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

 

[Minigiant]

Not really. Any time I make a ruling I am putting on both hats. I would literally have to follow RAW exactly, which in 5e is impossible as it is deliberately written vaguely and with major holes in it.

And will still put on both hats if he's running the game.

I'm talking about adding, subtracting, and altering core player options.

A DM can choose and point to John MacAuthor's Green Epic Fantasy Tale for his ban on elves, bards, pikes, and the Actor feat.

The player's criticism is then laid onto John MacAuthor if Good O' JM didn't give a replace for them in his book designed for D&D conversion.

 

[mamba]

I'm saying a good designer building a setting for D&D for commercial mass appeal sale would replace orcs with goliaths, minotaurs, leonin, gorillamen, hulks, aesir, some other new custom strong race, or allow players of other races to boost Strength

Minotaurs most likely will be in, maybe half-orges too, yet here we are discussing why orcs should be included anyway..

Also, since Tasha’s boost STR is any race

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yep. I acknowledged that it wasn't very strong in one of my first responses in this thread. At least I think it was this thread. There are quite a few going on right now.

Flimsy or not, though, it's a valid in fiction reason for why no orcs are present.

I find its flimsiness specifically undermines its validity. It is, essentially, just a longwinded way of saying, "They aren't there because we didn't feel like it," but trying to pass it off as objective. "Oh it couldn't possibly have had orcs; the setting inherently lacks something needed for them!"

I never got that sense. I got D&D elves from them, but admittedly D&D elves have a lot in common with Tolkien elves.

There are two groups, who separated as a result of one group following a leader of their people to a new land. The group that left is associated with Q (Qualinesti/Quenya), and with light and the sun; the group that stayed behind is associated with S (Silvanesti/Silvan elves), and with darkness and the stars. The former prefer to build buildings that surround the trees they love (as Galadriel and Elrond did), while the latter prefer to shape their homes from the forest itself (as the Silvan elves did.)

The parallels are substantial.

Elf wars are traditional D&D stuff as well.

So are orc wars. I don't see how your point escapes the same criticism as before.

It's part and parcel of the D&D elven race. Long ago the elves warred and killed each other and some fled or were forced to go live underground.

Borrowing from D&D.................................which has borrowed from Tolkien. It's indirect, so a direct desire to exclude orcs is fine.

Except that their excuse for the directness is "well we aren't in Tolkien's world, they couldn't exist outside of that." But their elves are heavily cribbing Tolkien's elves, down to copying patterns and even words ("the Kinslaying" is straight-up stolen borrowed from Tolkien), without any of the "deep and specific history and origin" actually brought over. No Fëanor, no silmarils, no Eru Ilúvatar, no Morgoth, no special relationship with stars, etc., etc. All of that is left as implied "you know what this is, you've seen Tolkien elves before." Why is this excuse applied to orcs and not to elves, when both meet the requirements?

It is not capricious any more than deciding to do anything even slightly creative is capricious. They have a different perspective on orcs than you do. That is all. It's pretty arrogant imposing your perspective over the creators of the setting.

Starting off with directly insulting me, nice move.

More importantly: I don't care what their perspective on orcs is. I care that they're asserting a standard which permits the stuff they included, and forbids the stuff they didn't, as though that standard were consistent and objective. The fact that it is neither--that their standard should have excluded elves entirely, and yet they not only included them but heavily borrowed from Tolkien, up to and including "the Kinslaying" as a key point of history for their own elves--is what bothers me. That is the capriciousness I dislike. If you're going to claim a standard is why you had to do something, that you couldn't have made any other choice, that standard should actually...y'know...be a standard. It should be upheld.

Plus, they have a replacement antagonist humanoid running around in the draconians. That alone would be a perfectly good reason to ditch orcs as well.

And if they had said, "We wanted to tell a story about elves and dragon-people, and we felt the space normally filled with orcs was adequately filled by our draconians," then I would have no problem with the response. It wouldn't be making any kind of "we couldn't include orcs" argument. It would instead be more of the form "the 'orc-like' niche was already full."

