Quote from: Fheredin on April 30, 2025, 06:04:36 PMIMHO, Tolkien left this point up in the air because he was stuck in a Catch-22. If he says that Morgoth created orcs ex nihilo, then I have to say that was a very impressive bit of non-creativity. If you say that orcs are corrupted elves, then they should have a residual potential for good because they have some sort of residual elvishness, and suddenly all the action scenes are mass murder. Tolkien's solution seems to have been a Quantum Backstory, because to my knowledge he never firmly settled on one solution or the other while he was alive.

It's my opinion that the second option--orcs are corrupted elves--is much more in keeping with the spirit of the Evil is Not Creative philosophy because evil was being corruptive rather than creative. If you say Morgoth created orcs out of nothing, then you have to ask yourself how relevant this restriction that evil isn't generative is, because at that point I feel it turns into hair-splitting.

I also want to point out that this philosophy towards evil doesn't really jive with the Bible. Jesus's least taught parable--the unjust steward--ends with Jesus providing a pointed critique of good people playing the game of life in a non-creative manner for fear of doing evil, while evil people exercise creativity which is completely unrestricted by morality. So, no, I don't think this philosophy is the full story; I'm just trying to be internally consistent with Tolkien's interpretation of these ideas when theorizing for LotR.

If orcs had some residual elvishness, they deserved some form of a denoument, and that would mean ending with their culture flourishing even if they weren't exactly at peace with the other inhabitants of Middle Earth.

You're evidently somewhat confused on what Christians believe about creativity and the metaphysics regarding it, or rather you are mistaking creativity with ingenuity/inventiveness. e.g I can be rather inventive in torturing someone, but ultimately there is nothing generative in that, nothing new or purposeful created as the output, despite the fact I can get rather "creative" in this non generative process.

That was mainly what Christ was harping on good people also being cunning and inventiveness. humans are ultimately sub-creators (as highlighted in Tolkien's essays) and thus are only creative to a specific extent.

To another point, Aulë already had done this, dwarves use to have no souls, and were merely animated by Aulë's intent and desire, having no volition, but by the grace of Eru Ilúvatar were they given souls and permitted free will. So already in the cannon it's established that the Ainur are perfectly capable of creating advanced (but soulless) animals.

Quote from: Fheredin on April 30, 2025, 06:04:36 PM

Quote from: Socratic-DM on April 29, 2025, 10:35:54 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on April 29, 2025, 07:20:57 PMThe problem with Tolkienesque Orcs is that one of Tolkien's biggest mistakes revolves around Orcs; they basically ceased to exist after the fall of Sauron.

For the meticulous plotting detail for the rest of LotR, this feels utterly baffling. It is as if Tolkien didn't want to waste word count on managing the denoument for a whole race of antagonists, and so he drew a big editorial circle around them and deleted them. Consequently, we must also conclude we never really got to see Orc culture as its own thing; we only ever saw Sauron reflected.

The other thing to remember when talking about RPGs specifically is that RPGs tend to have much higher power scaling than LotR did. Yes, some of the characters in LotR were definitely epic heroes, but when they roll up against a Balrog, they have to simply flee, with only the Maiar in the party even standing a chance of bringing a fight to a draw. Higher level RPG combat would absolutely involve killing this kind of monster.

Orc culture is a non-issue in Tolkien's Context:

It is a known fact that Tolkien had a lot of conflicting ideas regarding the Orcs within his setting, both around their origin and metaphysics. he heavily prescribed to the idea  St. Augustine put forward. that Evil is merely the absence of good and thus has no generative quality of it's own.

IMHO, Tolkien left this point up in the air because he was stuck in a Catch-22. If he says that Morgoth created orcs ex nihilo, then I have to say that was a very impressive bit of non-creativity. If you say that orcs are corrupted elves, then they should have a residual potential for good because they have some sort of residual elvishness, and suddenly all the action scenes are mass murder.

This doesn't follow. All of the interactions with Orcs in LOTR, the orcs are already antagonistic. They're either carrying out what they know are vile plans of Sauron or Saruman, or they're part of an army explicitly organized to conquer and kill. The "heroes" are defending themselves as part of a larger history of Sauron trying to conquer the world, and the orcs know this (maybe not every detail, but the broad goals) and are participating.

