considered them to be equivalent or related, but we can tell that the Christian source saw all of these creatures as stained by the curse of Cain (a common explanation of monstrosities for the Dark Ages).  As such, they are presented as spiritual/supernatural entities, elves by that time being more what we would call "fey" creatures than the more tangible elves of Norse mythology.  Giants were mostly mythological/historical beings as well, as Christian doctrine asserted at the time.  So, to the Christian monk rewriting/transcribing the tale, these would all be creatures of legend as told by his forebearers (not present creatures in the world).  It is doubtful that any such association was present in the original Anglo-Saxon story, and we have no way of knowing if they were even mentioned.  Tolkien knew all of this, and therefore had no reason to assume any relationship, thought he does preserve a little connection by originally conceiving of orcs as warped elves.  But this is all artistic license.  Tolkien was a master at taking words of uncertain meaning in Anglo-Saxon and using them for his own purposes (see "wuduwasa" and Woodwoses in RotK).  No conclusions about the nature of Tolkien's orcs can be inferred from Beowulf.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on February 19, 2025, 11:09:53 PM

Quote from: jhkim on February 19, 2025, 06:37:32 PMHe translates "orcneas" as "evil-spirits". But they're in the same category of monster as giants ("eotenas" similar to "jotun") and elves ("ylfe") - as well as Grendel and his mother.

The Fantasy Bestiary suggests two possible etymologies. One is "demon-corpse" that implies an undead creature like a ghoul or zombie. This may relate to the god of the underworld "Orcus" in Etruscan and Roman mythology. The other implies a sea-monster -- from "orcen" related to the modern-day "orca", also known as killer whale.

https://fantasy-bestiary.fandom.com/wiki/Orcneas

It is interesting that Beowulf puts elves and orcs as the same category of monster, but Tolkien makes them into polar opposites, even if orcs originated as a corruption of elves. More on Tolkien in a later post.

First, the fantasy bestiary is wrong.  There is no question as to which of the two etymologies for the word Tolkien favored.  He tells us himself (in the "Notes on Nomenclature" he prepared for the Danish and Swedish translations of the Lord of the Rings).

Thanks, Eirikrautha. In my OP, I was trying to separate out what "orcneas" meant prior to Tolkien creating his distinctive vision of the orcs of Middle Earth.

In other words, what's a reasonable translation of "orcneas" in the context of Beowulf? Put another way - if a native Old English speaker listened to Beowulf in the 9th or 10th century, what would he understand "orcneas" to mean? Do you think the translation of "evil spirit" is reasonable?

I agree there's an interesting issue of the distinction of the Christian monk transcribing the tale and the original meaning of the story, since the setting is pagan 6th century Scandinavia but the earliest manuscript we have is circa 1000CE.  I realize all this is just a shot in the dark, but I think it's still interesting - as Tolkien evidently did.

Also, do you understand this part of what Tolkien says?

QuoteI originally took the word from Old English orc [Beowulf 112 orc-neass and the gloss orc = pyrs ('ogre'), heldeofol ('hell-devil')].

What does "the gloss orc = pyrs" mean, and how does "heldeofol" relate to that?

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 01:10:32 AM

QuoteI originally took the word from Old English orc [Beowulf 112 orc-neass and the gloss orc = pyrs ('ogre'), heldeofol ('hell-devil')].

What does "the gloss orc = pyrs" mean, and how does "heldeofol" relate to that?

The copy/paste somehow substituted "p" for the Anglo-Saxon "þ" (thorn).  The term should be "þyrs", which is an Anglo-Saxon word usually associated with trolls or ogres (large humanoid monsters, like giants).  Much of our knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon language comes from Latin manuscripts which had "glosses", or translations of the Latin words into the vernacular in the margins, so that partially literate Latin readers (which may have described the vast majority of the trained monks in the Dark and Early Middle Ages) would understand the meaning of rare or unusual Latin words.  Several 9th century manuscripts contain the term "orc" as a gloss for the Latin word roughly meaning "ogre" or "monster" (the Germanic ogre had the connotation of a creature that fed on people), and the same Latin word was also glossed with "þyrs" elsewhere.  The same occurred with heldeofel.  This suggests that orc, ogre, and hell-devil are all terms with a similar meaning.  So the term "orc" predates Beowulf (at least the written form, though probably not the story itself), and was combined in the poem with "-neas" possibly meaning "body" or "corpse" (so it could meaning "monstrous creatures" or "monstrous corpses/undead", depending on how you interpret it). 

Also note, this is the Christian chronicler's (actually two different scribes) attribution (and the first scribe appeared to have modified the source material more than the scribe of the second half), so we don't know if that term would have been one used by the original pagan author(s) to describe Grendel or associated monsters.

So, I believe Tolkien here was justifying his reading of "orcneas" as "monstrous spawn of hell/underworld", based on the usage of the term in Beowulf and the Latin glosses.

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 01:10:32 AMThanks, Eirikrautha. In my OP, I was trying to separate out what "orcneas" meant prior to Tolkien creating his distinctive vision of the orcs of Middle Earth.

In other words, what's a reasonable translation of "orcneas" in the context of Beowulf? Put another way - if a native Old English speaker listened to Beowulf in the 9th or 10th century, what would he understand "orcneas" to mean? Do you think the translation of "evil spirit" is reasonable?

Let us assume that it is either correct or close enough to correct; does this really then serve as any manner of predecessor to Tolkien's orc?  He tells us where he got the name, certainly, but that doesn't mean he was trying to implement that specific monster (he didn't even use the name directly, after all).  In other words, assuming you're correct, isn't an "orcneas" a different imaginary creature entirely then an "orc"?

Thanks again, Eirikrautha! I believe you, but do you have a source other than Tolkien's letters that I can reference for that if I'm writing this up?

Quote from: Venka on February 20, 2025, 01:55:38 PM

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 01:10:32 AMThanks, Eirikrautha. In my OP, I was trying to separate out what "orcneas" meant prior to Tolkien creating his distinctive vision of the orcs of Middle Earth.

In other words, what's a reasonable translation of "orcneas" in the context of Beowulf? Put another way - if a native Old English speaker listened to Beowulf in the 9th or 10th century, what would he understand "orcneas" to mean? Do you think the translation of "evil spirit" is reasonable?

Let us assume that it is either correct or close enough to correct; does this really then serve as any manner of predecessor to Tolkien's orc?  He tells us where he got the name, certainly, but that doesn't mean he was trying to implement that specific monster (he didn't even use the name directly, after all).  In other words, assuming you're correct, isn't an "orcneas" a different imaginary creature entirely then an "orc"?

That's kind of the point of the topic. I agree an "orcneas" is a different creature than a Middle Earth "orc" -- but then, I also think that a Warhammer 40K "ork" and a World of Warcraft "orc" are also different creatures.

All of these are called something like "orc", but they are shifting versions. The most popular media of the time define what people think of "orcs" as.

Tolkien defines his orcs as being unruly drivers and pawns of the military-industrial complex, with their fiendish machines and scarring medicine. The popular understanding has steadily drifted away from that, though, so that now people think more of hulking green-skinned brutes - possibly even Noble Savage as Ratman_tf mentioned.

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 02:21:27 PMTolkien defines his orcs as being unruly drivers and pawns of the military-industrial complex, with their fiendish machines and scarring medicine. The popular understanding has steadily drifted away from that, though, so that now people think more of hulking green-skinned brutes - possibly even Noble Savage as Ratman_tf mentioned.

As seen in History of Middle Earth, Tolkien's conception of Orcs morphed over the decades. One constant is his view of them as beings corrupted by Morgoth, Sauron, and Saurman and bred as their servants. Whether they were constructs, mutated elves, mutated humans, or had free will, Tolkien never settled this question in his lifetime.

Furthermore, he famously disliked allegories, so for the most we should consider them as described rather than searching for some deeper meaning like pawns of a military-industrial complex. Melkor and Sauron sought to impose their will upon creation contrary to their explicit understanding of what God (Eru Iluvatar) wanted done. One aspect of that is the two of them corrupt things that Iluvatar created. As a fellow Catholic, it is clear to me where Tolkien is coming from in this regard.

Quote from: estar on February 20, 2025, 03:14:12 PM

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 02:21:27 PMTolkien defines his orcs as being unruly drivers and pawns of the military-industrial complex, with their fiendish machines and scarring medicine. The popular understanding has steadily drifted away from that, though, so that now people think more of hulking green-skinned brutes - possibly even Noble Savage as Ratman_tf mentioned.

As seen in History of Middle Earth, Tolkien's conception of Orcs morphed over the decades. One constant is his view of them as beings corrupted by Morgoth, Sauron, and Saurman and bred as their servants. Whether they were constructs, mutated elves, mutated humans, or had free will, Tolkien never settled this question in his lifetime.

Furthermore, he famously disliked allegories, so for the most we should consider them as described rather than searching for some deeper meaning like pawns of a military-industrial complex.

I think the focus of this should be Middle Earth orcs as they are understood by Tolkien fans - and possibly different understanding especially for LotR book fans and film fans.

I don't want to go too deep into literary interpretation because it's a quagmire.

However, I also think it's important for broad strokes to understand what is the basic archetype or stereotype that a given type of orcs represents. Just cataloging individual differences in details between orcs risks missing the forest for the trees.

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 03:32:44 PMI think the focus of this should be Middle Earth orcs as they are understood by Tolkien fans - and possibly different understanding especially for LotR book fans and film fans.

Tolkien fans? All the fans I know of are aware of the points I mentioned. And by fans I mean that group who enjoy Tolkien works beyond liking just the Hobbit, Lord of the Rings and/or the films.

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 03:32:44 PMI don't want to go too deep into literary interpretation because it's a quagmire.

We don't have to interpret anything his son make the primary sources available in several books. Letters, drafts, manuscripts, the works. It clear what Tolkien thought of orcs in the 1920s had different nuances than the Tolkien of the 1960s.

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 03:32:44 PMHowever, I also think it's important for broad strokes to understand what is the basic archetype or stereotype that a given type of orcs represents. Just cataloging individual differences in details between orcs risks missing the forest for the trees.

I stated what the archetype is. But perhaps I wasn't clear, the prototypical orc is a sentient being, corrupted from their original form by dark powers to be used as rank and file servants for their evil plans for the world.

This archetype diversified in major ways at three different time.

The first was Orcs as depicted in OD&D in 1974, this was reinforced by D&D rise in popularity and it ability to remain as the market leader for decades.

The second was Orcs as depicted in Warhammer in the mid-80s; this was further reinforced by Warcraft adopting a similar interpretation.

Finally, Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films marked the return of Orcs as creatures corrupted by evil powers. This was reinforced by Jackson explicitly showed Saruman creating the Uruk-hai.

https://www.tk421.net/lotr/film/fotr/27.html

All three have a foothold in the minds of today's hobbyists.

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 03:32:44 PMI think the focus of this should be Middle Earth orcs as they are understood by Tolkien fans - and possibly different understanding especially for LotR book fans and film fans.

The precise origin of orcs, whether they are redeemable or purely evil, whether or not they have a féa (soul), etc. have been topics of debate for decades, with no clear agreement from Tolkien fans anywhere. And you propose to solve it here, as an ancillary to a broader discussion?
Good luck.

QuoteI don't want to go too deep into literary interpretation because it's a quagmire.

However, I also think it's important for broad strokes to understand what is the basic archetype or stereotype that a given type of orcs represents. Just cataloging individual differences in details between orcs risks missing the forest for the trees.

Sure, but this only risks opening the discussion to the type of literary interpretation you claim you want to avoid. Why not just stick to the facts? Physical description. General backstory. Perception from the wider world. Unique traits/game mechanics...

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 03:32:44 PMI think the focus of this should be Middle Earth orcs as they are understood by Tolkien fans - and possibly different understanding especially for LotR book fans and film fans.

Well, then, it is incumbent upon you as a first step to determine how orcs "are understood by Tolkien fans."  Seems like, after you are done a decade hence, we can then move on to the specifics.  Though you'll probably have to define "Tolkien fans" first, just to narrow down your material.

Quote from: Effete on February 20, 2025, 04:02:52 PMSure, but this only risks opening the discussion to the type of literary interpretation you claim you want to avoid. Why not just stick to the facts? Physical description. General backstory. Perception from the wider world. Unique traits/game mechanics...

Because jhkim tends to put the cart before the horse.  He's not looking for the actual specifics of orcs and their portrayals.  He's looking for information that will support some idea he already has about orcs and their function in literature or gaming.  Now, I don't know what point he's trying to support (but, based off of the other thread on orcs and the MM, I have my suspicions).  But other discussions with him have led me to the conclusion that he cherry-picks his "data" based on predetermined results.  Maybe not this time (if you're willing to give him the benefit of the doubt), but I wouldn't bet on it...

Quote from: estar on February 20, 2025, 03:48:58 PM

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 03:32:44 PMI think the focus of this should be Middle Earth orcs as they are understood by Tolkien fans - and possibly different understanding especially for LotR book fans and film fans.

Tolkien fans? All the fans I know of are aware of the points I mentioned. And by fans I mean that group who enjoy Tolkien works beyond liking just the Hobbit, Lord of the Rings and/or the films.

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 03:32:44 PMI don't want to go too deep into literary interpretation because it's a quagmire.

We don't have to interpret anything his son make the primary sources available in several books. Letters, drafts, manuscripts, the works. It clear what Tolkien thought of orcs in the 1920s had different nuances than the Tolkien of the 1960s.

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 03:32:44 PMHowever, I also think it's important for broad strokes to understand what is the basic archetype or stereotype that a given type of orcs represents. Just cataloging individual differences in details between orcs risks missing the forest for the trees.

I stated what the archetype is. But perhaps I wasn't clear, the prototypical orc is a sentient being, corrupted from their original form by dark powers to be used as rank and file servants for their evil plans for the world.

This archetype diversified in major ways at three different time.

The first was Orcs as depicted in OD&D in 1974, this was reinforced by D&D rise in popularity and it ability to remain as the market leader for decades.

The second was Orcs as depicted in Warhammer in the mid-80s; this was further reinforced by Warcraft adopting a similar interpretation.

Finally, Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films marked the return of Orcs as creatures corrupted by evil powers. This was reinforced by Jackson explicitly showed Saruman creating the Uruk-hai.

https://www.tk421.net/lotr/film/fotr/27.html

All three have a foothold in the minds of today's hobbyists.

Yep.  Orcs are the stormtroopers of fantasy RPGs.  Or maybe stormtroopers are the orcs of space opera (orcs did come first)?

Quote from: Eirikrautha on February 20, 2025, 05:11:41 PMYep.  Orcs are the stormtroopers of fantasy RPGs.  Or maybe stormtroopers are the orcs of space opera (orcs did come first)?

Orcs don't miss all the time.

Quote from: Shteve on February 20, 2025, 05:21:36 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on February 20, 2025, 05:11:41 PMYep.  Orcs are the stormtroopers of fantasy RPGs.  Or maybe stormtroopers are the orcs of space opera (orcs did come first)?

Orcs don't miss all the time.

Neither do stormtroopers... just ask Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru...

Quote from: Eirikrautha on February 20, 2025, 05:11:41 PM

Quote from: estar on February 20, 2025, 03:48:58 PMI stated what the archetype is. But perhaps I wasn't clear, the prototypical orc is a sentient being, corrupted from their original form by dark powers to be used as rank and file servants for their evil plans for the world.

This archetype diversified in major ways at three different time.

The first was Orcs as depicted in OD&D in 1974, this was reinforced by D&D rise in popularity and it ability to remain as the market leader for decades.

The second was Orcs as depicted in Warhammer in the mid-80s; this was further reinforced by Warcraft adopting a similar interpretation.

Finally, Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films marked the return of Orcs as creatures corrupted by evil powers. This was reinforced by Jackson explicitly showed Saruman creating the Uruk-hai.

https://www.tk421.net/lotr/film/fotr/27.html

All three have a foothold in the minds of today's hobbyists.

Yep.  Orcs are the stormtroopers of fantasy RPGs.  Or maybe stormtroopers are the orcs of space opera (orcs did come first)?

I agree with estar that D&D, Warhammer, and Warcraft were significant splits to the archetype. Most of those did not highlight orcs as being corrupted from an original form.

In D&D, the orc background was majorly influenced by Roger Moore's creation myth in Dragon #62. That portrayed orcs not as a corruption, but as a force in themselves - seeking revenge on other races.

(https://darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/orcs-gruumsh.jpg)

It also seems to me that in D&D modules, orcs were often a force in their own right - rather than henchmen of a dark lord. G1 had orc servants to the giants, say, but B2 had orcs as their own faction - with orcish leaders rather than a non-orc dark lord.

