Half-Orcs?

[MavrickWeirdo]

I once had a NPC background of a human bear-hunter (with the scars to prove it) who took (stole) an orc femail to be his wife.

The way he saw it she could cook, and clean, and didn't talk to much.

From her point of veiw, she didn't mind the scarrs, and he didn't beat her like an orc husband would.

Ain't love grand

 

[Xarlen]

I was playing a little homegame of Iron DM with a buddy (But we were doing it 'Set up how these classes got together). Basicly, I had a Half-orc paladin who was taken in by a church after the paladins of the order killed his parents. Well, after his training, his first mission was to escort this mddle-aged rogue to the next city, for judgement. As it turns out, the Father worked for the church, and took 'spoils of war' out on a female orc... The irony is, the church deals with it's responsibilities with the Half-orc, that was caused from the father...

Anyways, I can think of a lot.

Orcs destroy a human barbarian tribe. Since the women are not warriors, the orcs show a little bit of mercy (or perverse interest) in killing all the males, and claiming the women. They then integrade the women into their tribes; these female humans are like a higher class, above Orc women. Concubines, perhaps even hunters. The human women aren't Raped, perse, but go along with it, because they're treated a little better then the human men treated them (Second class citizens).

Equally, I could see a tribe of Amazon women who have Orc slaves. The orcs are their cannon fodder, their servants. They're stronger then human men, and Stupider, and even though they're ugly, they... have greatswords . The half-orc males would either be killed, used as a higher class 'male' to the orcs (Or perhaps they have some blood in them making half-orc sorcerors), while the female half-orcs would be regarded as strong sisters.

 

[Celebrim]

I don't have Orcs in my campaigns, and haven't made consistant use of them since early in my D&D days. Various sorts of goblins fulfill the same role, and I'll address this question on the ways I've handled it in the past for goblins.

1) I tend to (unlike say the Forgotten realms) have all half-breeds as quite rare. Half-X would be unusual anywhere, and would tend to be mistaken for one parent or the other by one group or the other. For instance, a half-hobgoblin would probably taken for a goblin by a strange human, and for a human by a strange hobgoblin - especially by beings with little experience with the other race. There no populations of half-breeds out there breeding true. If the PC is a half-elf, he or she can almost certainly count on being the only one he will ever meet.

2) It's sad but true that the vast majority of the half-breeds occur because of violent interaction of the races - usually after or during war. In some cases, bearing a child of a different race is considered fortunate, depending on the region and the species in question. In others, it is considered misfortunate. In chaotic areas (especially CN and CE) half-breeds are likely to be aborted through herbal, alchemical, or magical abortiflects. In many cases, these work only sufficiently enough to have the child born defective and/or unviable. Whether healthy or unhealthy, they are often murdered shortly after birth (typically by drowning). Half-hobgoblins are common enough that they are (in lawful areas) not considered to be any more shameful than any other bastard, and can more or less get along in society. Cynically, this is probably because they consider abortion and murder the lesser of two evils.

3) Members of two races will occasionally have erotic (relatively) non-violent encounters. For instance, it is not entirely outside the realm of possibility that a human prostitute would accept a hobgoblin or bugbear john, and vica versa for a human sailor returning to port. In some areas, such deviance may even be common or even celebrated. (There are no areas yet that have what we would considered 'enlightened' attitude toward the other races, though there are some where the races mingle on the edges of society, and even some where particular races are accepted in specialized roles) It is also not impossible that a given chaotic member of any race might dally with another race just to see what it is like. However, in all of the above encounters, abortion and murder is the likely result in the rare event congress between two races results in an offspring.

4) Occassionally, ambitious members of a race considered to be unusually attractive to another race (almost anything to humans, humans to goblins, humans and elves to orines, fairies to anyone) will use thier sexual advantage as a political or social advantage and acquire power by errm positioning themselves close to throne or other powerful figure. In such a case, begatting offspring carries tremendous personal and social advantage, and offspring birthed in this fashion are likely to be very well treated, even pampered (even if one of the parents secretly detests or at least looks down on them). It is not impossible also that slaves/runaways/outcasts raised outside thier race come to think of themselves as being of that race, and tend to acquire that races standards of beauty. A slave of a Bugbear chief may well come to see the chief as his people see him, large, powerful, virile, and well proportioned.

5) Most rarely still, there are actual romantic attachments between two races. And even rarer still, some of these don't involve insanity or sociopathy on the part of one or both partners. There are elves of both sexes who find themselves attracted to particular humans, and humans who find themselves attracted to just about anything. The result can be fairly stable homes (though in the case of human/elf partnerships, the human parent dies well before his children reach adulthood.)

