On Orcs: Well, there was one for dwarves...

[Seraph]

Way back, Ninja D! made a series of threads about dwarves, our thoughts about them, whether we liked them or not, and how we used them in our settings (if we did).  What with Steerpike getting his Underdeep game going, and a few comments in Sylmenor's new "Greetings" thread, I thought I'd see what people did with Orcs...those famous "anonymous bad guys" trope.

Do you use Orcs in your setting?  Is there anything that makes them different from the orcs of settings x, y, and z?  Any preference for "orc" vs. "ork?"
If you don't use orcs, do you fill that role with something else, or does that role not fit into your setting at all?  What would you like to see different in orcs?

[HippopotamusDundee]

What I've mainly done thus far in my setting is to push the 'noble savage' aspect of the barbarian tribe complex of tropes - orcs who are large and physically very boar and auroch like (for the sake of etymological echoes I ended up naming them Aurch) but who have a very strong sense of animistic spirituality and believe in restraint and self-mastery. Though the Aurch still do have a tendency towards causing tremendous damage should they loose control, the raging barbarian frothing at the mouth (ala D&D) is actually considered a shameful figure in their society though they are well-suited to it.

As far as what I like to see, I find the Always Chaotic Evil stereotypes of orcs completely lacking in interest unless there's a proper cultural context to that depiction (and even then monocultures are utterly lacking in interest, on the whole). I've always wanted (and am dimly planning in another part of my setting of riffing off the whole Orc/Orca similarity in both naming and fierce apex predator thing and doing aquatic orcs of some kind.

As far as spelling goes, I favour "orc" and support any derivatives that reference Tolkien's original "yrch".

[LoA]

Stereotypical orcs don't really capture my fancy, but then again neither did any of the other "horde" races like bugbears, and hobgoblins.

I really like orcs in Eberron however. There's just something I find absolutely awesome about an entire orc society that once saved the world from Lovecraftian horrors.

[Ghostman]

I find Orcs are actually more interesting when they're played straight in the original Tolkien way (which they typically aren't in fantasy mainstream.)

That is to say that they are not dumb brutes, but rather smart (cunning and technologically savvy, especially in terms of siege engineering and mass production of practical tools and weapons) if lacking in creativity and "true" craftmanship. What makes them monstrous is that they are cruel and malicious (and warped ugly - which may be a consequence of the former, with appropriate metaphysics to justify it) and may have been created with the express purpose of replacing (via implied genocide) whatever other races are present in the world.

To say nothing of the idea that they were originally elves (or any other non-monstrous beings) subjected to horrible mutilations and torture to make them what they are now, permanently and irrevocably tainted in a manner that passes on from one generation to the next. That's some vivid and hardcore tragedy, far more stirring than the modernist "really they're honorable noble savage warrior race guys and everyone's just prejudiced against them wah wah wah" take.

[Sylmenor]

In my setting I take a "chaotic neutral warrior" approche with the orcs. They love the thrill of battle, its unwise to anger them and they are generally boorish. They don't really care about philosophicals question such as good or evil. That doesnt mean they are a bunch of grotesque brute, they want it their way. Across the ages, the orc fought so many battles that they are now rafined in war in general. Many orcs warlords have been famous for being cunning on battle. One of the orc territory now reclaims to be a kingdom. The other human/dwarve/elven kingdom, doesnt like that, but no one want to mess with them. The warrior-king of that orc kingdom aim to rise his kingdom's economy with mercenairy army contracts. The orcs from that kingdom are pretty much like the goth peoples during the roman empire age. Well, that's one of my orcish culture for example.

I never liked the "stupid chaotic evil savage" stereotype, personnally. If they were like that, I couldnt conceive how that race would not be exterminated by the other races

[Seraph]

In Avayevnon I went the "proud warrior race" route.  I eventually renamed them the Gorim, and I modelled them primarily off the Spartans, but had a few different groups.  I had them be naturally hairy, but mostly keep themselves carefully shaved all over as a sign of being civilized.  They placed a high value on honor, and had specific rites of courtship.

I don't have orcs in Cad Goleor or in Infernal Devices, so those don't apply, but I do have them in Camulus.  In Camulus I play with the idea of the "savage" a bit more.  I gave them access to the best iron in the known world, and a cultural attitude of "might makes right" and "I have the right to whatever I can take and keep."  This applies to land, power, women, and essentially all parts of life.  They are in some ways influenced by "The Iron Islands" from A Song of Ice and Fire.

[Cheomesh]

I have used Orcs in two settings.  In the first one, they were a mixture between Greeks and Plains Indians culturally, with stat modifiers based around WIS instead of STR.  In the other, they were basically blacks (a Grayhawk in the late 19th century setting).

M.

[Xathan]

When I use them, I go for a more true savage approach - it's not that they're stupid or whatever, it's just that they are near biologically incapable of controlling their temper and when it flares up, it's near impossible to quell until something's dead. Intelligent honeybadgers, basically. Add a dash of meritocracy (where granted, the only merit that matters is strength) and you have my orcs. I typically have them band together either under the rulership of a different race or when a greater threat appears - I had a group of orc warriors known as the Bloodfists, who's leader had an axe named Herosbane, ally with the player characters once to prevent a death god from being brought to the material plane, happily dying so others could keep living.