But they didn't. They said they couldn't have added orcs, because orcs have Tolkien-specific backstory. But they were totally fine lifting significant portions of Tolkien elf backstory without any of the associated cosmology (indeed, they exactly contradict that cosmology on numerous occasions, in ways that should have affected much of this stuff.)

So in this example, you've compared 1 meat with ALL the playable options.
If that is how my question comes across to you - its because your analogy is very much incorrect.

I'm not buying that and here is why
Because unless one ONLY plays orcs EVERY time one plays D&D OR one plays ALL the races simultaneously there is no way one is likely to experience an impoverished experience as you say.

One would have to order the meat burger EVERY time one ate.

You attend a party. The host offers you burgers, pizza, salad, pasta, or soup. You ask for a burger, and receive the interaction stated above. There. Not the only option, and yet still pretty clearly offering a thing and not actually delivering.

And believe it or not, yes, there are people who really are "I (nearly) always want to play X, and have not much interest in playing not-X." I am sometimes like that with dragonborn. I just really, really like them, I think they're the bees' knees (the bees' everything-else would be thri-kreen.) I find the vast majority of alternative options pretty dull most of the time (my previous preference, before 4e introduced me to dragonborn, was half-elves, and on reflection I realized it was basically just because of the "child of two worlds" aspect.)

So if someone invites you to a party they're hosting, and doesn't really explicitly say that they're doing no-patty burgers as one of the menu items, yes, I really do think one can reasonably say, "You have offered me something and then failed to actually do the thing you offered."

You playing or DMing?
And if it was $45 would that be ok?

I just...are you serious? Are you really going to quibble about the price point? I am finding it difficult to take your position seriously here.

For those of you who are arguing that the inclusion or exclusion of a Tolkien race requires the inclusion or exclusion of all of them, think about this. You are literally arguing that I can't take inspiration from part of any book or setting.

It's a good thing, then, that I'm not arguing that. Because, as I said above, it would be literally completely fine to say, "We included elves because we thought elves were cool, and because dragons played a critical role in our early story ideas, we came up with the idea for draconians as the 'enemy soldier' race, with all sorts of interesting stories that would enable. Since that fills up almost exactly the same niche as orcs, it didn't make sense to us to include those too, so we didn't." I wouldn't--couldn't--disagree with the logic of that response. I wouldn't have to like it, but it would logically hang together.

What I'm arguing is, if your standard is "we can't take X thing, because X thing has tons of interwoven backstory and connections that matter, and without those connections it wouldn't make sense," then you cannot reject X while simultaneously keeping Y when Y also has tons of interwoven backstory and connections that matter that are just left as a presumed zeitgeist. Either you reject X and Y because both of them run afoul of your purported "this cannot be included" criterion, or you admit that the criterion is faulty and doesn't actually prohibit anything.

They can. They chose not to. That's allowed, I think.

See above. They gave this as a reason why they, allegedly, cannot (rather, could not) do this thing. It is very specifically an "because of property Q, we could not include species M." But species N, which also has property Q, was included no problem. Indeed, it was a critical component of the story, complete with terms directly copied from the Tolkien source material. Hence, a contradiction. The above hypothetical alternative answer, "species P already fills the niche for species N, so we stuck with the one that we made for our story," has none of this problem, because it isn't purporting to offer any kind of criterion for inclusion or exclusion. Instead, it's pragmatic and (narrative) design-focused; not a "we couldn't do it" but "it didn't fit with our goals to do it."

 

[mamba]

Ok well this is confusing to me.
Can you please provide me with an example of what you mean?

Poor Choice = there are stats no race boosts
Fixed by Tasha’s = any race can boost anything

 

[Maxperson]

I'm talking about adding, subtracting, and altering core player options.

No, I don't have to do that, but... There's nothing wrong with me or the setting if I do and the players don't have a right to expect all of those options to be available to them.

A DM can choose and point to John MacAuthor's Green Epic Fantasy Tale for his ban on elves, bards, pikes, and the Actor feat.

Or not have any reason other than wanting to worldbuild something different.

 

[Minigiant]

Ok well this is confusing to me.
Can you please provide me with an example of what you mean?

Okay.

Dragonlance the setting is literally about as old as me.
So I, a human of Earth, could have been old enough to understand D&D, Dragonlance already existed.

