Dragonlance Dragonlance Creators Reveal Why There Are No Orcs On Krynn

Talking to the Dragonlance Nexus, Dragonlance creators Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman revealed why the world of Krynn features no orcs -- in short, because they didn't want to copy Tolkien, and orcs were very much a 'Middle Earth' thing.

Weis told Trampas Whiteman that "Orcs were also viewed as very Middle Earth. We wanted something different." Hickman added that it was draconians which made Krynn stand out. Read more at the link below!

Why are there no Orcs in Krynn? Weis and Hickman give us the answer! - Dragonlance Nexus

Dragonhelm gets the scoop from Weis and Hickman on why there are no orcs in Krynn. Read More

dragonlancenexus.com

 

[mamba]

Just because it was decided by the author, doesn't make it less objective.

actually it very much does. At the time of writing, was he free to decide differently? If yes, then it is subjective.

This isn't a question of whether or not Tolkien is an evocative author or not nor an opinion that may vary based on differing characteristics, qualifications, or perspectives of the reader. If Tolkien wrote LotR so that Hobbits were less vulnerable to the temptations of the rings, and it's pretty clear he did, then that's objective.

by now it is established fact and therefore objective, but not while Tolkien wrote it, unless you say there was already an objective fact about hobbits at the time Tolkien wrote this, that he had to abide by

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Is your argument that races play no part in fantasy or in Lord of the Rings in particular?

my argument is has been and will be that restrictions in games with no reason are unfun. also that most aliens and other races are stand ins for humans
my argumnent is that making frodo a human changes nothing of the story just means that humans from the shire act diffrently then humans from gondor and nueminor

 

[mamba]

That's not how it works. It's not an opinion or belief that Tolkien's hobbits had those traits. Yes, they're imaginary, but they have those traits that he assigned them. I can't be wrong when I state that. "Could have" is irrelevant since he did not.

could have is all that matters, we are not talking about what hobbits are now, we are talking about could Tolkien have found a different explanation at the time of writing

 

[GMforPowergamers]

The ring reacted to humans differently than to hobbits. It's kind of a big plot point in the books. Like, the entire reason a hobbit could carry it and humans couldn't. The entire catalyst for the storyline and plot

and that is needed why?
why can't some humans resist it? what is the importantce?

why do we need hobbits to stand in for small town peeps who never leave home and rarely know people that do and have no ambition?

 

[Xamnam]

"Orcs are unique to Tolkien, and we couldn't possibly take them without taking their foundation as written by Tolkien."

Why are you putting things they didn't say in quotes, and calling it explicitly stated? That's conflating their in-universe/fictional positioning, and their external justification and competency

 

[Sacrosanct]

my argument is has been and will be that restrictions in games with no reason are unfun.

But there are reasons. Because you (general you) might not think they are as important doesn't make them "no reason"

and that is needed why?
why can't some humans resist it? what is the importantce?

why do we need hobbits to stand in for small town peeps who never leave home and rarely know people that do and have no ambition?

You argued that you can replace without changing the story. Making that change would have a huge impact to the story, because how races work in LoTR is a huge part of the story. Hobbits most certainly aren't just like regular men but come from small towns. I'm not sure how you can argue that while claiming to know anything about the books because it ignores the entire point of the books.

 

[Maxperson]

I am.

So we've found the issue. You don't understand what change is. It's if you make any little thing different. That's change. If Tolkien had written everything exactly the same, but made the One Ring silver instead of gold, that would have been a different story. A slightly different story, but that change makes a difference, however small. It only gets more pronounced if you turn a hobbit into a human. Now Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin aren't of a race that Sauron overlooks and views as harmless, so that theme is gone and it probably causes the quest to fail since he looks in the human shire for the ring during the time Gandalf is trying to find out if the ring is the One or not. And it gets much worse if you turn the hobbits into those frost giants Umbran mentioned.

My precedence for this is the first 2 years no one knew not to put orcs in and even TSR writer, publisher, copy editor and story editor let a half orc by without batting an eyelash.

There has been no time during the history of the setting that no one knew orcs were not on Krynn. From the first moment that the setting was first published in 1987, orcs were not present. Modules are not a setting.

my argument is orc or no orc will not be noticed.

Then you need to prove it, which you can't do since I will notice it and if even one person notices it, your argument fails.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Actually, in both those instances I wrote rpg after their names so I was indeed referring to the games.

Right, but I think there is a distinction between settings that are not created specifically to be RPGs and those that are.

