Do orcs in gaming display parallels to colonialist propaganda?

[Hussar]

Again, I said I don't support the use of the term. I don't advocate its use and I don't use it personally or in works myself. I think it is an insulting slur. But we are trying to figure out what JRR Tolkien had in mind when he used it in the 40s* because the assertion here is that orcs are based on a racial stereotype. /snip

No. You are trying to figure out what JRR Tolkien had in mind.

Me, I couldn't care less.

/edit - whoops, sorry, didn't realize how much this thread had moved on. Please ignore.

 

[Hussar]

I wasn’t saying that at all. I think you clearly believe what you say and you are well intentioned. But I know for a fact many people agree with me and are afraid to weigh in (because I’ve spoken to such people). This happens on social media all the time. Normally most people ignore it to avoid the headache. But bad ideas and bad ideologies can take root that way. So I think it is increasingly important for people to give their honest opinion and not just the opinion that is good for business or keeps them out of trouble. That is why I said to Hussar that I welcomed his viewpoint even if I disagreed.

Perhaps these folks are too afraid to weigh in because the only people who have weighed in to support your point apparently cannot do so without relying on terms and phrases that break board rules? It always surprises me that folks are apparently incapable of discussing these issues without dehumanizing or otherwise insulting the other side of the conversation - either by questioning their morality, their ethics, their intelligence or their motivations and often all of the above.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I do think it's sad when people have been educated to take offence where none was (edit) intended. Couple of my east-Asian friends were sharing a video a year or two back about how it's offensive to ask "Where are you from?" - the clueless well-meaning whites asking Asians & Asian-Americans about their national origin were being given as examples of unconscious racism. In discouraging communication I think that kind of thing is actively harmful.

Or, well, some of the things I've said in the past that offended you, Brendan, I didn't mean to
be offensive but I spoke (wrote) too casually, and didn't think about my likely readership.
For one thing British humour often doesn't translate well across the pond; for another, the written word tends to strip out nuance compared to speech. My initial reaction to your strongly stated offence has generally been "Why is he persecuting me?!" - but on reflection I should have put more weight on where you were likely coming from.

I am sending you a PM S'mon. The reason is this warrants a well considered reply and I don't want to engage in cross forum drama (trying to be respectful to this forum and the other one involved). In my PM I will clarify further but here I will say, yes I can always be wrong, in that particular case it may be hard to persuade me I was wrong about what was stated, but I don't believe people should be punished forever for what they say online (and I don't consider myself the judge of anyone). And I've never been very happy with how that whole discussion played out.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Perhaps these folks are too afraid to weigh in because the only people who have weighed in to support your point apparently cannot do so without relying on terms and phrases that break board rules? It always surprises me that folks are apparently incapable of discussing these issues without dehumanizing or otherwise insulting the other side of the conversation - either by questioning their morality, their ethics, their intelligence or their motivations and often all of the above.

I think people are just nervous about getting dogpiled and called out. I can assure you, this is not a comfortable subject to weigh in on if you disagree with the premise of the OP

 

[Hussar]

I do think it's sad when people have been educated to take offence where none was (edit) intended. Couple of my east-Asian friends were sharing a video a year or two back about how it's offensive to ask "Where are you from?" - the clueless well-meaning whites asking Asians & Asian-Americans about their national origin were being given as examples of unconscious racism. In discouraging communication I think that kind of thing is actively harmful.

Or, well, some of the things I've said in the past that offended you, Brendan, I didn't mean to
be offensive but I spoke (wrote) too casually, and didn't think about my likely readership.
For one thing British humour often doesn't translate well across the pond; for another, the written word tends to strip out nuance compared to speech. My initial reaction to your strongly stated offence has generally been "Why is he persecuting me?!" - but on reflection I should have put more weight on where you were likely coming from.

Having seen this video and lived in Japan and Korea most of my adult life, it does resonate very, very strongly. The fetishism of asian people (particularly women) is a real thing and it's deeply, deeply embedded in racist attitudes. It really is offensive as all get out.

 

[Hussar]

Why do you only limit it to Europe? This is entirely your choice.
The Chinese (and Koreans) had "barbarians in the north" as had the Japanese which did not treat the Ainu pretty well. Not to mention that the Mongols were not only a threat to Europeans but also to many Asian and Middle Eastern nations. After all who ended the period of Islamic scientific leadership by razing Baghdad? It wasn't the Europeans. And there were also the tribes of Timur who conquered large territories. And why couldn't orcs symbolize Vikings?

So as I said, the barbarian raider stereotype existed around the world in all cultures and has nothing specifically to do with European colonialism. And even if you want to limit it European history you still need to explain why orcs would be related to the colonial era of Europe instead of those times when Europe was attacked by tribal societies (Mongols, Huns, Germanics, Turkish tribes, Vikings, ...)

So, because everyone is racist it's okay?

