D&D (2024) bring back the pig faced orcs for 6th edition, change up hobgoblins & is there a history of the design change

[Oofta]

Actual real-world indigenous people aren't, and weren't, evil, though.

Exactly. But they were labeled as "ignorant savages" and the "solution" was to strip them of all cultural identity. If the only thing distinguishing orcs from humans is culture, then I see no reason for orcs to exist. Have a tribe of ignorant savage evil human barbarians instead so you can repeat the colonialist trope of "superior" cultures.

 

[Faolyn]

Why? They are a species created to wage never ending, meaningless war. To sow chaos and destruction. They're magically constructed in my world.

Well then, problem solved! They're not people! I guess you have their monster type as construct or fiend, right?

Ooh, great idea. So to solve the orc problem, we should round up all the orc kids and send them off to boarding school to teach them to speak and dress "properly"! Fantastic idea that western civilization has foisted on indigenous peoples multiple times.

Wow, are you really saying you don't understand what culture is? I have to assume you're being deliberately obtuse here, because I can't believe that you are taking the idea "the DM creates a culture for orcs" with "people in-game round up orc kids and force them into a set of behaviors." Again, wow.

Are they?

The general options are that or they're formed out of the evil essence of the plane. They're not "innocent babies" by any stretch of the means.

Even if they are, so what? Who says orcs even have souls?

Well, as DM, you should say if they do.

Just seems like another arbitrary "my fiction says it's okay, your fiction doesn't".

Do what you want in your campaign.

Hey, you're the one that thinks that having a race of people whose entire purpose is to be evil and then get killed by the PCs is a good thing.

 

[Faolyn]

Exactly. But they were labeled as "ignorant savages" and the "solution" was to strip them of all cultural identity. If the only thing distinguishing orcs from humans is culture, then I see no reason for orcs to exist. Have a tribe of ignorant savage evil human barbarians instead so you can repeat the colonialist trope of "superior" cultures.

So you think that the only culture orcs could possibly have is "ignorant savage."

Interesting.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Labeling people ignorant or evil in order to justify killing them and taking their stuff is also a colonist trope. Which is what people are bothered by with the whole orc thing and why it's really weird in this thread that the solution seems to be making them pig--literally a mark of ham--in order to get back to being okay killing them for being orcs instead of a less problematic reason like 'the PCs are just bad people' or 'this group of orcs is doing things that warrant combat'.

 

[Oofta]

So you think that the only culture orcs could possibly have is "ignorant savage."

Interesting.

You're either twisting, not reading or just plain ignoring what I've said repeatedly now. If they are just humans with funny colored skin and bad dental work they serve no purpose for me.

But this is going same as every other thread.

1. I don't see a problem with monsters, including orcs always being evil. They serve a purpose in the game. Change alignments to what makes sense for your campaign.​

2. But why not have only some orcs be evil? [EDIT: add implied racism]​

3. That's fine. Do what makes sense for your campaign.​

4. Okay, but why not have only some orcs be evil?​

5. Go to step 1 until thread is shut down.​

Have a good one.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Again, you're arguing about home games and everyone else is talking about the default game.

 

[Oofta]

Again, you're arguing about home games and everyone else is talking about the default game.

Is there a "default" game? I reject the basic premise. Do we have a lot in common? Obviously. Do we all have to run everything exactly the same? Obviously not.

What's, let me just say "interesting", is that I don't care about what you do in your game but people really seem to get their knickers in a bundle about one preference. It's a preference that in my experience is shared by a lot of D&D players. I'm not "arguing" anything, that implies that I think there is one true way. I don't. People ask me questions, I answer. I can only discuss my opinions and why I do what I do. I have no real influence over your game or any hypothetical "default" game so I can only express what I do for my group. Seems kind of pretentious to tell others what I think they "should" or "should not" be doing.

The only thing I argue against is that blaming evil creatures on "culture" is somehow "better". That everyone that wears a specific uniform or is part of a specific organization is automatically evil to the core. That I, and a lot of people, still want good and evil in a game. How a DM justifies that is up to the DM and the group. I'm presenting one way of having easily identifiable good and evil, if that's even something you care about.

In other words, if I say "this is what I do in my campaign and here's why" and others simply replied "this is what I do in my campaign and here's why", that's a fine conversation to have. But every time this comes up it's always "this is what I do in my campaign and here's why" with a response of "why would you do that" with the implied "it's wrong to do it that way".

As far as what WOTC does with future editions, the opinion of anyone posting to this or the other related threads and $10.00 may get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Is there a "default" game? I reject the basic premise. Do we have a lot in common? Obviously. Do we all have to run everything exactly the same? Obviously not.