[Kindling]

I like orcs a lot. I agree with Ghostman that they're probably at their most kvlt and brutal when Tolkienian, but I do also enjoy the proud-warrior-race-guy type orc as well, just as long as there is still some nastiness to them. After all, no matter how proud you are, if you're a warrior race that's gonna involve a lot of killing, and a lot of being totally cool with killing, and probably also full on enjoying killing. And then of course there's the Warhammer orc, which is a whole load of fun in its own right.

EDIT: Although there are no true orcs in Dark Silver, I did originally create my Snaketalkers as sort of human orcs who fulfilled the same role within the setting that orcs do in vanilla DnD. Obviously I ended up adding a few of my own twists and some sword & sorcery pulpiness, but yeah the basic idea of them is orcs-but-not-orcs.

[Seraph]

I did like the idea that Orcs were at the forefront of technology in Tolkien's works.  And that alone seems to make them evil in Tolkien's universe, based on the fact that 3000 years after the first defeat of Sauron, the "good" kingdoms of elves and men are at the EXACT SAME tech level they were back then.  And that Narsil, a 3000 year-old sword, is still the best ever made.

And orcs being "the dark side of industry" is something that can be pretty cool.  Uncreative, quickl, destructive (as seen with the massive deforestation of Fangorn, and genocide of the Ents), and ugly creations used for evil.  The weapons of the heroes by contrast are ancient, and carefully crafted with magic and an eye to beauty, forged by hand and hard work.  Sometimes they even literally GIVE OFF LIGHT.

[O Senhor Leetz]

I always thought that orcs, especially Tolkiens, carried some severe racist and colonialist overtones. They are a heavily stereotyped referenced to the Other and perhaps even the global South as seen by Europeans, everything that Tolkien, and no doubt many others, thought that Western Europe and England was not - brutish, crass, 'black', and only able to be ruled by a strong despot. Now maybe I'm reading too much into this and I'm aware that the idea of 'orc' has evolved beyond this, but still, they were developed as the antithesis to the Anglo-Saxon; physically, intellectually, emotionally. It's hard for me to get past.

[LordVreeg]

I carefully took some of the traditional ideals then moved along with them.  The Orcs, Bugbears, and 1/2 Ogres are playable races.  To some degree, the history of the setting is such that the more traditional roles of the orcs and other humanoid races is far in the past, as well as it being a past where what they were built for has faded into ancient history.  Things have moved along. 

The orcash are the second most numerous race in Celtricia, after the Hobyts. Their integration is a subplot in the setting,  with some of them still being tribal, others beig integrated, others being both.

In addition, most races in Celtricia can cross breed, so some of the racial strains are actually partially mixed. 

[ooc]
"The Ogrillites

"The eight original Planars, called by the Alementary the True Gods, all had within them the creative spark, a part of the Song that allowed them to create.  Even some of the Angels had within them that part of the song.

And in the depths of time, after the Omwo~, after the Stunatu, and even after the Humans, Anthraxus created his Servants of Woe, the Ogrillites..."
-fragment of the Journey of the Chosen, found in Silverwood.



The Ogrillite peoples were created by Athraxus the Decayed at the end of the First Millenia of the Age of Heroes.  Long after the other Iesueca were created, Anthraxus took and perverted the other races and made them into his own.  The Brutal Orcash, the clever Goblins and Hobgoblins,  the canine Gnollic, the powerful Ograks, the Huge Fomor , and the wise Gartier, all were made as his people and his forces.  Bred for conflict and born to war.

For  thousands of years, these creatures were seen as sub-cultural and bestial, inferior enemies of the other intelligent races.  Great wars were fought on racial lines, with the Ogrillites being the favored troops of those that made aggressive war .  Yet as with all the races, time wore on and the original designs of the planars became less and less easy to determine.   The Ogrillites, especially the Orcash, grew in numbers and in the wild areas prospered.

In the current philosophical mindset of the Celtrician setting, the ability to integrate into a multi-racial culture is seen as one of the tenets of a cultured person.  Over millenia, positive relationships between the various races had become quite normal.  However, there had been a good amount of racism and discrimination practised, even among allies until very recently.  Where the enemies of the various city-states and countries were of a different race, it was often outright ugly.

But a little less than 2 centuries ago, driven in particular by the bold, equalizing, racial independence that the now-powerful and multi-national guilds had brought to the scene, race ceased being a major discrimination point in the Celtrician Cradle area.  The roots of this change can be found in the Bright Lands, where plutocrats in Hobyt Inn started trading heavily with their former enemy, the Blacknote Orcash Tribe a few days north of that city.  By that time within the city of HobytInn, Hobyts, Humans, and Omwo~ had been living with anti-discrimination laws for centuries, although the Orcash were not included.  Though there was great debate, a philospohical movement began in the North-West that was predicated on the idea that one of the primary determinants of a civilized society is the ability to become integrated in a multi-racial society.

