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

[Charlaquin]

At a high level the various races in the PHB represent different tropes. Elves are back-to-nature free love types, dwarves are nose-to-the-grindstone rigid rule types, halflings are happy-go-lucky idealized country folk and so on. What do orcs represent if they don't represent the barbarian at the gate? The evil forces that want to destroy civilization, use their ferocity, might and numbers to cause fear and chaos by destroying everyone else? What trope, what role do they represent if that's not their niche?

It’ll vary from table to table, setting to setting, campaign to campaign. Point is though, whatever role they may have in a given game, not having a single monolithic ethnoculture doesn’t make them “humans with funny skin color and bad dental work.” Orcs can be made to feel meaningfully different than humans without being culturally monolithic, let alone being always evil. So, “I don’t want my orcs to be humans with funny colored skin and bad dental work” is not a logically valid reason for insisting they be always evil.

Now, there may be other reasons to have always-evil orcs in your campaign, not the lest of which is “I want orcs to always be evil in my campaign.”

If the majority do represent that trope of evil barbaric hordes, then I think logically people should be biased against and fear any orc that walks into town. I don't want prejudice to be a big part of my game.

Case in point. That’s a logically valid reason to make orcs always evil in your campaign. I don’t think it’s a good reason to make orcs always evil by default in the official WotC published books.

Funny. Over just the past few pages it's been implied that I'm a racist and a Nazi apologist.

Well, you did make an argument that “not all Nazis were evil.” I got what you meant, and I don’t think you were intending to argue Nazi apologia, but it’s not like that critique is coming out of nowhere. I haven’t seen anyone calling you a racist, but if you are seeing that, I would recommend reporting their posts.

 

[Bohandas]

If they weren't doing evil things when given the option they wouldn't be evil.

Exactly. For some reason lot of people seem to be interpreting the alignment entry as "orcs are arbitrarily flagged as evil" when the intent is clearly "orcs disporportionately do evil things"

 

[Chaosmancer]

I've never told anyone else how to run their game or that it's wrong somehow to run anything differently than I run it.

In addition, we've been down this road. It's the same cycle.

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?​

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 the thread gets shut down.​

Why bother typing up the same in depth on my reasoning and logic behind my decisions when you're just going to have the same responses anyway?

Then why are you here arguing for evil orcs again? Seriously. Not trying to gotcha or do anything else, people put forth their preference for a new direction of DnD. You don't care, you want to run the game as you always have. We say that's fine, but we want to change DnD, because as a multi-national game, it has to think more broadly than you do at your table.

And you say you don't care, you are going to run your table like you always do. Which, is fine, we've said that's fine... so, why keep arguing? What are you gaining except to keep reminding us that you don't want to change your table. Which we know, and that's fine, and we've said that's fine. But we aren't talking about your table. We are talking about the publication of the international rules fo dungeons and dragons. And individual tables like yours, can do what they want, that's fine, we've said that's fine.

 

[Charlaquin]

Exactly. For some reason lot of people seem to be interpreting the alignment entry as "orcs are arbitrarily flagged as evil" when the intent is clearly "orcs disporportionately do evil things"

Right, but maybe examine that a little more closely. Why do orcs disproportionately do evil things? Is it environmental or is it genetic? If it’s environmental, is it really accurate to call orcs as a race evil, or would it be more accurate to say these particular orcs are evil? If it’s genetic... yikes.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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.

Yes there is a default game. That is why Orcus isn't the god of sunshine and puppy kisses and Solars can blind you. The very things we are talking about are the default lore for Orcs. Something you have abandoned, and the explanation you gave about them being born from pods for the sole purpose of war and chaos is fine. That changes them from being like humans to being something inhuman and evil. That works.

That also isn't the default. Default orcs weren't made by the Jotuns, because Default DnD doesn't have Jotuns.

 

[Bohandas]

You keep using this defense, but you still haven’t been able to explain how “orcs aren’t all evil” equates to “orcs are humans with funny colored skin and bad dental work.”