Meaning that no one sells a RPG book with thri-kreen presented as a playable race in Middle Earth, and so on. With D&D, even though they add caveats, the races are presented as playable. So I don't find it surprising that someone wants to play what the books say they can play.

If I ever found myself in a situation where a player wanted to play an orc or half orc so much despite me explaining that the setting is Krynn and they don't exist in the setting "canonically", then I'm probably going to draw the conclusion that they're more excited to play an orc than they are to play in Krynn.

Fair, as what one can also say that others have frivolous reasons for wanting to play a race not native to a particular setting.

Sure. I might even agree. I have a hard time imagining that people insisting that they play a half-orc in the setting being a widespread problem. But if it happened, I just feel like in a world with so many of the other fantasy races, it's hardly disruptive. It doesn't seem to undo any of the themes of the Dragonlance stories, or the general ideas of the setting. No one's going to watch what happens in play, and when the orc takes a turn, look at everyone and say "what are we even doing here?"

 

[hawkeyefan]

But there are reasons. Because you (general you) might not think they are as important doesn't make them "no reason"

You argued that you can replace without changing the story. Making that change would have a huge impact to the story, because how races work in LoTR is a huge part of the story. Hobbits most certainly aren't just like regular men but come from small towns. I'm not sure how you can argue that while claiming to know anything about the books because it ignores the entire point of the books.

But isn't it all so heavily allegorical that we can look at it as being about people?

 

[mamba]

Dragonlance as a setting is going to have a lot of the standard elements of D&D. I don't really think that's anywhere near as problematic as many claim it to be.

that works both ways, not having orcs is not problematic either

 

[Sacrosanct]

But isn't it all so heavily allegorical that we can look at it as being about people?

Yes, you could eliminate races altogether in LotR and have everyone as human. But certainly you can see how that would be a major change to the story, right? The different races in LoTR is a HUGE part of the story and plot.

 

[mamba]

Except that's not what was said. I literally did read it, and that's not what was said.

well, it is all in there, you are the one focusing on two sentences that you have to take out of context in order to cling to your interpretation.

I changed the sequence around a bit for clarity, you ignore 95% of what was said. Which of the two sounds closer to what was said?

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

There has been no time during the history of the setting that no one knew orcs were not on Krynn. From the first moment that the setting was first published in 1987, orcs were not present. Modules are not a setting.

1984. DLA1.

 

[Faolyn]

And now a False Dichotomy. I will repeat what I told you earlier. It's a feature that is unique, which is better than nothing.

What are what? Lack of orcs makes it different than worlds with orcs, which at this point is every other setting that didn't come over from MtG.

I just asked you what made Dragonlance unique. You refused to answer, and instead just said "it lacks orcs."

Anyone can make a setting that lacks orcs. I have, multiple times. My current setting lacks any and all goblinoids--in fact, really the only sapient races it has are the PHB races, minus dragonborn and plus bullywugs and kobolds, and a small number of monster races like fey, undead, and dragons. Does that make my world more unique than Krynn?

So is there anything that makes Dragonlance unique? Or is it just "no orcs"?

And I can tell you this: if I had a sudden need to add a new sentient race to my world to accomodate a player... I would.

It would be a lot harder than with three humans.

Not at all. It might even be easier, depending on the type of horror I want to go for, the type of players, and what sort of things they're OK with. Because (as an example) tempting them to resort to a more primal nature is prime horror material, especially when only one of those three races is a predator. And I don't even need to resort to that when all the standard horror plots are still available to me and would work whether or not the PCs have fur.

Funny how you're adamant you can run Discworld in D&D, despite how vastly different that setting is from the typical D&D setting, but think it would be too hard to run a horror game with non-human PCs.

I feel that you're just being a contrarian for the heck of it.

Add the race of martians to Earth as of 10,000 years ago and still living here today and Earth would be a very, very, VERY different setting than the one we live in.

Not according to some conspiracy theorists.

But orcs aren't Martians and Athas isn't Earth. Why would orcs be any different than any of the other big, buff, violent races that already exist on Athas?

Since you seemed to miss it in the quote of mine directly above this response, I'll put it here. I'm going to assume that you missed it rather than deliberately skipped it in order to twist my argument again.

"The setting won't fall apart, but it will feel different."

You keep making this claim. Prove it.

 

[Faolyn]

Well then by your argument they probably shouldn't have been converted if they don't support the entire PHB. Any argument about DL can be applied to the MtG based material that are now checks notes campaign settings for D&D.

