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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Paul Farquhar" data-source="post: 8813019" data-attributes="member: 6906155">I can give some insight as to why I think they went this was, and why I think it was a good decision.1) the obvious one was to make the setting different, like the steel currency and kender. Dragonlance was the first setting to deviate from core rules, and so the changes were tentative, and orcs didn't really matter. By the time Dark Sun came round, nine years later, the writers where much bolder. If you look at the Baldur's Gate computer game, there were no orcs in it. Bioware where explicit that they were bored with ubiquitous orcs and wanted to use some of the less frequently used generic monstrous humanoids (xvarts, hobgoblins and gnolls).2) From an authorial point of view, you only include a story element if you intend to do something with it. And Dragonlance was always highly focused on a single story. Orcs basically have two stories you can tell with them. Either they are the minions of evil, or you subvert the minions of evil story, and they are misunderstood noble warriors. Since the Dragonlance story is focused on dragons, it needed dragon-related minions of evil so that slot was taken, and since Dragonlance was focused on black and white obvious morality, it had no place for a subversive "evil isn't really evil" story.3) With hindsight, this happened to be fortuitous, since the much less human looking draconians avoid the unfortunate racist connotations that orcs carry these days.3b) Also, draconians, with their special abilities, make much more interesting combat opponents.</blockquote>

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