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.

 

[Phaezen]

Well that's just the thing. I'm seeing a lot of written outrage here about changing Goblins to Fey or removing ability score bonuses from Species, changing Race to Species etc...

Mostly the argument seem to boil down to "I prefer how this was all handled before in earlier editions".

Is that even relevant for new people? Not a rhetorical question, I'm seeing a lot of arguments saying that WotC's Monster Manual decisions are objectively harmful to the game and to new comers (not talking about how the book is organized, that's a debate about editorial and layout decisions, for example, yes I agree that it would have been nice if they had a page in the new MM to summarize species traits that you may want to tack onto NPC stats).

Difficult to answer here as I suspect most posters have decades of DMing experience, but I would suspect "mischievous fey race" is much more interesting to plot around then "savage humanoids who live in mines"

 

[AlViking]

I can honestly say I have never had a PC cast any of those spells.

The only one I've ever seen cast by a PC is crown of madness cast a handful of times by one player. There are hundreds of spells that can be cast and some won't apply any more but others will be quite effective that were useless before.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Framing this as an inevitable culture war seems to me to be just throwing fuel on a fire, and bad journalism to boot.

Boo.

Agree 150% don't start by claiming something is "culture war". This is an absolutely terrible thing that a lot of mainstream journalists seem to think is "cute" or "funny" to do, but is awful.

Obviously this is in part because of changing ideas, but changing ideas does not equal "culture war", that's sophomoric at best!

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be mean to Christian specifically, he works hard, and journalists far beyond him keep doing this, but let's see ENworld rise above this nonsense, frankly. Get an editorial policy to not call stuff "culture war" in the same way we don't use some other terms.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Difficult to answer here as I suspect most posters have decades of DMing experience, but I would suspect "mischievous fey race" is much more interesting to plot around then "savage humanoids who live in mines"

I mean, they serve completely different purposes. It's like comparing a jet plane to a bulldozer. You kind of want both options for different reasons and scenarios.

I will say though that other RPGs have been treating creatures like orcs as "just another kind of people" for decades, and generally that has been more interesting than treating them as separate from people (which is a role better filled by demons, monsters etc.).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Is that even relevant for new people? Not a rhetorical question, I'm seeing a lot of arguments saying that WotC's Monster Manual decisions are objectively harmful to the game and to new comers (not talking about how the book is organized, that's a debate about editorial and layout decisions, for example, yes I agree that it would have been nice if they had a page in the new MM to summarize species traits that you may want to tack onto NPC stats).

I don't think it is very relevant to genuine newcomers, as in people who have no specific expectations about this element of D&D. Like if I was new to D&D aged 11 again, now, I'm sure I'd just take whatever the species/monsters listed in the MM at face value, and not worry about what wasn't there.

I do think it may present a small issue for people who are new-ish, rather than genuinely new - i.e. they've been playing a year or five, they swap to the new edition, and the MM has a drastically different approach. I don't think it'll be game-destroying and they'll have the old MM to fall back to, but I imagine for some more casual DMs/players it will cause some confusion.

 

[TiQuinn]

Agree 150% don't start by claiming something is "culture war". This is an absolutely terrible thing that a lot of mainstream journalists seem to think is "cute" or "funny" to do, but is awful.

Obviously this is in part because of changing ideas, but changing ideas does not equal "culture war", that's sophomoric at best!

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be mean to Christian specifically, he works hard, and journalists far beyond him keep doing this, but let's see ENworld rise above this nonsense, frankly. Get an editorial policy to not call stuff "culture war" in the same way we don't use some other terms.

I just don’t like the hypocrisy. There’s a policy against discussing politics on ENWorld’s boards. Then don’t openly invite political discussions by very clearly stating that something is a culture war - because that will become the point people discuss.

 

[Christian Hoffer]

In regards to the "culture war" commentary, multiple things can be true.

The treatment of orcs in the current edition of Dungeons & Dragons is actively being used as fodder for the ongoing "culture war" being pushed on Twitter and right-wing outlets.

The actual mechanics of how orcs are being treated in Dungeons & Dragons have nothing to do with politics.

I get news alerts every hour about how Dungeons & Dragons is used on various websites, and yes, there is a segment of people who claim that orcs not actively being in the Monster Manual represents some kind of "wokeness" when in reality its a mechanical byproduct of how all humanoid species are treated.

If you disagree with how orcs are treated in the Monster Manual, it does not mean that you are agreeing with the so-called culture warriors. However, it's foolish (IMO) not to acknowledge that it's being used as a talking point, nor is it inflammatory to repudiate that mindset and provide context about how orcs are actually presented in the game.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

In regards to the "culture war" commentary, multiple things can be true.