Orcs don't symbolize Vikings because orcs aren't described as blond and blue eyed. No. They are SPECIFICALLY described as Asiatic, and leaning hard on Turkic. Sure, they could be symbolizing something else, if you choose to ignore what it actually says in the books.

 

[Hussar]

It's funny, running a D&D campaign now in Howard-esque Primeval Thule, that seems much much less the case than in traditional Tolkienesque D&D. The Beastmen may be thought of as 'orcs' by the local homo sapiens sapiens, but it's clear to the reader that they're really Neanderthals, just as Thule is really Greenland (and north is really west, so Hyperborea is really northern Canada!). Even the Serpentmen dwell peacefully alongside humans in the city of Ikath, and a relatively benevolent serpentman sage or artificer is easily imaginable.

Swords & Sorcery really does not have the Tolkienesque Good Race vs Evil Race thing going on - if only because everyone is pretty bad - and does not seem grounded in racial conflict the way Tolkienesque fantasy is.

However, even Thule kinda suffers under unspoken racism. In a setting that is purportedly real world Greenland (however, it's fantasy from just before the last Ice Age), every human civilization on the island save one is white, European. There is one invader group that is black, but, everyone else is European.

Not a single native group to be found. It was something that did stand out to me running the setting.

And, I say this as a huge, gushing fanboy of the setting. It really is fantastic and I love it to pieces. There's a six foot map of Thule hanging above my computer as I type this. So, yeah, the setting is great.

Does that make Thule racist? No, of course not. But, would it have been better for having included a couple of native groups - maybe a mythological Inuit people, perhaps? I think so.

 

[pemerton]

What do you think is the best approach? Get rid of "Always Chaotic Evil" races?

Are Always-CE Undead ok? How about demons?

I'm not joking; I am increasingly inclined to think RPGs can do without orcs and suchlike.

My own response to this isn't as firm as [MENTION=21169]Doug McCrae[/MENTION]'s.

When I ran a long-running Rolemaster game set in GH, I had (i) rolled orcs, hobgoblins and goblins into a single people, and (ii) presented them as warrior pastoralist-types living on the borders of the human nations, having been displaced by te migrations described by Gygax in his intro to the World of GH. There was no assumption of "always evil": I was influenced in D&D methodology by the Dragon 101 article "For King and Countery"; and, by default and as we played it, RM doesn't use alignment. Over the course of that campaign we had some orc PCs and an ogre PC - the latter in particular was a prominent character. The orcs and ogres co-existed, both in the fiction of the gameworld and also in our roster of PCs, with human people of colour (East Asian from the Scarlet Brotherhood, and African from Hepmonaland, both of which are departures from how Gygax presents the campaign world).

My 4e game has used alignment as a loose personality descriptor but has not pushed it too hard. Eg when the PCs capture goblins and hobgobinls and parole them, I take it for granted that the NPCs keep their word and cease killing civilians etc ("Let it Ride" as a resolution technique). This game had less sociological/historical depth than the GH one (not to say that the latter was deep, but just that, in these respects, the 4e one was shallower), but the framing of goblins and gnolls (the two "humanoid" races that I used - no orcs or kobold in that game) was as worshippers of Bane and Yeenoghu respectively, so the conflict was framed as religious as much as or more than racial.

As a general rule for the last 30-odd years I have tended to use cultists and demons and evil spirits as the principal antagonists in my generic fantasy RPGing, and to frame conflict in ways that broadly enliven norms of self-defence - ie the goblins and gnolls are soldiers who are being fought in self-defence, rather than a merely abstract or possible threat whose homes are being raided in a search for treasure.

 

[Hussar]

IMO, the "best approach" has already been put forth: simply present more nuanced versions of problematic races. So, yes, you can still have your marauding orcs, sure. But, you also have these other orcs too. So, it's not that orcs maraud because they are orcs, they maraud because that particular group of orcs is a bunch of nasty buggers. Present a more nuanced race and most of the issues go away because now you remove the connection between race and behavior.

 

[Bedrockgames]

IMO, the "best approach" has already been put forth: simply present more nuanced versions of problematic races. So, yes, you can still have your marauding orcs, sure. But, you also have these other orcs too. So, it's not that orcs maraud because they are orcs, they maraud because that particular group of orcs is a bunch of nasty buggers. Present a more nuanced race and most of the issues go away because now you remove the connection between race and behavior.

This is honestly what I do in my campaigns. I don't do it to keep my settings ethically clean, I just do it because I don't generally find evil races to be my cup of tea. But I just don't really have a problem with people doing something more in the style of Three Hearts, Three Lions or any literature where you have these cosmological forces colliding. I think as long you are treating it as a thought experiment in a fantasy setting, and not applying it to the real world, it is fine. Angels and Demons type stuff.

I think I just don't see content as equalling the message in a lot of these cases. Obviously if the orcs were clear stand ins for real races (which I don't think they are, but I realize some do) and humans were basically nazis or something that would be different.