It does bring up the question if orcs could be "cured" or reformed, but I think most people would agree that trying to provide orcs with a counciling session in the middle of a raid or battle is probably a bad idea.

I find it interesting to think of the Goblins in the Misty Mountains as being the natural culture of Orcs. Also consider that they behaved exactly like the Elves, Humans, and Dwarves when it came to Smaug's treasure.

Just an observation, but I think the fact that orcs are easily the most controversial of the classic fantasy races runs a bit deeper than just them being traditional bad guys. I think it has to do with the fact that they're almost uniquely Tolkien's creations. Elves and Dwarfs have a much broader range of literary and folkloric bases, so there's a degree of convergent evolution which admits of more generally accepted interpretations. While the word "orc" has mythic origins, every iteration of the concept derives in a direct lineage from Tolkien. If he'd just kept calling them "goblins", I suspect they wouldn't be anywhere near as much a subject of dispute.

You could say the same of halflings, but they're arguably just a unique take on gnomes, and anyway nobody seems to care much about halflings...

Quote from: ForgottenF on Today at 12:24:56 AMJust an observation, but I think the fact that orcs are easily the most controversial of the classic fantasy races runs a bit deeper than just them being traditional bad guys. I think it has to do with the fact that they're almost uniquely Tolkien's creations. Elves and Dwarfs have a much broader range of literary and folkloric bases, so there's a degree of convergent evolution which admits of more generally accepted interpretations. While the word "orc" has mythic origins, every iteration of the concept derives in a direct lineage from Tolkien. If he'd just kept calling them "goblins", I suspect they wouldn't be anywhere near as much a subject of dispute.

You could say the same of halflings, but they're arguably just a unique take on gnomes, and anyway nobody seems to care much about halflings...

Why does the fact that they were introduced by Tolkien make them controversial?

Quote from: Ruprecht on April 30, 2025, 04:55:44 PMThere are different types of Elves, and Dwarves, and Halflings but they never made an effort to provide different Orc cultures. Yes they have cross-breads but not like cultures. The DMs Guide should have had tables of ideas of how to make your Orcs (or other races) different from the baseline.

Welll ackshually... The Ondonti are a group of Forgotten Realms 15 Orc tribes who converted to Eldath and adopted agriculture and pacifism. They were encountered by Zhentil's Keep, who enslaved 14 of the 15 tribes, brought them to Raven's Bluff as easy labor and forced breeding program for extra orc armies -- specifically because of their pacifist nature making them unrebellious subjects. The last tribe was hidden by Eldath through priestly magics and later there's an adventure with an Eldath avatar to liberate these 14 enslaved tribes from Zhentil's Keep's clutches.

And then there's the famous Tethyrian Orc Paladin who eventually has a statue made in his honor due to devotion to his faith and protection of Tethyr borders from general border skirmish rapine.

And then there's the Grey Orcs of Thar and Moonsea region who are more henotheist or kathenotheist than monolatrist polytheist, meaning they were less Gruumsh primary or only and more diverse worship of their pantheon. This lead to a more "logical and measured" orc in that they hated everyone equally, YET they would not go out of their way to conquer (however they would brashly attack their enemies at any chance, even bad ones).

And then there's the Al-Qadim interpretation where everyone follows the unifying faith. So even though they do travel in tribal units they also adhere to the rules of hospitality and honor as universal for the Al-Qadim world (which is also/may be attached to FR Faerun at its South, if GM so wishes).

Yeah, Forgotten Realms is WAY more diverse than people give it credit for. And D&D orcs throughout the settings is way more diverse than assumed. Anyhoo, these examples show that diversity of religious and cultural doctrine can truly shape populations. But again, it is only available, to be included as the GM desires, which is part of the beauty of old TSR D&D.

But yeah, the popular conception is rather staid, in contrast to what was actually created in the past. That's a personal table or "community" issue to be hashed out. Am I saying we need more pacifist orcs baking cookies? ... Maybe? No, I mean no. But it's an option if your world wants it.

My dig with WotC D&D of late is they make things homogenized and safe to where it feels like designed-by-committee corporate pablum. That is not respecting the diversity of the fictive world or introducing moments of real moral quandry and conflict. It's catering to "safety" in the expense of "liberty", which I feel is the fertile ground necessary for creativity. And that makes me sad.

