The initial essay is pretty solid. You can do conflict without getting into weird jingoistic pro-genocide propaganda. And you should. Because racial inferiority and evil is a really creepy thing to talk about, and it is way too easy for RPGs to cross that line.

There is a reason that the volks at Stormfront have a series of RPG discussions where they discuss how best to exterminate the orcs and whether they are better used as a metaphor for Jews or Blacks. And yeah, people should be embarrassed every time their hobby could be easily mistaken for that.

-Frank

Quote from: Cranewings;477731I always thought Wizards and Evil gods make orcs out of fungus to bother humans.

Seriously. I've never really encountered the idea that orcs were people or had free will. We always knew they were monsters.

The idea of killing a bunch of orcs, later to discover they were the one tribe of good orcs, has been a running joke in gaming circles around here, but never taken seriously.

I'm with JM on this on. Monsters are monsters and people are people.

I think the man quoted in the original post needs to get his head on straight. Orcs aren't the place to start fighting fantasy about racism, Drow are.

"Don't judge me by the color of my skin."

I think there are cultural differences between gamers on this issue depending on what theire view of Orcs is.  A lot of us grew up in the 2E days with Forgotten Realms and our view of Orcs (and evil races in general - notably Drow) were shaped by the inconsistencies of presentation during that period.  Orcs might have been called a monster but they were treated like a race in a lot of material.  We were given monstrous mythology with details of all their gods, we told in the novels and other material about Orc tribes which hinted at Orc culture.  And in the north of the Forgotten realms they were there on the frontier carrying out raids in a way that obviously reminded one of indigenous races during periods of European colonisation.  

This had two effects that I could see, it made many of us uncomfortable with the idea that these Orcs were irredeemably evil, and secondly it made many of us interested in playing Orc characters (which also meant they couldn't be irredeemably evil.)

I remember years later when I started collecting older 1E material how much less confusion there was in the way that Orcs were treated.  They were clearly monsters in the older material.

Quote from: VectorSigma;477710At the far end of the spectrum, there's deconstructionist counter-colonial wankery.  That's where this guy lives, or is headed.

Yeah, the language used is distinctly Trotsky-entryist in tone and turn of phrase. The link doesn't work so I couldn't find out more about the author, but these guys work basically by trying to take over any organisation of people from within like a parasite hollowing out an animal. Or to put it another way, the "swine" of whom our host is so fond.

Quote from: John Morrow;477711So my suggestion is either stop treating monsters as people and instead play them as evil monsters or stop treating monsters as monsters and treat them like funny looking people (or don't use them at all) but trying to treat funny looking people as monsters creates all sorts of problems, as does trying to treat monsters like funny looking people.

This. Sometimes evil is just evil.

People who don't ask questions like this are generally shitty worldbuilders (which is not necessarily to say that they run shitty games). Part of building a compelling, interesting world that PCs can explore is figuring out stuff like "Why do the orcs raid human settlements"?

Answering that question with something more than the puerile "Because they're evil psychopaths" pushes one to really think about the logic of the world & fit things together so they make sense, as well as opening up more adventuring options and seeds than "A wizard wants you to recover his magical backscratcher and the orcs are the speedbumps along the way".

IRL, there are plenty of people who do horrible things who are not psychopaths, but who are reacting rationally, but callously, to a bad situation. That's a bit vacuous, but filling in the details for specific situations is basically identical to writing an adventure-situation.

e.g. If the orcs are raiding villages because they are rock-solid evil shits who are unable to be anything else, then yes, the only answer that makes sense is to exterminate them, and PCs essentially just make decisions over how many and how fast they want to do it.

If the orcs are raiding the village because the village controls the best farmland around and refuses to share it with them, then the PCs' decisions can be about resolving the problem, whether violently or not, and then narrow their scope down to things like how many and how fast. You add more agency and more opportunities for discovery, as well as drawing PCs into thinking of the world as a real sensible place familiar to them.

Quote from: Dog Quixote;477756I remember years later when I started collecting older 1E material how much less confusion there was in the way that Orcs were treated.  They were clearly monsters in the older material.

My experience is that they've always been questionable - since I remember having similar discussions to this in high school in the mid-eighties.  For one, we've had the half-orc as a player character race since 1st ed AD&D.  Also, the original Monster Manual and all of the old modules made explicit the issue that there were orc women and children, leaving the tricky moral quandry of what to do with them.  My old D&D groups would generally house rule that there weren't any women & children to deal with - but it was there in the rules and modules.

Quote from: jhkim;477763the original Monster Manual and all of the old modules made explicit the issue that there were orc women and children, leaving the tricky moral quandry of what to do with them.