That was reinforced in The Orcs of Thar (1988), the official D&D module that made orcs and other humanoids as optional player races for BECMI. Orcs and other humanoids aren't servants - they are their own savage civilization. The tongue-in-cheek nature of this is more like Warhammer 40K's space orks.

As also introduced in the 1980s, Warcraft orcs are distinctly more like Klingons - the big powerful proud warrior race.

(https://darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/orcs-wow.jpg)

The more Klingon-ish orcs were folded back into D&D with 3rd edition, which re-introduced the half-orc as a player race.

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 06:12:10 PMI agree with estar that D&D, Warhammer, and Warcraft were significant splits to the archetype. Most of those did not highlight orcs as being corrupted from an original form.

In D&D, the orc background was majorly influenced by Roger Moore's creation myth in Dragon #62. That portrayed orcs not as a corruption, but as a force in themselves - seeking revenge on other races.

(https://darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/orcs-gruumsh.jpg)

No, while Roger Moore's articles were fun to read but they were not influential in the sense of how Warhammer and later Warcraft depicted orcs.

What defined Orcs back in the day of classic D&D was their treatment as a tribal people painted as non-human bad guys. One of several tribal groups in this role starting with kobolds, goblins, hobgoblins, orcs, gnolls, bugbears, ogres, and giants.

Orcs were somewhat more prominent because their association with Tolkien's rank and file baddies. But for those of us back in the day, what was important was humanoids versus demi-humans situation. Orcs were one of the many types of humanoids counted as enemies thus the "bad guys", while the demi-humans can be generally counted as being allies thus "good guys".

This description of orcs in the Holmes Blue Book is typical of that view point.

QuoteOrc
Move: 90 feet/turn
Hit Dice: 1 Attacks: 1
Armor Class: 7
Treasure Type: D
Alignment: chaotic evil
Damage: 1-6 points
There are many tribes or nations of orcs. Members If different orc tribes cooperate poorly and attack
members of another tribe on sight unless under a strong commander. In large numbers, they are likely to be accompanied by more powerful creatures.

For every 100 orcs the chances are:
1-4 trolls 10%
1-6 ogres 20%
In full daylight orcs suffer a -1 off their attack dice.

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 06:12:10 PMIt also seems to me that in D&D modules, orcs were often a force in their own right - rather than henchmen of a dark lord. G1 had orc servants to the giants, say, but B2 had orcs as their own faction - with orcish leaders rather than a non-orc dark lord.

That was reinforced in The Orcs of Thar (1988), the official D&D module that made orcs and other humanoids as optional player races for BECMI. Orcs and other humanoids aren't servants - they are their own savage civilization. The tongue-in-cheek nature of this is more like Warhammer 40K's space orks.

Yes B2-Keep on the Borderlands cemented the hobby's view of the humanoids as the enemy. Deities & Demigods Gruumsh and Roger Moore's Dragon Magazine were viewed as interesting but as options not a definitive take on what a D&D orc was. Which was left undefined as it was for all the humanoids.

All that could be said in the official rules that for whatever reason the humanoids were the bad guys. The why was left to each referee to determine on their own.

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 06:12:10 PMAs also introduced in the 1980s, Warcraft orcs are distinctly more like Klingons - the big powerful proud warrior race.

(https://darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/orcs-wow.jpg)

The more Klingon-ish orcs were folded back into D&D with 3rd edition, which re-introduced the half-orc as a player race.

Well keep in mind the view that Klingons were honorable warriors was a TNG thing. The Orc as a vicious but honorable warrior came first in the mid 80s with Warhammer. Although, to be fair, Warcraft is the one that cemented this aspect of the orc, and the TNG honorable Klingon and Warcraft-style orc seem to have co-developed alongside each other throughout the 90s.

Greetings!

So, we have Tolkien Orcs; D&D Orcs--essentially the same; Warhammer Orcs, and World of Warcraft Orcs.

Ok, great. Some slightly different interpretations of Orcs. So what?

I'm not sure what Jhkim's point or objective here is.

I'm not interested in any kind of interpretation where Orcs are Woke, Rainbow Trannies and peace-loving, dope-smoking polyamorous Hippies.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: estar on February 20, 2025, 06:45:06 PM

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 06:12:10 PMIt also seems to me that in D&D modules, orcs were often a force in their own right - rather than henchmen of a dark lord. G1 had orc servants to the giants, say, but B2 had orcs as their own faction - with orcish leaders rather than a non-orc dark lord.

That was reinforced in The Orcs of Thar (1988), the official D&D module that made orcs and other humanoids as optional player races for BECMI. Orcs and other humanoids aren't servants - they are their own savage civilization. The tongue-in-cheek nature of this is more like Warhammer 40K's space orks.

Yes B2-Keep on the Borderlands cemented the hobby's view of the humanoids as the enemy. Deities & Demigods Gruumsh and Roger Moore's Dragon Magazine were viewed as interesting but as options not a definitive take on what a D&D orc was. Which was left undefined as it was for all the humanoids.

All that could be said in the official rules that for whatever reason the humanoids were the bad guys. The why was left to each referee to determine on their own.

It seems to me that D&D orcs shifted significantly away from Tolkien on several points:

• Orcs being a corrupted from their original form. You suggested this was part of their archetype, estar, but it isn't mentioned in any D&D material.
• The fiendish inventiveness of orcs and their cruel war machines and scarring medicines. This is completely dropped for D&D.
• Orcs riding on wargs.
• Orcs being henchmen of a dark lord. This is mentioned in the 1E MM, but it rarely features in any of the modules or setting books, and is not in the 2E MM.
• Orcs fighting other orcs. This is mentioned in the 1E MM, but it doesn't feature in any of the modules or setting books, and also isn't mentioned in 2E.

Quote from: estar on February 20, 2025, 06:45:06 PM

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 06:12:10 PMAs also introduced in the 1980s, Warcraft orcs are distinctly more like Klingons - the big powerful proud warrior race.

(https://darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/orcs-wow.jpg)

The more Klingon-ish orcs were folded back into D&D with 3rd edition, which re-introduced the half-orc as a player race.

Well keep in mind the view that Klingons were honorable warriors was a TNG thing. The Orc as a vicious but honorable warrior came first in the mid 80s with Warhammer. Although, to be fair, Warcraft is the one that cemented this aspect of the orc, and the TNG honorable Klingon and Warcraft-style orc seem to have co-developed alongside each other throughout the 90s.

I've never played Warhammer, but it seems that Warhammer orcs are somewhat comedic dumb brutes or jocks. This is similar to the take in The Orcs of Thar.

That's distinct than the honorable warrior stereotype / TNG Klingon from Warcraft.

3E sits a little in between these two, I think. Orcs and half-orcs have an Intelligence penalty, but they are portrayed more as barbarians - violent but potentially honorable.

Quote from: SHARK on February 20, 2025, 07:00:29 PMSo, we have Tolkien Orcs; D&D Orcs--essentially the same; Warhammer Orcs, and World of Warcraft Orcs.

Ok, great. Some slightly different interpretations of Orcs. So what?

In Saga of the Goblin Horde, orcs (and ogres) were genetically constructed by goblin overlords to be slave labor. The particular orcs in the setting, however, are free from this control since the nanotech controlling them malfunctioned when the goblin spaceship crashed on the human homeworld.

Maybe I'm a philistine heathen, but I don't really care what the etymology of the name is, or how Tolkien wrote it.

These days we have our own definition.

An orc is a savage race of monster men, often raping women based on the fact that half orcs are a thing, but utterly despicable so as to not create any sympathy when you encounter them.  Kill them all, and don't feel bad about it. 

weirdguy564 -- If you just want orcs to be generic bad guys and not think about any details of them, then probably this thread isn't of interest to you. It's about the different sorts of forms that orcs can be.

Ratman_tf brought up Earthdawn orcs. I only know Earthdawn by reputation, but I know Shadowrun (1989). Shadowrun first popularized orks as a core PC race in tabletop RPGs, I think.

(https://darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/orcs-shadowrun.jpg)

Here, orks are an offshoot of humanity - called metahumans or specifically "homo sapiens robustus". They have big and hairy with tusks, and breed prolifically with short lifespans. They are not particularly evil, but they are a little less intelligent and charismatic than humans. They are typically seen as the underclass of the Shadowrun world.

Earthdawn is the fantasy prequel to Shadowrun.

(https://darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/orcs-earthdawn.jpg)

Ratman_tf mentioned gahar earlier - this is their full description.

QuoteOrks

Much of our history and culture has been forgotten, swallowed by the jungle and lost to the Scourge. Today we are free, but we must never forget where we came from, and why we fight.
— Rogan Crossbite, rider with Asok's Armbreakers

Orks are tall and powerfully built, averaging about six feet in height and weighing over 200 pounds. They are more muscular than humans, and two large lower caninesprotrude from their mouth and cover their upper lip. Their body hair is coarse, and facial and head hair is frequently the texture of fine wire. Skin color ranges from beige to olive green, with tan, pinkish-white, or ebony possible, but less common.

Orks are impulsive and their emotions burn swift and hot, a trait they call _gahad_. They anger quickly, and are just as quick to form friendships. When an ork is driven to act, they act, and some individuals report physical discomfort when they "swallow their gahad." While this tendency can cause problems for their companions, orks generally consider gahad  as a positive thing, a spiritual fire pushing them forward.

With a lifespan averaging only 40 years, orks tend to seize life by the throat and get the most out of it they can. Given their emotional and impulsive natures, ork families tend to be sprawling affairs of half-siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins.

The most common social group is a tribe or clan, living a nomadic existence on the plains of Barsaive. Even the reborn kingdom of Cara Fahd is not much more than an affiliation of multiple tribes and clans. Still, the orks are taking to nation-building as fiercely as anything else they attempt.

While all the races have faced the prospect of slavery at the hands of the Theran Empire, the orks have a longer and deeper history with the institution. Ork legends tell that at one time, they were all slaves until they won their freedom centuries beforethe Scourge. As a result of this cultural legacy, many orks believe freedom to be one ofthe highest ideals in existence.

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 07:31:12 PMIt seems to me that D&D orcs shifted significantly away from Tolkien on several points:

• Orcs being a corrupted from their original form. You suggested this was part of their archetype, estar, but it isn't mentioned in any D&D material.

Because Orc were not invented by D&D they were invented by Tolkien. I and lot of hobbyists of the time were well aware that Tolkien had Orcs as bad guy minions and orcs as tribal inhabitants of an area like Moria. And saw how D&D reflected that with Keep on the Borders for tribes, and Hall of the Fire Giant King. Then slightly later when the Greyhawk Folio came out with both aspects and with the dark lord minion aspect like with Iuz more clearly drawn than the enslaved orcs of the Fire Giant King.

But again most of us didn't get into it that deep,it was sufficient that you had the humanoids whom you expected to fight, and demi-humans who were you friends.

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 07:31:12 PMThe fiendish inventiveness of orcs and their cruel war machines and scarring medicines. This is completely dropped for D&D.

You are the one bringing this up. Frankly it one of those details that make sense if pointed out but the biggest impression I got and most of my friends got was the archetype I mentioned before. And the biggest reason we knew about the orcs being corrupted beings is the same reason people know about it from the film. It was part of what was going on with Saruman and was remarked on by the characters in the book.

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 07:31:12 PM

• Orcs riding on wargs.

That is because Gygax decided that belonged with Goblins, not orcs. So it wasn't dropped as much it was adapted.

QuoteWolf, Dire: This variety of wolf is simply a huge specimen typical of the Pleistocene Epoch. They conform to the characteristics of normal wolves. (Worgs): Evil natured, neo-dire wolves are known as worgs. These creatures have a language and are often found in co-operation with goblins in order to gain prey or to simply enjoy killing. They are as large as ponies and can be ridden. They otherwise conform to the characteristics of wolves.

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 07:31:12 PMOrcs being henchmen of a dark lord. This is mentioned in the 1E MM, but it rarely features in any of the modules or setting books, and is not in the 2E MM.

Again we were all aware of Lord of the Rings as bunch of junior high schoolers in the late 70s and early 80s. Especially after the explosion of fantasy novels after the Sword of Shannara.

As for D&D it was as featured as often as any other fantasy tropes that wasn't a maze with rooms filled with monsters, treasure, and traps.

For example the Greyhawk Folio

QuoteIn addition to the many evil clerics, thieves, fighters, assassins, and magic-users who have gathered under the grim banner of Iuz, numbers of the foulest tribes of humanoids have grown in strength and are ready to march. Goblins, orcs, and hobgoblins in the thousands are known to be in arms, swelling the human contingents of Iuz's armies

.

As for humanoid tribes fighting each there are the Pomarj and the Yatil Mountains.

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 07:31:12 PMOrcs fighting other orcs. This is mentioned in the 1E MM, but it doesn't feature in any of the modules or setting books, and also isn't mentioned in 2E.

You are looking for deeper meaning that isn't there. Outside of a handful of characteristics that exist in varying degrees among the three major types I mentioned, every author comes up with their own set details about what makes an orc an orc.

Some, like I do, start out with corrupted beings that originated as servants of a dark power. (Tolkien)

Some start with the honorable warrior culture (Warhammer/Warcraft)

Some just start with being a warlike tribal culture and ignore anything about honor or corruption in favor of their interpretation (D&D).

Quote from: weirdguy564 on February 20, 2025, 07:50:23 PMMaybe I'm a philistine heathen, but I don't really care what the entomology of the name is, or how Tolkien wrote it. 

The "entomology of orcs" is exactly what Peter Jackson did when he said he wanted the Moria orcs to be like scurrying insects.

One of the best parts of Orcs of Thar has been overlooked, and I think it has some bearing on D&D orcs. In the module, orcs and all humanoids were the vessels of souls who reincarnated from evil or chaotic beings in a previous life. This was supposed to be a stepping stone on the path to immortality. That's a pretty big departure from Tolkien's orcs.

As for my own take, it started with a notebook, where I went through the Monster Manual, Fiend Folio, and Monster Manual II and categorized all the entries. One of the categories was sentient beings capable of forming cultures. Between all three, I counted over 60 distinct races/species/creature types that fit that definition.

So from a worldbuilding perspective I went holy shit that is a lot. With the Majestic Wilderlands, I never went with the entire list, but I did account for most of the ones found in the original Monster Manual.

The root of I came up with is found in the fact that most are not truly alien but rather some type of humanoid or animal-human hybrid. So the reason why so many distinct sentient beings exist is because at the beginning of creation there just humans and elves being taught by the gods. For various regions a faction broke away that wanted to impose their own vision on creation. They called themselves Demons.

This resulted in the Dawn War being fought and during that war the demon sought to create the perfect servitor race from humans. The resulted in dwarves, halflings, goblins, orcs, lizardmen, reptile men, and all the other myriad humans. For various reasons that I won't get into, elves couldn't be transformed by demons only humans.

As for orcs.

QuoteOrcs are defined by aggression. The demons took humans and transformed them into orcs by infusing them with fierce aggressiveness that only subsided in the presence of a strong leader. During the Dawn War, the Free People attempted to integrate liberated orcs as they did with other races but were soon forced to drive them out because the orcs' aggression proved too disruptive. After the war, the orcs turned on themselves in a fratricidal struggle for power. Only the high birth rate bestowed upon them by the demons saved the orcs, allowing their tribes to survive and establish new homes throughout the Majestic Fantasy Realms.

Orc society is organized in a hierarchy of strong rulers, with leaders and subordinates locked in a continual cycle of duels and leadership challenges. Female orcs are just as aggressive as male orcs, and one third of the orc tribes are led by females.

As a legacy of their creation, orcs can be dominated by strong-willed individuals from other cultures. This involves defeating the strongest orc leader and continually overcoming challenges from subordinate orcs. The most notable recent example is the great dragon Aracador, who rallied the orcs of the White Mountains to sack the elven forest of Silverwood.

As for Orcs PCs, sure and I list them as a choice along with the other races in my rules. As part of my brief, is that for Orcs, like humans their level of aggressiveness falls on a bell curve. It just with Orcs the mean is off the high end of normal humans. For a Orc PC, the aggressiveness can be on the low end, an exception to be sure but not one unheard off.

As far being NPCs goes, they have the same potential as any humans, so there can be a 9th-level Orc Fighter, a 6th level Orc Cleric, or a 3rd Level Orc Magic User. This reflects how Orc NPCs were handled in my GURPS campaign. And also means don't expect an Orc Warren to be full easy pickings with 1 HD only. Regarding roleplaying Orcs as NPCs, their aggressiveness means that most encounters don't end peacefully. But when exceptions occur they often do make sense.

