That’s all fine. Like I sad, I don’t particularly care what orcs look like in your games. If you prefer for each humanoid race to have a very clearly defined role and for none of them to overlap, that’s fine for your games. It even makes sense to me why you might prefer that, even if it isn’t what I would prefer. We don’t have to play the same way.
I’m sorry if what I want out of orcs is unclear, I just don’t think it’s particularly relevant to the discussion. Because my goal isn’t to make other people use orcs the same way I do. I have my preferences, which I talked very briefly about in the “what have you done with orcs?” thread, but I’m trying to get away from specifics, which I think only serve to distract from the underlying points. What I’m trying to understand - and thank you for trying to explain, despite being tired, I do appreciate it - is why the various humanoids having more diverse roles, (which may lead to some overlap) translates to “humans with masks” to you and many others.
It’s fine if you don’t like for there to be much (any?) overlap between the roles filled by various humanoid races. But why is it that you consider the existence of overlap to make orcs “just humans with masks?” Why does a race having more than a single monolithic ethnoculture make them fundamentally human in your eyes?
For sure. I think we’re fundamentally in agreement about that basic point, and disagree about what the default should look like, but I’m tired too and it’s clear we aren’t likely to come to an agreement on that point. Right now I’m just trying to understand a perspective I see expressed frequently in these discussions, and have never had explained to me in a way that has made sense to me. It came up earlier in this thread with the whole humans/ogres/centaurs thing, and the person I was talking to about it started getting really hostile and accusing me of using arguments that supported segregation (???) so I disengaged because I didn’t see that leading anywhere positive. But I really can’t understand how anyone could see these various creatures as fundamentally the same except for cultural differences.
If orcs overlapped narratively and culturally with humans, I understand that you wouldn’t like that, and I even kind of understand why. But I don’t understand how that makes them fundamentally the same race in your view.
I started this post before there were a bazillion other posts but here goes.
There are a lot of ideas floating around on how to "fix" monstrous humanoids.
One extreme is that they should be any alignment, there should just be generic background cultural attributes that can be applied to any humanoid. If you did that, I see no distinction between any humanoid (playable race or not). At that point, why not just have a set of features that you can mix and match (i.e. darkvision, special abilities or proficiencies, etc.) get rid of starting bonuses or make it a +2, +1 you assign anywhere.
At that point? No reason to have different races at all. Humans are just magically a little more varied in a fantasy world because if that group of elves can have all the same attributes and descriptors as a dwarf or orc, why bother? The only difference would be what they look like. It's that extreme that I think of as humans with rubber masks. It's Star Wars aliens that are all humans with different imagery.
So that's one extreme. The other extreme is that you just run them like they are in the MM, the ravaging horde bent on destroying all civilized lands and driven by little more than brutality and hate. That is a caricature. But truth be told? Most races are caricatures, at least as a starting point. Dwarves are miners, elves are tree huggers and so on.
I think caricatures are good for the game. There are far too many intelligent creatures out there, they need to have an easy hook.
The one race that doesn't have an easy hook is humans. Humans have always been the most flexible and dynamic species. That's their caricature, so to speak.
So there's a continuum. Make orcs (and all humanoids) too flexible and I think they're just humans with different visuals. I took a look at Eberron Orcs and, to be honest, there was nothing that stood out as different from humans other than that they have a (mostly undeserved) reputation for violence. I kind of think that's worse - it's racism without cause. MM orc having a reputation as being violent is logical, they are. Eberron orcs having a reputation as being violent is just straight up racism.
Take another example: WOW orcs. I will admit that I only have passing knowledge of WOW orcs, and it's mostly from the WOW movie (I think I played the game for about 2 days when I got it for free). In any case, in the movie they seemed like the worst stereotypes of indigenous people I can think of. Either brutal savages or noble savages just trying to survive.
Could there be some in-between steps? Yes ... but the issue I see is the half steps are difficult. What half steps would be enough? When do you go from minor tweaks to Star Wars aliens? I think it's best left up to each campaign.
In summary: some wording should be fixed. I'm okay with orcs having a reputation as violent invaders if it's a reputation they deserve. On the other hand we should have far more explicit section on making orcs unique and reinforce that the alignment entry is just the default.
P.S. PCs should be handled differently than the standard baseline.
