D&D General Handling the Orc Horde as a key setting element

[Stormonu]

make sure that the first Orcs that the PCs meet are peaceful and interesting. Maybe a druid or a some traders visiting a merchant rather than raiding. Have some positive interaction happen so the PCs get to see orcs as people first.

I have no desire to do that. I want my players gritting their teeth, ready to bust some orc heads. Small orc bands in the wilderness is small hornets nest, but they purposely overbreed and stress their surrounding environment and spill out into raiding hordes. They're to be feared and eliminated before they get to be a bigger problem.

 

[Shadowdweller00]

How about: Species in Flux

Orcs are the specially bred / created footsoldiers of a fallen empire. They were designed specifically for war - strong, hardy, aggressive; possessing high birth and maturation rates to replace those fallen in battle. They never had to support themselves - Imperial infrastructure kept them fed and equipped. While war casualties kept their numbers down. They were never amongst the Imperial elite and have no traditions of scholarship.

Since the Empire fell, orcs don't fully know what to do with themselves. Where once they had status and pride as the Empire's soldiers, now they have little. They are hated and ostracized by other humanoids as living reminders (and often former perpetrators) of Imperial war crimes. Many have become embittered. Various pockets have found work as mercenaries and enforcers. Some try hunting, fishing, herding, or farming - usually badly because they have no tradition of any such things amongst themselves; and few outsiders are willing to help educate them. Many are willing to work for whoever can keep their children fed; often finding themselves in positions of hard, dangerous, and demeaning labour that others don't want to do. Where they're even allowed to coexist in non-orcish societies. Other orcs end up as tramps and vagabonds, or band together to raid for food and supplies. This exacerbates their already poor reputation. In those few places where they ARE tolerated, their high birth and maturation rates often lead to rapid overpopulation without external dangers whittling away their numbers. And their high growth rates relative to other races tend to alarm xenophobic peoples who fear that orcs may grow to supplant them if left unchecked.

So...orcs are often dangerous because they are desperate.

 

[Redwizard007]

How about: Species in Flux

Orcs are the specially bred / created footsoldiers of a fallen empire. They were designed specifically for war - strong, hardy, aggressive; possessing high birth and maturation rates to replace those fallen in battle. They never had to support themselves - Imperial infrastructure kept them fed and equipped. While war casualties kept their numbers down. They were never amongst the Imperial elite and have no traditions of scholarship.

Since the Empire fell, orcs don't fully know what to do with themselves. Where once they had status and pride as the Empire's soldiers, now they have little. They are hated and ostracized by other humanoids as living reminders (and often former perpetrators) of Imperial war crimes. Many have become embittered. Various pockets have found work as mercenaries and enforcers. Some try hunting, fishing, herding, or farming - usually badly because they have no tradition of any such things amongst themselves; and few outsiders are willing to help educate them. Many are willing to work for whoever can keep their children fed; often finding themselves in positions of hard, dangerous, and demeaning labour that others don't want to do. Where they're even allowed to coexist in non-orcish societies. Other orcs end up as tramps and vagabonds, or band together to raid for food and supplies. This exacerbates their already poor reputation. In those few places where they ARE tolerated, their high birth and maturation rates often lead to rapid overpopulation without external dangers whittling away their numbers. And their high growth rates relative to other races tend to alarm xenophobic peoples who fear that orcs may grow to supplant them if left unchecked.

So...orcs are often dangerous because they are desperate.

This is a perfect origin story for orcs in a homebrew campaign, and I am shamelessly plagiarizing it. It's actually quite similar to draconians post War of the Lance.

Ronin-esque warriors bred for war, but with no one to fight for, and no way to support themselves beyond raiding, slaving, and mercenary work. They are ready made minions for every upstart warlord, evil wizard, or rampaging horde, but could just as easily find themselves as temple guards, mercenaries, or soldiers in the armies of civilization, given the right circumstances. In any case, fiercely loyal to a leader they perceive as looking out for them and probably a bribe away from betraying harsh masters. That seems to check all the traditional "orc" boxes without falling into the always evil tag. It can even circumvent the slave-race issue by having the orcs as originally valued, respected and free-willed.

 

[NotAYakk]

This is a perfect origin story for orcs in a homebrew campaign, and I am shamelessly plagiarizing it. It's actually quite similar to draconians post War of the Lance.