Now this is just how I handle Orcs. There are other approaches that work just as well including ones that don't get into that much depth about why orcs are orcs.

I played GURPS as my main system for two decades so just made sense to make orc NPCs of differing points values representing different levels of skill. Sometimes, circumstances were such that I had to roleplay the orcs interacting with the PCs. So I came up with a way that didn't make every orc a carbon copy of each other but also avoided making them honorable klingons which I disliked. Then when I wrote my Majestic Fantasy Rules I translated that into OD&D terms.

Quote from: estar on February 20, 2025, 08:56:53 PM

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 07:31:12 PMIt seems to me that D&D orcs shifted significantly away from Tolkien on several points:

• Orcs being a corrupted from their original form. You suggested this was part of their archetype, estar, but it isn't mentioned in any D&D material.

Because Orc were not invented by D&D they were invented by Tolkien. I and lot of hobbyists of the time were well aware that Tolkien had Orcs as bad guy minions and orcs as tribal inhabitants of an area like Moria. And saw how D&D reflected that with Keep on the Borders for tribes, and Hall of the Fire Giant King. Then slightly later when the Greyhawk Folio came out with both aspects and with the dark lord minion aspect like with Iuz more clearly drawn than the enslaved orcs of the Fire Giant King.

But again most of us didn't get into it that deep,it was sufficient that you had the humanoids whom you expected to fight, and demi-humans who were you friends.

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 07:31:12 PMThe fiendish inventiveness of orcs and their cruel war machines and scarring medicines. This is completely dropped for D&D.

You are the one bringing this up. Frankly it one of those details that make sense if pointed out but the biggest impression I got and most of my friends got was the archetype I mentioned before. And the biggest reason we knew about the orcs being corrupted beings is the same reason people know about it from the film. It was part of what was going on with Saruman and was remarked on by the characters in the book.

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 07:31:12 PM

• Orcs riding on wargs.

That is because Gygax decided that belonged with Goblins, not orcs. So it wasn't dropped as much it was adapted.

QuoteWolf, Dire: This variety of wolf is simply a huge specimen typical of the Pleistocene Epoch. They conform to the characteristics of normal wolves. (Worgs): Evil natured, neo-dire wolves are known as worgs. These creatures have a language and are often found in co-operation with goblins in order to gain prey or to simply enjoy killing. They are as large as ponies and can be ridden. They otherwise conform to the characteristics of wolves.

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 07:31:12 PMOrcs being henchmen of a dark lord. This is mentioned in the 1E MM, but it rarely features in any of the modules or setting books, and is not in the 2E MM.

Again we were all aware of Lord of the Rings as bunch of junior high schoolers in the late 70s and early 80s. Especially after the explosion of fantasy novels after the Sword of Shannara.

As for D&D it was as featured as often as any other fantasy tropes that wasn't a maze with rooms filled with monsters, treasure, and traps.

For example the Greyhawk Folio

QuoteIn addition to the many evil clerics, thieves, fighters, assassins, and magic-users who have gathered under the grim banner of Iuz, numbers of the foulest tribes of humanoids have grown in strength and are ready to march. Goblins, orcs, and hobgoblins in the thousands are known to be in arms, swelling the human contingents of Iuz's armies

.

As for humanoid tribes fighting each there are the Pomarj and the Yatil Mountains.

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 07:31:12 PMOrcs fighting other orcs. This is mentioned in the 1E MM, but it doesn't feature in any of the modules or setting books, and also isn't mentioned in 2E.

You are looking for deeper meaning that isn't there. Outside of a handful of characteristics that exist in varying degrees among the three major types I mentioned, every author comes up with their own set details about what makes an orc an orc.

Some, like I do, start out with corrupted beings that originated as servants of a dark power. (Tolkien)

Some start with the honorable warrior culture (Warhammer/Warcraft)

Some just start with being a warlike tribal culture and ignore anything about honor or corruption in favor of their interpretation (D&D).







For me

Greetings!

Excellent, Estar! I agree.

I understand everything you have discussed just fine. That all makes sense. What boggles me is this mysterious, "Deeper Meaning" that Jhkim seems to be driving at.

There is no deeper meaning.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: estar on February 20, 2025, 09:29:59 PMAs for orcs.

QuoteOrcs are defined by aggression. The demons took humans and transformed them into orcs by infusing them with fierce aggressiveness that only subsided in the presence of a strong leader. During the Dawn War, the Free People attempted to integrate liberated orcs as they did with other races but were soon forced to drive them out because the orcs' aggression proved too disruptive. After the war, the orcs turned on themselves in a fratricidal struggle for power. Only the high birth rate bestowed upon them by the demons saved the orcs, allowing their tribes to survive and establish new homes throughout the Majestic Fantasy Realms.

Orc society is organized in a hierarchy of strong rulers, with leaders and subordinates locked in a continual cycle of duels and leadership challenges. Female orcs are just as aggressive as male orcs, and one third of the orc tribes are led by females.

As a legacy of their creation, orcs can be dominated by strong-willed individuals from other cultures. This involves defeating the strongest orc leader and continually overcoming challenges from subordinate orcs. The most notable recent example is the great dragon Aracador, who rallied the orcs of the White Mountains to sack the elven forest of Silverwood.

As for Orcs PCs, sure and I list them as a choice along with the other races in my rules. As part of my brief, is that for Orcs, like humans their level of aggressiveness falls on a bell curve. It just with Orcs the mean is off the high end of normal humans. For a Orc PC, the aggressiveness can be on the low end, an exception to be sure but not one unheard off.

Thanks, estar!! That might be a great example to throw in about how orcs are adapted for particular worlds.

My most recent fantasy campaign was loosely based on the Incan empire with D&D rules and tropes. A bit like the Romans, the Incans were known for turning their enemies into their subjects / allies. So I defined the four core races of the empire as dwarves, elves, humans, and orcs. Dwarves were the first, and they made the distinctive stonework of the Solar Empire and its reverence for mountains. Elves were next, who were good with plants and created the terraced gardens and fields of the empire. Humans brought domesticated animals and weaving. The orcs:

QuoteOrcs were the last to come from the sacred lake, and are said to have been sent by Viracocha to the far corners of the world to wake up all the other peoples and creatures of the world from the earth. They are warlike wanderers by nature, and they especially revere Illapa the god of storms and war. They are known as soldiers and scouts.

• Orcs are violent, but they are not seen as inherently evil. While they tend towards Illapa the god of storms, the orcs of the empire also respect Inti.

I see them as much like Tolkien orcs in many ways. If there was a dark lord instead of a virtuous god-king, then orcs could easily become a great force of evil. In this background, though, they are the mainstay of the empire's armies, fighting to defend civilization. It brings to mind the comic The Dark Knight Returns, where Batman defeats a gang leader and then recruits all the gang members to be his minions.

Here's my full background doc:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/19ZadR7QUcyFsZ7u5x1MukSgY2cA7_CmZog7MgrxcxCU/edit?tab=t.0

Quote from: Eirikrautha on February 20, 2025, 05:08:38 PMWell, then, it is incumbent upon you as a first step to determine how orcs "are understood by Tolkien fans."  Seems like, after you are done a decade hence, we can then move on to the specifics.  Though you'll probably have to define "Tolkien fans" first, just to narrow down your material.

I'm a Tolkien fan. I have spend about 35 years so far reading everything many, many times, including everything Christopher Tolkien ever did, listening to interviews, reading all the published letters. Whatever.

I can tell you this: Tolkien himself did NOT know, fundamentally, what orcs were. He deigned to comment upon their inherent "evilness" due to his Catholicism. In fact, since he considered them "corrupted" by outside forces, I am of the opinion that he wasn't sure what Eru thought of orcs, so he didn't think he could comment. Now THAT is sticking with your own lore.

That said, orcs are evil as fuck because they are. We never meet a "good" orc in any of Tolkien's writings, even though we see plenty of bad men, elves, dwarves, and possibly hobbits (who are more just selfish than anything else). Eagles are impenetrable, dragons, balrogs, and trolls are uniformly bad. But for dragons and balrogs, that seems to be a choice, especially balrogs because decided to follow Morgoth; they weren't created that way. I dunno if a good troll or dragon is possible, probably not, but again corrupted beings; there was no free will there so to speak.

Hence, minions of Morgoth/Sauron are all evil, but some of them decided to be that way (irredeemable) and some were just born into it (jury is out). Either way, they all deserve death, but as Gandalf said, "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement."

I crammed orcs in dragonlance by saying they were the result of feral subteranean human survivors of the cataclysm breeding with the physical manifestation of a demon named orcus. i don't gotta explain shit, its magic...

Quote from: Brad on February 20, 2025, 10:02:17 PMI can tell you this: Tolkien himself did NOT know, fundamentally, what orcs were. He deigned to comment upon their inherent "evilness" due to his Catholicism. In fact, since he considered them "corrupted" by outside forces, I am of the opinion that he wasn't sure what Eru thought of orcs, so he didn't think he could comment. Now THAT is sticking with your own lore.

Exactly!
The Good Professor never settled on the issue of orcs. His very latest ruminations were that they were initially beasts from the old world crossed with human stock to give them form (i.e. bipedal posture) and some semblance of intelligence. Christopher's editorializations in the form of the Silmarilion should be taken with a grain of salt; appreciated for what they are, but not considered canon. Tolkien later rejected his earlier writings that orcs were corruptions of elves. The only reason that made it into the published work is because it was the most completed version of his notes.

QuoteBut for dragons and balrogs, that seems to be a choice, especially balrogs because decided to follow Morgoth; they weren't created that way.

That's debatable. From the very beginning, Melkor and several of the other Ainur sowed discord into the Ainulindalé, to which Eru said that there is no creation that does not first originate with Himself. So although the Ainur had free will amongst themselves, it can be argued that their evil nature was first devised by Eru (possibly as a test for Elves and Men on Middle Earth).

Regardless, the orcs of Middle Earth were clearly meant to be servants of the Dark Powers, and quite likely irredeemably evil.

Quote from: Effete on February 21, 2025, 02:02:53 AMRegardless, the orcs of Middle Earth were clearly meant to be servants of the Dark Powers, and quite likely irredeemably evil.

In his letter #153 (Sep 1954), Tolkien stated:

Quote from: TolkienThey would be Morgoth's greatest Sins, abuses of his highest privilege, and would be creatures begotten of Sin, and naturally bad. (I nearly wrote 'irredeemably bad'; but that would be going too far. Because by accepting or tolerating their making – necessary to their actual existence – even Orcs would become part of the World, which is God's and ultimately good.)

Now, I can believe that at other times he might have suggested otherwise. He changed his mind about many things in Middle Earth over time. I think it's best to consider it undefined.

Quote from: Brad on February 20, 2025, 10:02:17 PMI can tell you this: Tolkien himself did NOT know, fundamentally, what orcs were. He deigned to comment upon their inherent "evilness" due to his Catholicism. In fact, since he considered them "corrupted" by outside forces, I am of the opinion that he wasn't sure what Eru thought of orcs, so he didn't think he could comment. Now THAT is sticking with your own lore.

Quote from: Brad on February 20, 2025, 10:02:17 PMHence, minions of Morgoth/Sauron are all evil, but some of them decided to be that way (irredeemable) and some were just born into it (jury is out). Either way, they all deserve death, but as Gandalf said, "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement."

Can you suggest letters or other writing other than letter #153? It seems to me, as you state, he clearly is opposed to the idea of dealing death in judgement - since that is a major theme in Lord of the Rings.

As a parallel, in the Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander, Taran finds a baby gwythaint - a bird corrupted by the evil lord Arawn. He tries to care for it as best he can, against the advice of all the others. It escapes, but it eventually helps him in return, and even gives its life for him much later.

---

I think it's an open question of what would happen if caring characters in Middle Earth were to find a baby orc or half-orc.

I've done several runs of my "New Fellowship" one-shot adventure. One of my favorite bits from those was when a PC risked his life to save Gollum in the end, after they had throw the One Ring into the lava and he tried to leap after it. We agreed in the postscript that years later, Gollum had settled as a crotchety old man in the Shire - hating all his neighbors and them hating him, but the PCs still felt good about saving him.

Greetings!

*SIGH* I really don't understand all of the hand-wringing over Orcs. There somehow is this kind of deep-seated need to excuse the Orcs, to forgive them, to shelter them or lift them up as somehow good and virtuous and redeemable.

Why all of this desperate need to have Orcs be just misunderstood, and ultimately redeemable to the Light?

I say, fuck that. Do your redemption arcs with Humans, or Elves, or Dwarves. Dragons, or some Giants, fine.

For Orcs?

Let the Orcs be ruthless, and hateful, and violent savages. Let them be the wicked, the depraved, the sadistic, conquering villains. They are evil, from the womb!

Yes. Let fire, and steel, and death be the Orc's portion! Crush them relentlessly, and show them no mercy!

Geesus. I want the Orcs to keep their testosterone, their hatred, their savagery. It is precisely the Orcs' differences as a dark, evil, and brutal race that makes them interesting and FUN!

I say stomp the heavy boot on all the Barney Orc utopians. Let the hate burn bright! Redeeming Orcs into Barney Orcs DILUTES the game world, and makes the entire world more feminine, soft, and happy. Fuck that.

The armies need to march. Pile the bodies of the conquered high!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: estar on February 20, 2025, 06:45:06 PMWell keep in mind the view that Klingons were honorable warriors was a TNG thing. The Orc as a vicious but honorable warrior came first in the mid 80s with Warhammer. Although, to be fair, Warcraft is the one that cemented this aspect of the orc, and the TNG honorable Klingon and Warcraft-style orc seem to have co-developed alongside each other throughout the 90s.

An interesting observation. It does seem that orcs and klingons of the 90's were kind of a reaction to "evil for evil's sake" of previous villians. The best (IMO) example is Xanatos of the Disney cartoon Gargoyles. Infamous for being competent and complex.

Quote from: SHARK on February 21, 2025, 03:55:05 AM*SIGH* I really don't understand all of the hand-wringing over Orcs. There somehow is this kind of deep-seated need to excuse the Orcs, to forgive them, to shelter them or lift them up as somehow good and virtuous and redeemable.

Why all of this desperate need to have Orcs be just misunderstood, and ultimately redeemable to the Light?

It's really pretty simple at heart, as are most big lies. For some people, the very concept of "evil" is beyond the pale, to the point that it needs to be rooted out of all thought.  This isn't a form of moral nihilism alone (though it is that too) so much as a deep-seated fear.  I forget who said it about the post-moderns or the exact quote, but it went something like:  "Unlike Nietzsche who looked into the Abyss with fear and loathing, they took one glance and gleefully jumped in."

Just as Chesterton commented, "the lesson of dragons is not that dragons exist but that they can be slain," well the lesson of orcs is not that orcs exist but that evil is a thing.  If evil is a thing for orcs, then it could be a thing lurking in anyone. If it could be in anyone, it could be in me.  Some people need desperately for there not to be orcs, because they think they might be part one.

Quote from: estar on February 20, 2025, 06:45:06 PMWell keep in mind the view that Klingons were honorable warriors was a TNG thing. The Orc as a vicious but honorable warrior came first in the mid 80s with Warhammer. Although, to be fair, Warcraft is the one that cemented this aspect of the orc, and the TNG honorable Klingon and Warcraft-style orc seem to have co-developed alongside each other throughout the 90s.

WHFB orcs were honorable?  Admittedly I've always been more into the 40k side of GW's offerings but I've never heard or seen that take on WHFB orcs.  I fully admit though that I've never been an expert on the fantasy side of the lore (skimming to reading through a couple editions of army books) but I've never heard of them been referred to as honorable.  Vicious and violent?  Absolutely.  The ultimate example of a violent might makes right society?  Sure.  But always chaotic on the verge of violence within their own units/society enforced only by even more severe violence from those (temporarily) in charge.  Are there any examples in the WHFB lore where you can point to orcs being honorable as opposed to just refraining temporarily from violence/aggression simply for an equally temporary more important benefit?  I do agree though that Warcraft introduced that more "noble savage" motif to their clearly inspired fantasy orcs though.

Quote from: Effete on February 21, 2025, 02:02:53 AMThat's debatable. From the very beginning, Melkor and several of the other Ainur sowed discord into the Ainulindalé, to which Eru said that there is no creation that does not first originate with Himself. So although the Ainur had free will amongst themselves, it can be argued that their evil nature was first devised by Eru (possibly as a test for Elves and Men on Middle Earth).

