I really don't think it should be called the "ORC license"

[BrokenTwin]

Anyway red and yellow orcs aren’t my “take”, there was a whole thread about it here.

My only knowledge of notedly different coloured orcs in one medium is from WoW, where the red ones were demonically corrupted from the green ones. Never heard of yellow orcs, and I'm honestly quite happy to remain ignorant on that presumably not great take.

I’m never gonna be okay with demonic Gnolls with no free will, though. That’s a garbage retcon with no value.

You have flinds, they can fill that niche. Let the Gnoll stand as a people that have to decide between joining their demonic “kin”, avoiding them, or fighting them. That’s interesting. That adds to the game.

Yeah, still haven't forgiven 5E for that. Especially after 4E* did such a good job in exploring how the demonic gnolls were corrupted and their faith stolen by Yeenoghu from Gorellik. Complete with revisionist history from the former that they were always the gnolls' creator and master.

* Presumably this was introduced in an earlier edition, but 4E is the edition I first discovered it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

My only knowledge of notedly different coloured orcs in one medium is from WoW, where the red ones were demonically corrupted from the green ones. Never heard of yellow orcs, and I'm honestly quite happy to remain ignorant on that presumably not great take.

From a D&D advwnture iirc, it’s literally just a lazy “yellow orcs are X RL ethno-culture, red ones are Y ethno-culture” nothing special

Yeah, still haven't forgiven 5E for that. Especially after 4E* did such a good job in exploring how the demonic gnolls were corrupted and their faith stolen by Yeenoghu from Gorellik. Complete with revisionist history from the former that they were always the gnolls' creator and master.

* Presumably this was introduced in an earlier edition, but 4E is the edition I first discovered it.

100% agreed. The 4e Gnoll is heavily influenced by the 3.5 Eberron Znir Pact Gnolls.

 

[eyeheartawk]

I’m never gonna be okay with demonic Gnolls with no free will, though. That’s a garbage retcon with no value.

You have flinds, they can fill that niche. Let the Gnoll stand as a people that have to decide between joining their demonic “kin”, avoiding them, or fighting them. That’s interesting. That adds to the game.

Jokes on you.

After decades of playing, Gnolls and Kobolds still get confused as the same in my head.

 

[Reynard]

PSA: If you make a snarky reply to someone, and then block them…they aren’t gonna see your snark.

Anyway red and yellow orcs aren’t my “take”, there was a whole thread about it here.

The conversation about racism in D&D has centered in large part on the Orc for decades, exactly because orcs were used as stand ins for real ethno-cultural groups in D&D media, in the writings of Gygax, and on internet message boards.

The conversation has not, in recent years, been about orcs being the problem, however. Rather the problem has been that orcs are presented as biologically evil while also being an intelligent tool using species of person, and not a cosmic elementally evil creature, and then it was made worse with very colonialist language often used by oppressors to talk about races they consider inferior and in need of white “guidance”, in Volo’s. (A tradition dating back to Gygax, with pit stops in really egregiously racist stuff in D&D media)

B. Dave Walters tweeted, when the orc conversation hit its crescendo, that “depicting an entire race as naturally evil is racist.” The sentiment is not that orcs are bad, but rather that orcs are being misused and should instead be depicted as people. Just like other races.

Because of this, depicting orcs as the hero is a pretty unalloyed good.


I’m never gonna be okay with demonic Gnolls with no free will, though. That’s a garbage retcon with no value.

You have flinds, they can fill that niche. Let the Gnoll stand as a people that have to decide between joining their demonic “kin”, avoiding them, or fighting them. That’s interesting. That adds to the game.

And here we were having a nice conversation about condiments.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

PSA: If you make a snarky reply to someone, and then block them…they aren’t gonna see your snark.

Some blocks are a badge of honor.

 

[eyeheartawk]

Some blocks are a badge of honor.

 

[aramis erak]

It absolutely may not be, and if you find it exaggerated I'm happy to walk it back to one order of magnitude; that's still a comparison between 500% and 75% -- I'll take it.

I based my statement on D&D's numbers alone being in the (lower?) tens of millions, and that making up about half the community. Where I probably overreached was in underestimating the '90s numbers; I was thinking tens of thousands but it was more likely hundreds of thousands.

...Of course hundreds of thousands to tens of millions is still two orders of magnitude, but yeah, it's probably an optimistic guess. I'm not married to the estimate. My point stands.

I've seen multiple estimates putting the total population of gamers worldwide in the early 90's being around 100 to 200 thousand... but those are most likely quite wrong. They're based upon a mixture of magazine subs and sales, core sales, and GAMA reporting. I don't recall the exact ratio of PHBs to DMGs...
Classic Traveller, between 1977 and 1988, sold 175,000 core rules sets. Traveller wasn't the number one game;it was selling probably 20k units per year in the last two years.
MegaTraveller was more units in less time,
RuneQuest had similar numbers, and was in the same markets. Enough sales to make Avalon Hill snap it up in a sweetheart deal, resulting in RuneQuest 3rd Edition.
D&D was largely considered 90% of play and maybe as low as 80% of sales... (In Anchorage, the management of Boscos around 1990 was saying D&D content was almost 80% of sales of RPGs, even tho' it was 20% of shelf space. But Boscos was just really getting its business going strong then... in 1985, it was a comic shop that had a few games from parental liquidations of collections of mostly comics. I got one of my copies of ElfQuest there.)

In the early 90's, TSR had several deals that were balloning their market share, too... B. Dalton, Waldenbooks, one or two toy chains... and the novels outside those. Kaybee Toys carried only the boxed sets.
Metagaming was dead, but SJ learned from Howard Thompson that book stores are great for selling games with low prices. I bought most of my games at Bosco's, but Car Wars and GURPS were cheaper at Waldenbooks, especially with the discount card. But GURPS had to be special ordered. TSR stuff wt up new and didn't get restocked at my favorite Waldenbooks... but it always had the new stuff.

 

[Wicht]

Ketchup is an abomination of cuisine.

I don't have much use for ketchup as a condiment. I like a West Virginia Dog myself (mustard, a hot dog meat sauce, mayonnaise coleslaw). And for fries I prefer something tangy.

But as a cook, I gotta defend ketchup just a little. As an ingredient in cooking it can be quite good. If your sauce needs just a little sweet acid, ketchup gives you a bit of tomato paste, vinegar and sugar all in one squeeze while also adding a dash of spice. A number of chefs will use it as a shortcut ingredient in things rather than adding them in piecemeal. I always want a bottle of ketchup in my kitchen for such uses.

 

[aramis erak]

I mean, I can only speak anecdotally, but I think AD&D's loss was mostly White Wolf's gain.

IME, in the late 90's (post-96) AD&D was still heavily played, despite the low sales numbers.

At least 70% of people playing D&D, judging from what my friends and players were also playing. F And based upon what the local "Gamer's Guild" was listing on their contact lists - 90% of people were willing to play D&D, and around 80% listed only D&D; that was a list of 300 people, in a bourough of 350k people, and more than 2/3 of my players were NOT on that list. Almost everyone was able to find a D&D group; finding a Traveller, Cyberpunk, or Torg group was "know da right peoples or fuggedaboudit..." so, a reasonable estimate of Anchorage's RPG gamers was about 600 to 900 people... in 1998. And 90% were willing to play D&D.

 

[Reynard]

I thought Shannon Applecline's Designers and Dragons: the 90s, said White Wolf's big years vs D&D were actually the early 90s. By the late 90s, M:tG had eaten every RPG publisher's lunch, including WW.