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

[Chaosmancer]

Formless? Whatever they were before Gruumsh remade them into a weapon? Is a sword any less a sword if it was once a plowshare?

So... he was looking for a home for his people.... whom he hadn't made yet?

And, yes, if a plowshare was turned into a sword, that means it used to be a plowshare. So, what were orcs before they were orcs? Because the Lore makes it sound like they were made and ready to go, then Gruumsh said "Okay, we aren't getting out land peaceably, we need to go to war with all of these guys", which means that they weren't MADE for war, they were SENT to war.

 

[Oofta]

So, the answer to North Korea is to kidnap all their children and put them in reeducation camps?

This is your problem, you jump straight from "enemy nation" to "reeducation camps" like that is the only possible route we could take. We can't possibly have allied orcs, because if we did then the only answer to our enemies who happen to be orcs is a reeducation camp. Meanwhile, The Scarlet Brotherhood or the Zhentarim don't get the same response, but those are evil groups of humans.

There are more options. Stop trying to say that we only have a single possible answer to the problem of enemy nations.

This is why I shouldn't bother answering questions. First, who the **** said North Korean kids are evil? Anyone?

I'm done trying to have a conversation with you.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I'll repeat yet again: people should do what makes sense to them and there should be more emphasis on alignment just being the default. I happen to use the default because it suits a specific role.

1) The discussion is what we'd like to see 6e do, not just saying 'you do you, brah'.
2) How about not having a default alignment at all? They have a default in your individual game, but the actual default game doesn't just blanketly call whole races 'evil' for arbitrary reasons? Cool? Cool.

 

[Oofta]

1) The discussion is what we'd like to see 6e do, not just saying 'you do you, brah'.
2) How about not having a default alignment at all? They have a default in your individual game, but the actual default game doesn't just blanketly call whole races 'evil' for arbitrary reasons? Cool? Cool.

I think default alignment serves a purpose but it should be stressed that it is just a default. Feel free to differ.

Related: what would the default lore of orcs be if they are not a weapon of war for a vengeful god? If you keep the same lore, they're still effectively CE whether there's a label attached or not.

P.S. I actually think the default lore is kind of awful. Gruumsh had a right to be pissed, even if I disagree with his reaction.

 

[Charlaquin]

This is why I shouldn't bother answering questions. First, who the **** said North Korean kids are evil? Anyone?

No, including Chaosmancer.

Chaosmancer suggested that there be some orcs that are evil and some orcs that are not. You said the logical “solution” to that was to put orcs in re-education camps. Chaosmancer was making a comparison to the real world, where (presumably, if you believe in evil) some people are evil and some people are not. Is the logical solution here to put children in re-education camps? I would argue no. So why would that be the logical solution in fantasyland?

When some orcs are evil and some orcs are not, the “solution,” is to ally with the good orcs, to seek peaceful resolution with the evil orcs when possible, and to fight them when peaceful resolution isn’t possible.

 

[Charlaquin]

Related: what would the default lore of orcs be if they are not a weapon of war for a vengeful god? If you keep the same lore, they're still effectively CE whether there's a label attached or not.

P.S. I actually think the default lore is kind of awful. Gruumsh had a right to be pissed, even if I disagree with his reaction.

No, see the default lore is awesome, because Gruumsh had a right to be pissed. It adds nuance to the conflict. Gruumsh isn’t just evil for the sake of being evil, he’s seeking justice for the wrong that was done to him and his people - perhaps overzealously so, but perhaps not wrongfully so. It makes orcs infinitely more compelling characters, instead of just mindless servants of irredeemable evil. It also makes the other gods less unambiguously good. Maybe Corellon is as flawed as Gruumsh. Maybe there is no right side in war.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Related: what would the default lore of orcs be if they are not a weapon of war for a vengeful god? If you keep the same lore, they're still effectively CE whether there's a label attached or not.

P.S. I actually think the default lore is kind of awful. Gruumsh had a right to be pissed, even if I disagree with his reaction.

I mean like I said before, all the evil creator gods are also highly incompetent. D&D has long adhered to the Hayes code derping of villains always having to be dumb.

Why even have 'evil' gods rather than those who were wronged by the core deities and are beefing with them.

There is a highly underrated Denzel Washington movie called John Q where a man goes to some extreme ends to save his son. Near the end, he breaks down and, referring to his son making sure he isn't in the same situation again tells him to discard his morals and make sure he makes as much money as possible.

Why couldn't Gruumish, pushed to the end of his rope by that jerk elf tormenting him, tell his orcs to do the same? Become strong, protect what is yours. take what you deserve. Do not let the elves grind you down. Grind THEM down first. No more being nice. No more trying with them. To WAAAAAAAGH!

 

[Faolyn]

I'm just quoting the MM. They are a race created to wage endless war.

P.S. Or are you going to call me a liar again? Because you never did respond to my questions in this post.

I didn't see that post. I've had boatloads of notices in the last few days.