Regardless, the orcs of Middle Earth were clearly meant to be servants of the Dark Powers, and quite likely irredeemably evil.

That's true, of course, but I still think balrogs specifically decided to be evil, even if Melkor seeded the thought. Eru allowed Melkor to do as he wished, probably as you stated to test men, but the balrogs uniquely had a choice in the matter. Same with Sauron...he could have just kept learning from Aule and been the greatest smith ever, but instead was corrupted by Morgoth. You can make the case that Morgoth fooled Sauron to some degree, but ultimately Mairon became the Lord of the Rings through his own volition. I think this has to be the case, the free will thing, or Aragorn and Galadriel and Gandalf rejecting the ring is pretty nonsensical.

And and to address Shark's point, kill 'em all, let God sort them out.

Quote from: SHARK on February 20, 2025, 09:30:47 PMThere is no deeper meaning.

SHARK

Spoken like a true orc.

I've been brushing up on Warcraft lore for reasons of my own lately, so I'll throw in a little extra context which might be interesting.

Warcraft: Orcs and Humans (1994) was originally going to be an adaptation of the Warhammer Fantasy tabletop game, but Blizzard couldn't get the license, so they made up their own lore. The end result in both that game and Warcraft II (1995) is that the portrayal of orcs is kind of a half step between Warhammer and Tolkien orcs. Original Warcraft orcs are a tribal society bent on conquest and destruction, like in Warhammer, but more intelligent, capable of carrying out alliances and industrialized warfare, more like Tolkien's orcs. Cosmetically they're kind of a toned down version of Warhammer orcs as well.

They're also literal aliens that arrived on Azeroth through a stargate, but that's kind of beside the point.

The real heel-face turn comes in Warcraft III (2002), where the backstory of the orcs gets retconned so that they were semi-unwitting pawns of the demonic Burning Legion, and puts them on the redemption arc to being the fantasy Klingons they are by World of Warcraft (2004).

The interesting thing is that Warcraft III and World of Warcraft were actually in development at the same time. The Orc redemption story was originally conceived for a point-and-click adventure game in development in the late 90s which was later canceled, but it is still quite likely that the reason the orcs got face-turned is that Blizzard knew they were making an MMO and were going to need them as a playable race for it.

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 06:12:10 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on February 20, 2025, 05:11:41 PM

Quote from: estar on February 20, 2025, 03:48:58 PMI stated what the archetype is. But perhaps I wasn't clear, the prototypical orc is a sentient being, corrupted from their original form by dark powers to be used as rank and file servants for their evil plans for the world.

This archetype diversified in major ways at three different time.

The first was Orcs as depicted in OD&D in 1974, this was reinforced by D&D rise in popularity and it ability to remain as the market leader for decades.

The second was Orcs as depicted in Warhammer in the mid-80s; this was further reinforced by Warcraft adopting a similar interpretation.

Finally, Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films marked the return of Orcs as creatures corrupted by evil powers. This was reinforced by Jackson explicitly showed Saruman creating the Uruk-hai.

https://www.tk421.net/lotr/film/fotr/27.html

All three have a foothold in the minds of today's hobbyists.

Yep.  Orcs are the stormtroopers of fantasy RPGs.  Or maybe stormtroopers are the orcs of space opera (orcs did come first)?

I agree with estar that D&D, Warhammer, and Warcraft were significant splits to the archetype. Most of those did not highlight orcs as being corrupted from an original form.

In D&D, the orc background was majorly influenced by Roger Moore's creation myth in Dragon #62. That portrayed orcs not as a corruption, but as a force in themselves - seeking revenge on other races.

(https://darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/orcs-gruumsh.jpg)

It also seems to me that in D&D modules, orcs were often a force in their own right - rather than henchmen of a dark lord. G1 had orc servants to the giants, say, but B2 had orcs as their own faction - with orcish leaders rather than a non-orc dark lord.

That was reinforced in The Orcs of Thar (1988), the official D&D module that made orcs and other humanoids as optional player races for BECMI. Orcs and other humanoids aren't servants - they are their own savage civilization. The tongue-in-cheek nature of this is more like Warhammer 40K's space orks.

As also introduced in the 1980s, Warcraft orcs are distinctly more like Klingons - the big powerful proud warrior race.

(https://darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/orcs-wow.jpg)

The more Klingon-ish orcs were folded back into D&D with 3rd edition, which re-introduced the half-orc as a player race.

I didnt read the whole thread so maybe someone brought it up, but the Orcs in Warcraft are corrupted. Natural orcs are reddish brown skinned and the green ones are infected with evil magic from drinking demon blood. The proud, honirable warrior race thing is actually new to them too they adopted that identity when Thrall made the new Horde like 10 years ago of in game time. Orcish honor is also played up by Garrosh Hellscream because he hates the other races in the Horde and wants to kick them out. Granted i think thats a retcon cause they were trying to character assassinate him HARD when they wanted him to be a raid boss. While a few things did happen before, for the most part everything about Warcraft Orcs people know is recent, within living memory. I think at most 60 years. Before that the only notable thing is they lived underground while the bigger races of their homeworld Draenor killed one another and they, for the most part, killed off the majority of the remaining Ogres.  This is part of why i don't like the Warcraft Orcs.

Quote from: RNGm on February 21, 2025, 08:56:37 AM

Quote from: estar on February 20, 2025, 06:45:06 PMWell keep in mind the view that Klingons were honorable warriors was a TNG thing. The Orc as a vicious but honorable warrior came first in the mid 80s with Warhammer. Although, to be fair, Warcraft is the one that cemented this aspect of the orc, and the TNG honorable Klingon and Warcraft-style orc seem to have co-developed alongside each other throughout the 90s.

WHFB orcs were honorable?  Admittedly I've always been more into the 40k side of GW's offerings but I've never heard or seen that take on WHFB orcs.  I fully admit though that I've never been an expert on the fantasy side of the lore (skimming to reading through a couple editions of army books) but I've never heard of them been referred to as honorable.  Vicious and violent?  Absolutely.  The ultimate example of a violent might makes right society?  Sure.  But always chaotic on the verge of violence within their own units/society enforced only by even more severe violence from those (temporarily) in charge.  Are there any examples in the WHFB lore where you can point to orcs being honorable as opposed to just refraining temporarily from violence/aggression simply for an equally temporary more important benefit?  I do agree though that Warcraft introduced that more "noble savage" motif to their clearly inspired fantasy orcs though.

WHFB orcs are not honorable, unless its in some old lore i don't really know. They just enjoy violence for violences sake. Usually they don't abstain from violence for temporary benefit either, since an orc army that doesnt have an opponent will usually start infighting. Especially Grimgor Ironhide who will start killing his own army if he goes more than 3 days without a fight.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 21, 2025, 07:15:50 AM

Quote from: SHARK on February 21, 2025, 03:55:05 AM*SIGH* I really don't understand all of the hand-wringing over Orcs. There somehow is this kind of deep-seated need to excuse the Orcs, to forgive them, to shelter them or lift them up as somehow good and virtuous and redeemable.

Why all of this desperate need to have Orcs be just misunderstood, and ultimately redeemable to the Light?

It's really pretty simple at heart, as are most big lies. For some people, the very concept of "evil" is beyond the pale, to the point that it needs to be rooted out of all thought.  This isn't a form of moral nihilism alone (though it is that too) so much as a deep-seated fear.  I forget who said it about the post-moderns or the exact quote, but it went something like:  "Unlike Nietzsche who looked into the Abyss with fear and loathing, they took one glance and gleefully jumped in."

Just as Chesterton commented, "the lesson of dragons is not that dragons exist but that they can be slain," well the lesson of orcs is not that orcs exist but that evil is a thing.  If evil is a thing for orcs, then it could be a thing lurking in anyone. If it could be in anyone, it could be in me.  Some people need desperately for there not to be orcs, because they think they might be part one.

Greetings!

Hmmm...That's damn insightful, Steven Mitchell! I like that, my friend! "The lesson of dragons is not that dragons exist, but that they can be slain." Yeah! Talk about a good cigar-worthy truth to chew on there!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK on February 21, 2025, 03:55:05 AMGreetings!

*SIGH* I really don't understand all of the hand-wringing over Orcs. There somehow is this kind of deep-seated need to excuse the Orcs, to forgive them, to shelter them or lift them up as somehow good and virtuous and redeemable.

Why all of this desperate need to have Orcs be just misunderstood, and ultimately redeemable to the Light?

Speaking only for myself, it's my basic Catholic disposition that, like Tolkien, wrestles with the moral implications of a race of sapient beings created irredeemable.

I realize this isn't a problem if you're playing in some dualistic (good and evil as balanced opposites required for stability of the cosmos) hell-dimension of a setting, but if your setting at all echoes a Christian ethos (as all of mine do) then you need to consider the moral issue of souls created for eternal damnation (rather that choosing it).

In my case, this led me first to a version of goblins, orcs, and ogres that were "the shadows of murdered men"; soulless corruptions of the shadows left behind when someone died before their natural time. The shadows of the 'small folk' became goblins, the shadows of warriors became orcs, and those of lords and 'great men who cast long shadows' became ogres. They are literally soulless aberrations created by necromancers to prey on mankind... essentially a type of undead that avoids all those issues of Christian morality.

However, a fair number of players I was testing my system with expressed a desire for something more akin to a Warcraft orc and, as my system already included the ability to play more fantastical beings like unicorns and dragons, I renamed a few things.

The "shadows of murdered men" became simply Shades, identical save for the name.

What now carried the name Orc (and Ogre) was a particular lineage of Mutants (an existing PC race of humans mutated by the Cataclysm that includes Trolls, Troglodytes, and others as "true-breeding" subspecies). I decided they were the descendants of the last Emperor and his Praetorian Guard who were determined to reclaim all of their former Empire to restore it to glory. Basically, they're fanatics ruling a Roman rump state with "Restore the Glory of Rome (including slavery and forced worship of the Emperor as a living god)" as their holy mission. They're also mutants whose adrenal system is now always on at 110%... with all the issues that causes.

In short, they're bad neighbors to all the free cities and other successor states that arose after the Cataclysm wiped the Empire off the map along with 99.9% of the population. They're an evil empire-in-the making and you definitely shouldn't have moral qualms about killing their soldiers in the process of liberating villages and slave camps from their clutches. But they also aren't intrinsically evil. They grow up in an evil culture and most start committing grave moral evils as soon as they reach the age of reason; but if you were to raise them free of their culture they'd just be another mutant with a particular mixed-bag of "cursed blessings" that all mutants in the setting have.

That also solves the moral issues of the orcs, just in the opposite direction of the Shade version. They have moral agency and choose to do evil like the worst stereotypes of the Roman Empire they're built on.

The only type of Orc I genuinely dislike is the "born irredeemably damned" version, but more often than not those only really exist in settings designed by Tolkein/D&D cargo-cultists who never even stopped to consider any moral implications at all (sorta like how the Forgotten Realms cosmology became a hell dimension where the most ethical action if you can't escape is embrace undeath didn't happen as a deliberate decision, but because of a pile of choices made by different writers without any deep consideration beyond solving an immediate plot issue). As such, most of those usually have bigger issues than just the nature of its orcs.

Quote from: RNGm on February 21, 2025, 08:56:37 AMWHFB orcs were honorable?  Admittedly I've always been more into the 40k side of GW's offerings but I've never heard or seen that take on WHFB orcs.  I fully admit though that I've never been an expert on the fantasy side of the lore (skimming to reading through a couple editions of army books) but I've never heard of them been referred to as honorable.  Vicious and violent?  Absolutely.  The ultimate example of a violent might makes right society?  Sure.  But always chaotic on the verge of violence within their own units/society enforced only by even more severe violence from those (temporarily) in charge.  Are there any examples in the WHFB lore where you can point to orcs being honorable as opposed to just refraining temporarily from violence/aggression simply for an equally temporary more important benefit?  I do agree though that Warcraft introduced that more "noble savage" motif to their clearly inspired fantasy orcs though.

I looked it up and turned out I conflated the two.
https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/friz30/do_40k_orks_have_their_own_code_of_honour_like/

It appears that 40K Orks are a form of corrupted being.

QuoteWarhammer 40,000 orks are different in the fact that instead of a species of mammal or mammal like creature, they are fungus. They shed spores which cam grow almost anywhere, and these spores grow everything from their food (shrooms, squigs, grots), slaves (grots, gretchin) and all of the boyz, who grow in fungal sacs underground and emerge effectively a young adult that is fully capable of fighting. They dont have to band together like Warcraft orcs to ensure their survival as a tribe and species. In 40k, if a 'newborn' ork cant win a fight and dies then he wasnt orky enough and the boyz got a laugh out of it.

Warhammer Fantasy Orks as well if this is accurate
https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Greenskins

I made the mistake because their aesthetics were so similar. But Warcraft is the true source of the honorable warrior Orc.

Still I think modified my original point stands. The basic archetype of orcs was estabilshed by Tolkien. And there were three times that archtype got modified and diversified. D&D, Warhammer/Warcraft, and the LoTR Films.

with the added note that Warhammer created an iconic look for the orcs, and Warcraft copied that look and added to it the idea of the orcs as vicious, honorable warriors.

Quote from: estar on February 21, 2025, 11:47:28 AMwith the added note that Warhammer created an iconic look for the orcs, and Warcraft copied that look and added to it the idea of the orcs as vicious, honorable warriors.

Another unspoken element I think could be argued played into the transformation of some orcs into the vicious honorable warriors in the late 80's/early 90's was Star Trek TNG's expansion of the Klingons from basically TOS' space commies into a "proud warrior race."

Basically, a lot of those versions of orcs amount to "fantasy Klingons" and the impulse to have playable ones runs parallel to the adoption of Klingon culture (including an entire constructed language) by a certain subset of sci-fi fandom.

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 21, 2025, 11:25:05 AM

Quote from: SHARK on February 21, 2025, 03:55:05 AM*SIGH* I really don't understand all of the hand-wringing over Orcs. There somehow is this kind of deep-seated need to excuse the Orcs, to forgive them, to shelter them or lift them up as somehow good and virtuous and redeemable.

Why all of this desperate need to have Orcs be just misunderstood, and ultimately redeemable to the Light?

Speaking only for myself, it's my basic Catholic disposition that, like Tolkien, wrestles with the moral implications of a race of sapient beings created irredeemable.

To SHARK and Steven Mitchell - Tolkien is the one who created the current archetype of orc, and he is the one who wrote at length about moral implications and said they were not irredeemable -- back in 1954. One of his central themes was about mercy, summed up by Gandalf's quote that Brad posted earlier, "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement."

So the thought of orc redemption isn't a modern SJW thing -- it was something that Tolkien wrestled with in the 1950s.

You're free to have orcs however you want in your campaign. The orcs in my Shadowrun campaign aren't the same as orcs in Tolkien's Middle Earth or orcs in your world of Thandor.

To Chris24601:

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 21, 2025, 11:25:05 AMIn short, they're bad neighbors to all the free cities and other successor states that arose after the Cataclysm wiped the Empire off the map along with 99.9% of the population. They're an evil empire-in-the making and you definitely shouldn't have moral qualms about killing their soldiers in the process of liberating villages and slave camps from their clutches. But they also aren't intrinsically evil. They grow up in an evil culture and most start committing grave moral evils as soon as they reach the age of reason; but if you were to raise them free of their culture they'd just be another mutant with a particular mixed-bag of "cursed blessings" that all mutants in the setting have.

That also solves the moral issues of the orcs, just in the opposite direction of the Shade version. They have moral agency and choose to do evil like the worst stereotypes of the Roman Empire they're built on.

Thanks for the overview of orcs in your campaign world. In my recent campaign world, the Solar Empire (based on the Incans) is objectively good - ruled by a divinely-inspired king chosen by the good-aligned sun god. So you're taking the worst stereotypes of the Roman Empire, and I'm taking the best stereotypes of the Incan Empire.

It's fantasy, so we can do what we want in our own worlds. But in this case, it's made your Roman-inspired orcs evil and my Incan-inspired orcs good.

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 21, 2025, 11:25:05 AMWhat now carried the name Orc (and Ogre) was a particular lineage of Mutants (an existing PC race of humans mutated by the Cataclysm that includes Trolls, Troglodytes, and others as "true-breeding" subspecies). I decided they were the descendants of the last Emperor and his Praetorian Guard who were determined to reclaim all of their former Empire to restore it to glory. Basically, they're fanatics ruling a Roman rump state with "Restore the Glory of Rome (including slavery and forced worship of the Emperor as a living god)" as their holy mission. They're also mutants whose adrenal system is now always on at 110%... with all the issues that causes.

