D&D 5E What Makes an Orc an Orc?

[Charlaquin]

That doesn't make them disassociated. That makes them approximations. The association is there. Mirroring reality isn't.

By your standard, no mechanics are dissociated. All game mechanics are approximations of something, they just have different degrees of abstraction.

And that’s why “dissociated mechanics” is a useless term that should stay in 2009 where it belongs.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That is what I usually for my own settings. I choose a handful of races that I include and then come up with a lot of lore and stuff for them.

Sure but people don't agree on what races they want to use, and will likely change their answer from campaign to campaign. We therefore need a lot of options to choose from.

 

[Laurefindel]

So, from point 1 you have already misinterpreted the argument being made.

Honestly, I think the stakes should be repeated and clearly established for everyone to see and understand. Even if it's the 1001st time.

This thread alone has 27 pages. A lot has been said. A lot has been misinterpreted. Some posts were plainly misleading, some even made in bad faith. Trying to sift through it is no longer just cumbersome; it's too easy to be misread, misinterpreted, or misunderstood. Again.

This discussion is interesting. I should even say essential. But now it's going nowhere.

[edit] You've wrote this as I was typing:

Well, we have already explained it, but I’ll try one more time. The language used to dehumanize and vilify [insert evil fantasy race here] is the same as the language that has been (and still very much is) used to dehumanize and vilify real-world peoples. Including it makes the game less welcoming to people who have faced and do face discrimination on similar grounds. One doesn’t have to think that orcs are meant to be representative of one’s own ethnicity to be made uncomfortable by the fact that, in the make-believe game people are playing for fun, they like to pretend there’s this group of monsters that it’s ok to kill, for exactly the same reasons people have used to justify killing people like you in real life. Orcs don’t have to represent black people for people to be kinda put off by the fact that some folks get their kicks by imagining there’s this primitive humanoid subspecies who’s inherently violent and needs to be put down, and imagining themeselves as the ones doing the genocide.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Neanderthals are just, people basically. Like, if they weren't extinct, you'd be hard pressed to tell one apart from just any other person

From the UK’s Natural History Museum:

Who were the Neanderthals?

Explore facts about these extinct humans, from looks to lifestyle and abilities.

www.nhm.ac.uk

Their short, stocky physiques were suited to cold environments. The bulky trunk, in addition to their short lower leg and lower arm bones, gave Neanderthals proportions that would have minimised the skin's surface area, presumably to conserve heat under the predominantly colder conditions of the last 200,000 years.

Some researchers argue that this physique also gave the Neanderthals greater power in their arms and legs for close-range ambushes during hunting.

And while they certainly resemble humans, the description and reconstruction posted in the museum site would make them distinguishable from the average Joe by most people.

With that, you’re just a few strokes of a pen from exaggerating them into a suitable Orc replacement. What some researchers argue, you make so mechanically, with exaggeration of their physique and making them slightly more aggressive than standard humans.

 

[Laurefindel]

So if I get it right, the offensive description is that:

The rhetoric used to described orcs as villains is similar (or the same) as the rhetoric used to legitimize prejudice made by a group (usually in position of power) toward another group (usually in minority) in order to make it morally acceptable for the first group.

 

[Dire Bare]

I don't know about "as bad", but most humanoid and giant "monsters" are pretty depraved too. Those described in Volo's are just more precise in their description of loathsomeness. Gnolls and hill giants particularly.

Opposition in D&D (monsters) is built on a paradigm where character-races can be nice and others are enemies, taking roots in the "order vs chaos" origins as a wargame. The simplest solution is too remove orcs completely, but the way monsters are defined, another creature will fill the void left by violent and brutish orcs. The monster manual (and Volo's) is irredeemable if all ideology that can be linked to racism is to be removed.

I'm not sure if the monstrous manual needs to be burned and redone or not, but either orcs are ok(ish) as they are, or all intelligent creatures (short of the most alien minds) are fundamentally just as bad.

Yup. It's not just orcs that are problematic in D&D and other fantasy stories. Orcs are most often used as an example of how race is problematic in D&D as they are probably the most classic bad guy race and are also iconic in one of the most important pieces of source material, Lord of the Rings. But for all of you slipperly-slopers out there, once we fix orcs, we're coming for your hill giants, your hobgoblins, and your drow . . . . I would argue that most races in D&D are problematic to some degree (some way more than others) and each one needs to be re-examined eventually, even the sexy ones with pointy ears.

