ORCS or Half-Orcs?

[The Human Target]

Yeah, your personal conception of what Ocs "are" will heavily influence your ability to accept them as a PC race.

In my campaigns Orcs have always been the Tolkien variety: corrupted flesh, or mortal demons. There were plenty of primitive human tribes (or Kagonesti-like elves) that served as good sources of the "noble savage" character.

My question for the 4E designers is: if Orcs are noble savages now, what the "baseline humanoid badguy savage"? That's an archetype that's fairly important to a lot of campaign worlds. Hobgoblins are too organized; goblins too weak; bugbears too strong; etc. etc. If Orcs are PC, there's now a hole in the humanoid lineup. Is there a proposed fill-in too?

I hope so, and it better be good.

Admittedly, what I'll probably do (if Orcs are in fact PC's), is rename them and adapt them into a Dragonlance-like Minotaur race. "Orcs" are already established as the corrupted mortals IMC, and so they will remain.

They could alter Goblins. Bugbears, Hobgoblins, Gnolls etc to better fit that archtype.

Or they could make up something new.

Or they could choose to leave the baseline humanoid badguy savage empty.

Hopefully they'll get over the 'these are good races' and 'these are bad races' paradigm for regular humanoids and emphasize that the rampaging barbarians might be ANY race at all, even those traditionally thought of as good. In fact the points of light setting concept seems tailor made to do this by emphasizing the barbarian/civilized divide instead of the elf/orc divide.

Thats what I'd like to see too.

 

[Khuxan]

Hopefully they'll get over the 'these are good races' and 'these are bad races' paradigm for regular humanoids and emphasize that the rampaging barbarians might be ANY race at all, even those traditionally thought of as good. In fact the points of light setting concept seems tailor made to do this by emphasizing the barbarian/civilized divide instead of the elf/orc divide.

Amen!

My question for the 4E designers is: if Orcs are noble savages now, what the "baseline humanoid badguy savage"?

Gnolls?

 

[Mighty Veil]

I don't think LOTR really has black-and-white morality. Boromir, hello?.

He was good. He failed his will save against the ring and just tried to take it. After the ring was away from him. He was all sorry. Sacrificed his life for the other hobbits.

 

[Tquirky]

D&D is a game. If it sets up strong tropes and archetypes, then you'll seem all the more edgy, maverick, progressive and clever if when you "break type" and have a good orc.

Build moral ambiguity into the rules and it's no longer big or clever, just yawnful (and annoying that you can't just thump the orcs in a purely racist and unreal-worldish way without going into moral paroxysms about their disposition).

The problem is, this is not intuitive. I expect alignment is going to get itself castrated into shades of grey with the current design team, in their wisdom - Eberron is a clear harbinger.

 

[Mighty Veil]

D&D is a game. If it sets up strong tropes and archetypes, then you'll seem all the more edgy, maverick, progressive and clever if when you "break type" and have a good orc.

Build moral ambiguity into the rules and it's no longer big or clever, just yawnful (and annoying that you can't just thump the orcs in a purely racist and unreal-worldish way without going into moral paroxysms about their disposition).

The problem is, this is not intuitive. I expect alignment is going to get itself castrated into shades of grey with the current design team, in their wisdom - Eberron is a clear harbinger.

Well said.

I remember when I was a kid I saw an orc miniature. Bought it. And created an orc character. My DM was so against it at first. I played Og the orc mostly as comedy relief (like Freddy Kruger character from the show V was like). My DM ended up liking him. Near the end of that campaign, we were now 13. I turned my orc into a savage orc. My DM just hated it and couldn't understand why. At the time I was bored with the character. Years later we realized we were just bored with that campaign.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Build moral ambiguity into the rules and it's no longer big or clever, just yawnful (and annoying that you can't just thump the orcs in a purely racist and unreal-worldish way without going into moral paroxysms about their disposition).