Yeah as a Catholic myself, a version of this is how I resolved the moral issues with Orcs. The Demons were seeking to create a warrior race that could be dominated by them.

The Demi-humans like Dwarves, Gnomes, and Halflings were just the first round of alterations they didn't modify their personalities just their physical abilities. The orcs, goblins, etc. were the second round where their bodies and minds were altered.

Quote from: SHARK on February 21, 2025, 03:55:05 AM*SIGH* I really don't understand all of the hand-wringing over Orcs. There somehow is this kind of deep-seated need to excuse the Orcs, to forgive them, to shelter them or lift them up as somehow good and virtuous and redeemable.

I can only speak for myself but always liked to read and when it came to my Catholicism this meant reading some theology. Parallel and intersecting this was some of the musings of golden age science fiction and fantasy authors on the nature of free will and the different ways of handling it. It was not a big thing but it was there and to me interesting.

The final piece of the puzzle is how I was running sandbox campaigns from the start. Sure the term was only coined in the 2000s, what I was doing was fleshing out my setting enough so that the players, if they wanted too, could plot a way to found kingdoms, become kings, and conquer. That naturally led to running things as a sandbox campaign because who knows where their next ally will come from or what they will have to do to gain their trust.

One challenge was to make that interesting, and shades of grey rather than black and white was more interesting to run and for them to play in a campaign where the focus is on making a mark upon the world.

Hence, I jettisoned alignments early on and came up with more nuanced depictions of religions and races. So even if you managed to get the Church of Mitra on your side you still need to keep an eye on them because they have their dark side despite overall being a force for good. With the Orcs, describing them the way I do means if the players need to get an orc tribe off their back in order to deal with a more pressing issue, there are ways of doing that beyond waging a costly war of extermination.

Quote from: SHARK on February 21, 2025, 03:55:05 AMWhy all of this desperate need to have Orcs be just misunderstood, and ultimately redeemable to the Light?

The situation of the Orcs in the Majestic Wilderlands/Majestic Fantasy Realms is tragic but given what the demons did to them peaceful co-existance is not possible except for rare individuals whose aggressive nature is at the low end of the bell curve.

The demons represent irreparable evil in my setting. I am not a fan of Milton or the devil as an antihero. Demons have managed to maim themselves spiritually so badly that they are incapable of doing good. Everything they do is for their own selfish reasons.

Quote from: Slambo on February 21, 2025, 10:35:46 AMWHFB orcs are not honorable, unless its in some old lore i don't really know. They just enjoy violence for violences sake. Usually they don't abstain from violence for temporary benefit either, since an orc army that doesnt have an opponent will usually start infighting. Especially Grimgor Ironhide who will start killing his own army if he goes more than 3 days without a fight.

Sorry that it wasn't clear but that abstaining from violence probably should have wrote "abstaining from violence temporarily against you" and that might be a more 40k thing than WHFB and was partly based off of this 40k Ork codex quote:

"They cannot be bargained with or bought save with weapons that they will inevitable turn against those who tried to bribe them."   https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Ork_Quotes

Quote from: estar on February 21, 2025, 11:47:28 AMI made the mistake because their aesthetics were so similar. But Warcraft is the true source of the honorable warrior Orc.

It's an easy mistake to make to conflate the two especially given that one was based on the other when a licensing agreement didn't work out.   I agree on the Warcraft source as it eventually turned out by WoW but it didn't seem to be the case originally in the games I mainly played back in the day (Warcraft 1 & 2) as confirmed above already.  Regardless, I'm not a fan of the honorable warrior savage motif for orcs and think it's better served with other fictional fantasy (it's sad that nowadays you have to specify both adjectives for the "modern audience" that may be reading) races.

Quote from: estar on February 21, 2025, 12:40:53 PMThe demons represent irreparable evil in my setting. I am not a fan of Milton or the devil as an antihero. Demons have managed to maim themselves spiritually so badly that they are incapable of doing good. Everything they do is for their own selfish reasons.

My demons are the same; literally fallen angels who knowingly chose evil. They also ended up consigned to The Outer Darkness (i.e. Hell) unless summoned by mortals (and there's more than enough stupid, greedy and desperate souls to make them a recurring issue).

For my setting its the undead (including the aforementioned Shades) who fill the role of irredeemable evil; soulless mockeries of life and lost souls that chose evil in life and rejected God in death. They're empowered by the Demon Emperor (Satan analogue) himself as the embodiment of his hatred for all God's creation and his desire to drag as many souls as possible into The Outer Darkness out of spite.

My Orcs ended up as a more human evil largely because I didn't feel a need to have yet another irredeemable evil in the setting what with demons and undead already existing. After you've got "soulless" and "soul/spirit that chose evil" covered I can't think of any other types of irredeemable natures that I'd want to include in a fundamentally Christian mythos.

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 21, 2025, 11:25:05 AM

QuoteGreetings!

*SIGH* I really don't understand all of the hand-wringing over Orcs. There somehow is this kind of deep-seated need to excuse the Orcs, to forgive them, to shelter them or lift them up as somehow good and virtuous and redeemable.

Why all of this desperate need to have Orcs be just misunderstood, and ultimately redeemable to the Light?

Speaking only for myself, it's my basic Catholic disposition that, like Tolkien, wrestles with the moral implications of a race of sapient beings created irredeemable.

I realize this isn't a problem if you're playing in some dualistic (good and evil as balanced opposites required for stability of the cosmos) hell-dimension of a setting, but if your setting at all echoes a Christian ethos (as all of mine do) then you need to consider the moral issue of souls created for eternal damnation (rather that choosing it).

In a weird way, it's also an issue from a secular point of view. Without a metaphysical force driving them, you start to wonder how an entirely evil culture could actually function. The only examples we have in the real world are human, of course, but it looks like amorality, selfishness and vice are not scalable or sustainable to a societal level. You almost have to give orcs some kind of honor culture or internal ethics in order to conceive of them being functional enough as a group to actually pose a threat to a developed human culture.

Quote from: RNGm on February 21, 2025, 01:08:24 PM

Quote from: estar on February 21, 2025, 11:47:28 AMI made the mistake because their aesthetics were so similar. But Warcraft is the true source of the honorable warrior Orc.

It's an easy mistake to make to conflate the two especially given that one was based on the other when a licensing agreement didn't work out.   I agree on the Warcraft source as it eventually turned out by WoW but it didn't seem to be the case originally in the games I mainly played back in the day (Warcraft 1 & 2) as confirmed above already.  Regardless, I'm not a fan of the honorable warrior savage motif for orcs and think it's better served with other fictional fantasy (it's sad that nowadays you have to specify both adjectives for the "modern audience" that may be reading) races.

I'm leaning towards three broad archetypes, and subtypes within those. However, I only know Warhammer 40K and Warcraft by reputation and descriptions on the web. I haven't played them. So I'd love thoughts from someone with experience. The three broad archetypes:

• The Minion / Goblin - short, fiendishly inventive, quarrelsome
• The Brute - big, strong, tough, dumb
• The Savage - big, warrior culture, aggressive

Minion/Goblin is most descriptive of Tolkien's orcs. The Uruk-Hai were taller and prouder than regular orcs, but in the books they were no taller or stronger than humans. Standard orcs were short and cruel, not chest-beating manly men.

Brute is more like Warhammer 40K orks. They come in a comedic horde, supposedly a satire of European football hooligans.

Savage is more like Warcraft orcs - and the Earthdawn orcs. They might be corrupted or not, but they still have a code and some form of honor.

Quote from: ForgottenF on February 21, 2025, 02:04:33 PMIn a weird way, it's also an issue from a secular point of view. Without a metaphysical force driving them, you start to wonder how an entirely evil culture could actually function. The only examples we have in the real world are human, of course, but it looks like amorality, selfishness and vice are not scalable or sustainable to a societal level. You almost have to give orcs some kind of honor culture or internal ethics in order to conceive of them being functional enough as a group to actually pose a threat to a developed human culture.

I'd say Minion/Goblin type orcs by themselves aren't a threat. They're just henchmen of a dark lord.

Brutes like Warhammer 40K are a threat by numbers of their horde and/or magic. Their fungus biology lets them quickly turn into hordes, and their magic lets them create technology despite their stupidity.

Savages like Warcraft have the honor code that makes them a dangerous warrior race.

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 06:12:10 PMI agree with estar that D&D, Warhammer, and Warcraft were significant splits to the archetype. Most of those did not highlight orcs as being corrupted from an original form.

...

As also introduced in the 1980s, Warcraft orcs are distinctly more like Klingons - the big powerful proud warrior race.

Other people have addressed this to some extent, but with respect to Warcraft, this isn't accurate at all.  The corrupted nature of the orcs is pretty central to the narrative of the second and third games in the series.  Since you're looking for alternate interpretations of orcs, it's probably worth going into a little more detail.

In the first two games, the orcs are depicted as thoroughly vicious and evil.  They lust for conquest.  They enslave the races they defeat.  Their spellcasters are all demon-summoning necromancers.  Orc society is ruled from the shadows by an immensely powerful orcish warlock, making the entire race effectively henchmen of an evil wizard.  They have already committed genocide against one race at the behest of a demon lord.  While it is never stated outright that orcs are a corrupted and degenerate race, there are hints that this is the case.  Orcish necromancy is revealed to be a perversion of ancestor worship.  The strange alien home world of the orcs is dying around them, but once they come through the portal to Azeroth (the earthlike fantasy world that is the setting for the games), this taint seems to follow them and transform the landscape.

In the third game, after being defeated and subjugated, the orcs unexpectedly fall into a state of lethargy.  This is initially interpreted by humans as a disease, but it turns out that orcs have been under the influence of evil magics and demonic corruption for so long that they can't function without them.  That's where the storyline of the orc campaign in the third game begins, and the proud barbarian warrior orcs that you're talking about emerge from that.

Quote from: jhkim on February 21, 2025, 12:28:11 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 21, 2025, 11:25:05 AM

Quote from: SHARK on February 21, 2025, 03:55:05 AM*SIGH* I really don't understand all of the hand-wringing over Orcs. There somehow is this kind of deep-seated need to excuse the Orcs, to forgive them, to shelter them or lift them up as somehow good and virtuous and redeemable.

Why all of this desperate need to have Orcs be just misunderstood, and ultimately redeemable to the Light?

Speaking only for myself, it's my basic Catholic disposition that, like Tolkien, wrestles with the moral implications of a race of sapient beings created irredeemable.

To SHARK and Steven Mitchell - Tolkien is the one who created the current archetype of orc, and he is the one who wrote at length about moral implications and said they were not irredeemable -- back in 1954. One of his central themes was about mercy, summed up by Gandalf's quote that Brad posted earlier, "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement."

So the thought of orc redemption isn't a modern SJW thing -- it was something that Tolkien wrestled with in the 1950s.

You're free to have orcs however you want in your campaign. The orcs in my Shadowrun campaign aren't the same as orcs in Tolkien's Middle Earth or orcs in your world of Thandor.

To Chris24601:

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 21, 2025, 11:25:05 AMIn short, they're bad neighbors to all the free cities and other successor states that arose after the Cataclysm wiped the Empire off the map along with 99.9% of the population. They're an evil empire-in-the making and you definitely shouldn't have moral qualms about killing their soldiers in the process of liberating villages and slave camps from their clutches. But they also aren't intrinsically evil. They grow up in an evil culture and most start committing grave moral evils as soon as they reach the age of reason; but if you were to raise them free of their culture they'd just be another mutant with a particular mixed-bag of "cursed blessings" that all mutants in the setting have.

That also solves the moral issues of the orcs, just in the opposite direction of the Shade version. They have moral agency and choose to do evil like the worst stereotypes of the Roman Empire they're built on.

Thanks for the overview of orcs in your campaign world. In my recent campaign world, the Solar Empire (based on the Incans) is objectively good - ruled by a divinely-inspired king chosen by the good-aligned sun god. So you're taking the worst stereotypes of the Roman Empire, and I'm taking the best stereotypes of the Incan Empire.

It's fantasy, so we can do what we want in our own worlds. But in this case, it's made your Roman-inspired orcs evil and my Incan-inspired orcs good.

Greetings!

Yes, Jhkim, I'm fully aware of what all Tolkien wrote about Middle Earth. I own and have read The Silmarillion, The Lord of The Rings, The Hobbit, Unfinished Tales, and more. Like Brad, I started reading Tolkien when I was a kid, and then proceeded to get into everything Tolkien wrote. I've read his excellent works for many years since. Tolkien was a brilliant scholar, and an inspiring author and writer. I even have one of those fine "World of Middle Earth" coffee-table books with absolutely beautiful maps and cartography provided by world-class cartographers.

Having said that, I'm not running a D&D campaign set in the world of Middle Earth. I use my world of Thandor. So, whatever Tolkien wrestled with and hemmed and hawed about the spiritual sanctification of Orcs, or whether or not Orcs possessed eternal souls that could be redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross--is absolutely irrelevant. I don't care about what Tolkien wrote about in "Letter #156" in 1938, or his notes that he scribbled to his son Christopher in 1968. Nor do I care about the mind-boggling Woke Feminist interpretation of what some fat, ugly Lesbian "Tolkien Scholar" in current-day Cambridge University, Britain has argued about "What Tolkien *really* meant with such and such writing in The Lord of the Rings.

As far as being inspired by Scriptures and theological doctrine--I'm more interested in what the Lord says about Evil creatures, and tribes of the wicked and abominable that are damned and judged, than what Tolkien says, or Gandalf. In the Bible, the Lord says the following:

1 Samuel 15:3
"Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass."

King James Version (KJV)

(https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/1-Samuel-15-3/)

Thus, the Orcs are therefore likened to the Amalekites, like what is described in the Biblical quotation I noted.

Beyond such Biblical theological ruminations and marinating in God's righteous judgment and using us as instruments to smite the wicked and the blasphemous, and standing strong for righteousness and fighting against evil, as you noted yourself previously, there have been interpretations that differed from Tolkien's expressions of Orcs--as you noted, 1E AD&D's Monster Manual. Yes, in the 1EAD&D Monster Manual, Orcs are pig-faced, primitive, evil savages. The AD&D Orcs organize themselves into tribes, worship dark, evil gods, and are always engaged in rape, plunder, and war.

Orcs are a vibrant, colourful, and savage enemy that opposes all of civilization, righteousness, goodness, and by extension, are ever-present antagonists standing against the Player Characters.

I think that original game-based interpretation is of salient importance. We are playing the D&D game, with the point being to have fun. I don't think dragging obscure Tolkien references into a game or insisting on moral struggle sessions is very helpful in contributing to the fun process of playing in a fantasy milieu.

I freely grant, while I myself am something of an educated scholar, and well-versed in philosophy, theology, and history--some of my players would look at me cross-eyed if I were to drop some of these moral struggle sessions about Orcs on them. Between puffing on a good cigar, and taking a swig of fine whiskey, they would likely exclaim to me, saying--

"What, SHARK? Bro, pass me the lighter, and lets get rolling the dice! Fuck the Orcs! It's time to bring the hammer down on them! Fucking Orcs need to die!"

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Quasquetonian on February 21, 2025, 02:47:07 PM

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 06:12:10 PMAs also introduced in the 1980s, Warcraft orcs are distinctly more like Klingons - the big powerful proud warrior race.

Other people have addressed this to some extent, but with respect to Warcraft, this isn't accurate at all.  The corrupted nature of the orcs is pretty central to the narrative of the second and third games in the series.  Since you're looking for alternate interpretations of orcs, it's probably worth going into a little more detail.

In the first two games, the orcs are depicted as thoroughly vicious and evil.  They lust for conquest.  They enslave the races they defeat.  Their spellcasters are all demon-summoning necromancers. Orc society is ruled from the shadows by an immensely powerful orcish warlock, making the entire race effectively henchmen of an evil wizard.  They have already committed genocide against one race at the behest of a demon lord. While it is never stated outright that orcs are a corrupted and degenerate race, there are hints that this is the case.  Orcish necromancy is revealed to be a perversion of ancestor worship.  The strange alien home world of the orcs is dying around them, but once they come through the portal to Azeroth (the earthlike fantasy world that is the setting for the games), this taint seems to follow them and transform the landscape.

In the third game, after being defeated and subjugated, the orcs unexpectedly fall into a state of lethargy.  This is initially interpreted by humans as a disease, but it turns out that orcs have been under the influence of evil magics and demonic corruption for so long that they can't function without them.  That's where the storyline of the orc campaign in the third game begins, and the proud barbarian warrior orcs that you're talking about emerge from that.