Ronin-esque warriors bred for war, but with no one to fight for, and no way to support themselves beyond raiding, slaving, and mercenary work. They are ready made minions for every upstart warlord, evil wizard, or rampaging horde, but could just as easily find themselves as temple guards, mercenaries, or soldiers in the armies of civilization, given the right circumstances. In any case, fiercely loyal to a leader they perceive as looking out for them and probably a bribe away from betraying harsh masters. That seems to check all the traditional "orc" boxes without falling into the always evil tag. It can even circumvent the slave-race issue by having the orcs as originally valued, respected and free-willed.

I did that with all of the half-races.

The Bael Turathian empire used magic to produce half-elves, half-orcs, muls, goliaths, and tieflings. The noble caste mixed their blood with fiends to enhance their ability to use magic, and bred special-purpose slaves using half-human stock. Half-orcs are the descendants of shock troops magically engineered by an ancient empire.

These chimeras generally breed true with mixed with the parent races, but sometimes the resulting child carries mostly the properties of the other parent.

By the present day, most of the chimeras have been "well mixed" into the human population; apparently pure human-human matings can spawn a chimera. A few of the types (muls and goliaths) where used in geographically limited areas that have remained isolated from being mixed in.

 

[S'mon]

I really do want to salvage them. But a whole species where everyone is a burning and pillaging warrior and an evil bastard just straight up makes no sense. Believable orcs need to look like they could be a sustainable culture that has been going for thousands of years and wouldn't destroy itself within just one generation.

Remember that 1e FR population densities are extremely low. The average Orc probably never encounters any of the 1e sedentary/PC races. When they do, they go kill-burn-pillage. But that's just what the PC races experience vis-a-vis Orcs. 99.9% of the time, Orcs are not pillaging human villages. They probably never encounter a human village.

 

[Mind of tempest]

for bugbears I would lean into 5e lore to its logical conclusion, bugbears are people derive from ambush predators like cats you have conflict with them not because they can't be negotiated with but because fundamentally it is a hyper carnivore and you and your livestock are possible food options and they can steal metal far easier than mining it or buying it, but you can reason with them with food or useful things but if the prey is rare skirmishes will take place.

 

[Mind of tempest]

what about full mythical with them being evil spirits which just sort of form?

 

[Azzy]

Well, in the FR (like in GH), orcs worship Grummsh and his pantheon. Part of the creation myths of that religion is that the gods of the other races (humans, elves, dwarves, halflings) took all the good lands for their own races and left little to nothing for the orcs to inhabit. Whether that's objectively true or a mythologized version of the orcish cultural memory of being displaced by the other races not matters little. Part of the text you quoted alludes to the dwarves of the area having been previously expansionist and nigh-genocidal and that probably just feeds more and more into the orcish myth of displacement.

Between that belief, Grummsh being a harsh and xenophobic, martial deity, and the orcs typically inhabiting land that isn't very hospitable, turning towards raiding is likely rather natural. It's even likely that the orcs that inhabit the former dwarven strongholds are less likely to turn to raiding than their badlands brethren and possible that there might be more peacible (if somewhat xenophobic) and open to trade.

 

[Shadowdweller00]

Or possibly: Spiritual Corruption

As every honest orc knows, civilization corrupts. It turns strong, free people into slaves. Weakens the body. Tempts the mind to want things it should not. Draws would-be megalomaniacal tyrants of the cities to delve into profane and world-breaking magic. Left too long to fester, cities and nations become a threat to everyone. Unfortunately, by that point, most tyrants have raised walls of hard stone and armies of miserable, metal-clad slaves. To root out the corrosive influence of civilization it is better to tear it out by the roots before it catches hold. Start small, in the towns and hamlets. Civilization starts with an excessive love of things - gold, objects, houses larger than one's neighbors, cattle beyond what the tribe needs. So...orcs try to save people. Burn their things, and their overlarge shelters. Take their useless, shiny trinkets away. Free their thralls. Sometimes re-education is necessary safely under the watchful eye of the tribe. Corrupted minds unfortunately, rarely appreciate what a sacrifice is being made for them; rarely understand how much better off they will be once the process is over. How much less miserable they would be without their overlords.

Ok, maybe that's too close to Uthgardt beliefs. Figured it was worth a chuckle at least. There's a lot of room for depth in conflicting religious, cultural, cosmological views though, I think.