But if we're going to be talking about questions that go unreplied-to, you never explained how the DM giving orcs a culture makes them humans with funny teeth instead of, y'know, orcs with a culture. You keep hiding behind the idea that it would somehow be done by in-game force, rather than by a worldbuilding DM, even though we keep telling you otherwise.

So here goes the missing post:

Is there an answer in there somewhere about how do we go from my statement "not all storm troopers were evil, some are conscripts who have no choice" to your exact words "Except when people started talking about having evil regimes you started to argue against it."?

What am I arguing against? I have never argued against having evil regimes.

Sigh. I've addressed this at least twice before.

Again: When people brought up having evil regimes, your first responses were all "But they weren't all evil! Some of them were conscripts or kids! Or had other reasons for being in the FEE!"

It's not like you asked "Would every single member of your FEE be evil, or would there be outliers?"

It's not like you asked "would you be OK with your party killing a member of the FEE on sight before checking to see if they were doing evil things first?"

I do find it interesting that you're now trying to claim all you were talking about is stormtroopers when you were the one who brought up conscripted Nazis in the first place (presumably in response to someone else's notion that Nazis made for popular video game baddies).

I have a preference that, unlike the real world, you can have good guys fighting bad guys. That in some cases you can resort to violence to achieve your goals without having the moral dilemma of fireballing some guy just because they were a poor schmuck that was conscripted.

Sure, that's fine.

'Cept what you're saying, and have said, is it's better to kill someone on sight because of their race rather than the choices they consciously made.

Which suggests to me that you are thinking:

• That the majority of any FEE is actually going to be innocents who were conscripted into joining.
• That all players are like yours and just like unloading fireballs on the enemy and don't like moral quandaries.

Instead of thinking

• Maybe only a smallish percentage of the FEE is actually going to be innocents.
• Maybe everyone in the FEE is irredeemably evil, because it's a fantasy evil empire, because anyone who isn't dyed-in-the-wool evil gets exiled or executed the second they stop kicking puppies.
• Maybe other tables have a higher tolerance for moral quandaries.
• Maybe other tables like rescuing not-evil members from the FEE.
• Maybe other DMs are able to make it clearer which members of the FEE are bad guys and which aren't.
• Maybe other DMs would only show members of the FEE who were actively engaging in evil.

As far as the accusation of lying, when I see a post that says "It doesn't look good when your argument is #NotAllNazis." it sure does sound like you're calling me a nazi sympathizer.

You either didn't know what people are talking about, in which case you should have asked for clarification before claiming that people called you something bad, or you do know what people were talking about, realized that they weren't calling you something bad, and lied about it.

So yeah. You're clearly not understanding what I've been writing--not if I've had to respond to the same question at least three times now. So basically, I give up on this particular thread. I'll just talk about pig-shaped orcs from now on.

 

[Oofta]

No, including Chaosmancer.

Chaosmancer suggested that there be some orcs that are evil and some orcs that are not. You said the logical “solution” to that was to put orcs in re-education camps. Chaosmancer was making a comparison to the real world, where (presumably, if you believe in evil) some people are evil and some people are not. Is the logical solution here to put children in re-education camps? I would argue no. So why would that be the logical solution in fantasyland?

When some orcs are evil and some orcs are not, the “solution,” is to ally with the good orcs, to seek peaceful resolution with the evil orcs when possible, and to fight them when peaceful resolution isn’t possible.

What he said was

So, the answer to North Korea is to kidnap all their children and put them in reeducation camps?

I don't even know where that came from.

The question is:

...What's wrong with ackowledging, in the default level of the game of Dungeons and Dragons, where we have written how orcs are raised, who raises them, their beliefs, their superstitions, their symbology, their tools, their myths and ect ect, that some orcs are good and some are not?
...

First, I have no clue how much more often I can acknowledge that different campaigns can and should handle things differently. I don't have the 5E version of Eberron, but my understanding is that they change the lore for orcs. Cool beans.

But ... "orcs are raised, who raises them, their beliefs, their superstitions, their symbology, their tools, their myths and ect ect, that some orcs are good" sounds to me exactly like the justification used for the boarding schools that had the goal of reeducating "savages".

I really don't understand why you don't acknowledge that the idea that in order to reform someone you have to get them to reject their heritage and culture is bad.

In any case, it's a gotcha question which is why I'm not going to bother answering. If you don't accept my logic, so be it.

 

[Faolyn]

A blunt interpretation of their description in the MM. I would not say this is exactly true, as Gruumsh commanding his children to do something is very different than explicitly creating them only for war.

I'll add, orcs have plenty of other gods in their pantheon that can affect their behavior, so I don't think having an evil god at the top of their pantheon makes all orcs evil.

True: they have a god of strength and loyalty, a god of strategy and tactics, and a god of fertility, healing, and hearth and home. And their evil gods are seen more as boogeymen to be feared than as gods to be worshipped.