I am going to pay for this. I am sure. But, instead of debating an argument, on which the two sides will NEVER agree. Perhaps it is best to try and come up with a solution for players that wish to add orcs to their game that are inherently evil. I am going to start, and if you feel so inclined, please feel free to remove or change any problematic wording:
Orcs
These creatures are feared by all throughout the realm. Touched by an unknown evil in an age before history, they have waxed and waned in influence over the realm. Today, they are relegated to more remote areas, where they cause panic to those living on the edges of civilization.
Physical Appearance
Orcs are a thick boned species that stand a bit shorter than the average human. Their skin ranges from poison green to swamp green, and houses little to no hair. The only hair they do have is on top of their skull. Their back is often hunched, but like the rest of their body, is dense with striated muscles.
History
An orc's history goes back long before there were books. The evil that created them long forgotten. And once histories became written, they too began to appear. Though they are often little more than footnotes, their presence has dominated many decisions in history: Whether an army should advance on a neighboring kingdom, or do they stay put for fear of the orcs they recently saw? Does the kingdom choose to begin to populate the forest in the north, or do they choose the lands in the south where no orcs were present? These "footnotes" have been noted by some scholars, and some kings, which grow weary of making their decisions around the evil entities.
Society
The living conditions of an orc, of any orc, is one of filth. Loose knit groups are how they survive, and within those groups is an inherent violence towards all. The leader rules by force and fear. Trades, such as weaving and sewing and flint carving are passed down, yet even these lessons come with punching and biting. Hunting and foraging sustain the groups, as does invading small homesteads and travelling caravans.
Obviously, this is not great, nor fleshed out. But it is a start. A start to try and end an endless debate.
NOTE: If you are one that just cannot fathom an orc (or any race) being inherently evil, you should, for all intensive purposes, declare your view so everyone knows it. Because that view does not align with D&D's alignment system. It does not align with D&D's lore. Nor does it align with how the game is presently played. (Devils and Demons - Angels and Archons - Torm and Tempus - you get the point.) Once the view is declared, then at least everyone debating understands your stance. This might help things move in a better direction.
This description doesn't help me very much as a DM for a few overlapping reasons
• I think culture- and society-forming humanoid groups ought to be presented as complex and with free will. These orcs hunt, forage, make arts and crafts (and possibly trade), have a way of relating socially (even through violence), and raise young. They should have all the detail in a setting that groups of humans have. This is especially true if this is a playable race; players will want their characters to have free will in order to shape their characters backgrounds (beyond just being another Drizzt). They will probably want their orc character to be able to accompany the party into town without constantly roleplaying hostile interactions.
• There is a strong implied setting in the above description, namely a Keep on the Borderlands-style frontier. First, the
frontier setting is strongly reminiscent of the American frontier (vast stretches of
"free" land, militarized border towns and "homesteads," cash economy, and of course the Others who threaten "civilization"). But it's also very handwavy: there's civilization and then a generic expanse "out there" where orcs, goblins, bugbears, hobgoblins, etc all live. There's no sense of who controls what territory, whose allied with whom, etc. They are simultaneously described as only forming "loose knit" groups and being powerful enough to threaten entire kingdoms. In other words, the king has an orc problem, and somehow 4-6 adventurers are the best way to deal with that problem, and everything else is shunted offscreen.
• re: inherent evil: if creatures are formed by demon ichor on the 83rd layer of the abyss and are entering the material plane through a portal opened by a wizard, then sure. I suppose that's covered by the "long forgotten" evil in the description, but again feels handwavy, an excuse to create an inherently evil group without providing any texture to the lore. The effect is to constrain the way PCs might interact with this group of creatures.
The above might not be problems when in the context of a specific setting. For example, a points of light setting in which there are not vague "realms" but just this one realm, and not orcs inhabiting a featureless wild, but this one specific group of orcs that occupies the forest to the NE. To be clear, it is likely that this setting would still be at least implicitly colonialist, but it would work from a world building perspective. But when you generalize culture-forming humanoid groups in this way, you sort of get the worst of both worlds: both generic, texture-less world building
and creatures that grotesquely resemble colonial fantasies of the "other."
