D&D General Why are "ugly evil orcs" so unpopular?

[Lanefan]

You can call them a different species than human all you want, but that doesn’t accurately describe the way they are actually depicted. The relationship between various humanoid “races” in D&D is more like the relationship between different breeds of dog than it is like the relationship between dogs and cats.

Which is just a differently-phrased restatement of the "they're all just Humans with prosthetics" argument; which, if true, is a rather sad development.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Going even further down the rabbit hole, "mongol" used to be a medical term for Down's Syndrome. It was used to describe the physical aspects of the syndrome, long before the chromosomal link was understood. Wikipedia shows that it appeared in scientific journals as late as 1961.

So, at the time, Tolkien was actually using a more "scientific" physical descriptor, rather than a simple racial term. The M word was an acceptable phrase then. It's not now. See also: idiot, hysteria, etc. There's lots of cases to be made of racism in orc history, but this is a particularly weak example.

The importance of the quotation, in my view, is that it shows that when Tolkien used terms such as "sallow-faced", "squint-eyed", "slant-eyed", "crook-legged", and "bowlegged" his stated intent was to give his orcs the features of "Mongoloid" people -- Asians and Native Americans. ("Mongol-types" was probably used to refer to this outdated racial category.) Not only that but he considered this feature important enough to correct a movie script for The Lord of the Rings that failed to take it into account.

 

[Deset Gled]

And even if we ignore the social and historical problems with all ugly all evil races, I find them so..... boring. They end up as shallow as a puddle, and you lose a lot of fun complexity and drama that you could have explored.

I'll straight up disagree with you here. Even if you dislike having certain races being designated fodder, "all ugly all evil" is the basis to all the best "By what measure is a [insert here]?" plots ever written. Some of the best episodes of Star Trek and Twilight Zone are based on this trope, not to mention countless video games, movies, books, songs etc. From "A Modern Prometheus" to "Zootopia", it's a plot that is anything but boring. Its okay to say that's not the plot you want, but if you can't see the complexity and drama to explore, then you're not looking very hard.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Which is just a differently-phrased restatement of the "they're all just Humans with prosthetics" argument; which, if true, is a rather sad development.

true but that is a topic for another day.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Not in the way that we describe things as 'racist' today.

The medical use of the term was racist. Dimitra Fimi, Tolkien, Race, and Cultural History (2008), talking about Tolkien's usage of "Mongol-types":

This statement is important from an anthropological point of view, as it seems to reflect popular ideas of the traditional hierarchy of the three extreme human racial types: the Caucasoid, the Mongoloid and the Negroid... In this case, Tolkien seems to identify himself with the 'European' race, usually associated with the Caucasoid, and chooses for his villains the physical characteristics in extreme of the so-called Mongoloid race, traditionally seen as inferior from a western European perspective. At the same time, the identification of Orcs with the Mongoloid race evokes popular ideas on racial degeneration and mental disability. For many years – officially until 1961 – the medical condition today known as 'Down's Syndrome' – was referred to as 'Mongolian idiocy' or 'Mongolism'. The term originated in the writing of John Langdon Down, who was the first to describe and study the condition… Writing during the second half of the nineteenth century and influenced by racial anthropology, Down came to view mental disability as a regression to earlier, less 'developed' races of humans.​

 

[Sacrosanct]

Every time we have a thread on orcs which inevitably turns into a discussion on racism and culture (or lack thereof) of orcs, I'm gonna post pics I had commissioned recently for an issue of The Gnoll Sage I did. Just to show that orcs can be so much more than just "evil monsters with hp to be killed." Yes, I'm old school, so I prefer pig-faced orcs.

View attachment Gnoll Sage 5 Balidan Daguulalt.png
View attachment Gnoll Sage 5 Chaka Plains.png
View attachment Gnoll Sage 5 Iron Shield.png
View attachment Gnoll Sage 5 Red Sails.png
View attachment Gnoll Sage 5 Yellow Fang.png

 

[Charlaquin]

Which is just a differently-phrased restatement of the "they're all just Humans with prosthetics" argument; which, if true, is a rather sad development.

Why? If “humans with prosthetics” just means “as morally nuanced as humans,” then it’s only a good thing in my book.

 

[Bolares]

From "A Modern Prometheus" to "Zootopia", it's a plot that is anything but boring.

Maybe I'm mistaken, but the plot of zootopia is all about not being "all ugly all evil"....

 

[Scribe]

Eberron is great because it has good ideas in it. D&D has been getting closer and closer to Eberron over the years (alignment, less racial definitions and more cultural definitions...) and I think it's great!

But what if one doesn't think Eberron is great at all?

 

[Charlaquin]

Maybe I'm mistaken, but the plot of zootopia is all about not being "all ugly all evil"....

The plot of A Modern Prometheus (more commonly known as Frankenstein) is too. I believe they may have been trying to make the point that you need “ugly = evil” as a baseline in order to tell stories with “ugly =/= evil” as the moral.