Do ogres look more like shrek..orcs like LotR?

[Emirikol]

A lot of us grew up on fantasy not from books, but from movies. When you think of ogres now, do you think of shrek? Do the orcs in your mind look like the ones from LotR? Do your medusae carry bows and surround themselves with statuary like from Clash of the Titans? Are all of your giant snakes right out of Conan movies? Will you use things from Pan's Labyrinth?

How much has movie fantasy affected your D&D game and your imagination in descriptions?

Are you a movie-gamer or a book-gamer when it comes to how you gained your "fantasy" experiences?

jh

 

[lukelightning]

I like the LotR Movie Orcs...they look properly "chaotic" since they are so varied in appearance, which belies their unnatural origins.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Books, definitely. But I am a librarian after all.

My orcs still are described as porcine in varying degrees, and the ogres more like the oafish monsters of folklore than Shrek.

 

[WayneLigon]

I go for both.

In my mind, orcs have always looked like they looked in the LOTR movies or something similar. They, or things like them, looked like that in most fantasy art I saw. I never used the pig-faced things though I did have one world where they were more boar-like with the mukltiple slashing tusks.

I don't think of Shrek when I think of ogres since Shrek is obviously a comedy and could not have an overtly terrifying main character.

I have used the serpent/Medusa model.

I use a lot of fantasy art books to find different looks for things like trolls and ogres.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

I'd rather have a rusty nail driven through my nether regions than describe an ogre as looking like Shrek.

Funny enough, they resemble the ogres from either the very first Final Fantasy game (purple skinned brutes with flat-topped heads) or the ogres from the Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom arcade game.

That might be "heretical" to some, but dude...I played this game a lot. Got to the point where I could beat it in one quarter going through the red dragon.

Anyways! The game also influenced how I like to picture kobolds as well, and their design in the game was clearly referenced from the illustration of the kobold from the 2E Monster Compendium.

Orcs? I see them as LOTR-ish as well. Nastier the better.

Now that I think on it...I think a lot of look for...stuff was influenced by this n' that video game. Back in the DAYYYYS OF YORE, illustrations of monsters, good, inspired, or at all were hard to come by. Especially with 2E adventures mentioning monsters from other Monstrous Compendiums you didn't have. I remember getting The Shining South and one of the adventures mentions a glabrezu and two vrocks in the dungeron. At that time, all outsiders were relegated to the Outer Planes Appendix ghetto. I RACKED my brains trying to figure out what in the hell they were supposed to look like! I think there was an illustration of a glabrezu with the adventure, but wasn't quite clear to my 13 year old brain what-in-the-hell exactly it was supposed to be or if it wasn't just some random illustration they threw in there (because I had noticed a LOT of art reprints in 2E products even then).

I ended up drawing what I thought a glabrezu looked like. It looked like a grell. :|

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Most of my descriptions of the D&D creatures are influenced by the images in the 1e Monster Manual.

I am more of a books person overall. My wife, coming more recently to the game is a movie person in terms of her imagery (LotR being the number one influence).

 

[S'mon]

Shrek is a child's comedy cartoon/satire, so not a big influence. The LOTR orcs are more goblins in D&D terms, except the Uruk Hai.

 

[jonathan swift]

My Orcs are a mix of Warhammer and Warcraft.

 

[Robert Ranting]

I'm not that kinda orc!

I really didn't get into Fantasy until I was in highschool, so my first exposure to Orcs and Ogres was in the original WarCraft: Orcs and Humans PC game. While the Ogres were pretty much a footnote, the depiction of ape-like, tusked, green-skinned brutes with pointed ears stuck to the Orcs, especially since I kept playing the WarCraft games as they came out (although I'm not an avid player of WoW, truth be told).

Generally though, when I'm playing D&D and using stats out of a book, I refer to the art right there in the book for my descriptions and mental imagery, unless it's incredibly disappointing or silly looking (when I don't want a silly encounter in that instance).

 

[crazy_monkey1956]

When I first started gaming, my orcs were Gamorrean (sp?) guards out of Return of the Jedi. My goblins were the creepy little dudes in Labyrinth. Nowadays, however, I tend to just hold up the monster manual and point to the picture, saying to the players, "You see this."