Thanks for the added detail. Does that invalidate the Klingon comparison, though? Even during the TNG era, the Klingons weren't nice. They eventually had a treaty with the Federation, but they were brutal and lusted for conquest. Pre-peace-treaty they tried to mass execute civilians like the Organians. Even in the TNG era, there were many Star Trek stories where evil Klingon subgroups or individuals were the enemy.

I'm not saying that Warcraft orcs and Klingons are identical, but it seems like they have the same broader archetype of the proud, brutal warrior race. It sounds like the first two games are like pre-peace-treaty Klingons under evil government, and the third game shifted them to be more like the proud barbarians of the TNG era.

This is all I ever needed for D&D Orcs...

This is the tale the shamans tell, in the camps of the orcs when the night is deep on the world and dawn is far away:

In the beginning all the gods met and drew lots for the parts of the world in which their representative races would dwell. The human gods drew the lot that allowed humans to dwell where they pleased, in any environment. The elven gods drew the green forests, the dwarven gods drew the high mountains, the gnomish gods the rocky, sunlit hills, and the halfling gods picked the lot that gave them the fields and meadows. Then the assembled gods turned to the orcish gods and laughed loud and long. "All the lots are taken!" they said tauntingly. "Where will your people dwell, One-Eye? There is no place left!" There was silence upon the world then, as Gruumsh One-Eye lifted his great iron spear and stretched it forth over the world. The shaft blotted out the sun over a great part of the lands as he spoke: "No. You lie. You have rigged the drawing of the lots, hoping to cheat me and my followers. But One-Eye never sleeps; One-Eye sees all. There is a place for orcs to dwell . . . here!" With that, Gruumsh struck the forests with his spear, and a part of them withered with rot. "And here!" he bellowed, and his spear pierced the mountains, opening mighty rifts and chasms. "And here!" and the spearhead split the hills and made them shake and covered them in dust. "And here!" and the black spear gouged the meadows, and made them barren. "There!" roared He- Who-Watches triumphantly, and his voice carried to the ends of the world. "There is where the orcs shall dwell! There they shall survive, and multiply, and grow stronger, and a day shall come when they cover the world, and shall slay all of your collected peoples! Orcs shall inherit the world you sought to cheat me of!"

In this way, say the shamans, did the orcs come into the world, and thus did Gruumsh predict the coming time when orcs will rule alone. This is why orcs make war, ceaseless and endless: war for the wrath of Gruumsh.
(https://imgs.search.brave.com/9vJq9jGFGYaR8ovFR_Z4UBvT5Ya6_W6D9fAYSig51SM/rs:fit:860:0:0:0/g:ce/aHR0cHM6Ly9zdGF0/aWMud2lraWEubm9j/b29raWUubmV0L2Zv/cmdvdHRlbnJlYWxt/cy9pbWFnZXMvMy8z/NC9HcnV1bXNoU21p/dGUucG5nL3Jldmlz/aW9uL2xhdGVzdC9z/Y2FsZS10by13aWR0/aC1kb3duLzQ1MD9j/Yj0yMDI0MTExODAz/MDkxMA)

Quote from: SHARK on February 21, 2025, 02:48:30 PMI'm not running a D&D campaign set in the world of Middle Earth. I use my world of Thandor. So, whatever Tolkien wrestled with and hemmed and hawed about the spiritual sanctification of Orcs, or whether or not Orcs possessed eternal souls that could be redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross--is absolutely irrelevant. I don't care about what Tolkien wrote about in "Letter #156" in 1938, or his notes that he scribbled to his son Christopher in 1968.

Again, that's exactly my point about different versions of orcs. Tolkien's orcs aren't the same as Thandor orcs, and that's fine. My beef was with you suggesting that Tolkien was a mush-brained SJW who didn't understand what orcs really are.

Quote from: SHARK on February 21, 2025, 02:48:30 PMI think that original game-based interpretation is of salient importance. We are playing the D&D game, with the point being to have fun. I don't think dragging obscure Tolkien references into a game or insisting on moral struggle sessions is very helpful in contributing to the fun process of playing in a fantasy milieu.

I've had great fun in my recent Middle Earth games.

The whole plot of the last one-shot adventure was a mission of peace - a quest to get to King Thror and end the devastating War of the Dwarves and Orcs (https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Battle_of_Azanulbizar) that was being driven in part by his Sauron-created dwarven ring which would lead to his death. Orcs were still the enemy, but the point wasn't to wipe them all out - it was to save Thror and the dwarven people after the devastation of Smaug.

Nothing wrong with a low-thought slaughter-fest game, but my Tolkien games have often had moral dilemmas as part of the fun.

I mentioned before that in my "New Fellowship" game, one of the PCs risked himself to rescue Gollum, and successfully brought Gollum out from Mount Doom, eventually settling him back at the Shire. I loved that twist.

Another twist I loved was in a different run of the "New Fellowship" game, where the eagle PC flew Gollum far away from them such that he couldn't follow, depositing him in Fangorn forest. That lead to a brief reunion of the ent-wife PC with an ent there, and the ents taking charge of Gollum.

One of the main features of the "New Fellowship" adventure was that doing evil would further the corruption of the Ring-bearer. Too much slaughter and indifference and the Ring would take you over. The players didn't hate this - they all enjoyed getting into the Tolkien themes and the possibility of being corrupted by the Ring.

There's plenty of different ways to have fun in RPGs.

Quote from: crkrueger on February 21, 2025, 04:33:03 PMThis is all I ever needed for D&D Orcs...

This is the tale the shamans tell, in the camps of the orcs when the night is deep on the world and dawn is far away:

In the beginning all the gods met and drew lots for the parts of the world in which their representative races would dwell. The human gods drew the lot that allowed humans to dwell where they pleased, in any environment. The elven gods drew the green forests, the dwarven gods drew the high mountains, the gnomish gods the rocky, sunlit hills, and the halfling gods picked the lot that gave them the fields and meadows. Then the assembled gods turned to the orcish gods and laughed loud and long. "All the lots are taken!" they said tauntingly. "Where will your people dwell, One-Eye? There is no place left!" There was silence upon the world then, as Gruumsh One-Eye lifted his great iron spear and stretched it forth over the world. The shaft blotted out the sun over a great part of the lands as he spoke: "No. You lie. You have rigged the drawing of the lots, hoping to cheat me and my followers. But One-Eye never sleeps; One-Eye sees all. There is a place for orcs to dwell . . . here!" With that, Gruumsh struck the forests with his spear, and a part of them withered with rot. "And here!" he bellowed, and his spear pierced the mountains, opening mighty rifts and chasms. "And here!" and the spearhead split the hills and made them shake and covered them in dust. "And here!" and the black spear gouged the meadows, and made them barren. "There!" roared He- Who-Watches triumphantly, and his voice carried to the ends of the world. "There is where the orcs shall dwell! There they shall survive, and multiply, and grow stronger, and a day shall come when they cover the world, and shall slay all of your collected peoples! Orcs shall inherit the world you sought to cheat me of!"

In this way, say the shamans, did the orcs come into the world, and thus did Gruumsh predict the coming time when orcs will rule alone. This is why orcs make war, ceaseless and endless: war for the wrath of Gruumsh.
(https://imgs.search.brave.com/9vJq9jGFGYaR8ovFR_Z4UBvT5Ya6_W6D9fAYSig51SM/rs:fit:860:0:0:0/g:ce/aHR0cHM6Ly9zdGF0/aWMud2lraWEubm9j/b29raWUubmV0L2Zv/cmdvdHRlbnJlYWxt/cy9pbWFnZXMvMy8z/NC9HcnV1bXNoU21p/dGUucG5nL3Jldmlz/aW9uL2xhdGVzdC9z/Y2FsZS10by13aWR0/aC1kb3duLzQ1MD9j/Yj0yMDI0MTExODAz/MDkxMA)

Greetings!

crkrueger! I love that story from Dragon Magazine! I agree as well. My own sentiments are similar.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: crkrueger on February 21, 2025, 04:33:03 PMThis is all I ever needed for D&D Orcs...

The Grummsh story is cute, but raises some questions about the "good" gods being dicks, and the orcs being justified in their actions due to being unfairly treated.

Quote from: jhkim on February 21, 2025, 04:58:21 PM

Quote from: SHARK on February 21, 2025, 02:48:30 PMI'm not running a D&D campaign set in the world of Middle Earth. I use my world of Thandor. So, whatever Tolkien wrestled with and hemmed and hawed about the spiritual sanctification of Orcs, or whether or not Orcs possessed eternal souls that could be redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross--is absolutely irrelevant. I don't care about what Tolkien wrote about in "Letter #156" in 1938, or his notes that he scribbled to his son Christopher in 1968.

Again, that's exactly my point about different versions of orcs. Tolkien's orcs aren't the same as Thandor orcs, and that's fine. My beef was with you suggesting that Tolkien was a mush-brained SJW who didn't understand what orcs really are.

Quote from: SHARK on February 21, 2025, 02:48:30 PMI think that original game-based interpretation is of salient importance. We are playing the D&D game, with the point being to have fun. I don't think dragging obscure Tolkien references into a game or insisting on moral struggle sessions is very helpful in contributing to the fun process of playing in a fantasy milieu.

I've had great fun in my recent Middle Earth games.

The whole plot of the last one-shot adventure was a mission of peace - a quest to get to King Thror and end the devastating War of the Dwarves and Orcs (https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Battle_of_Azanulbizar) that was being driven in part by his Sauron-created dwarven ring which would lead to his death. Orcs were still the enemy, but the point wasn't to wipe them all out - it was to save Thror and the dwarven people after the devastation of Smaug.

Nothing wrong with a low-thought slaughter-fest game, but my Tolkien games have often had moral dilemmas as part of the fun.

I mentioned before that in my "New Fellowship" game, one of the PCs risked himself to rescue Gollum, and successfully brought Gollum out from Mount Doom, eventually settling him back at the Shire. I loved that twist.

Another twist I loved was in a different run of the "New Fellowship" game, where the eagle PC flew Gollum far away from them such that he couldn't follow, depositing him in Fangorn forest. That lead to a brief reunion of the ent-wife PC with an ent there, and the ents taking charge of Gollum.

One of the main features of the "New Fellowship" adventure was that doing evil would further the corruption of the Ring-bearer. Too much slaughter and indifference and the Ring would take you over. The players didn't hate this - they all enjoyed getting into the Tolkien themes and the possibility of being corrupted by the Ring.

There's plenty of different ways to have fun in RPGs.

Greetings!

No, Jhkim. Tolkien was definitely not a mush-brained SJW. My illustration or point though was if you are playing a fantasy game of D&D, largely inspired and based upon AD&D--which of course has inspirations from Tolkien--but you aren't running the game set in Middle Earth--then all of the angels dancing on a pin head and Tolkien's back and forth thoughts over 40 years about Orcs in Middle Earth isn't really relevant or helpful.

Hell, MOST GAMERS playing D&D nowadays have never read anything that Tolkien wrote. Their references are more likely The Lord of the Rings films, by Jackson. And, truth be told--many of the younger players don't even have that as a background reference. Their reference bubble is entirely within the game books, and maybe video games in general over the last 15 years. I've met more than one person under the age of 40 for example, that has never seen Jackson's The Lord of the Rings.

That brings me around to the larger point that probably many gamers want to play and have fun--they would get glassy eyed when you start quoting some obscure collection of Tolkien's letters from 75 or more years ago. "Tolkien who? That dude that wrote the Lord of The Rings? Oh, right right." Beyond that--yeah, lots of gamers raised on COD or whatever are interested in adventure, conquest, fighting, and booty. And seeing their characters "get juiced"--they certainly aren't interested in moralistic struggle sessions about whether or not Tolkien thought one decade or not that Orcs had a redeemable soul, and might, maybe, somehow could be redeemed to the Light.

As far as morality struggles in a campaign, well, you claim to have players that like that, and have had fun. Ok, great. I have had a few myself in my own campaigns. However, maybe I am trapped in my own bubble of self-referencing anecdotes like some of our friends here like needling you about with your anecdotes--*Laughing*--but in my experience, easily half of my own players want to enjoy time with adult friends, have some food and drinks, smoke, and roll dice and kill stuff. And get that booty. And juice their characters with whatever new spells, abilities, or magic items. They are not likely to be interested in moralistic struggle sessions after a long week at work, fighting traffic, shopping, and dealing with the kids.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 21, 2025, 06:44:16 PM

Quote from: crkrueger on February 21, 2025, 04:33:03 PMThis is all I ever needed for D&D Orcs...

The Grummsh story is cute, but raises some questions about the "good" gods being dicks, and the orcs being justified in their actions due to being unfairly treated.

Well, the point is, no matter what the truth is, the Orcs' entire culture is based on destroying the other races.  Why do Orcs make war?  Because that's what Gruumsh made them for.  They're his weapons in the War against the peoples of the other Gods.  Whether their origin story is true compared to everyone else's, or whether Corellon shot out Gruumsh's eye, etc. is moot.

Quote from: crkrueger on February 21, 2025, 07:08:34 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 21, 2025, 06:44:16 PM

Quote from: crkrueger on February 21, 2025, 04:33:03 PMThis is all I ever needed for D&D Orcs...

The Grummsh story is cute, but raises some questions about the "good" gods being dicks, and the orcs being justified in their actions due to being unfairly treated.

Well, the point is, no matter what the truth is, the Orcs' entire culture is based on destroying the other races.  Why do Orcs make war?  Because that's what Gruumsh made them for.  They're his weapons in the War against the peoples of the other Gods.  Whether their origin story is true compared to everyone else's, or whether Corellon shot out Gruumsh's eye, etc. is moot.

Greetings!

My friend, that is an excellent point! I myself, in running campaigns in my World of Thandor, I enjoy embracing a similar approach to keeping Cosmological or Theological TRUTH more or less vague, uncertain, or otherwise entirely parochial. OF COURSE every race and culture has their own religious dogmas and anointed truth. From their perspective, and traditions. Virtually none of them in my campaigns have God on speed dial to provide them with a perfect and comprehensive bullet point presentation or a TED talk on how every detail in creation and their particular culture was made and provide all the answers.

*Laughing* Honestly, keeping stuff kind of vague and uncertain allows for some religious strife, naturally, but it takes the wind out of getting too deep into theology or philosophy. Which, of course, is intentional on my part. My players are not particularly interested in sitting through hours-long lectures on philosophy and theology. Let alone getting wrapped up in moralistic struggle sessions over theological interpretations.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: estar on February 21, 2025, 12:40:53 PMI am not a fan of Milton or the devil as an antihero.

To be fair to Milton, you should blame the Romantics for the "devil as an anti-hero" thing.

Quote from: crkrueger on February 21, 2025, 07:08:34 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 21, 2025, 06:44:16 PM

Quote from: crkrueger on February 21, 2025, 04:33:03 PMThis is all I ever needed for D&D Orcs...

The Grummsh story is cute, but raises some questions about the "good" gods being dicks, and the orcs being justified in their actions due to being unfairly treated.

Well, the point is, no matter what the truth is, the Orcs' entire culture is based on destroying the other races.  Why do Orcs make war?  Because that's what Gruumsh made them for.  They're his weapons in the War against the peoples of the other Gods.  Whether their origin story is true compared to everyone else's, or whether Corellon shot out Gruumsh's eye, etc. is moot.

If Grummsh was just a chaos god of destruction, then he doesn't need an excuse. The chaos gods of 40k (for example) are unrepentant in their aspects. But the story insinuates that Grummsh does have some sense of fairness, if only to make the argument that the other gods cheated him and the orcs hatred (and his) is justified.

Quote from: jhkim on February 21, 2025, 02:41:43 PMI'm leaning towards three broad archetypes, and subtypes within those. However, I only know Warhammer 40K and Warcraft by reputation and descriptions on the web. I haven't played them. So I'd love thoughts from someone with experience. The three broad archetypes:

• The Minion / Goblin - short, fiendishly inventive, quarrelsome
• The Brute - big, strong, tough, dumb
• The Savage - big, warrior culture, aggressive

Well in both Warhammer and Warcraft, the orcs/orks are part of broader factions that include goblins, trolls, etc., so some of the roles are intended to be filled by other humanoids.

That said, you could argue that Warcraft orcs have been through all three over the history of the series. Cosmetically, they've always been "brutes", and their combat role in the strategy games is to be stand-and-bang infantry. They were technically minions of the Burning Legion prior to Warcraft III and they are arguably "savages" in Warcrat III and beyond.