Leave them alive so that the orc children can grow up to avenge their fathers, since this provides further plot opportunities. Plus the grownup orcs are worth heaps more XP than the babies.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;477764Leave them alive so that the orc children can grow up to avenge their fathers, since this provides further plot opportunities. Plus the grownup orcs are worth heaps more XP than the babies.

So the cycle of forgiveness begins.

-Frank

On a related note to the "are Orcs bad guys or simply misunderstood folk exhibniting extremem cultural differences theme" - this comment popped up on a thread on the Mongoose site about my Age of Treason setting, here with my response to it:

Post subject: Re: [AoT] Questions threadPosted:

Quote from: Simulacrum

Quote from: BlackyinkinHi,

I have been following the build up to this setting with anticipation, I had loved the originality I seeing grow in the work. Then I saw the word 'Orcs' and it put me off a little, why has such a great product steeped in a good knowledge of the ancient world should have to resort to the default fantasy rpg bad guy, it feels a little like a cop out. However keep up the good work, this is a really interesting setting.

Simon Bray

That's a really good question. AoT was originally developed as an alternative to ongoing Gloranthan campaigns (we'd take a break from one, swap GM role and play the other), and therefor tried to keep well away from what Glorantha did so well. A key part of this was that AoT was always a humanocentric world from its conception.

The Orcs are humans. Their unpleasantness is rooted not in an intrinsically evil nature but in worshipping gods with an appetite for human sacrifice, and the pressures that puts on how their society is set up. Thus far no worse than some historic human cultures; but given their holocausts deliver direct and manifest personal advantages, it is perhaps more of a stark moral choice than doing the same in order to ensure the sun rises and the crops grow to the benefit of all.

The orcs in question are distant. You won't encounter them at all in the regions covered by the current book (they appear in a gloss in the world chapter as the inhabitants of a faraway land).

So why call them Orcs? Originally I didn't, for much the reasons that hit you when you saw the word. From a design point of view, the name flags "bad guys", and just sometimes that's a liberating certainty for a story. If you encounter them, you are likely to be far from home, and have wandered into regions where AoT's gritty historical grounding is relaxed and a bit more high fantasy romp is on the agenda.

There are some historical reasons why in the end I did. As a side note, I ran Griffin Island in the setting for quite some time, with elves and dwarfs removed but the orcs, glorantha-style ogres and slarges left in - and we had a blast. The fact that 'orcs' still exist in the setting, albeit as a human tribe, is therefor also a bit of a memento of some very good times. I appreciate that is self indulgent.

Clearly prejudice against orcs is quite widespread. Now I am guilty here of playing with the morality and monstrousness of "Orcs" by insisting they are a human tribe (AoT admits rather more extremes of physical types and appearance for humans than most settings), but you only have to make as much of that as you want to. And like other posters here, I would generally not present the PCs with the opportunity or means of genocide. It's not exactly a fun dilemma on a game. Preventing the "Orcs" from dragging off an entire village for sacrifice - that's the story.

On the whole - it is hard to credit "orcs" and other fantasy evil tribes with acts any more heinous than many human peoples have been guilty of through history.

I think genocide is an important part of Tolkienesque D&D.  It's not really 'colonialist' though - that's a misapplication of cultural Marxist terminology - because the Good Guys are rarely colonial empires conquering the analogue Americas/Africa/Australia, they usually have the Evil Hordes right on their doorstep and are typically fighting to defend their own lands from being overrun, as in Tolkien.  The closest IRL medieval analogy, and the one I think influenced Tolkien, was the defense of the West against the Turks and Mongols.  If the Good Guys are on the offensive then it can feel more like the Teutonic Knights or Nazis seeking Lebensraum at the expense of the Easterners (Lithuanian pagans, Russians et al) and obviously that's likely to make people feel uncomfortable.

You don't have to play D&D as Tolkienesque.  You can play Conan style swords & sorcery; Conan might occasionslly lead his black warriors to sack a black village, but there's no real genocidal tropes in the Hyborean setting.  Likewise Leiber's Nehwon - the Mingols are a big threat in Swords of Lakhmar, but otherwise there's nothing much in the way of discernible racial conflict; no 'orcs'.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;477762People who don't ask questions like this are generally shitty worldbuilders (which is not necessarily to say that they run shitty games). Part of building a compelling, interesting world that PCs can explore is figuring out stuff like "Why do the orcs raid human settlements"?

Answering that question with something more than the puerile "Because they're evil psychopaths" pushes one to really think about the logic of the world & fit things together so they make sense, as well as opening up more adventuring options and seeds than "A wizard wants you to recover his magical backscratcher and the orcs are the speedbumps along the way".