Quote from: tenbones on April 30, 2025, 05:42:45 PMFurther it's blurred by the fact that while people incorrectly assume D&D orcs are just Tolkien orcs, they're really not. They're as caricature to the Tolkien narrative concept, which exists *specifically* as a moral and spiritual metaphor in accordance to his setting's cosmology. Whereas D&D orcs have just been savage antagonists for the purposes of playing the game and killing them for their sweet loot.

Right. This was the point of the original post. There's the idea that orcs were one thing in the 1970s and that there's been a slow change since then of "humanizing orcs". But there was a big change from Tolkien orcs to D&D orcs from the start.

Quote from: Opaopajr on April 30, 2025, 05:04:06 AMYeah, not really seeing orcs as being dismissable threats so much because they have large raiding party numbers and they can end up with orc and half-orc leveled NPCs in random encounters. But sure, I guess they can be seen as marginalized. It's like any sentient species in these games, it depends if you let them have analogous tools as the PCs with alien motivations and tweaks to maintain a sense of mystery. Once you play *anything* with the ability to "level-up" and use the same gear and tactics of fellow sentients with opposable thumbs of a sort then it's game on!

Absolutely. The thing is that I've rarely seen this done in published D&D books or in D&D games that I've played. Other iconic enemies like dragons and drow were given a lot of variety and levels - and focused modules about them, but orcs have stayed as low-level side encounters without much flavor or threat.

Ruprecht brought up B2, but that seems to prove the point. Orcs are areas B&C and middling threat and treasure, while area K the Shrine of Evil Chaos has the most threat and the most treasure. Opaopajr, you brought up a number of bits of setting lore from Forgotten Realms and Al Qadim, but again, I haven't seen those appear in either published adventures or actual play.

It's easily possible to have varied and/or leveled orc NPCs and orc organization to make them more like the world threat they are in Tolkien. The question is whether this is wanted.

Since I've been running Middle Earth adventures recently, I'm used to orcs as primary antagonists - but I wonder what I would do if I was making an orc-centered D&D adventure.

I think you are right, jhkim, the question is: how do you make new Adventures without type-casting or neutering the Orcs?

I think the best response is like a lot of art, "just make it and see if it works". But I also think the challenge is being faithful to the alien cultural perspective without flinching. It's so tempting to smooth things over with sugary frosting for less controversy and supposedly more sales.

It's one of the reasons I made a goofy PC of a big half-orc teenager/young adult who was still in her "I like horses and ponies!" phase. She was the child of a female orc who 'was the prize' from a human adventure party and became 'a wife' of one of the heroes, only to be dropped off at the next human village. That's her momma's story, these human adventurers understood orc wooing practices and so thoroughly wanted her that they wiped out most of her traveling clan -- she was in very high demand! But daddy human was denying this now pregnant mommy her greatness and honor by not letting her go off and fight a great dragon threatening the area. Daddy must have died gloriously while leaving her a coward with a new child-to-be (later, a daughter) among the humans. If only she could have traveled with an extra horse to die gloriously together as a family. Daughter likes horsies now and wants to save them all so other mommies can go die gloriously as a family in battle in the future!

Blah, blah, blah, make orcs make sense to themselves and (slightly? greatly?) alien to us. It takes a concept to be lived in and followed through without hesitation. There might be a few in the Adventures Guild, but I'm not going to filter through all that...

Quote from: Opaopajr on Today at 01:07:44 AMBlah, blah, blah, make orcs make sense to themselves and (slightly? greatly?) alien to us. It takes a concept to be lived in and followed through without hesitation. There might be a few in the Adventures Guild, but I'm not going to filter through all that...

One game that I thought did this well was Skyrim, in fact the whole elder scrolls series.  Orc society and culture work, are internally consistent, and are comprehensible to humans, but are also just plain weird.  I really enjoyed the depiction.  Here's a link to a pretty good description: 
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Orc

Quote from: Opaopajr on Today at 01:07:44 AMI think you are right, jhkim, the question is: how do you make new Adventures without type-casting or neutering the Orcs?

