Since that would clearly be ridiculous, you knew what I meant and posted something that really didn't need to be said anyway.
Did I know what you meant? You tried to dismiss my point by saying "of course they aren't humans" but this was never about being human. It was about personhood.
For centuries across every land on the map, people have pointed to their neighbors and said "these are not people, they are monsters in people's skin, it is kill or be killed". Sometimes they are monsters just because, sometimes because they worship "dark gods" or "evil spirits"
So is it any wonder that if I went to my college aged players, who are taking a class on say, colonialism, and I say "okay, Orcs are a vicious and brutal people, who slaughter civilized folk, all because they worship the evil god Gruumsh" one of my players might think back to the real atrocities they just read about and be conflicted? Because I just spun the exact same narrative that okayed the slaughter of [X].
This has happened at my tables, this discussions have come up, multiple times. And I can't just dismiss them by saying "well, orcs aren't humans anyways, so it is fine."
You are aware that every single orc is a figment of somebody's imagination, right? There are no orcs. There have never been orcs. There never will be orcs. They're made up for the specific purpose of giving made up people someone to kill without feeling bad about it.
And no one can draw any troubling connections right? No one could possibly get drawn out of the fantasy by echoes of the IRL past that I am pulling out?
I snipped a lot, but I left what I think are the major turning points.
What does it get us? Moral plot immunity. Orcs (or whatever) are bad because they are. We don't have to wring hands about whether we should parley or just kill them. Orcs are bad because those are the metaphysical laws of that universe. Orcs raised in a human society may learn to pretend better than other orcs, but they're still inherently evil in a way that can't be changed. And, there aren't immutably good races because they would serve no story value.
Well, you seem to have snipped too much, because your presentation of Orcs being bad because of metaphysical laws is the exact opposite of what I said in that post.
I also find it squicky to say that orcs raised in human society are just "pretending" to be good, and are still inherently evil. That leads to "just slaughter all of them" mentalities. Which are a problem.
That doesn't mean that orcs must be irredeemably evil in every D&D setting. If you want a lot of gray and moral quandary, where every time you raid an orc lair, you need to wring hands about whether you should have negotiated or tried to "redeem" the orc brutes, then you should, by all means, do so. There is nothing wrong with that.
But, it's also not BadWrongFun to have orcs be low-level toons that don't provoke any soul searching when you kill them. They aren't a real-world race and, really, they don't have any particular similarities to any real-world race. They're nothing more than an embodiment of all the brutish nastiness that exists. The real world concept of racism is literally impossible to apply to them, in this form, and it would be nonsensical to try.
I enjoy Greyhawk and play it as irredeemable orcs. I love Eberron and the nuanced orcs. My preference is probably the morally gray because I'm really not into the whole murder-hobo schtick. But, D&D really is geared towards murder-hobos, so having a race that was made up just to be mooks makes a heck of a lot of sense, especially when you talk about defaults.
Okay, firstly, it is not literally impossible to apply real world racism to them. People have posted the links, and while yes, they are a respresentation of many different racist claims, I think that is somewhat more obvious. Orcs are the archetype racists have called other people to dehumanize them.
To the second, man, I get the desire for simple, mindless fun. I do, trust me. I've had PCs rack up big body counts. But, the way you are phrasing things is just ugly. Hand-wringing, Really? Redeem in quotation marks while calling them brutes, implying it is all impossible and a naive dream to get something good out of these beings?
I'm reminded of a movie review I watched recently. You'll probably discount it out of hand, but it struck me. It was a brief study of Newt Schamander from "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them." and the reviewers wanted to point out something, something I had forgotten. At the end of the movie, they confront the monster. There is a monster, it is doing all the terrible things it is accused of doing, and a third party kills it. And that is framed as a tragedy.
It was a tragedy that they couldn't save the monster.
And thinking about it, how often have you ever read a story with that moral in it? I realized it was incredibly rare. Sure, I've read about misunderstood monsters, but this thing wasn't misunderstood. It was the terrible force of destruction that it was purported to be. And that makes the issue far more interesting.
Sure, I like my mindless fun, slaughtering cultists or bandits or demons without any real concern about the morality of it. But, at the end of the day, that is the easiest storytelling we can do. "They are other, go kill them."
I'm really curious who is not feeling "included" by a made up, non-human species being imagined as being hardwired for traits that are considered evil. The whole conversation just seems... strange. Why is it more than a shoulder shrug?
Because some people see the language that was used to oppress and kill in the past being used as an excuse to kill things in the game.
Is this really so hard to see?
So... orcs...
Yes, I agree having them created by an evil god is an issue with their free will.
How about make Gruumsh a mythological champion of the orcs that unites them.
I don't think we need an origin story.
Redo orcs in the image of Klingons.
Or, honestly, just redo a few small details.
Make Gruumsh not pure evil. He can be a god of strength and war without being evil, we've got those.
Instead of making orcs kill all people because they are evil, have them be at war with everyone. We can figure out a good reason, but it isn't "just because" they have a goal. Maybe, they are at war with the Elves because they are trying to reclaim Gruumsh's lost eye, and they are fighting everyone else for siding with the elves.
Then, don't have the PCs run into an Orc Village (avoiding the orc babies problem).
Bam, you have orcs that are constant antagonists (you only meet enemy soldiers) but who are not "brutish, low and stupid" or irredeemably evil.
Why do you kill an orc warband? The war part. If you don't take them out, they are going to attack, pillage and burn somewhere, because that is the mission they are on. But there is a reason for it, could you negotiate with them? Maybe. But they are definitely your enemy.