It has nothing to do with moral ambiguity. It's about opening up the targeting parameters to use an anachronism. It allows you to whack the heads off elves or humans just like you do orcs because in this situation a group of one can be just as much an antagonist as the other.

EDIT: I know I'm partial to using elves as examples, I just find them distasteful. They're only a placeholder for *insert generic humanoid race here.* Don't tell me no one else on this site would find burning down a village of elven barbarians a fun session.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Hopefully they'll get over the 'these are good races' and 'these are bad races' paradigm for regular humanoids and emphasize that the rampaging barbarians might be ANY race at all, even those traditionally thought of as good. In fact the points of light setting concept seems tailor made to do this by emphasizing the barbarian/civilized divide instead of the elf/orc divide.

Not me. There's plenty of grey and moral anguish in the real world. I get more than my share of that just reading the news or trying to figure out who to vote for. One of the reasons I play D&D is so I can get away from that and just kick in some doors and bash things.

That's OK though if 4E leans more your way than mine on the fluffy stuff. That's a lot easier to change than the rules (which require re-balancing and extensive playtesting). If the MM says "Orcs are strong and brutish, but more misunderstood than evil" I can just cross it out and scribble "They were Men of the West once, but have been corrupted by greed and the power of the Shadow" in the margin and ... ta da! Insta-fantasy.

Of the course, the beauty of the above example is that you can do the exact opposite too, and I expect people will if necessary.

 

[Tquirky]

EDIT: I know I'm partial to using elves as examples, I just find them distasteful. They're only a placeholder for *insert generic humanoid race here.* Don't tell me no one else on this site would find burning down a village of elven barbarians a fun session.

And why? Because they have a stereotype of being goody-two-shoes. Take away their white-hat-until-proven-otherwise status and you wouldn't have that attitude towards them. Excellent demonstration of the unintuitive paradox I'm referring to. You've basically made my argument for me.

A D&D where adult, male orcs cannot be attacked by a "hero" just for being an orc, and all that stands for, is by definition a poorer D&D, striking at the very heart of the game (a significant part of which is "killing things and taking their stuff"). YMMV.

 

[Irda Ranger]

EDIT: I know I'm partial to using elves as examples, I just find them distasteful. They're only a placeholder for *insert generic humanoid race here.* Don't tell me no one else on this site would find burning down a village of elven barbarians a fun session.

Are they capital-E Evil? Because if not, then no. The problem with burning down whole villages of "savages" is that they all could be redeemed if you took the effort. That's why I like having Tolkien Orcs as bad guys, instead of the men of Near or Far Harad.

Does anyone have the quote from Faramir (in the movie), when looking at the man he killed in that first ambush where he takes Sam and Frodo captive? Something like "Who was this man? Did he have dreams not unlike my own?" That was the spirit of the quote, anyway.

And if you burned down a village of those guys, you'd have to ask yourself "Could it have been done another way? A better way? A way that did not require the burning of innocents?"

 

[Mighty Veil]

EDIT: I know I'm partial to using elves as examples, I just find them distasteful. They're only a placeholder for *insert generic humanoid race here.* Don't tell me no one else on this site would find burning down a village of elven barbarians a fun session.

If it were a world with no orcs and drow or elves similar to Melnibone were casted as the bad guys. I'd have no troubles torching them down. But orcs for fantasy aren't just some generic bad guy. They are the common thug bad guy. To homebrew a change is one thing. To make it the design you base everything around is another.

If mindflayers created a kingdom and some author wrote a book about one who had some sex appeal to its readers. Since now a very very rare monster, based off something very evil, and its role is an evil one. Should 5e core players make them a regular race you'd run into at the local pub? "Oh but they now eat only the brains of their enemies and that of cats. Oh wait... that would offend Peta and their enemies could be reformed. They only eat tofu brains now" (but won't that offend ents?). Tquirky has said my side of view best so far. Well one aspect of it. Irda seems to have the other aspect of it.