 

[BOZ]

i don't know, i've slept with an orc before, it's not so bad.

whoops! did i say that?

 

[GroverCleaveland]

Knowing the human species as I do, I think humans are as likely to rape orcs as vice versa. What better way to demoralize your foe than to rape its women (or men)? And (please don't take this in the wrong way) a hole's a hole, they all look the same in the dark, etc.

I can't imagine a species more brutal than humans.

 

[reapersaurus]

Good thread, Terraism, even though I think it was done a few months ago - I'll assume you were referring to my post here:

I'm personally sick to death of the "Half-orc PC as a child of rape" cop-out, but that's just me because I have strong beliefs about half-orcs being a playable race.

I'm glad someone picked up the ball and ran with it - I'd like to hear from some people who view orcs as being inescapably evil, therefore have problems seeing a volkuntary union between them and humans.

My take is this:

Since first seeing the half-orcs as a PLAYER CHARACTER race in 3E, I had difficulty merging in my mind the common-held belief that orcs are cartoonishly evil and only exist to destroy.

It didn't make sense that the only explanation for a human mating with a orc was rape.
I mean, half-orcs are in the PHB for heroes to play!
So after reading the description of both the half-orc and the orc entry in the MM (and PHB), it seemed to me that the 3E designers based the orcs off of Klingons!

They are agressive, like to fight, like to dance, drink and party, value scars and battle over diplomacy, etc.
Admit it - doesn't a Batleth just seem right for an orc to use?

So thinking about Klingons - if memory serves - it seemed there were many human/orc pairings that didn't only owe themselves to rape or alcohol OR craziness.

So I made a background for Ubaar, the PC in my sig, specifically to describe a half-orc that didn't rely on rape for his being.

Then I read about Turrosh Mak and thought I'd make Ubaar a champion for half-orcs and oppressed people who have racism thrown in their face by supposed "do-gooder" races all the time.

 

[Creamsteak]

I agree with most of you in this thread, but because of my player's lack of motivation to do backgrounds I cut out the middleman. I just let them play Orc's as a PC class and don't worry about it. Also, since none of them ever want to play half-elves, I threw them out too (half drow... that's an idea).

So I instead, for my campaign world, just assume that every time two different races mate, there is a 50% chance the offspring will be one type or the other. I should develop a system for what abilities the characters get or don't get, but generally I just roll for each Racial trait on 50%.

For instance, a human and an orc.

I roll once for each of the +1 modifiers to ability scores
I roll once for each of the -1 modifiers to ability scores
I roll once for each special quality, attack, or exceptional ability
I roll once each for every racial trait.

What ends up happening is players get greedy and try to mate off for special abilities. I'm not one to shoot down creative ways to handle things, but I do knock some players ideas out when they get too greedy. I never want to see an Orc/Elf/Gnome/Dwarf/Human with all the appropriate traits.

 

[reapersaurus]

I found the old thread on my HD, and it actually is 10 months old,
I think anyone reading this thread would like to read the other one, but sadly I can't attach files of HTML OR ZIP.

I've posted in Meta about it, too, if you wanna chime in.

 

[Celebrim]

"...it seemed to me that the 3E designers based the orcs off of Klingons!"

Actually, you have it backwards. Klingons were based off orcs. Vulcans are based off elves. Ferengi are goblins, and so forth. I even heard they did a pixie race in one of the spinoffs but I stopped carring about ST a long time ago.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

"...it seemed to me that the 3E designers based the orcs off of Klingons!"

Actually, you have it backwards. Klingons were based off orcs. Vulcans are based off elves. Ferengi are goblins, and so forth. I even heard they did a pixie race in one of the spinoffs but I stopped carring about ST a long time ago.

Probably, this is true.

Orcs are, IIRC, usually chaotic evil. This means you will find many exceptions - maybe chaotic neutral or good orc tribes, or even a Lawful Evil/Neutral Orc city. If humans - who can be ANY alignment - might be able to adapt to the orc, and the result is a half-orc offspring.

Orcs are not very intelligent, and they are not very self assure, trying to compensate it with their strength and agressiveness. This is not what everybody likes, and many people will shun orcs because of this, but each orc still has a distinctive personality, like humans, halflings, elves, dwarfes and gnomes, and if you get through the "layers" that hide the true personality, the "weak core", you might find something that deserves to be loved...

Mustrum Ridcully