D&D 5E I really like orcs & goblins, and stories that incorporate them.

[Slit518]

I really like the idea of orcs and goblins, these separate evil beings in the world that are hell bent on destruction & mayhem.

I enjoy the potential depth of the orc or goblin culture, delving in as the DM, describing what their society/hierarchy, etc... is like.

I can start so many campaigns with a goblin or an orc menace, and leave them relevant until further levels (not too far).

Is this normal? Or am I sick?

 

[Blue]

I love exploring the cultures of "the Other", and evil cultures definitely lend itself to that.

Last campaign, I had two separate orcish (orken?) cultures - one a horseback-riding nomad culture based losely off the mongols based in "The Northern Steppes", another an archipelago-homed sailing and slaving culture with demonic influences. Both "evil", but very different flavors of evil. The steppe nomads wouldn't have considered themselves evil at all, while the archipelago orcs intentionally did acts.

I also had a very warlike working-communistic Hobgoblin culture with second class goblin serfs, and the kobolds had their own chaotic risk-positive meritocracy where you tied yourself to the coattails with whomever had the grandest plan (and a chance of pulling it off) and threw yourself into supporting it with all of your energy and reckless abandon - until something better came along. Of course, they all considered themselves the blood of dragons so they all had a chip on their shoulder and something to prove to the world.

 

[Nevvur]

I like them too. I depicted them as one of the major threats to the adventure zone in the last campaign I ran, but the players never really spent much time dealing with them. Mostly because they were busy dealing with two other major threats. I did remark during a segment of downtime that village mayors were sending in reports that orc raider activity was increasing in the area, but one of players responded, "Well, that's stuff the militia can handle."

The way I fed hooks to each of the regional threats made for the kind of game where you choose your opponent knowing the remaining opponents would grow in power. I guess they figured an orcish horde was the least scary climactic conflict since they saved that one for last.

 

[Inchoroi]

I have an area of the setting I'm using that I've built up a bunch of orc tribes with their own cultures and grievances; it's been centuries since the orcs have united under a single leader, the last time being a moment when the orc horde almost conquered an entire province, only to be pushed back on the brink of victory by the last stand of a hill dwarf city. The orc tribes have never been the same since.

The orcs keep goblinoid slaves (except for hobgoblins) and use them in a similar fashion to cattle; a chieftain's "herd" denotes their power and standing in the tribe, while a group of three orc sisters act as the spiritual guides for the tribes, interpreting the stars and whichever god the tribe worships (there are multiple orc gods, which I've stolen from several settings). More than one tribal war has been started over which orc god should be worshiped. Orcs also track their power by the number of human slaves they have; in the setting, humans are the "common denominator", able to breed with the majority of the intelligent races successfully, producing sterile but hardy half-breeds.

The hobgoblins, on the other hand, have tightly packed citadels in the mountains further west, where they continually struggle against one another for supremacy, and occasionally lend themselves out as mercenaries for those that don't care where their warriors come from.


...my setting is a little dark, isn't it?

 

[zeldafan42]

I love goblins and orcs! But I HATE the whole cliche “inherently evil race” trope. It’s such lazy writing. Inherently evil race is just code for “I want my good guys to be able to slaughter hordes of sapient opponents without raising any messy questions of morality.”

No thank you. Orcs and goblins in my eyes should be allowed to be just as capable of good or evil as humans or elves or dwarves.

Goblins in particular have managed to earn a lot of fondness from me thanks to the way Terry Pratchett portrayed them in some of the later Discworld books. If you want to read something that makes you rethink the role of goblins in your fantasy setting, check out Snuff and Raising Steam. Goblin culture on the Disc is fascinating.

 

[Inchoroi]

I love goblins and orcs! But I HATE the whole cliche “inherently evil race” trope. It’s such lazy writing. Inherently evil race is just code for “I want my good guys to be able to slaughter hordes of sapient opponents without raising any messy questions of morality.”

No thank you. Orcs and goblins in my eyes should be allowed to be just as capable of good or evil as humans or elves or dwarves.

Goblins in particular have managed to earn a lot of fondness from me thanks to the way Terry Pratchett portrayed them in some of the later Discworld books. If you want to read something that makes you rethink the role of goblins in your fantasy setting, check out Snuff and Raising Steam. Goblin culture on the Disc is fascinating.

I have read both of those and loved them!

Orcs and goblins have a reason to be evil in my setting, because of their creation myths; don't have to be, but their societies pretty much indoctrinate them.

 

[cbwjm]

I've created the basics of a setting where there are no orcs but there are goblins and hobgoblins. Hobgoblins were created from goblins when one of their shamans found an item of mystical power that altered him. First he transformed some of his fellow shamans then they approached the goblin tribes and gave them a chance to join them. First the tribes made war on each other, the strong became hobgoblins, the weak stayed as goblins and became an under class in the hobgoblin empire.

Boop!

 

[Sunseeker]

I agree with [MENTION=6853887]zeldafan42[/MENTION], I like orcs and gobins as classic antagonists, but I dislike them being portrayed as "inherently evil". Worshipping evil gods? Sure. Practicing evil magic? Okay. Aggressive? Violent? Selfish? Wasteful? Sure. But to have culture you need society, and to have society you need some inherent need to work together. Maybe it's an oppressive tyrant who focuses their aggression outward at human civilization, that's fine and all. I think it adds depth to their culture to explain why they do bad things, as opposed to doing evil for the sake of evil. That's the realm of demons and devils. And I think it is more appropriate to have "evil for the sake of evil" covered by true monsters and not simply "other" humanoids.

I like my players to be heroes...but that doesn't mean anything else about the world needs to be black and white. In fact I often feel that players become more heroic when they have to fight evil on both sides. When there is corruption hidden at home and goodness hidden in the enemy, I feel makes for more heroic gameplay, requiring players to choose their targets carefully and also understand why and who they are attacking, and who benefits from that.

My current campaign world has a fairly diverse population of nomadic orcs broken down into 3 main groups: mountain/black orcs(least nomadic, most warlike), desert/brown orcs(most nomadic, most religious) and forest/green orcs(least civilized, most savage), and then a whole slew of tribal factions within those.

 

[Herosmith14]

I have to admit, I like the "monstrous" side too. A lot of my characters, in fact, are good (or at least neutral) orcs who have either shrugged of their societies ways at a fairly early age, or are on a redemption arc.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

I love goblins and orcs! But I HATE the whole cliche “inherently evil race” trope. It’s such lazy writing. Inherently evil race is just code for “I want my good guys to be able to slaughter hordes of sapient opponents without raising any messy questions of morality.

There's no such thing as a lazy trope, only lazy execution. A good writer can build a fascinating story out of the premise of an encounter with people who truly are intrinsically malicious, exploring the strange and terrible consequences of that premise. And a lazy writer can make a mess out of the premise that orcs and goblins are just like the rest of us, making us question why they even bothered to include them in the story.