Therefore I, Minigiant, could have played Dragonlance in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd edition.

However due to how 1st, 2nd and 3rd editions were designed, the only STR based race in the PHBs would have been banned by the thematic choices of Weiss and Hickman. A player who is a fan of making the biggest strongest dude they can and just smashing foes would have their fun diminished.

However the inclusion of Minotaurs and Ogres into the setting as STR races and the TCOE's rules for allowing player choice of ASI solves this problem.

If not for the Tasha's rules, said player would have less enjoyment in creation of their character.

We still await to see in Minotaurs and Ogres are options in the new DL book.

 

[Maxperson]

I find its flimsiness specifically undermines its validity. It is, essentially, just a longwinded way of saying, "They aren't there because we didn't feel like it," but trying to pass it off as objective. "Oh it couldn't possibly have had orcs; the setting inherently lacks something needed for them!"

It doesn't, though, because "we didn't feel like it" is also a valid reason. The validity isn't undermined by a flimsy explanation. It's actually increased in a very small way, where a stronger reason would have increased in a big way.

There are two groups, who separated as a result of one group following a leader of their people to a new land. The group that left is associated with Q (Qualinesti/Quenya), and with light and the sun; the group that stayed behind is associated with S (Silvanesti/Silvan elves), and with darkness and the stars. The former prefer to build buildings that surround the trees they love (as Galadriel and Elrond did), while the latter prefer to shape their homes from the forest itself (as the Silvan elves did.)

The parallels are substantial.

Sylvan elves are in the 1e MM and are the silvan elves of Tolkien. As are Gray elves(noldor). Linking qualinesti to the language Quenya is a bit of a stretch in my opinion. It could just as easily be coincidence that the "Qu" was used.

So are orc wars. I don't see how your point escapes the same criticism as before.

The point is that these things are in D&D, so you can't say for sure if they were copying Tolkien. The simplest and more likely explanation is that they were using 1e D&D for their inspiration.

Except that their excuse for the directness is "well we aren't in Tolkien's world, they couldn't exist outside of that." But their elves are heavily cribbing Tolkien's elves, down to copying patterns and even words ("the Kinslaying" is straight-up stolen borrowed from Tolkien)

It's straight up borrowed from 1e D&D. D&D borrowed if from Tolkien.

What I'm arguing is, if your standard is "we can't take X thing, because X thing has tons of interwoven backstory and connections that matter, and without those connections it wouldn't make sense," then you cannot reject X while simultaneously keeping Y when Y also has tons of interwoven backstory and connections that matter that are just left as a presumed zeitgeist. Either you reject X and Y because both of them run afoul of your purported "this cannot be included" criterion, or you admit that the criterion is faulty and doesn't actually prohibit anything.

The problem you are running into is that it's more likely to have been drawn from D&D, not Tolkien. Before you can continue on to your criticism, you need to prove that D&D isn't what they were drawing upon. Also, you are off a bit with your statement of their criterion.

“Orcs were simply set aside as antagonists that were unique to Middle-earth (despite their generic application in D&D). We needed our own enemy."

Elves, Dwarves, etc. are not unique to Middle Earth. Nor are elven kinslayings and such.

 

[AnotherGuy]

You attend a party. The host offers you burgers, pizza, salad, pasta, or soup. You ask for a burger, and receive the interaction stated above. There. Not the only option, and yet still pretty clearly offering a thing and not actually delivering.

So in this example the party is D&D.
The playable options are the food.
The meat is the orc.
And the rest of the bun is what?
Why would you not say the host is offering pizza, salad, pasta and soup?
As the host can you not see how you're setting yourself up for a fail?

And believe it or not, yes, there are people who really are "I (nearly) always want to play X, and have not much interest in playing not-X." I am sometimes like that with dragonborn. I just really, really like them, I think they're the bees' knees (the bees' everything-else would be thri-kreen.) I find the vast majority of alternative options pretty dull most of the time (my previous preference, before 4e introduced me to dragonborn, was half-elves, and on reflection I realized it was basically just because of the "child of two worlds" aspect.)

