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.

 

[InkTide]

(For the record, I'm not familiar with this dude's work at all - I just clicked on the video out of curiosity.)

Playable orcs can't be monsters, just variant humans with a different coat of paint.

Not exactly what he says there - it's more "species without mechanical differences are just variant humans," which I can kind of agree with as a concept, but there are mechanical differences between species in the new PHB (just not stat ones). However, orcs don't have much in the way of that in comparison to something like dragonborn, tieflings, aasimar, etc. Goliaths feel more fleshed out to me as a playable species and I barely know anything about them.

With the playable orcs it feels like there's barely anything to know about them, and what little history they're given really could just be swapped out with a group of humans if you have no context for who Gruumsh is (context which the brief blurbs about him on the orcs page almost imply has changed immensely, but provides scant details as to how). But that's a PHB problem, not a MM one - every playable species in the 2024 PHB feels like an afterthought, but orcs especially so.

Playable orcs are a slippery slope

It's more extreme - he's more on a "playable non-humans are a slippery slope" point there. Which I think is silly. He's very much got a "non-humans should be monsters" philosophy about this that comes through, but I think he knows he can't quite say that outright if he wants a wider audience.

There is a scale of personhood to monsterhood that is up to the each GM

This is about the only thing in the video I agreed with (almost) without caveats (the single caveat being that a 1-dimensional scale is too simplistic), but that's because it's about the most milquetoast take imaginable.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I’m actually quite disturbed by the number of people have being playing D&D for so long with the deeply racist idea that “if it’s a different species to me it’s okay to kill it”. The world is full of monsters, and all of them are human.

 

[Mournblade94]

I’m actually quite disturbed by the number of people have being playing D&D for so long with the deeply racist idea that “if it’s a different species to me it’s okay to kill it”. The world is full of monsters, and all of them are human.

Yes but in D&D the humans aren't the monsters thanks to the Alignment system. Humans can be monsters. Orcs, goblinoids, and other greenskins are always monsters that's the difference. Making them playable is a mistake.

Nobody is racist for making orcs evil minions. That's satanic panic level of alarmism.

 

[TwoSix]

I’m actually quite disturbed by the number of people have being playing D&D for so long with the deeply racist idea that “if it’s a different species to me it’s okay to kill it”. The world is full of monsters, and all of them are human.

Sometimes it's fun to wrestle with moral complexities. I don't view D&D as one of those times.

D&D needs several varieties of humanoid-type monsters with a modicum of organization and cunning, which are also wearing obvious "enemy uniforms" and have "kill-on-sight" flags. I don't care what combination of biology, culture, and magic gets me that combination, but they need to exist.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I’m actually quite disturbed by the number of people have being playing D&D for so long with the deeply racist idea that “if it’s a different species to me it’s okay to kill it”. The world is full of monsters, and all of them are human.

It is just a shoot-em up version of playing D&D. I don't think people who are playing this way are going any deeper than: monsters for the heroes to kill. I don't generally play the game that way, but I have known plenty of people who do and it is pretty obvious. Some media you have nuance around this stuff, some you don't. There is a place for moral complexity in film, games and literature but there is also room for stuff like Aliens where you have a threat that needs to be destroyed

 

[Yaarel]

Orcs as Humanoid is a settled fact now.

Possibly Ogrillons can function as the mindless toughs now, and inherit much of the nonhuman aspects of Orc traditions.

Humanoids are clearly humanlike.

In the arriving D&D, I expect new ambiguities to happen because many Nonhumanoids are playable species. How humanlike is a Fey Goblin since it can be a player character? The same principle applies to Fey Eladrin, probably Fiend Tiefling (who never left the Fiend Planes?), Aberration Gith, likely Undead Vampire at some point, and so on.

 

[Yaarel]

What does the 5e24 DMG sample setting of Greyhawk say about orc culture(s)?

Actually, not much. They are present, but like other Humanoids, get caught up in whatever regional conflicts are taking place.

The hub of the setting is local, the Free City of Greyhawk, which is cosmopolitan, and includes all Humanoids as citizens.

The rest of the continent of Flannaess is places for the DM to place adventures. The continent divides into regions, each with ongoing struggles, whose contexts help suggest where an adventure might make most sense.

Keep in mind, Greyhawk is an example of how a DM can worldbuild. The DM is intended to homebrew it − and that is pretty much how old school Greyhawk functioned as well.

Defacto, it will probably be the DMs Guild that details the continental setting today.

I generally expect monster manuals to give a default set of narrative flavor descriptions that can be used or not by a DM, not just a stat block.

The Players Handbook is the main source for the default flavor for the core Humanoids. It is brief and suggestive. The DM and players will decide together what the flavor is exactly.

I expect settings to say when things on that world differ from the default, such as Krynn kender, Dark Sun cannibal halflings, and Eberron orcs.

I expect 5.5 Eberron and Forgotten Realms to do deep dives into Orc lore.

 

[npick03]

every playable species in the 2024 PHB feels like an afterthought, but orcs especially so.

I think it feels that way because it might be true? It feels to me like orcs were put in the 2024 PH specifically to dodge the orc racism issue. But two paragraphs isn't enough space to rehabilitate 50 years of orcs as monsters, not people. They mention Gruumsh for some reason, which is weirdly specific for a book that doesn't really have gods in it, but then they wildly misrepresent him as a powerful nomad instead of the chaotic evil god of conquest and destruction that he's been since 1980. Its like the most underwhelming version of having your cake and eating it too.

I’m actually quite disturbed by the number of people have being playing D&D for so long with the deeply racist idea that “if it’s a different species to me it’s okay to kill it”. The world is full of monsters, and all of them are human.

Same. I don't think its really wrestling with moral complexities to treat orcs, goblins, etc. as people. If they have language, culture, and religion they are quite obviously people to me. If I need cannon fodder, or the dark lord needs stormtroopers, that is what mindless undead and constructs are for.

If orcs were obviously supernatural beings, like if they were born from the darkness in people's hearts and poofed into smoke when defeated, that would be different. But orcs as they have been portrayed in D&D have always been people, just sometimes (depending on setting/edition) conveniently unpersoned by Alignment.

 

[Scribe]

Possibly Ogrillons can function as the mindless toughs now, and inherit much of the nonhuman aspects of Orc traditions.

Justice for the poor Ogrillons when?

 

[Aldarc]

Nobody is racist for making orcs evil minions. That's satanic panic level of alarmism.

It's not Satanic Panic. It's coming from WotC. The attitudes towards orcs have been progressively changing for a while now, and the designers have their own opinions about things that they disliked or have made them uncomfortable. It's just that they now feel confident that they can make those changes due to how the fanbase itself has changed.