The treatment of orcs in the current edition of Dungeons & Dragons is actively being used as fodder for the ongoing "culture war" being pushed on Twitter and right-wing outlets.

The actual mechanics of how orcs are being treated in Dungeons & Dragons have nothing to do with politics.

I get news alerts every hour about how Dungeons & Dragons is used on various websites, and yes, there is a segment of people who claim that orcs not actively being in the Monster Manual represents some kind of "wokeness" when in reality its a mechanical byproduct of how all humanoid species are treated.

If you disagree with how orcs are treated in the Monster Manual, it does not mean that you are agreeing with the so-called culture warriors. However, it's foolish (IMO) not to acknowledge that it's being used as a talking point, nor is it inflammatory to repudiate that mindset and provide context about how orcs are actually presented in the game.

With respect, Christian, what you wrote was:

The culture war surrounding orcs in Dungeons & Dragons continues with the release of the 2025 Monster Manual.

That's not "repudiating" anything.

On the contrary that's absolutely accepting the idea that it's some sort of legitimate or semi-legitimate "culture war".

Furthermore, it's literally the first thing you said in the article. That is, frankly, and imho, deeply unhelpful. It's also very common today in journalism, I couldn't count the articles where some journo regardless of political alignment opens by saying something is a "culture war" issue, and in the majority of cases, and I'd say this one, it's not really a culture war issue primarily, but secondarily. The worst cases are with minority groups, where some flippant white straight cis male journalist basically says "Whether trans people should be allowed to exist is a 'culture war' issue!" or "Whether women should have any rights at all is a 'culture war'" and it's like absolutely piss off to those journos. You're not doing something remotely that bad, but it still doesn't help!

Here, this is a changing approach. It's not even a wild approach - RPGs were doing this in the 1980s, for god's sake! It's just new to D&D.

This is my opinion and I didn't write the article, and I'm not a journalist, so feel free to dismiss it, but I think you shouldn't open by saying something is a "culture war" issue, because you're essentially ceding that mostly what it is, even when that's not the intent. By all means later on mention it's likely to be picked up and used in a culture war way, by people like the Telegraph, who wouldn't know a d20 if it hit them forcefully between the eyes, but please don't just start by ceding ground like that.

 

[billd91]

Well that's just the thing. I'm seeing a lot of written outrage here about changing Goblins to Fey or removing ability score bonuses from Species, changing Race to Species etc...

Mostly the argument seem to boil down to "I prefer how this was all handled before in earlier editions".

Is that even relevant for new people? Not a rhetorical question, I'm seeing a lot of arguments saying that WotC's Monster Manual decisions are objectively harmful to the game and to new comers (not talking about how the book is organized, that's a debate about editorial and layout decisions, for example, yes I agree that it would have been nice if they had a page in the new MM to summarize species traits that you may want to tack onto NPC stats).

Completely new people? I'm sure it's not relevant. But 5e.2014 brought in a LOT of new to D&D people and who are now experiencing their first really major changes. Many of the changes, like changing race to species, are very minor in terms and that's small potatoes.
The goblin humanoid to fey switch is a change in how rules behave - admittedly around a relatively limited subset of game elements. Those kind of things are a little thornier. So are changes in the processes and tools available to DMs and players in the main rulebooks. A little bit here and there are vexing, too many and you find people stop following the new product line. And WotC may be targeting new players but they want us experienced players, particularly the big new cohorts, to update as well. And right now, that new from 5e.2014 cohort is pretty big. We'll see how frustrating they find the changes.

 

[TiQuinn]

In regards to the "culture war" commentary, multiple things can be true.

The treatment of orcs in the current edition of Dungeons & Dragons is actively being used as fodder for the ongoing "culture war" being pushed on Twitter and right-wing outlets.

The actual mechanics of how orcs are being treated in Dungeons & Dragons have nothing to do with politics.

I get news alerts every hour about how Dungeons & Dragons is used on various websites, and yes, there is a segment of people who claim that orcs not actively being in the Monster Manual represents some kind of "wokeness" when in reality its a mechanical byproduct of how all humanoid species are treated.

If you disagree with how orcs are treated in the Monster Manual, it does not mean that you are agreeing with the so-called culture warriors. However, it's foolish (IMO) not to acknowledge that it's being used as a talking point, nor is it inflammatory to repudiate that mindset and provide context about how orcs are actually presented in the game.

My point is that if the article wants to be opinion commentary that’s fine, but then IMO, don’t open such an article to comments on the board because it will naturally be to discuss that commentary even if it’s against ENWorld policy.