Yes, I have experienced the race and class fetishists over the years. I have such a player at my table - he enjoys barbarians. He's played 5 in the decade he has been playing with me. 3 have died, and 2 have become NPCs due to the storyline. He is however able to play other classes and have fun. Is it a diminished experienced, I'm not entirely convinced.
I'd argue the table is likely to suffer a diminished experience each additional time that playable option is selected by the player.

So if someone invites you to a party they're hosting, and doesn't really explicitly say that they're doing no-patty burgers as one of the menu items, yes, I really do think one can reasonably say, "You have offered me something and then failed to actually do the thing you offered."

Hence, the need for a sidebar acknowledgement on the native races of Krynn. It just makes things easier for everyone involved and yet there were some who argued against its inclusion because its absence would only but harm players.

I just...are you serious? Are you really going to quibble about the price point? I am finding it difficult to take your position seriously here.

I didn't bring up the price, the original poster did. If he didn't think it was a point of relevance why do you suspect he brought it up?

 

[mamba]

I find its flimsiness specifically undermines its validity. It is, essentially, just a longwinded way of saying, "They aren't there because we didn't feel like it," but trying to pass it off as objective. "Oh it couldn't possibly have had orcs; the setting inherently lacks something needed for them!"

not sure where you are getting this from "We wanted something different." sounds not very objective at all

More importantly: I don't care what their perspective on orcs is. I care that they're asserting a standard which permits the stuff they included, and forbids the stuff they didn't, as though that standard were consistent and objective.

see above, and also "We needed our own enemy. Draconians not only made our world unique but quickly became an important and deep diegetic pillar of Krynn.”

And if they had said, "We wanted to tell a story about elves and dragon-people, and we felt the space normally filled with orcs was adequately filled by our draconians," then I would have no problem with the response. It wouldn't be making any kind of "we couldn't include orcs" argument. It would instead be more of the form "the 'orc-like' niche was already full."

well, that is what they said. Note esp. “We had goblins for the soldiers”

So I take it you are now ok with excluding orcs

 

[Faolyn]

No! That's not how it works. Writing a setting for a system only includes what of that system the writer wanted to include, not EVERYTHING.

Not if it's for a system that already has everything in it. Do you really think that Eberron would have included everything if it didn't have to? Keith Baker even said that he had to do certain things because D&D required it.

Then don't buy it. If I see it and it's as sparse and terrible as a setting book as Spelljammer, I'm not buying it. If it's well done and includes every race under the sun, I'm also not buying it. I'm not going to spend another $50 on kitchen sink setting #471. They're going to need to curate things and give me something unique for me to spend money on a setting.

We all have our reasons for spending money or not.

Nope. But why buy yet another generic setting from WotC when I already have multiples from them?

So what is the difference between generic setting #471 and a setting that is basically a generic setting, except it has no orcs?

Spelljammer was bad because they didn't include enough lore, not because they removed races or curated anything. What they had (save for the hadozee) was decent, they just didn't have nearly enough.

I'm not sure how this is important? That's an undead creature that is nothing like orcs in D&D or Tolkien.

So, you're not sure how a creature was created long before Tolkien doesn't have to rely on Tolkien's personal interpretation to be used?

Dragonlance does not. It doesn't have Eru(one god), Valar(archangels), Maia(angels), immortal elves with gifts of telepathy, far seeing, pass without trace and more, nor does it have dwarves that hate elves and vice versa for how the races treated each other, elves who were banished from heaven for heinous crimes, and on and on and on.

So then it shouldn't require Tolkien's interpretation of how orcs are created either.

I mean, you keep proving my point here. Elves in folklore are usually very small, often goblin-y or sprite-like in appearance, were tricksters who caused illness and seduced and abducted people. They got bowdlerized by the Victorians, sure, but Tolkien made them into the much taller, far more noble woodland archers, pretty people that we think of today--and that's what D&D used for their own elves. Weiss and Hickman had no problem using them, but for some reason thought that they had to have Tolkien's origins for orcs?

There is not much difference. Not every WotC setting has to include everything in D&D. That is just a false and unreasonable position to take.

There's not much difference between your personal homebrew world that is designed to cater to your personal tastes and to a world produced by a company that has to appeal to tens of thousands of people or more?

Uh-huh.