Thus, the Bright Lands were the first to open up citizenship to the Orcash and Gartier and also to include Ograk, Goblin and Gnolls as well (this is incredibly rare because of the distribution of the races). However, in a world where Hobyts and Orcash are the most populous races, almost 10% of the Orcash of the world, and almost 25% of the Orcash in the Northern Celtrician 'cradle' area, are 'civilized' and integrated.

In the time since then, most of the Northern (cradle) countries have accepted and adopted this acculturation. The idea has also spread to the Lands of Om in the Far South and most of the west. However, the Ambrellian and Argussian Empires are combating the idea. Some rulers and leaders embrace this change and proselytize it, although many fear it, but nonetheless this tide of change has washed over the lands.[/ooc]

[Xeviat]

I avoided using Orcs in my setting primarily because they're more Tolkien than they are mythological, at least to me. That's not saying that there won't be something similar. I am using "goblins" as one of the three groupings of villainous humanoids in my setting: there are goblins (evil fey), giants (self explanatory), and ferrals (anthropomorphic animals and lycanthropes). Some of my goblins may end up very orc-like. In fact, their association with elves (being, basically, corrupted elves), makes them very orc-like in the Tolkienesque sense.

Funny how things work out.

[LordVreeg]

I always thought that orcs, especially Tolkiens, carried some severe racist and colonialist overtones. They are a heavily stereotyped referenced to the Other and perhaps even the global South as seen by Europeans, everything that Tolkien, and no doubt many others, thought that Western Europe and England was not - brutish, crass, 'black', and only able to be ruled by a strong despot. Now maybe I'm reading too much into this and I'm aware that the idea of 'orc' has evolved beyond this, but still, they were developed as the antithesis to the Anglo-Saxon; physically, intellectually, emotionally. It's hard for me to get past.

As someone who read a ton of Tolkien early, and who actually TA'd it later on, understanding  the world according to the English at that time, or those times as Tolkien wrote over decades and undoubtably changed himself, was critical.  Between the Swarthymen, the Pukel men, the 'cruel Haradrim', even the placement and existence of Numenor, there was certainly a level of thought, much in the ways of the speeches of Churchill and his ilk, that was colonial and was frankly racist (Much though I still enjoy reading about Churchill and some of his speeches). Some of the more recent biographical sketches of him in 'Franklin & Winston' and in Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy (merely the best pure writing I have seen in decades) make it clear that once in his cups, which was pretty much daily, he thought the A-S hegemony was the only group suited to running the world.

I think that realization back in the early 80's, when I took classes then helped teach the subject, brought on the first sequential realizations that eventually led to the idea that my analogues had been created to be such, tainted copies, but had slipped through the centuries and millenia into their own place in the world, as opposed to what they were created to be.

I dislike alignment somewhat benignly; but especially dislike the idea of Racial Alignment (Though I have no problem with 'cultural racial alignment proclivities').  Orcs are the D&D clasic exemplar of 'Racial Alignment'.  So when one looks at the idea of traditional orcs, and evil races, one must look at that.

[LoA]

I always thought that orcs, especially Tolkiens, carried some severe racist and colonialist overtones. They are a heavily stereotyped referenced to the Other and perhaps even the global South as seen by Europeans, everything that Tolkien, and no doubt many others, thought that Western Europe and England was not - brutish, crass, 'black', and only able to be ruled by a strong despot. Now maybe I'm reading too much into this and I'm aware that the idea of 'orc' has evolved beyond this, but still, they were developed as the antithesis to the Anglo-Saxon; physically, intellectually, emotionally. It's hard for me to get past.

As someone who read a ton of Tolkien early, and who actually TA'd it later on, understanding  the world according to the English at that time, or those times as Tolkien wrote over decades and undoubtably changed himself, was critical.  Between the Swarthymen, the Pukel men, the 'cruel Haradrim', even the placement and existence of Numenor, there was certainly a level of thought, much in the ways of the speeches of Churchill and his ilk, that was colonial and was frankly racist (Much though I still enjoy reading about Churchill and some of his speeches). Some of the more recent biographical sketches of him in 'Franklin & Winston' and in Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy (merely the best pure writing I have seen in decades) make it clear that once in his cups, which was pretty much daily, he thought the A-S hegemony was the only group suited to running the world.

I think that realization back in the early 80's, when I took classes then helped teach the subject, brought on the first sequential realizations that eventually led to the idea that my analogues had been created to be such, tainted copies, but had slipped through the centuries and millenia into their own place in the world, as opposed to what they were created to be.

I dislike alignment somewhat benignly; but especially dislike the idea of Racial Alignment (Though I have no problem with 'cultural racial alignment proclivities').  Orcs are the D&D clasic exemplar of 'Racial Alignment'.  So when one looks at the idea of traditional orcs, and evil races, one must look at that.

Heh, I thought J.R.R. Tolkien hated allegory.