Are Orcs in the Monster Manual? No and Yes.

The culture war surrounding orcs in Dungeons & Dragons continues with the release of the 2025 Monster Manual. Review copies of the Monster Manual are out in the wild, with many sites, EN World included, are giving their thoughts about the final core rulebook for the revised Fifth Edition ruleset. But while most commentators are discussing whether or not the monsters in the new Monster Manual hit harder than their 2014 equivalent, a growing number of commentators (mostly on Elon Musk's Twitter, but other places as well) are decrying the abolishment of orcs in the new rulebook.

Several months ago, would-be culture warriors complained about the depiction of orcs in the new Player's Handbook. Instead of depicting orcs as bloodthirsty marauders or creatures of evils, orcs (or more specifically, playable orcs) were depicted as a traveling species given endurance, determination, and the ability by their god Gruumsh to see in the darkness to help them "wander great plains, vast caverns, and churning seas." Keep in mind that one of the core facets of Dungeons & Dragons is that every game is defined by its players rather than an official canon, but some people were upset or annoyed about the shift in how a fictional species of humanoids were portrayed in two paragraphs of text and a piece of art in a 250+ page rulebook.

With the pending release of the Monster Manual, the orc is back in the spotlight once again. This time, it's because orcs no longer have statblocks in the Monster Manual. While the 2014 Monster Manual had a section detailing orc culture and three statblocks for various kinds of orcs, all specific mention of orcs have indeed been removed from the Monster Manual. The orcs are not the only creature to receive this treatment - drow are no longer in the Monster Manual, nor are duergar.

However, much of this is due to a deliberate design choice, meant not to sanitize Dungeons & Dragons from evil sentient species, but rather to add some versatility to a DM's toolbox. Orcs (and drow) are now covered under the expanded set of generic NPC statblocks in the Monster Manual. Instead of players being limited to only three Orc-specific statblocks (the Orc, the Orc War Chief and the Orc Eye of Gruumsh), DMs can use any of the 45 Humanoid statblocks in the book. Campaigns can now feature orc assassins, orc cultists, orc gladiators, or orc warriors instead of leaning on a handful of stats that lean into specific D&D lore.

Personally, I generally like that the D&D design ethos is leaning away from highly specific statblocks to more generalized ones. Why wouldn't an orc be an assassin or a pirate? Why should orcs (or any other species chosen to be adversaries in a D&D campaign) be limited to a handful of low CR statblocks? The design shift allows DMs more versatility, not less.

However, I do think that the D&D design team would do well to eventually provide some modularity to these generic statblocks, allowing DMs to "overlay" certain species-specific abilities over these NPC statblocks. Abilities like darkvision for orcs or the ability to cast darkness for drow or a fiendish rebuke for tieflings would be an easy way to separate the generic human assassin from the orc without impacting a statblock's CR.

As for the wider controversy surrounding orcs in D&D, the game and its lore is evolving over time, just as it has over the past 50 years. There's still a place for evil orcs, but they no longer need to be universally (or multiversally) evil within the context of the game. The idea that D&D's rulebooks must depict anything but the rules themselves a specific way is antithetical to the mutability of Dungeons & Dragons, which is supposed to be one of the game's biggest strengths.

 

[TiQuinn]

I mean Monsters of the Multiverse isn't legacy content. That's where all the good Duergar statblocks are anyway.

It’s not? I think of it as old content now.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Ah, that's not the right question.

Which minority groups will see the same language that has been applied to them also applied to orcs?

Orcs have drawn from just about every racial and cultural group We have had tribal orcs, roman orcs, orcs that are European, Asian, etc. Again, I think this is something that emerges when people are overly focused on taking a microscope to media tropes. You can paint orcs in a bad light, just like you can paint anything in a bad light. But orcs in D&D are just monsters

 

[Scribe]

Ah, that's not the right question.

Which minority groups will see the same language that has been applied to them also applied to orcs?

Any and every group described as an "other" and seen as an an outsider coming into an already settled land.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Ah, that's not the right question.

Which minority groups will see the same language that has been applied to them also applied to orcs?

Russians, right?

 

[Clint_L]

Orcs have drawn from just about every racial and cultural group We have had tribal orcs, roman orcs, orcs that are European, Asian, etc. Again, I think this is something that emerges when people are overly focused on taking a microscope to media tropes. You can paint orcs in a bad light, just like you can paint anything in a bad light. But orcs in D&D are just monsters.

There is a plethora of discussion, including on this forum, on how monsters in media have often reflected and reinforced negative real world stereotypes, and this is true of orcs more than pretty much any other literary creature. We are talking decades of scholarship, predating D&D. I think you know this.

It is very easy for someone who looks like me to just write this perspective off as people being overly sensitive and "taking a microscope" to things that aren't obvious because I'm never the target.

 

[Bedrockgames]

There is a plethora of discussion, including on this forum, on how monsters in media have often reflected and reinforced negative real world stereotypes, and this is true of orcs more than pretty much any other literary creature. We are talking decades of scholarship, predating D&D. I think you know this.

I was in those discussions. And I am not trying to rehash them. But people speak as if this is a settled debate and it just isn't. My point is, a lot of people still don't agree with those conclusions

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean Monsters of the Multiverse isn't legacy content. That's where all the good Duergar statblocks are anyway.

Sure it is. As soon as the 5.5 MM releases, that's the whole game. Everything else is legacy content from what I can see. Certainly that's the impression WotC is giving IMO.

 

[Scott Christian]

Do you really have such a hard time grasping the idea that real people relate to unreal things all the time? That people see themselves reflected in the media they consume? Every single type of person in the real world talks about "representation"-- seeing themselves within their media-- in other words, seeing themselves in "make-believe". That's like one of the hallmarks of science fiction... showing off real-world issues through the lens of a fantastical world.

I think it should be noted that people see reflections of themselves and representation of themselves for a lot of reasons. After all, it was not just people with dwarfism that saw themselves in Frodo. It was not just white males that saw themselves reflected in who Spock was. And it was not just young white girls that saw themselves in Captain Marvel.

In fact, many young people grew up relating with Hulk's anger, Data's logical thinking, and Treebeard's empathy. And none of those characters are even human (I mean, while in Hulk form). One of the most prominent fantasy characters of all time, Drizzt Do'Urden, was related to not because of his physical representation, but because of his outcast persona.

This debate has been pigeonholed so many times by the public. The record should be clarified: Sight (aka - visual representation) is but a small part of what people relate to in a character, and for the most part, not the main thing. In fact, it is at the last of the traits. As you stated Defcon, our neural net does a terrible job at depicting reality from fiction. Empathy and Theory of Mind play the largest role, and one of those things is directly correlated to life experiences; the teenager that was on Team Jacob and found his vampiric brooding oh so relatable will often eye roll their way through that same brooding as an older person.

So @GothmogIV , yes people relate to unreal things. They relate to them just as you relate to your RPG character, fictional characters, or even real people. It literally uses all the same brain mechanisms. Fortunately for us, we can depict fiction from reality (most of the time) before we cross social norms.

 

[Chaltab]

Sure it is. As soon as the 5.5 MM releases, that's the whole game. Everything else is legacy content from what I can see. Certainly that's the impression WotC is giving IMO.

It really isn't.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It really isn't.

YMMV on that one. Look at the marketing publishing strategies. Ray Wenniger himself said corporate presented and rolled out the release of the new corebooks intentionally like a new edition, even if the designers weren't necessarily thinking that way.

WotC has to lie in the bed they made.