I think Orcs are the mystery race...

[Remathilis]

I really hope the quintesential D&D monster baddie stays a baddie. Give me their PC stats in the MM, thank you.

Give me something new and fresh for the mystery race. Or at least Goliaths.

 

[Reaper Steve]

I'm thinking it will be something totally new to the game. I mean why keep orcs as a race secret, but announce that tieflings will be a pc race? Wouldn't it have made more sense the other way around? Tieflings or eladrin as a race would have been a surprise. Orcs, not so much.

My sentiments exactly. I think the mystery race needs to be more of a shocker than Tieflings were. Fill that square, orcs will not.

 

[Clavis]

I have no objections to making some Orcs into redeemable noble savages, especially if other Orcs are still howling killers. I actually did that in a previous campaign, where Humans, Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings and Gnomes were all really degenerate variations on a single elder race.

Also, Orcs are not 100% Tolkien at all. The name occurs in the Middle Ages both as a reference to a sea monster, and a ogre-like creature. On a literary level, before Tolkien "Red Orc" was a character in William Blake's poetic epics, where he represented (surprise!) humanity's wild passions that are wrongly suppressed by civilization.

As a side note, did it ever strike anybody else as odd that D&D Orcs were not worshipers of Orcus?

 

[Bishmon]

I wouldn't mind orcs, especially if it means half-orcs are never mentioned again.

I want a strong, brutish, monstrous race in the PHB and orcs would certainly work. I'm still holding out hope for minotaurs, though.

 

[Sadrik]

I would prefer goblin and hobgoblin over orc. Leave the orcs for the wild uncivilized raiding raping and pillaging types that everybody has to exterminate.

 

[Klaus]

I have no objections to making some Orcs into redeemable noble savages, especially if other Orcs are still howling killers. I actually did that in a previous campaign, where Humans, Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings and Gnomes were all really degenerate variations on a single elder race.

Also, Orcs are not 100% Tolkien at all. The name occurs in the Middle Ages both as a reference to a sea monster, and a ogre-like creature. On a literary level, before Tolkien "Red Orc" was a character in William Blake's poetic epics, where he represented (surprise!) humanity's wild passions that are wrongly suppressed by civilization.

As a side note, did it ever strike anybody else as odd that D&D Orcs were not worshipers of Orcus?

Two words for you: Rappan Athuk.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Yeah really.

I haven't thought of Orcs as Tolkien's since I heard my first "Zabu".

Heh, my idea of what orcs were was defined as a bunch of green-skinned guys with tusks who say stuff like "Dabu" and "Zug-Zug" a few years before I ever read Tolkien, which itself was a few years before the movies were released.

For me, Orcs will always be Warcraft-style Orcs.

 

[StarFyre]

hmmm

i read somehere, in one of the earlier deisgn dev posts, etc, that one ofthe staff guys at wizards, uses a minotaur character, and that in 4E core books, he will still be able to.

But it was never meantioned if that was due to a detailed stat block in the MM or maybe, minotaurs are the last core race? They have been 'core' in dragonlance, alot longer than Warcraft 3 afterall has been around with the taurens...I would love to have a minotaur in the core book they are cool

Sanjay

 

[ThirdWizard]

Three words:

Giant. Space. Hamsters.

 

[BadMojo]

Three words:

Giant. Space. Hamsters.

Four more words: Victorian Era British Hippo Men

Errrr, no.

Actually I'd like to see orcs as a PHB race if they were more like Orcs in Eberron. Less grunting brute and more nature-attuned. I'd love to see orcs take the "best woodsmen in the realm" crown from the elves since the little pointy-eared guys already have the kick ass warrior and natural born spellcaster crowns. Greedy little bastards.