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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9637202" data-attributes="member: 18">As an aside, I think the real problem here is that D&D goblins have actually acquired a personality, and did so before the Fey stuff, but works fine with the Fey stuff.Whereas D&D's orcs have, at least since 1990, been just about the most "pulled in every direction" orcs of any major fantasy game, with no particular identity, and frequent changes. Particularly no edition from 2E onwards has been able to give them a distinctive or interesting culture - "generic barbarians" is not a distinctive culture, and Gruumsh just doesn't have the juice, no matter how much people might wish he did. 5E pushed them into a sort of "generic racist stereotype", which was, uh, not a good idea on any level whatsoever (but rather a weird sop to some people who don't even typically play D&D). I.e. "there are loads of them, they reproduce fast, they're physically strong but they have no culture, they're and ugly and stupid and can never be more than ugly and stupid because they are inherently inferior, and they want to come here and take our stuff <s>and our wome</s>n!". It's been applied to countless cultures on earth by other cultures, but given much of the 19th and 20th (and now 21st) centuries have had white people applying it liberally to Black, Asian and Latin American peoples (in roughly that time order), it was kind of a shockingly bad idea to try and do "Orcs are like this weird racist stereotype but for real!". Just don't make racist stereotypes in to species in fantasy, people!And worse, it wasn't even distinctive or interesting! Yet another D&D orc-fail.Ironically, orcs might best be served by the generic and overdone but not too common in D&D trope of "honorable warrior species", which is what they seem to have acquired in 5E 2024. It's not much, but it's more than they've had for a long time (outside of the odd setting-specific portrayal which didn't catch on generally, like Eberron).</blockquote>

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