 

[squibbles]

[...] Parallels with viking raids immediately come to mind. "From the fury of the Northmen, O Lord, deliver us." Or the Huns. "The Scourge of God." Raiding warriors being seen by their opponents and demons in human guise does have plenty of precedent. [...]

Thinking on this subject some more, I remembered a super evocative phrase that the Byzantine historian Jordanes used to describe Scandia (the Romans' name for Scandinavia, which they mistakenly believed was an island).

He called it "The Womb of Nations," which evokes the unknown, a mysterious place where many strange and hostile peoples apparently come from. But, because Europe is big, travel is hard, and knowledge often fails to be transmitted into durable written records, there can be all kinds of people out in the distant north that are barely known or understood.

But the first time I heard the phrase was in Hardcore History's Death Throes of the Republic series, in which the Romans are blindsided by an army of Cimbri, i.e. giant* shirtless Danes. Because without satelite communications, its really easy for a massive army to show up at your doorstep without much warning--and for you to not really know where they came from or why they're attacking you.

*giant to the Romans, anyway, who were 5' to 5'5''

So considering this:

Remember that 1e FR population densities are extremely low. The average Orc probably never encounters any of the 1e sedentary/PC races. When they do, they go kill-burn-pillage. But that's just what the PC races experience vis-a-vis Orcs. 99.9% of the time, Orcs are not pillaging human villages. They probably never encounter a human village.

And that the 1e Forgotten Realms are stupidly gobsmackingly large.

(source, forgotten realms camapaign setting, DM sourcebook p. 10... why on Earth did you need so much space Ed?)

Maybe there are all kinds of orc and goblinoid civilizations thriving throughout the savage frontier. Perhaps they have all kinds of complicated political interrelationships; sometimes weaker groups are displaced and put into conflict with demihumans, sometimes there are big wierd confederations to accomplish various ends--which would explain why orcs, goblins, ogres, etc. always end up together in a team.

Or maybe said orc/goblin civilizations are only doing ok... or even quite badly. Ancient Jutland wasn't wildly populous, and the Cimbri were purportedly displaced by flooding (no one really knows), but they nonetheless raided and sacked their way through western Europe beating consular armies of 80,000.

(from Wikipedia)

If your average dwarf hold has a population of something like 10ish thousand, that kind of horde would certainly give them a rough time.

I really quite do like the suggestion that someone made that Gruumsh is not just a distant creator god and mythological figure, but an active despot who really wants the claim of being lord over a powerful people of strong conquerors. No matter how many orcs have to die for his dream. We do have plenty of examples of purely mortal human dictators doing just that and somehow getting a large majority to be full on board or at least going along without protesting.
Add to that an army of religious police shamans and the whole lunacy of it all becomes pretty realistic. We do see dissent in real countries. But if you have something like this going for thousands of years and hundreds of generations, and the eternal war with the hated mortal enemy is not just propaganda but nearly constant active warfare, then it becomes fairly plausible that barely anyone considers that society is total madness and pointless suffering.

Dear Leader Kim Jong-Gruumsh.

Taking the Womb of Nations idea a step further, it could be a real phenomena that intermittently pops out big groups of orcs. What if there's a series of portals to Gruumsh's divine domain--or maybe his wandering interplanar army; at some point the orcs didn't have a divine domain. Gruumsh occasionally sends one of the tribes that serves him in the afterlife to round up all his minions in FR and do some damage. This would partly explain their lawful orientation, since it'd be a army with military discipline and organization. It would also explain their servility to Gruumsh, since his threat of force is always there. They'd obviously pop out in one or more of the mountain ranges--spine of the world, ice mountains, or greypeak mountains--which would explain their longstanding beef with the dwarves.

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OR

Maybe don't decide what's going on with the orcs, but try to make it a mystery (i.e. make them a /sigh mystery box). There are tough organized raiders who it is said destroyed the dwarves and elves in ages past, and who are known to unexpectedly form invasion armies, but who come from an unknown homeland, and have unclear motivations. You can have the evil marauding humanoids, but throw in unexpected signs of greater complexity when the PCs interact with them. Then you listen to the players speculate about them and steal liberally when/if they have good ideas.

Eh, maybe that's a difficult lift given how done to death the evil orc horde archetype is.