IRL, there are plenty of people who do horrible things who are not psychopaths, but who are reacting rationally, but callously, to a bad situation. That's a bit vacuous, but filling in the details for specific situations is basically identical to writing an adventure-situation.

e.g. If the orcs are raiding villages because they are rock-solid evil shits who are unable to be anything else, then yes, the only answer that makes sense is to exterminate them, and PCs essentially just make decisions over how many and how fast they want to do it.

If the orcs are raiding the village because the village controls the best farmland around and refuses to share it with them, then the PCs' decisions can be about resolving the problem, whether violently or not, and then narrow their scope down to things like how many and how fast. You add more agency and more opportunities for discovery, as well as drawing PCs into thinking of the world as a real sensible place familiar to them.

Why do you hate Warhammer?

Quote from: John Morrow;477714I think that happens because people are taught that stereotyping people is bad and they are seeing the orcs as people.  So seeing "Orcs, Chaotic Evil" can look an awful lot like seeing "African American, Criminal" or "Muslim, Terrorist" or even "Caucasian, Racist".

I'm afraid I haven't been able to resist that last stereotype - I just introduced the "Neo-Nerathi" into my 4e/Wilderlands D&D campaign; and the 'Pure Alryan' Nerathi are distinguished from other humans (the Red Altanians) in the campaign area by their paler skin tone: http://4esouthlands.blogspot.com/2011/09/neo-nerath.html

It's a powerful trope, it lets me use Neo-Nazi and Neo-Confederate trappings on an antagonist group (the PCs are mostly Red Altanians).  At the same time, not all Alryans will be depicted as Nazis, but there are interesting potential issues on divided loyalties, who can you trust, etc.  Plus the Neo-Nerathi may have a legitimate gripe over the Altanian 'betrayal' at Gedden Plain - I'm leaving what actually happened there purposefully uncertain.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;477743If you're going to get offended at an imaginary mythology about an imaginary race, at least get it right, you cocksmock. Killing orcs is like killing Nazis: fun and amusing.

In recent versions of D&D it's the Hobgoblins who are the militarist Nazi-analogues, though.  In Gygaxian Greyhawk Gygax just used humans, the blond Lawful Evil Suel & their Scarlet Brotherhood (symbol: blue quasi-swastika on scarlet field) are the Nazi analogues it's fine to kill.

Quote from: S'mon;477770In recent versions of D&D it's the Hobgoblins who are the militarist Nazi-analogues, though.  In Gygaxian Greyhawk Gygax just used humans, the blond Lawful Evil Suel & their Scarlet Brotherhood (symbol: blue quasi-swastika on scarlet field) are the Nazi analogues it's fine to kill.

Not to mention that you can see the whole Orc myth, (or at least the one in Monstrous Mythology which I think is the same) as demonstrating how the other races' gods screwed the Orcs and forced them into the fringes of the world.

In any case, sympathetic reading or not, it doesn't strike me as particularly Nazi like.

Quote from: S'mon;477767Conan might occasionslly lead his black warriors to sack a black village, but there's no real genocidal tropes in the Hyborean setting.

In Conan of Aquilonia, he journeys to the edge of the world to finally kill Thoth-Amon who has taken refuge with the snake-men, and he and his army butcher them all horribly.

In Queen of the Black Coast when he's a pirate with Belit, he kills all the once-Stygian-now-were-hyenas (since they were created by ape magic we know it's all of them in the world) and the very last of the winged human-eating grey apes.

Does it count as genocide if there's only like one or two of them left?

Battling and even wiping out the last members of an ancient and evil race bent on enslaving and/or eating humans has a long tradition in swords and sorcery fiction. It's only right and proper for us to carry this fine and honourable tradition on.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;477772In Conan of Aquilonia, he journeys to the edge of the world to finally kill Thoth-Amon who has taken refuge with the snake-men, and he and his army butcher them all horribly.

In Queen of the Black Coast when he's a pirate with Belit, he kills all the once-Stygian-now-were-hyenas (since they were created by ape magic we know it's all of them in the world) and the very last of the winged human-eating grey apes.

Does it count as genocide if there's only like one or two of them left?

Battling and even wiping out the last members of an ancient and evil race bent on enslaving and/or eating humans has a long tradition in swords and sorcery fiction. It's only right and proper for us to carry this fine and honourable tradition on.

I was thinking more of large scale genocide like "kill all the blacks/whites/humans/elves/orcs".  Literal Genocide by the good guys is not really a very strong trope in Tolkien - AIR the good guys kill the defeated/captured orcs after the defeat of Sauron, but nothing about going into Mordor to wipe out the orc women and children.

The one fantasy novel I can recall that centres on genocide is Moorcock's Erekose - initially genocide of the Eldren (Elves) by the Humans, then genocide of the Humans by the Elves; the latter is presented as A Good Thing.