None of those descriptors properly fit to me though. One of the things that makes the Orc campaign compelling in Warcraft II (which is the one I've played the most) is that it really sells the idea of conducting an elaborate military campaign at a continental scale, with concern for logistics, operations, and strategy. You don't feel like you're playing a minion, and while the noble savage trope isn't really there yet, I wouldn't say the orcs come over as a just a ravening horde. "Brutes" don't seem like they should be able to build oil rigs and operate battleships. It feels more like being in an early industrial military culture than anything else. Less fantasy Klingons and more fantasy Prussians. 

EDIT: It's probably worth mentioning that the Warcraft universe has a surplus of other races that can serve the role of "barbarous, antagonistic humanoid mob": troglodytes, serpent men, boar-men, murlocs, centaurs, harpies, and so on. That seems to be a commonality in fantasy settings that remove orcs from the traditional role.

As for Warhammer Orcs, they changed over time.  Early on, Warhammer Mass Combat Roleplay (ie first edition) Orcs were more Tolkienesque, perhaps because GW moved a lot of their Lord of the Rings line into their Warhammer line when the rights expired.  They were often shorter than men. Around the time of third edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle and First Edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay they got bigger and bulkier.   Possibly starting with the purchase of Nick Lund's orc range of miniatures.  Still Strength 3 toughness 4 though.  Warhammer 40000 Rogue Trader got a three book treatment on Orcs that seems to be where a lot of the Waaaaagh came in as well as much of the silliness though Paul Bonner and Kev Adams certainly gave us some goofy orcs.  I think the biggest change was Brian Neilsen's orcs, especially the multipart orcs with the bigger, beefier arms.  These guys are all miniature Hulks.  This is where we start seeing the Orcs with special rules for "Choppas" and eventually the upgrade to Strength four.  Fantasy Battle has long had a nebulous relationship to 40k, but the idea of Orcs as fungus was certainly hinted at heavily in the Old World Bestiary for second edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.  Best bestiary I've ever read, so much fun.

Quote from: jhkim on February 21, 2025, 04:21:30 PMThanks for the added detail. Does that invalidate the Klingon comparison, though? Even during the TNG era, the Klingons weren't nice. They eventually had a treaty with the Federation, but they were brutal and lusted for conquest. Pre-peace-treaty they tried to mass execute civilians like the Organians. Even in the TNG era, there were many Star Trek stories where evil Klingon subgroups or individuals were the enemy.

I'm not saying that Warcraft orcs and Klingons are identical, but it seems like they have the same broader archetype of the proud, brutal warrior race. It sounds like the first two games are like pre-peace-treaty Klingons under evil government, and the third game shifted them to be more like the proud barbarians of the TNG era.

I don't think a comparison between Klingons and the orcs from Warcraft is a compelling one.  (EDIT: At least the first two games in the series.)

When people think of the Klingons as a proud and honorable warrior race, they're usually thinking specifically of Worf, an outsider who tries to live up to a highly idealized conception of Klingon culture.  When he meets other flesh-and-blood Klingons, he finds that they cannot live up that same standard, or do not want to, or twist it to suit their own purposes, or merely pay lip service to it.  When Worf chides Yar by saying, "Cowards take hostages.  Klingons do not," it's not an accurate depiction of the Klingon honor code.  It's a guarantee that, by the end of the episode, a Klingon will take hostages and Worf will have to navigate that.

However, even if the Klingons were a proud and honorable warrior race, the orcs in the first two Warcraft games are definitely not.  They're explicitly evil.  They're in league with dark forces.  Most orcs do not realize they are being manipulated and ruled by a necromancer, but they're more than happy to march into battle alongside undead abominations, infuse themselves with demonic blood, commit genocide, and enslave races.  Orcish necromancers even enslave the spirits of their own ancestors.  They slaughter women and children like livestock.  There's no talk of honor, pride, or anything resembling a code of conduct.

There are evil Klingons, sure, but most of them are just space jerks.

Thrall, the main character of the orc campaign in the third game, is probably inspired to some extent by Worf.  Both are raised by humans.  Both try to find their way to a proud warrior culture.  Both end up becoming racial paragons despite, or maybe because of, their upbringing.  Also, Worf has become so iconic that any non-human but human adjacent warrior race is going to bear some influence from him if they display certain characteristics, so it's likely the post-corruption orcs are more generally inspired by him.

I have some other things to say about this, but I want to respond to one of your other posts and they'll make more sense there.

Quote from: SHARK on February 21, 2025, 07:07:42 PMHell, MOST GAMERS playing D&D nowadays have never read anything that Tolkien wrote. Their references are more likely The Lord of the Rings films, by Jackson. And, truth be told--many of the younger players don't even have that as a background reference. Their reference bubble is entirely within the game books, and maybe video games in general over the last 15 years. I've met more than one person under the age of 40 for example, that has never seen Jackson's The Lord of the Rings.

That brings me around to the larger point that probably many gamers want to play and have fun--they would get glassy eyed when you start quoting some obscure collection of Tolkien's letters

We're in a weird reversal where now you're arguing to just give players material like the modern video games they're familiar with, and forget about old-school stuff. In the past, you've tended to argue to bring in older sensibilities.

Fashions and tastes change over the years, but some things really are timeless, and Tolkien is one of those. I don't want to be stuck in the past, but I've gotten a lot of mileage out of older material - what I consider classics - rather than just going with the latest publications and editions. Last summer I ran my "New Fellowship" game for a group including two teens plus my 24-year-old son, and it went over really well with them - and I think encouraged the teens to take another look at Tolkien.

I don't want to disparage playing to recent video game sensibilities. But it doesn't have to be one or the other. I find young people can learn to have fun with and appreciate older material, and in turn, as an older gamer, I'm open to trying stuff that today's teens come up with. At DunDraCon last weekend, I played in a game run by a teenager loosely based on the "Wings of Fire" books that started a decade ago.

Quote from: SHARK on February 21, 2025, 07:07:42 PMin my experience, easily half of my own players want to enjoy time with adult friends, have some food and drinks, smoke, and roll dice and kill stuff. And get that booty. And juice their characters with whatever new spells, abilities, or magic items. They are not likely to be interested in moralistic struggle sessions after a long week at work, fighting traffic, shopping, and dealing with the kids.

Do you actually think that my Middle Earth games are described as "moralistic struggle sessions"? There's a massive middle ground between "moralistic struggle session" and just treating everything like a video game to grind through and open the loot boxes.

I think that's exactly where tabletop RPGs shine. It's not just juicing and lootboxes - it's having the game world seem real, and the enemies and NPCs have personality and motivation instead of being a bag of hit points and XP.

Greetings!

Well, Jhkim, when people are arguing about whatever Tolkien said in 1938, whatever he changed his mind about, what Tolkien said in Letter 156, what he said in some interview in 1965--and then argue about what HE REALLY MEANT--and on and on--all when we are talking about fighting against Orcs in a D&D game in 2025, it certainly seems to resemble a "Moralistic Struggle Session." *Laughing*

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK on February 22, 2025, 08:31:57 AMWell, Jhkim, when people are arguing about whatever Tolkien said in 1938, whatever he changed his mind about, what Tolkien said in Letter 156, what he said in some interview in 1965--and then argue about what HE REALLY MEANT--and on and on--all when we are talking about fighting against Orcs in a D&D game in 2025, it certainly seems to resemble a "Moralistic Struggle Session." *Laughing*

C'mon, SHARK. I know you're not actually stupid, and you can distinguish between a forum posting and RPG play.

If the topic is where the idea of orcs came from, then yeah, I'm going to post about Old English etymology and about Tolkien's writings.

Do your RPG sessions consist of your lecturing your players about Mongol history and then threatening to bathe them in napalm if they're communists? No? Then maybe you can make the distinction.

Quote from: jhkim on February 22, 2025, 10:55:46 AMDo your RPG sessions consist of your lecturing your players about Mongol history and then threatening to bathe them in napalm if they're communists? No? Then maybe you can make the distinction.

I used to be play Twilight 2000 back in the day for a short time and that was a legitimate scenario for players to potentially be faced with!  :)

Quote from: Quasquetonian on February 22, 2025, 01:27:14 AM

Quote from: jhkim on February 21, 2025, 04:21:30 PMThanks for the added detail. Does that invalidate the Klingon comparison, though? Even during the TNG era, the Klingons weren't nice. They eventually had a treaty with the Federation, but they were brutal and lusted for conquest. Pre-peace-treaty they tried to mass execute civilians like the Organians. Even in the TNG era, there were many Star Trek stories where evil Klingon subgroups or individuals were the enemy.

I'm not saying that Warcraft orcs and Klingons are identical, but it seems like they have the same broader archetype of the proud, brutal warrior race. It sounds like the first two games are like pre-peace-treaty Klingons under evil government, and the third game shifted them to be more like the proud barbarians of the TNG era.

I don't think a comparison between Klingons and the orcs from Warcraft is a compelling one.  (EDIT: At least the first two games in the series.)

When people think of the Klingons as a proud and honorable warrior race, they're usually thinking specifically of Worf, an outsider who tries to live up to a highly idealized conception of Klingon culture.  When he meets other flesh-and-blood Klingons, he finds that they cannot live up that same standard, or do not want to, or twist it to suit their own purposes, or merely pay lip service to it.  When Worf chides Yar by saying, "Cowards take hostages.  Klingons do not," it's not an accurate depiction of the Klingon honor code.  It's a guarantee that, by the end of the episode, a Klingon will take hostages and Worf will have to navigate that.

However, even if the Klingons were a proud and honorable warrior race, the orcs in the first two Warcraft games are definitely not.  They're explicitly evil.

You're arguing that early Klingons are not honorable in a human sense - which I would agree with. Klingons taking hostages and engaging in genocide (which they did) makes them more like the original evil Warcraft orcs. I originally used the term "Savage" to describe the archetype, and referred to them as "proud" but didn't mention honor. estar added the qualifier "honorable", and Ratman_tf mentioned "noble savage" early in the thread, which might contribute to some miscommunication.

Do you think there's a better way to describe the archetype that Warcraft orcs represent - especially taking into account the later games?

I want to refer to a "Savage" or "Proud Warrior Race" archetype isn't necessarily noble or honorable - though some could potentially be honorable. It sounds to me like Warcraft orcs go from being sinister evil savages (in the first two games) into being more ambiguous and possibly noble savages in World of Warcraft. But maybe there's a better way to communicate that.

Quote from: jhkim on February 22, 2025, 02:16:45 PM

Quote from: Quasquetonian on February 22, 2025, 01:27:14 AM

Quote from: jhkim on February 21, 2025, 04:21:30 PMThanks for the added detail. Does that invalidate the Klingon comparison, though? Even during the TNG era, the Klingons weren't nice. They eventually had a treaty with the Federation, but they were brutal and lusted for conquest. Pre-peace-treaty they tried to mass execute civilians like the Organians. Even in the TNG era, there were many Star Trek stories where evil Klingon subgroups or individuals were the enemy.

I'm not saying that Warcraft orcs and Klingons are identical, but it seems like they have the same broader archetype of the proud, brutal warrior race. It sounds like the first two games are like pre-peace-treaty Klingons under evil government, and the third game shifted them to be more like the proud barbarians of the TNG era.

I don't think a comparison between Klingons and the orcs from Warcraft is a compelling one.  (EDIT: At least the first two games in the series.)

When people think of the Klingons as a proud and honorable warrior race, they're usually thinking specifically of Worf, an outsider who tries to live up to a highly idealized conception of Klingon culture.  When he meets other flesh-and-blood Klingons, he finds that they cannot live up that same standard, or do not want to, or twist it to suit their own purposes, or merely pay lip service to it.  When Worf chides Yar by saying, "Cowards take hostages.  Klingons do not," it's not an accurate depiction of the Klingon honor code.  It's a guarantee that, by the end of the episode, a Klingon will take hostages and Worf will have to navigate that.

Many times in the various Trek series, especially the Enterprise episode "Judgement", there are Klingons who claim that their society was more honorable and less bloodthirsty. Granted it's off screen, but if we can take that at face value, then it's not unreasonable to think that Klingon society has gone through phases. More honorable, less honorable, more expansionist, less expansionist, etc.
So the Klingons have gone from the more honorable times of pre ENT, to the villany of ENT and TOS, to a more honorable period during TNG and a slide into the hypocracy of DS9 Klingons not living up to the Klingon ideal, and then potentially returning to it after Martok is made Chancellor. Meanwhile individual Klingons (like Worf) try to navigate the shifting culture as best they can.

This is pretty comparable to Warcraft orcs. Who started out as villians, were revealed to have been under the control of demons to explain how shitty they were, broke away and reformed themselves into proud warriors, and then went through various phases of being sympathetic or assholes, depending on the needs of the current game expansion.

Quote from: GnomeWorks on February 19, 2025, 07:15:46 PMAt this point, implementing whatever version of orcs pisses off the most half-shaved-head blue-haired "people" (communists aren't people) possible is the goal.

How about this?  Long ago, on the continent of Africa analogue, a nasty, brutish race evolved from the nasty brutish primates that lived in the jungles.  They engaged in an endless series of tribal wars with stronger tribes terrorizing and enslaving the weaker tribes.  Because of their brutish, violent nature, their societies never advanced and they still live in huts after thousands of years.  A few of them, fed up with the endless bloodshed and barbarism, fled North to Europe analogue or East to China analogue.  They were uplifted into the first humans by benevolent deities who taught them civilization.  They have returned to the cradle of their kind to attempt to bring civilization and advancement to the savage orcs.  They have found that a single powerful orc warlord has revolutionized orc warfare and united many tribes under his banner.  Let's call him Shakaroun the Great.  He plans to wage a war of annihilation against the humans who he sees as a perversion of orc purity.  The orcs are no longer a gaggle of bickering tribes.  They are an organized, disciplined force under a powerful, intelligent leader and they are coming.   

One notion I've had and never capitalized on is an Alexander the Great figure who is leading orcs and the orcs never get tired of marching on to further war and conflict.  Many years later they return to his homeland from the opposite direction having circumnavigated the world.

Quote from: jhkim on February 21, 2025, 12:28:11 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 21, 2025, 11:25:05 AM

Quote from: SHARK on February 21, 2025, 03:55:05 AM*SIGH* I really don't understand all of the hand-wringing over Orcs. There somehow is this kind of deep-seated need to excuse the Orcs, to forgive them, to shelter them or lift them up as somehow good and virtuous and redeemable.

Why all of this desperate need to have Orcs be just misunderstood, and ultimately redeemable to the Light?

Speaking only for myself, it's my basic Catholic disposition that, like Tolkien, wrestles with the moral implications of a race of sapient beings created irredeemable.

To SHARK and Steven Mitchell - Tolkien is the one who created the current archetype of orc, and he is the one who wrote at length about moral implications and said they were not irredeemable -- back in 1954. One of his central themes was about mercy, summed up by Gandalf's quote that Brad posted earlier, "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement."

So the thought of orc redemption isn't a modern SJW thing -- it was something that Tolkien wrestled with in the 1950s.

You're free to have orcs however you want in your campaign. The orcs in my Shadowrun campaign aren't the same as orcs in Tolkien's Middle Earth or orcs in your world of Thandor.

To Chris24601:

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 21, 2025, 11:25:05 AMIn short, they're bad neighbors to all the free cities and other successor states that arose after the Cataclysm wiped the Empire off the map along with 99.9% of the population. They're an evil empire-in-the making and you definitely shouldn't have moral qualms about killing their soldiers in the process of liberating villages and slave camps from their clutches. But they also aren't intrinsically evil. They grow up in an evil culture and most start committing grave moral evils as soon as they reach the age of reason; but if you were to raise them free of their culture they'd just be another mutant with a particular mixed-bag of "cursed blessings" that all mutants in the setting have.

That also solves the moral issues of the orcs, just in the opposite direction of the Shade version. They have moral agency and choose to do evil like the worst stereotypes of the Roman Empire they're built on.

Thanks for the overview of orcs in your campaign world. In my recent campaign world, the Solar Empire (based on the Incans) is objectively good - ruled by a divinely-inspired king chosen by the good-aligned sun god. So you're taking the worst stereotypes of the Roman Empire, and I'm taking the best stereotypes of the Incan Empire.

It's fantasy, so we can do what we want in our own worlds. But in this case, it's made your Roman-inspired orcs evil and my Incan-inspired orcs good.

It isn't "the current archetype of orcs", he invented orcs. They did not exist at all before that. I don't like that you keep implying that there was some kind of old Norse monster called an orc that Tolkien borrowed from, that other writers were also borrowing from later. We don't know anything about what the Norse thing was other than the word, so the whole concept of an orc, the idea that it's the same thing or a related thing to goblins, the idea that they're footsoldiers, the idea of half orcs, the appearance, the behavior, it's all from Lord of the Rings and nowhere else.

