Dragonlance Dragonlance Creators Reveal Why There Are No Orcs On Krynn

Talking to the Dragonlance Nexus, Dragonlance creators Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman revealed why the world of Krynn features no orcs -- in short, because they didn't want to copy Tolkien, and orcs were very much a 'Middle Earth' thing.

Weis told Trampas Whiteman that "Orcs were also viewed as very Middle Earth. We wanted something different." Hickman added that it was draconians which made Krynn stand out. Read more at the link below!

Why are there no Orcs in Krynn? Weis and Hickman give us the answer! - Dragonlance Nexus

Dragonhelm gets the scoop from Weis and Hickman on why there are no orcs in Krynn. Read More

dragonlancenexus.com

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The only DC comic I've ever read is Batman and it's been awhile. DC always seemed like such a mess to read.

I'm not sure who told DC that they needed to do what the X-Men comics do, but with their continuity, but I wish they'd stop it. (And yes, I'm aware that the X-Men's current huge changes are actually good.)

 

[Erdric Dragin]

I strongly disagree. I don’t think that position bears any relation to how art is made. da Vinci doesn’t have to explain why the Mona Lisa doesn’t have a hat on. She doesn’t have a hat because he didn’t paint her with a hat.

Middle Earth doesn’t have a school of wizardry because Tolkien didn’t put a school of wizardry in it. My novel doesn’t have a robot in it because I didn’t want a robot in it. One doesn’t have to explain the absence of every possible element.

That just shows terrible creativity and lack of worldbuilding because should said player/PC looks into the reasons why, then the DM has no choice but to answer. If the lore is isolated to just a region and a DM handwaves other worlds/planes/gods etc., that's different. But if the established lore is everything is connected, as it originally was in 2E, it's not a bad thing to please fans by delving into deeper lore of the bigger questions.

Then again, as someone else posted, WotC has proven to have no consistency or care for the lore of D&D so I guess the debate is completely moot. All the more reason and proof why Legacy D&D (1e-3e) was far better of a game than it is now.

 

[Mecheon]

A better question is what existing theme in Krynn does it fit? There's no lore that I can think that would encourage orcs to form/evolve/be created.

Random seafaring group of Irda sailed off before that whole event went down, were far enough away from ground zero they got more chaos-ified from the Graygem, but not full ogre-fied. Minotaurs came across 'em later

mind the theme in question is "Minotaurs are great, give them some fun stuff to discover while sailing"

 

[Maxperson]

Random seafaring group of Irda sailed off before that whole event went down, were far enough away from ground zero they got more chaos-ified from the Graygem, but not full ogre-fied. Minotaurs came across 'em later

That happened or you just made it up?

 

[Velderan]

That just shows terrible creativity and lack of worldbuilding because should said player/PC looks into the reasons why, then the DM has no choice but to answer. If the lore is isolated to just a region and a DM handwaves other worlds/planes/gods etc., that's different. But if the established lore is everything is connected, as it originally was in 2E, it's not a bad thing to please fans by delving into deeper lore of the bigger questions.

Then again, as someone else posted, WotC has proven to have no consistency or care for the lore of D&D so I guess the debate is completely moot. All the more reason and proof why Legacy D&D (1e-3e) was far better of a game than it is now.

I'd argue the opposite. It's terrible creative to cram everything in just to put everything in. If there's no reason beyond "well some player might be really stubborn and not pick something we did build into the world", why force something into your creative work if it doesn't have a place?

 

[Lord Rasputin]

If only they'd applied that to Hobbit like things, we might have been spared Kender ;-)

That they didn't use hobbits doesn't mean they didn't have a niche. I was at a talk Weis gave at a convention about 30 years ago, and they made kender to fill that niche, much as draconians filled the orc niche. Weis said she based Tasslehoff on a child in an old movie, I think Meet Me in St. Louis.

 

[Mecheon]

That happened or you just made it up?

Completely just made up on the spot, but, at least would work as an explanation for the random half orc

 

[Lord Rasputin]

Not once is my decades of DL fandom have I ever thought "you know what makes Krynn unique and interesting? The fact that there aren't any orcs."

By contrast, I thought this many times. It's a big reason I don't like the Forgotten Realms: you don't have to include everything. In fact, you shouldn't.

 

[Maxperson]

Completely just made up on the spot, but, at least would work as an explanation for the random half orc

Sure, but that wasn't the question. There are lots of things that the DM can make up that could explain why an orc or half-orc is present. The question was...

"A better question is what existing theme in Krynn does it fit? There's no lore that I can think that would encourage orcs to form/evolve/be created."

If you can't think of some lore that already exists and explains orcs, then the rationale given by the creators that the world lore doesn't justify orcs coming into being on Krynn still holds true. The old reasoning was questioned, so I'm challenging the challenge by asking that question.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

That they didn't use hobbits doesn't mean they didn't have a niche. I was at a talk Weis gave at a convention about 30 years ago, and they made kender to fill that niche, much as draconians filled the orc niche. Weis said she based Tasslehoff on a child in an old move, I think Meet Me in St. Louis.

1) tasslehoff on his own in a novel is AWESOME. (i say this as someone that hates the kender write up for games)
2) this is what I mean... in 1985 they thought orc niche was born just to be a minion of the darklord. They MADE a new deadlier minion of the dark lady...

so, since the orc niche in 2022 is NOT 'born to be dark lord minion' the CURRENT theme and place of orc/half orc is NOT filled by modern draconians.