 

[Guest 6801328]

So if they don't represent real world people, there is no problem. Unless there is a different issue.

P.S. If you're just going to post "We've already explained it" or some variation don't bother because it adds nothing.

Ok! I'll explain it (yet) again!

1. They don't represent real world people. Let's get that out of the way.
2. In the game, they play the role of the "bad guys" to make it clear that part of the point of the game is to kill them and take their stuff.
3. In order to portray bad guys, it's useful to lean on tropes that are widely understood. E.g., relentlessly hungry undead, evil supernatural beings locked in an eternal battle against forces of good, alien geniuses that want to eat our brains, etc.
4. One such portrayal is "stupid, ugly, stooped-posture, violent, irrational, marauding, uncivilized, rapists." For many of us, that immediately triggers a ready-made impression of "evil people that need to be killed."
5. Alas! That trope is so effective that for centuries...millennia...it has been used to justify truly horrid behavior.
6. The thing is, it's not true. It's just not true that some groups of humans are more prone to these behaviors than others.
7. Unfortunately, these lies are not just a thing of the past. Not only are there millions of people still suffering the effects of the behaviors once justified because of these lies, but one reason it is so hard to stamp out is that many people still have, perhaps only subconsciously, a lingering belief that it is true. And some people (e.g. overt white supremacists) even still traffic in those tropes.
8. So not only is it simply hurtful to use this propaganda as a trope in a game, it's possible that it has a subconscious effect of reinforcing a belief that it's kinda sorta maybe true in the real world as well.
9. And isn't just the possibility that this is true enough reason to make a lore change to a game of make-believe, without acting like it's some huge imposition?

 

[Flamestrike]

So if I get it right, the offensive description is that:

The rhetoric used to described orcs as villains is similar (or the same) as the rhetoric used to legitimize prejudice made by a group (usually in position of power) toward another group (usually in minority) in order to make it morally acceptable for the first group...

... to engage in genocide towards the other group.

You left that bit out of the end of your final paragraph.

 

[Dire Bare]

Ok! I'll explain it (yet) again!

1. They don't represent real world people. Let's get that out of the way.
2. In the game, they play the role of the "bad guys" to make it clear that part of the point of the game is to kill them and take their stuff.
3. In order to portray bad guys, it's useful to lean on tropes that are widely understood. E.g., relentlessly hungry undead, evil supernatural beings locked in an eternal battle against forces of good, alien geniuses that want to eat our brains, etc.
4. One such portrayal is "stupid, ugly, stooped-posture, violent, irrational, marauding, uncivilized, rapists." For many of us, that immediately triggers a ready-made impression of "evil people that need to be killed."
5. Alas! That trope is so effective that for centuries...millennia...it has been used to justify truly horrid behavior.
6. The thing is, it's not true. It's just not true that some groups of humans are more prone to these behaviors than others.
7. Unfortunately, these lies are not just a thing of the past. Not only are there millions of people still suffering the effects of the behaviors once justified because of these lies, but one reason it is so hard to stamp out is that many people still have, perhaps only subconsciously, a lingering belief that it is true. And some people (e.g. overt white supremacists) even still traffic in those tropes.
8. So not only is it simply hurtful to use this propaganda as a trope in a game, it's possible that it has a subconscious effect of reinforcing a belief that it's kinda sorta maybe true in the real world as well.
9. And isn't just the possibility that this is true enough reason to make a lore change to a game of make-believe, without acting like it's some huge imposition?

You've explained the problem very well, multiple times. Those who aren't getting it aren't going to suddenly understand . . . . because they don't want to. This argument has been made clear multiple times in multiple threads over the past month, and the same posters still don't seem to understand . . . . it's not because the threads have all gotten super long, it's willful ignorance based in a fear and unwillingness to do the hard work of change.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Yup. It's not just orcs that are problematic in D&D and other fantasy stories. Orcs are most often used as an example of how race is problematic in D&D as they are probably the most classic bad guy race and are also iconic in one of the most important pieces of source material, Lord of the Rings. But for all of you slipperly-slopers out there, once we fix orcs, we're coming for your hill giants, your hobgoblins, and your drow . . . . I would argue that most races in D&D are problematic to some degree (some way more than others) and each one needs to be re-examined eventually, even the sexy ones with pointy ears.

Kind true, though I think there is certain 'uncanny valley of problematic' here. The most problematic stuff tends to be things that are very much like humans but not quite. Once we get to truly bizarre stuff like Beholders the associations really are not there.