Original D&D orcs are taken directly from these orcs. They assumed that you knew what they were already, the same way halflings were originally straight up called hobbits and treants were straight up called ents, and a balor was a balrog.

The iteration comes later as we've already identified with Warcraft and Warhammer, but that has nothing to do with some revival of an old Norse concept. (For what it's worth, elves and dwarves are from old Norse lore or whatever, but in this case you're right, Tolkien created the modern archetype.)

People also keep getting sidetracked on the origins of LOTR orcs and whether they have souls, are redeemable, etc. It doesn't matter. Their depiction in LOTR itself is consistent and doesn't get into those details. Those questions are separate questions from whether they're bigger and stronger than humans (no), green (no), stupid (no), are noble savages (no).

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 21, 2025, 07:52:41 PM

Quote from: crkrueger on February 21, 2025, 07:08:34 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 21, 2025, 06:44:16 PM

Quote from: crkrueger on February 21, 2025, 04:33:03 PMThis is all I ever needed for D&D Orcs...

The Grummsh story is cute, but raises some questions about the "good" gods being dicks, and the orcs being justified in their actions due to being unfairly treated.

Well, the point is, no matter what the truth is, the Orcs' entire culture is based on destroying the other races.  Why do Orcs make war?  Because that's what Gruumsh made them for.  They're his weapons in the War against the peoples of the other Gods.  Whether their origin story is true compared to everyone else's, or whether Corellon shot out Gruumsh's eye, etc. is moot.

If Grummsh was just a chaos god of destruction, then he doesn't need an excuse. The chaos gods of 40k (for example) are unrepentant in their aspects. But the story insinuates that Grummsh does have some sense of fairness, if only to make the argument that the other gods cheated him and the orcs hatred (and his) is justified.

This was in the days when Orcs were Lawful/Evil...

Quote from: David Johansen on February 21, 2025, 11:55:45 PMAs for Warhammer Orcs, they changed over time.  Early on, Warhammer Mass Combat Roleplay (ie first edition) Orcs were more Tolkienesque, perhaps because GW moved a lot of their Lord of the Rings line into their Warhammer line when the rights expired.  They were often shorter than men. Around the time of third edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle and First Edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay they got bigger and bulkier.   Possibly starting with the purchase of Nick Lund's orc range of miniatures.  Still Strength 3 toughness 4 though.  Warhammer 40000 Rogue Trader got a three book treatment on Orcs that seems to be where a lot of the Waaaaagh came in as well as much of the silliness though Paul Bonner and Kev Adams certainly gave us some goofy orcs.  I think the biggest change was Brian Neilsen's orcs, especially the multipart orcs with the bigger, beefier arms.  These guys are all miniature Hulks.  This is where we start seeing the Orcs with special rules for "Choppas" and eventually the upgrade to Strength four.  Fantasy Battle has long had a nebulous relationship to 40k, but the idea of Orcs as fungus was certainly hinted at heavily in the Old World Bestiary for second edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.  Best bestiary I've ever read, so much fun.

There's a 19 year gap between the Old World of WFRP1, which predates 40K, and the post-Shitstorm of Chaos second edition.  In WFRP2 (in which WFB and 40K have been legally separated) they're dropping an Easter Egg to the idea that the Old World in a planet in 40K.

Quote from: crkrueger on February 23, 2025, 12:50:57 PM

Quote from: David Johansen on February 21, 2025, 11:55:45 PMAs for Warhammer Orcs, they changed over time.  Early on, Warhammer Mass Combat Roleplay (ie first edition) Orcs were more Tolkienesque, perhaps because GW moved a lot of their Lord of the Rings line into their Warhammer line when the rights expired.  They were often shorter than men. Around the time of third edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle and First Edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay they got bigger and bulkier.   Possibly starting with the purchase of Nick Lund's orc range of miniatures.  Still Strength 3 toughness 4 though.  Warhammer 40000 Rogue Trader got a three book treatment on Orcs that seems to be where a lot of the Waaaaagh came in as well as much of the silliness though Paul Bonner and Kev Adams certainly gave us some goofy orcs.  I think the biggest change was Brian Neilsen's orcs, especially the multipart orcs with the bigger, beefier arms.  These guys are all miniature Hulks.  This is where we start seeing the Orcs with special rules for "Choppas" and eventually the upgrade to Strength four.  Fantasy Battle has long had a nebulous relationship to 40k, but the idea of Orcs as fungus was certainly hinted at heavily in the Old World Bestiary for second edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.  Best bestiary I've ever read, so much fun.

There's a 19 year gap between the Old World of WFRP1, which predates 40K, and the post-Shitstorm of Chaos second edition.  In WFRP2 (in which WFB and 40K have been legally separated) they're dropping an Easter Egg to the idea that the Old World in a planet in 40K.

My impression was that 40K miniatures quickly became the dominant game, though, after it was first created in 1987. Right? That it took 19 years for a second edition seemed to be because the RPG side languished in obscurity compared to the miniatures.

If so, then I think orks from Warhammer 40K miniatures are much more relevant to the cultural zeitgeist.

Sure, but various hints at Warhammer's world existing in the 40k universe predate slotta bases which were a third edition thing.  It's most pronounced in the Realm of Chaos books. There's also an older game called Star Farers from 1981 Citadel Miniatures with Dark Disciples fighting the Space Marines of the Empire with "Bolt Guns" so the ideas are old and intermixed. 

My point is that the Warhammer Ork evolved conceptually over time and there were even female orks if you roll the clock back far enough.

Quote from: jhkim on February 23, 2025, 01:13:44 PM

Quote from: crkrueger on February 23, 2025, 12:50:57 PM

Quote from: David Johansen on February 21, 2025, 11:55:45 PMAs for Warhammer Orcs, they changed over time.  Early on, Warhammer Mass Combat Roleplay (ie first edition) Orcs were more Tolkienesque, perhaps because GW moved a lot of their Lord of the Rings line into their Warhammer line when the rights expired.  They were often shorter than men. Around the time of third edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle and First Edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay they got bigger and bulkier.   Possibly starting with the purchase of Nick Lund's orc range of miniatures.  Still Strength 3 toughness 4 though.  Warhammer 40000 Rogue Trader got a three book treatment on Orcs that seems to be where a lot of the Waaaaagh came in as well as much of the silliness though Paul Bonner and Kev Adams certainly gave us some goofy orcs.  I think the biggest change was Brian Neilsen's orcs, especially the multipart orcs with the bigger, beefier arms.  These guys are all miniature Hulks.  This is where we start seeing the Orcs with special rules for "Choppas" and eventually the upgrade to Strength four.  Fantasy Battle has long had a nebulous relationship to 40k, but the idea of Orcs as fungus was certainly hinted at heavily in the Old World Bestiary for second edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.  Best bestiary I've ever read, so much fun.

There's a 19 year gap between the Old World of WFRP1, which predates 40K, and the post-Shitstorm of Chaos second edition.  In WFRP2 (in which WFB and 40K have been legally separated) they're dropping an Easter Egg to the idea that the Old World in a planet in 40K.

My impression was that 40K miniatures quickly became the dominant game, though, after it was first created in 1987. Right? That it took 19 years for a second edition seemed to be because the RPG side languished in obscurity compared to the miniatures.

If so, then I think orks from Warhammer 40K miniatures are much more relevant to the cultural zeitgeist.

The RPG side has always been viewed poorly by the GW suits.  Dark Heresy sold out in minutes and BL closed up shop the next day.

Warhammer Fantasy as an IP however, kept selling at least 150+ novels, at least a couple dozen video game titles, including an MMO, not to mention another 5 Editions of WFB.

In Warhammer 40K, Orks are a bioengineered Doomsday weapon, a fungal lifeform who are (not born...fruited?) with skills they need genetically encoded.  They also have a psychic aura that increases as they gain in numbers.  Ork vehicles painted red "go fasta" because Orks believe they do.  Their leaders keep growing in size as they win until they can dwarf a small mech.

Warhammer Fantasy Orcs (yes the K vs. C matters) are in a quasi-Tolkienian mode.

I don't think 40K Orks contribute much to the Cultural Zeitgeist outside of 40K.

Quote from: crkrueger on February 23, 2025, 06:57:30 PMIn Warhammer 40K, Orks are a bioengineered Doomsday weapon, a fungal lifeform who are (not born...fruited?) with skills they need genetically encoded. 

Lol, that's actually a good (terminology) question.  Assuming normal fungal terminology, I believe the correct term would be germinate, lol.   :)

Quote from: RNGm on February 21, 2025, 08:56:37 AM

Quote from: estar on February 20, 2025, 06:45:06 PMWell keep in mind the view that Klingons were honorable warriors was a TNG thing. The Orc as a vicious but honorable warrior came first in the mid 80s with Warhammer. Although, to be fair, Warcraft is the one that cemented this aspect of the orc, and the TNG honorable Klingon and Warcraft-style orc seem to have co-developed alongside each other throughout the 90s.

WHFB orcs were honorable?  Admittedly I've always been more into the 40k side of GW's offerings but I've never heard or seen that take on WHFB orcs.  I fully admit though that I've never been an expert on the fantasy side of the lore (skimming to reading through a couple editions of army books) but I've never heard of them been referred to as honorable.  Vicious and violent?  Absolutely.  The ultimate example of a violent might makes right society?  Sure.  But always chaotic on the verge of violence within their own units/society enforced only by even more severe violence from those (temporarily) in charge.  Are there any examples in the WHFB lore where you can point to orcs being honorable as opposed to just refraining temporarily from violence/aggression simply for an equally temporary more important benefit?  I do agree though that Warcraft introduced that more "noble savage" motif to their clearly inspired fantasy orcs though.

I've never taken them for being honorable either.

Quote from: crkrueger on February 23, 2025, 12:44:12 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 21, 2025, 07:52:41 PM

Quote from: crkrueger on February 21, 2025, 07:08:34 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 21, 2025, 06:44:16 PM

Quote from: crkrueger on February 21, 2025, 04:33:03 PMThis is all I ever needed for D&D Orcs...

The Grummsh story is cute, but raises some questions about the "good" gods being dicks, and the orcs being justified in their actions due to being unfairly treated.

Well, the point is, no matter what the truth is, the Orcs' entire culture is based on destroying the other races.  Why do Orcs make war?  Because that's what Gruumsh made them for.  They're his weapons in the War against the peoples of the other Gods.  Whether their origin story is true compared to everyone else's, or whether Corellon shot out Gruumsh's eye, etc. is moot.

If Grummsh was just a chaos god of destruction, then he doesn't need an excuse. The chaos gods of 40k (for example) are unrepentant in their aspects. But the story insinuates that Grummsh does have some sense of fairness, if only to make the argument that the other gods cheated him and the orcs hatred (and his) is justified.

This was in the days when Orcs were Lawful/Evil...

Well that just makes the latter argument more likely.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 24, 2025, 02:54:12 PM

Quote from: crkrueger on February 23, 2025, 12:44:12 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 21, 2025, 07:52:41 PM

Quote from: crkrueger on February 21, 2025, 07:08:34 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 21, 2025, 06:44:16 PM

Quote from: crkrueger on February 21, 2025, 04:33:03 PMThis is all I ever needed for D&D Orcs...

The Grummsh story is cute, but raises some questions about the "good" gods being dicks, and the orcs being justified in their actions due to being unfairly treated.

Well, the point is, no matter what the truth is, the Orcs' entire culture is based on destroying the other races.  Why do Orcs make war?  Because that's what Gruumsh made them for.  They're his weapons in the War against the peoples of the other Gods.  Whether their origin story is true compared to everyone else's, or whether Corellon shot out Gruumsh's eye, etc. is moot.

If Grummsh was just a chaos god of destruction, then he doesn't need an excuse. The chaos gods of 40k (for example) are unrepentant in their aspects. But the story insinuates that Grummsh does have some sense of fairness, if only to make the argument that the other gods cheated him and the orcs hatred (and his) is justified.

This was in the days when Orcs were Lawful/Evil...

Well that just makes the latter argument more likely.

It insinuates the Shamans think vengeance and hate are a good way to get the orcs in a frenzy, anyway.

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 08:38:10 PMweirdguy564 -- If you just want orcs to be generic bad guys and not think about any details of them, then probably this thread isn't of interest to you. It's about the different sorts of forms that orcs can be.

I'll be fair.  If complex orc history and culture is what you want, go for it. 

But I do find this thread interesting, so that assumption isn't true.

I don't think the viewpoint of,  "Orcs are bad, kill them," is wrong. It goes along with why D&D is heavily connected to having undead be a main antagonist.  So much that destroying them is a main feature of a main class, the cleric and turn undead.

Sometimes good guys are good, bad guys are bad, and it's simple.  Almost like it was written for kids. 

Quote from: weirdguy564 on February 25, 2025, 08:48:04 AM

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 08:38:10 PMweirdguy564 -- If you just want orcs to be generic bad guys and not think about any details of them, then probably this thread isn't of interest to you. It's about the different sorts of forms that orcs can be.

I'll be fair.  If complex orc history and culture is what you want, go for it. 

But I do find this thread interesting, so that assumption isn't true.

I don't think the viewpoint of,  "Orcs are bad, kill them," is wrong.

I agree that there's nothing inherently wrong with orcs being pure evil to be killed. The point of this thread is to show some of the many different ways for orcs to be in play - including different types of evil orcs as well as non-evil orcs like Shadowrun or Earthdawn.

I don't agree with people who say that having evil orcs is inherently racist.

I'm still trying to consider about the core sorts of archetypes represented.

I'm thinking something like "Minion/Goblin" ; something like "Primeval" (?); and "Warrior Race". I had called the middle one "Brute" but I'm not happy with that as a label, though it is characterized by being stupid and strong - covering a range like the Neanderthal stereotype but also like old biker gang stereotypes.

Quote from: jhkim on February 27, 2025, 12:31:21 AMI'm thinking something like "Minion/Goblin" ; something like "Primeval" (?); and "Warrior Race". I had called the middle one "Brute" but I'm not happy with that as a label, though it is characterized by being stupid and strong - covering a range like the Neanderthal stereotype but also like old biker gang stereotypes.

In the Age of Sigmar setting, orks are creatures of Destruction, one of the four general 'alignments' of the setting. They are not "evil" like Chaos, but rather are just dedicated to a more primal existence without the taint of Order. This makes them chaotic by D&D standards, but not evil.

Quote from: HappyDaze on February 28, 2025, 02:22:56 AM

Quote from: jhkim on February 27, 2025, 12:31:21 AMI'm thinking something like "Minion/Goblin" ; something like "Primeval" (?); and "Warrior Race". I had called the middle one "Brute" but I'm not happy with that as a label, though it is characterized by being stupid and strong - covering a range like the Neanderthal stereotype but also like old biker gang stereotypes.

In the Age of Sigmar setting, orks are creatures of Destruction, one of the four general 'alignments' of the setting. They are not "evil" like Chaos, but rather are just dedicated to a more primal existence without the taint of Order. This makes them chaotic by D&D standards, but not evil.

Thanks.

I guess, for people who play orcs in games like Age of Sigmar, what's the most appealing part? And in turn, what does that mean for the fun of playing half-orcs and orcs in role-playing?

I've had a few half-orc and orc characters.

One that I liked a lot was Ufthak Draper, who was a rich orc in a GURPS Fantasy campaign. I pictured him as being like a young heir in something like The Sopranos. His family were arms merchants, who got rich making and supplying weapons. It was inherently a crooked and dangerous business - but they made at being a mainstream front, even though everyone knew that hits and backroom deals were part of how things happened. So here was an orc who grew up rich and educated - he secretly learned a bit of magic of the sort to enhance weapons, so he had a front as being a privileged merchant's heir, but he would absolutely fight for the family and the orcish cause.

I also had a D&D half-orc cleric who was a pugnacious light-domain cleric, constantly making righteous demands and ready to fight if they weren't met. His tagline was "Have you seen the light!" I think that drew on some Klingon-ish tropes, as he was rude and violent, but would fight for honor and righteousness.

Quote from: jhkim on March 01, 2025, 02:06:33 AMI guess, for people who play orcs in games like Age of Sigmar, what's the most appealing part?

It's oddly one where the characters might have the same motivation in-game that some players tend to at the table: fight and break stuff for fun (oh, and for the characters, it honors their gods too). It doesn't have to go deeper than that. The Destruction faction is often a might-makes-right band of rampaging fools so it can be a natural fit if you want to go murder hobo and not be out of place to the setting and source materials. For short-term games, it can be fun.