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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Robbs" data-source="post: 4246461" data-attributes="member: 33483"><p>I'm currently populating a campaign world and am facing similar issues.  I've placed orc tribes in two areas, foothills that are similar to your description (although more northernly, so winter snows are more of an issue than summer heat) and a boggish area east of that.  I'm basically looking at three issues to help me shape them;  access to water, food sources, and outside pressures preventing them from relocating in a more hospitable area.  For the group that exists in the foothills, they are situated between the Giantlands higher up, they exist in conflict with Ogres and such in their territory, and below them are an Amerind flavored barbarian people that are inherently magical.  Thus their options are fairly limited.  They can't relocate without impacting a group generally more powerful than them.  They are in constant conflict with the other powers sharing their lands, which necessitates warbands.  Any peaceful times leads to massive breeding (I have them as a fertile people that are quick to mature) which puts huge pressures upon the tribes, triggering internecine warfare.  Periodically a uniter of tribes will appear, when this happens they swarm (reaching deep into the lowlands and driving the human tribes far south).  So there are alternating cycles.  In rich times they raid in numbers during the warm months.  In poor times they raid in small groups during the winter.  The bog group has different specfics but similar issues.  Their territory is not rich enough to supply them, they cannot raise enough to assume more peaceful ways, and nobody wants their land bad enough to try and wipe them out.  So they are a perpetual thorn.  To alter that, you can have something valuable that they have limited ability to cash in on as an incentive to explorers and adventuring.  In my campaign I am working in an angle sampling earlier races that battled for dominance and were devastated, leaving behind ancient ruins.  I'm stealing from the Monte Cook-Dragons vs. Giants, with some Forgotten Realms, Cthulu and my own stuff mixed in.  So while the orcs are smart enough to stay out of the cursed areas, PCs are notoriously dumb that way!</p></blockquote><p></p>

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