Sure. But D&D is still going to have a species, or a MM entry, or both, called "Orc". What are they going to be like? I'm not talking about a group that fills a similar narrative role, I'm talking about orcs. What are the inoffensive, yet not bland orcs going to be? What have they been? Level Up did a pretty good job, especially with the orc-focused cultures, but they didn't have a lot to say about orcs themselves, because without their culture orcs have very little to differentiate them from humans outside of pure cosmetics.
Are you asking us to do a whole write-up for you? Because, well, that would take a lot of time and space.
But anyway, the answer is "whatever we like." Let's assume D&D doesn't do the species/culture divide, so we need to put everything in one section. We won't use terms like
violent or
savage. We can use words like
forceful and
bold. Those aren't "inoffensive" terms; they're dynamic and descriptive and they don't limit orcs to either being monsters or "happy gumdrops" either. We can give them a tribal society but bring up trade networks, like
@Chaosmancer mentioned, and clever innovations. The Scythians were nomadic but skilled bronze-smiths, which means that even if orcs never set down permanent roots they could still have metallurgy, and if they
do have villages and towns, they could become even better smiths. Maybe they'll never be as good as dwarfs, maybe the things they make would be considered crude by modern humans (us),
but that's OK. It's still better than leaving them as non-creative savages who do nothing but steal and break what other races make. Or we could do this: I've always felt the one way to salvage the gully dwarfs would be to have them work with clay: make them expert potters and sculptors. Other dwarfs would consider that dirty and stupid, because objects made of clay aren't as sturdy as objects made of stone or metal--but clay is actually very important. Without gully dwarfs, you could let orcs become the potters, a niche which is sorely lacking in D&D.
We could bring in, as I mentioned before, herding and ranching, another empty niche in D&D. Or we could have orcs be mighty hunters who prefer to go after bigger and more powerful prey--a human may bring down a deer but an orc will go after a hippo. (Or fantasy versions thereof).
And maybe orcs
are prone to war, on a cultural level. That's fine, as long as there are reasons for those wars beyond "orcs are savages". Maybe they actually have a lot of customs and rules and war
amongst themselves when they're broken; they could also believe that non-orcs can't possibly understand those rules and don't hold it against them when they're accidentally broken. And if orcs are forceful and bold, then perhaps they have no problem being mercenaries or signing up to other people's armies. In which case, orcs can still be "the bad guy" by simply being in the other person's army--because hey, it's a job.
And take a look at the traditional orc gods without the traditional Always Evil glasses on: We have Baghtru, god of strength; Ilneval, god of clever strategies; and Luthic, goddess of home, hearth, fertility, and medicine; all led by Gruumsh, a god who made sure his people could survive in any environment. We could even make Yurtrus, god of disease, more neutral; Babalú Ayé is a Yorube god of both diseases and their cures and Yurtrus could be similar. Shargaas, god of darkness, could remain a bogeyman deity (and IMO a good reason to not give orcs darkvision), or perhaps be he could be turned into a trickster god.