I think the best response is like a lot of art, "just make it and see if it works". But I also think the challenge is being faithful to the alien cultural perspective without flinching. It's so tempting to smooth things over with sugary frosting for less controversy and supposedly more sales.

IMO, people should make what they like. You can't please everybody, and controversy often sells more than blandly inoffensive.

That said, I think a big problem with controversy is that people can get stuck into thinking there are only two choices. There are so many different possibilities for orcs.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on April 30, 2025, 06:54:35 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on April 30, 2025, 06:04:36 PM

Quote from: Socratic-DM on April 29, 2025, 10:35:54 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on April 29, 2025, 07:20:57 PMThe problem with Tolkienesque Orcs is that one of Tolkien's biggest mistakes revolves around Orcs; they basically ceased to exist after the fall of Sauron.

For the meticulous plotting detail for the rest of LotR, this feels utterly baffling. It is as if Tolkien didn't want to waste word count on managing the denoument for a whole race of antagonists, and so he drew a big editorial circle around them and deleted them. Consequently, we must also conclude we never really got to see Orc culture as its own thing; we only ever saw Sauron reflected.

The other thing to remember when talking about RPGs specifically is that RPGs tend to have much higher power scaling than LotR did. Yes, some of the characters in LotR were definitely epic heroes, but when they roll up against a Balrog, they have to simply flee, with only the Maiar in the party even standing a chance of bringing a fight to a draw. Higher level RPG combat would absolutely involve killing this kind of monster.

Orc culture is a non-issue in Tolkien's Context:

It is a known fact that Tolkien had a lot of conflicting ideas regarding the Orcs within his setting, both around their origin and metaphysics. he heavily prescribed to the idea  St. Augustine put forward. that Evil is merely the absence of good and thus has no generative quality of it's own.

IMHO, Tolkien left this point up in the air because he was stuck in a Catch-22. If he says that Morgoth created orcs ex nihilo, then I have to say that was a very impressive bit of non-creativity. If you say that orcs are corrupted elves, then they should have a residual potential for good because they have some sort of residual elvishness, and suddenly all the action scenes are mass murder.

This doesn't follow. All of the interactions with Orcs in LOTR, the orcs are already antagonistic. They're either carrying out what they know are vile plans of Sauron or Saruman, or they're part of an army explicitly organized to conquer and kill. The "heroes" are defending themselves as part of a larger history of Sauron trying to conquer the world, and the orcs know this (maybe not every detail, but the broad goals) and are participating.

It does bring up the question if orcs could be "cured" or reformed, but I think most people would agree that trying to provide orcs with a counciling session in the middle of a raid or battle is probably a bad idea.

Oh, I largely agree. I was mostly trying to steel-man Tolkien's point of view, which I don't fully understand. Tolkien clearly had mixed feelings on the origins of orcs. That said, I do think that the killing of orcs we see was fully justified self-defense. And, of course, Sauron's coalition included men from the south, so I don't see what any moral hang-up would be. But my understanding is that there was one.

Really, I think that this just goes to show how little we see of orcs after the fall of Sauron. You could fairly argue that their violent tendencies caused them to kill each other, but that isn't going to kill all of the orcs, so what happens to the orcs in the aftermath of the story is a complete guess.

Quote from: Socratic-DM on April 30, 2025, 06:35:42 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on April 30, 2025, 06:04:36 PMIMHO, Tolkien left this point up in the air because he was stuck in a Catch-22. If he says that Morgoth created orcs ex nihilo, then I have to say that was a very impressive bit of non-creativity. If you say that orcs are corrupted elves, then they should have a residual potential for good because they have some sort of residual elvishness, and suddenly all the action scenes are mass murder. Tolkien's solution seems to have been a Quantum Backstory, because to my knowledge he never firmly settled on one solution or the other while he was alive.

It's my opinion that the second option--orcs are corrupted elves--is much more in keeping with the spirit of the Evil is Not Creative philosophy because evil was being corruptive rather than creative. If you say Morgoth created orcs out of nothing, then you have to ask yourself how relevant this restriction that evil isn't generative is, because at that point I feel it turns into hair-splitting.