Of course there is a default game, that what a listed alignment is. It's the default alignment of that entire monster population.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

If orcs are only evil because of culture then it's colonialist BS

No, it isn’t. You always misrepresent the point to get here.

It’s not that orcs are “only evil because of culture”, it’s that if orcs are defined by Gruumsh, then a supernatural being exerts power to override their will and any culture they would have on their own doesn’t actually exist. Cutting them off from Gruumsh allows them to develop their own culture.

Or another way, the “colonialist BS” relies on the idea that we would be making orcs more like elves or something, when that clearly isn’t anyone’s goal. It would also require taking orcs within a game world, and within the fiction of that world, changing orcs from one thing into another. Most of the orc discussion is instead about changing the starting point of orcs. Changing what the PHB and MM say about orcs and half-orcs, does not equate to re-education, it’s literally just designing a game element differently.

Designing orcs to have cultures that take into account a nature that is different from humans in a few easily remembered ways does not require that orcs have an inherent alignment.

Native Re-education was a process of forced assimilation. Nothing about the arguments you keep railing against with this claim of colonialism actually relies upon orcs assimilating to “friendly races” culture. Orcs can fully still predominantly be in opposition to what most humans and elves and dwarves call civilization, without any need for them to be Evil.

And again, the discussion isn’t about your game world. Absolutely everyone else is talking about the game in general. Insisting on trying to make your side of the discussion exclusively about your game world is disingenuous, regardless of your intent, because you are replying to arguments about the game, as if the discussion was about your game.

Edit: Indeed, you even entered the discussion by making it about the game at large, and suggesting that having orcs not be always-evil is somehow bad for the game in general. Then as soon as your reasoning is challenged, you make it about your game and act affronted that people are attacking how you play.

 

[Faolyn]

You're either twisting, not reading or just plain ignoring what I've said repeatedly now. If they are just humans with funny colored skin and bad dental work they serve no purpose for me.

No, you've been misunderstanding what I've said: orcs + culture =/= human.

But this is going same as every other thread.

Maybe that means you're not understanding what everyone else is talking about.

2. But why not have only some orcs be evil? [EDIT: add implied racism]

Why not? Some humans are evil. The second-most recent big bad in my campaign was a halfling. The players hated him. I'm gonna have him come back as undead soon.

If all members of a race are "irredeemably evil" simply because you want them to be, and you spend a lot of time fighting against any possibility of them being not evil--such as by comparing the DM making cultures for orcs to real-life people forcibly stripping others of their cultural identity--then maybe there is a problem. And not with the "not Always Evil" crowd.

And quite frankly, you're the one who brought up racism. Paul Farquhar said "Anyone can be evil. It's just that you can no longer tell who is evil by looking at their skin colour." To me, that clearly means "you can't just look at someone and decide they're evil because of their race, which since this is D&D, that actually means things like your fighter can't just look at an orc and decide they're evil because they're an orc." But you seemed to take that as a personal attack, as if Paul was saying you were a real-life racist.

3. That's fine. Do what makes sense for your campaign.​

From what I could tell, your first post in this thread was:

I think the issue with any generically evil creature (let's call them Blargs) is that at some point someone is going to start identifying with them because Blargs are outcasts from normal society that are feared and some people feel like they don't fit in. Then they want to play a Blarg so we come up with stats. The next thing you know, it's a bad thing that Blargs are a representation of people that are prejudiced against. Since we can no longer have generically evil Blargs we come up with something completely different called Blurgs. The cycle continues. [...] For me? It's just a game and I think people read too much into this. I just finished playing Half-Life Alyx after getting a new VR headset (awesome game by the way) and I have no qualms about mowing down the enemy in this or any other video game I've ever played. Is that over-simplified, not realistic? Absolutely. It's a game.

You literally started this by saying that it was somehow bad that people would want to play an evil race because then "people would start identifying them" and you'd have to come up with a new evil race.

And hey, sure, maybe you're the type of player who hates having to deal with moral quandaries in-game. That's fine. We can all appreciate a little black and white morality at times. But then you started fighting against the idea of having evil non-racial groups by saying things like "For some people, some games, it's okay for Nazis to be evil because the Nazi regime was evil. It ignores that soldiers in the Nazi army were there for a whole host of reasons. Same with storm troopers for that matter."

It doesn't look good when your argument is #NotAllNazis. And it looks worse when your argument is "its better to kill people for the way they were born than for the conscious choices they make," because you're ignoring that most DMs aren't going to have the Evil Empire conscripting innocents as soldiers without also at least strongly hinting that is the case to the PCs.

4. Okay, but why not have only some orcs be evil?​

5. Go to step 1 until thread is shut down.​

You've been claiming that would happen four fifteen pages now.