You're imposing human psychology on them. Not entirely, but at least partially. You're saying that they can't think and feel in a fundamentally different way that would cause them all to behave evilly.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Right, but maybe examine that a little more closely. Why do orcs disproportionately do evil things? Is it environmental or is it genetic? If it’s environmental, is it really accurate to call orcs as a race evil, or would it be more accurate to say these particular orcs are evil? If it’s genetic... yikes.

Yeah, I have a problem with declaring genetic evil. That just... can't be evil to me. Evil is about choicesm if you remove the choice you can have other things, but it can't be evil.

After all, Sharks are savage, blood-thirsty predators, but they aren't evil.

 

[Chaosmancer]

You're imposing human psychology on them. Not entirely, but at least partially. You're saying that they can't think and feel in a fundamentally different way.

Human psychology is being imposed on them by the other side to. Read Oofta's last post "want to destroy civilization, use their ferocity, might and numbers to cause fear and chaos by destroying everyone else"

That is human psychology there. Destroy your enemies, you need might and numbers to do so, the goal is to cause fear and cause. You could use that to describe a hundred different vicious groups of humanity who sought to destroy their enemies.

 

[Faolyn]

Who's fighting against other options? Let me repeat. I do not care what you do in your campaign. For that matter, I think the MM and DMG should stress that the alignment listed in the book is just the default. It's stated as such, but it's just a couple of lines in the intro to the MM.

Except when people started talking about having evil regimes you started to argue against it. You're continuing to do so right now.

Again, noticing a trend is not a judgement call. As far as the Nazi thing, let it go. I don't think everyone wearing a Nazi uniform was evil, many soldiers were conscripts. Unless of course you think the 8-12 year old kids that were filling in auxiliary roles were evil of course.

Like right here.

Yes, there were unwilling Nazis. Some of them even tried to help the Jews or other people who were being persecuted by the rest of the party. But none of this has anything to do with an Evil Empire in a D&D game, or a group of bandits in a D&D game, or anything like that.

If you're going to say "it's not realistic that all orcs are evil" then I'll just reply with "it's not realistic that the evil empire only recruits like minded soldiers".

Sure, great point.

Campaign villain: the Evil Empire, with its Evil Overlord, soldiers, technicians, spellcasters, etc. The Evil Overlord is charismatic enough that a lot of their minions are there by choice: they support the Overlord's goals, are getting a slice of the pie, like being evil, or don't care about what the Overlord is doing because it doesn't negatively affect them.

Except some of them aren't there by choice. Some of them were forced to join under threat of their death or the death of their loved ones. Some of them are magically charmed. Some were for the Overlord at first but have come to realize they can't support its regime but haven't been able to defect yet. Some of them simply don't care enough about the Empire and would turn on it if they could be guaranteed safety for doing so.

Awesome. Not everyone in the Evil Empire is actually evil-aligned. Many are, but some aren't. The PCs will have to be care that they don't turn evil in their fight against evil. This is a good conflict to have. And I'm willing to be that many, even most DMs who include an Evil Empire would have at least a couple of people who are willing to turn against it. Depending on how evil the Evil Empire is, there may even be lots of people willing to turn against it.

Now, about those orcs of yours... How many of them have decided to flip off Gruumsh and turn to the other side?

 

[Faolyn]

You're imposing human psychology on them. Not entirely, but at least partially. You're saying that they can't think and feel in a fundamentally different way that would cause them all to behave evilly.

Why would they? If they think and feel in a way that would cause them to behave evilly, they would have killed themselves off ages ago. For them to survive, they have to behave in a way that's beneficial for their group--since orcs are, and have always been, creatures that live in groups.

They can have reasons to war against others, same as humans have reasons to war against others. Maybe they even have really good reasons to war against others. But for it to be built into their fantasy DNA and have them not drive themselves extinct... that makes no sense.