I also want to point out that this philosophy towards evil doesn't really jive with the Bible. Jesus's least taught parable--the unjust steward--ends with Jesus providing a pointed critique of good people playing the game of life in a non-creative manner for fear of doing evil, while evil people exercise creativity which is completely unrestricted by morality. So, no, I don't think this philosophy is the full story; I'm just trying to be internally consistent with Tolkien's interpretation of these ideas when theorizing for LotR.

If orcs had some residual elvishness, they deserved some form of a denoument, and that would mean ending with their culture flourishing even if they weren't exactly at peace with the other inhabitants of Middle Earth.

You're evidently somewhat confused on what Christians believe about creativity and the metaphysics regarding it, or rather you are mistaking creativity with ingenuity/inventiveness. e.g I can be rather inventive in torturing someone, but ultimately there is nothing generative in that, nothing new or purposeful created as the output, despite the fact I can get rather "creative" in this non generative process.

That was mainly what Christ was harping on good people also being cunning and inventiveness. humans are ultimately sub-creators (as highlighted in Tolkien's essays) and thus are only creative to a specific extent.

To another point, Aulë already had done this, dwarves use to have no souls, and were merely animated by Aulë's intent and desire, having no volition, but by the grace of Eru Ilúvatar were they given souls and permitted free will. So already in the cannon it's established that the Ainur are perfectly capable of creating advanced (but soulless) animals.

I would beg to differ on that being an inherently "Christian" point of view so much as loosely Tolkien's while he was writing Lord of the Rings. Insert Venn diagram here. I don't even actually recall this from Augustine's discussion of evil, either, although that could be because I haven't read Augustine in ~20 years. Regardless, Augustine is not actually canon. He's commentary, and you are free to disagree with commentary. I could write a book about the flaws in Calvin's commentaries.

Regardless, I have to point out that from Morgoth's perspective, this is hairsplitting. Morgoth didn't actually care if orcs were self-aware, so even if he could have made them so, he probably would not have. How much does the definition of creativity actually matter?

Quote from: jhkim on Today at 12:46:56 AMAbsolutely. The thing is that I've rarely seen this done in published D&D books or in D&D games that I've played. Other iconic enemies like dragons and drow were given a lot of variety and levels - and focused modules about them, but orcs have stayed as low-level side encounters without much flavor or threat.

Not a module, but R.A. Salvatore's The Thousand Orcs probably deserves a mention. That has an orc horde as a regional threat, and they're led by an orc warlord who is implied to be a high-level fighter. If memory serves, he squares off with Drizzt Do'Urden and comes out pretty evenly with him.

I was going to mention the Red Hand of Doom campaign for third edition, but I went and looked and the antagonists are hobgoblins/bugbears, and they made their leader a half-dragon, so that really just reinforces your point.

EDIT: In general, it's probably fair to say that orcs come off better in the fiction surrounding tabletop games than they do in the RPGs. The fact that the fiction shears away the game stats makes the power scaling irrelevant. An ork tribe is one of the major threats in the 4th Gotrek and Felix book, and William King can make them a plausible threats to Felix even though he's already 2v1-ed a greater demon at that point. I don't read the 40k books, but I believe the Orks have actually come the closest to conquering Terra of any of the non-human factions.

I'm late to the party, but I can think of two distinct milestones in the conceptual history of orcs where they were significantly nerfed and lost their mojo.

The first is when the whole bullshit "Orcs are a stand-in for whoever we think is marginalized and we are racist". We know that this is a woke lie, but the social repercussions of that has made a far more sympathetic monster than the representations of mankind's evil and brutality that they were.

The second happened when BECMI's Orcs of Thar and D&D 3.x were set aside and monsters were not allowed to achieve character levels, thus preventing the monster races from advancing like characters. Using Orcs of Thar and D&D 3.x, orcs and other humanoid monsters could have NPC and PC levels so that they could be more than just low level "cannon fodder" type monsters. To me, as a GM, the inclusion of class and level for humanoids made the  suspension of disbelief easier and the game more fun. As a Player, this allowed me to have a rival who advanced as my character did and was much more satisfying to vanquish in the final battle with the Big Boss.

This is more of a gamer's approach because I never really got that heavily into the background of Tolkien's Middle-Earth.

I guess nobody gave two shits about my input, which I thought was relevant in regards to orcs as given in the game itself, and not the very loose interpretation of orcs in D&D...

Oh well...