This doesn't follow. If you're converting something from another source, you keep close to its source and use the source's races. If you're using the original, then you keep to the original and use the original races, or at the least make it easy for players to use the original races without having to bring in spaceships or planar travel.

Bad arguments are bad. Books can suggest a baseline and DMs can work with their players on figuring out if that baseline makes sense for their table. The wording of the DMG already says as DM I can make changes to published stuff, so if I don't want tieflings in the Realms guess what I can do as DM? How many places does WotC need to say make it your own game before people will figure that out? Given the lack of any controversy on the MtG settings, I'm going to guess this is nowhere near the problem you seem to be making it out to be.

Sure--and that's absolutely true when you're talking about homebrew stuff. But we're not talking about a homebrew setting. We're talking about an official, published setting.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Yes, you could eliminate races altogether in LotR and have everyone as human. But certainly you can see how that would be a major change to the story, right? The different races in LoTR is a HUGE part of the story and plot.

On the one hand, yes, I see what you are saying. The appeal of playing something different. I think we can all understand that.

But on the other hand, I don't think that Tolkien couldn't have crafted the same story with each of the major races simply represented as different cultures rather than distinct races. It may have lost something, and perhaps may not have become the phenomenon that it became, but we can't really say. There are elements in it that are timeless, and have existed as long as humans have.

 

[Faolyn]

these two are not contradictory. He said Krynn isn’t generic fantasy minus orcs

And I keep asking what makes it not-generic, and I don't really get an answer.

You'd think people would bring up the dragon wars and the towers of wizardry and the horrible joke races (I may hate them, but they are unique) and the battle between good and evil/chaos... but people just talk about the lack of orcs.

 

[Minigiant]

But isn't it all so heavily allegorical that we can look at it as being about people?

Yes, you could eliminate races altogether in LotR and have everyone as human. But certainly you can see how that would be a major change to the story, right? The different races in LoTR is a HUGE part of the story and plot.

Huge is a bit much. Big not huge.

Tolkien put a lot of humany traits into all the LOTR races and the field of vision was purposely done to highlight and shadow elements of the various races to divide them. But it would be a big change if they fully were all human.

D&D made them even more humanlike when they ported them over. That's why they get all weird because you can interact with the entirety of the dwarves, elves, and halflings.

 

[Maxperson]

That...Max, I know we have had definitional arguments before, but like...for real?

This is literally a captial-K "the Kinslaying." It's straight-up taking from Tolkien. Show me where the idea of a "Kinslaying" is actually written into the backstory of ALL elves in ALL D&D media ever. I'll wait.

Sure.

D&D 1e Fiend Folio: "Ages past, when the elvenfolk were but new to the face of the earth, their number was torn by discord and those of better disposition drove from them those of the elves who were selfish and cruel. However constant warfare between the two divisions of elven kind
continued, with the goodly ones ever victorious, until those of dark nature were forced to withdraw from the lands under the skies and seek safety in the realm of the underworld" ~ Elven wars = slaying kin.

D&D 2e The Complete Book of Elves: "The tension grew unbearable. The Elves who had embraced the teachings of Lolth marched into the cities and slaughtered their brethren. The first attack came under cover of darkness, and the other Elves could not mount a defense." ~ That's a straight up Tolkien style kinslaying.

D&D 3e Races of the Wild: "Since virtually all elves are in accord on this point, they almost never war against their own kind, except for periodic skirmishing between surface elves and drow." ~ Toned back to just war between drow and elves, which is kinslaying.

4e: No idea as I didn't like this edition.

5e: Has ditched that lore almost entirely and now they just hate each other but hey, let's all just get along.

At least since 1e elves have killed kin in battle. And by the by, the kinslaying in Dragonlance was a civil war, not a kinslaying of the Tolkien or 2e elven sort. So Dragonlance fits the 1e view of elves fighting and killing one another.

 

[Faolyn]

Settings aren't required to be better, only different.

They should be better if they want us to spend money on them.

Strawman. The lack of orcs isn't the only thing that makes Dragonlance different. It's symptomatic of a world that is dominated by humans and natural beasts, and when the few monsters do appear, it's in the direct service of Evil.

So... Ravenloft?

So what? Things can be different in different ways.

So then it shouldn't matter if people want to play orcs in Dragonlance.

You want to see things go REALLY NUCLEAR?! Try putting generic fantasyland creatures into Dark Sun and watch the fan reaction! You aint seen nothing yet!

Do people want to play generic fantasyland creatures in Dark Sun? Are generic fantasyland creatures in the PHB as playable races?