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Let’s Read Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse.
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<blockquote data-quote="Leatherhead" data-source="post: 8672900" data-attributes="member: 53176"><p><h3>Orcs (Not appearing in this book)</h3><p>I'm going to do a bit of a weird thing today, for a "Lets read" thread anyway.</p><p></p><p>There are no Orc monsters in this book. There is the Orc PC race, which has been revised from its previous incarnations, but not one NPC stat block. Even monsters that previously had the Orc tag lost them for their reprinting (looking at you, Tanarukks). The rest of the Orcs from VGtM are technically lost in the limbo of legacy content.</p><p></p><p>Which naturally begs the question: Why am I pointing this out?</p><p></p><p>Well, I started this thread as an attempt to analyze the changes to the monsters in this book, as it is functionally a preview of what we can expect in the upcoming 5.5 (or whatever they are going to call it) edition that will be coming out in 2024. And while it is hard to do anything other than wildly speculate as to why Orcs were abandoned, speculation is a hobby of mine, and what the dev team cut is arguably just as important as what they saved and what they changed.</p><p></p><p>Orcs have a history of being problematic, even Tolkien himself had criticism levied at him for his depiction of orcs, and D&D does love hinting at Tolkien. But then again, you could say similar things about Goblinoids, and especially the Drow. Those races were included in this book, and given a cultural face lift, one that gave them wiggle room to be free of their worship-strangled cultures. Orcs and Goblinoids even have similar PC race write ups. In paraphrasing: “Yeah, this god is a really big influence on this race, but it's totally cool to not care about that god too, you do you.”</p><p></p><p>So despite these similarities, why were Orcs cut?</p><p></p><p>The best answer I can come up with is speculation based upon this Sage Advice:</p><p></p><p>[URL unfurl="true"]https://dnd.wizards.com/sage-advice/book-updates[/URL]</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Orcs in different settings are just too different from each other to provide a “multiversal ” take on orc NPCs. And apparently, that is why they were cut from this book instead of cleaned up.</p><p></p><p>More importantly, what does this imply about the new 5.5 books? Not very much, other than a confirmation that the books are going to be mostly setting-agnostic or tied into the multiversal setting. Beyond that, who knows? Perhaps there is some Fay based campaign setting coming up and that's the real reason why Goblinoids and Drow got a pass.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Leatherhead, post: 8672900, member: 53176"] [HEADING=2]Orcs (Not appearing in this book)[/HEADING] I'm going to do a bit of a weird thing today, for a "Lets read" thread anyway. There are no Orc monsters in this book. There is the Orc PC race, which has been revised from its previous incarnations, but not one NPC stat block. Even monsters that previously had the Orc tag lost them for their reprinting (looking at you, Tanarukks). The rest of the Orcs from VGtM are technically lost in the limbo of legacy content. Which naturally begs the question: Why am I pointing this out? Well, I started this thread as an attempt to analyze the changes to the monsters in this book, as it is functionally a preview of what we can expect in the upcoming 5.5 (or whatever they are going to call it) edition that will be coming out in 2024. And while it is hard to do anything other than wildly speculate as to why Orcs were abandoned, speculation is a hobby of mine, and what the dev team cut is arguably just as important as what they saved and what they changed. Orcs have a history of being problematic, even Tolkien himself had criticism levied at him for his depiction of orcs, and D&D does love hinting at Tolkien. But then again, you could say similar things about Goblinoids, and especially the Drow. Those races were included in this book, and given a cultural face lift, one that gave them wiggle room to be free of their worship-strangled cultures. Orcs and Goblinoids even have similar PC race write ups. In paraphrasing: “Yeah, this god is a really big influence on this race, but it's totally cool to not care about that god too, you do you.” So despite these similarities, why were Orcs cut? The best answer I can come up with is speculation based upon this Sage Advice: [URL unfurl="true"]https://dnd.wizards.com/sage-advice/book-updates[/URL] Orcs in different settings are just too different from each other to provide a “multiversal ” take on orc NPCs. And apparently, that is why they were cut from this book instead of cleaned up. More importantly, what does this imply about the new 5.5 books? Not very much, other than a confirmation that the books are going to be mostly setting-agnostic or tied into the multiversal setting. Beyond that, who knows? Perhaps there is some Fay based campaign setting coming up and that's the real reason why Goblinoids and Drow got a pass. [/QUOTE]
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