D&D General Why are "ugly evil orcs" so unpopular?

[Lyxen]

Weird - I think killing something for amusement would be one of the definitions of "evil".

It was a kind of a joke, the description comes from Moldway, in which there are only three alignments, Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic, which is why the orcs were not labelled as evil even though their description is clearly evil.

I don't use orcs unless I'm running a game set in Middle-earth, because I feel like they belong to Tolkien. And there's so many options in D&D to fill that orc role, I don't even feel their absence. Come to think of it, I don't think any of the other DMs in our group use orcs either.

It's a good way of running the game, after thinking about it, I don't think I've used orcs recently either, except for beginners, because it's easier for new players to relate to the LotR movies, with simple savage adversaries which can be quite frightening.

And at the same times, orcs are absolutely iconic in D&D as adversaries, so I would not mind using them, and one of our DMs uses them a lot, although these are Eberron orcs.

And finally, an old story from about 40 years in the past, I was running a game for our usual group, but one lady player had brought her cousin (who was an absolute beginner) to the game, and he had taken point, going down a staircase. And I told him that there was a landing, and that there was an orc there.

His reply has been iconic at least to us, because he came from the south of France and had an extremely strong southern accent: "O conng, putaing de merde, un orc !"

So a typical southern French idiom, but the funny thing is that he had absolutely no idea what an orc was...

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

"Why are "ugly evil orcs" so unpopular?"

Ooh, did I get in before the thread got shut down?

Answer in two parts:

1. They aren't. Or rather, they are only popular with certain groups.

At its core, fantasy has traditionally been simple (and some would say small-c conservative). It uses traditional tropes, and has standard archetypes. There is good, and there is evil. More often than not, you have some variation of the Hero's Journey, and the good vanquishes the evil.

In addition, evil is usually demarcated by clear and obvious indicators- ugliness being a usual example, although the ugliness can be external or internal.

In making the transition to fantasy RPGs, like D&D, where you have combat and indiscriminate killing (at the beginning), it was convenient to be able to say, "This is evil; this can be killed; this is a bag of XP for me to slay." It fit both the standard fantasy archetype and the gaming need.

To the extent gamers have moved away from that model, and to the extent we have more "realistic" fantasy that more accurately delves into psychology (Game of Thrones being the common example people are familiar with, but there are so many others), people are more hesitant to accept these fantasy and D&D tropes.

...unless that's what they want from their game.


2. RPGs and players. The Drizzt corollary.

Look, if you have a humanoid of any type, even something "evil," eventually someone will want to play it. Because it's an RPG. Either they will want to play it evil, or they will want to play it against type. And if they do, they will begin to ask, "Hey, I can't be the only one, right?" As more players do that, it's not longer the exception.

 

[Willie the Duck]

2. The only reasons I see people wanting to play 'evil' humanoid types or monsters as good is a) because they have some social statement to make, b) they are bored with the 'regular' choices.

I have found it moreso that a lot of players simply consider orcs to be part of the 'regular' choices. A lot of them have grown up with, or at least started gaming with, the WoW-esque green-skin-and-tusks-but-otherwise-same-as-elves-and-dwarves orcs. To the question of 'so, are you making some kind of statement?' would get a 'what the heck are you talking about?' kind of response.

I don't even really like Tieflings and Dragonborn, but I'll admit that my love of cats has made me a little partial to Tabaxi, although that doesn't mean I would necessarily allow them as a player choice in a Tolkienesque setting.

Right, and if you are doing a Tolkienesque setting, evil orcs and no tieflings/tabaxi/dragonborn makes all the sense in the world. A lot of people aren't gaming in that paradigm. They are playing in settings influenced by the JRPGs and novels and comics and shows that were influenced by Tolkien and D&D but with changes X, Y, and Z (which includes good-guy devil-childs and orcs and such).

Orcs, goblins, other humanoids are definitely OUT in my campaigns as PC choices, because I'm not going to try and warp the entire milieu of something like, say, Greyhawk, in order to incorporate them as anything other than implacable enemies of the free peoples of good alignment. Orcs walking into a free city populated by humans and demi-humans are going to be slain on sight by someone, and I don't feel obligated as a DM to try and invent clever workarounds for the benefit of one contrary player. Now if EVERYONE in the group wants to play an orc, that's something that can be worked with, but it's going to be a different campaign and setting altogether. Although I probably won't be running it, because I don't run 'PC's are evil' themed games.

If it were a different campaign and setting altogether, why would it have to be a 'PC's are evil' campaign?

 

[Campbell]

I know for me personally I was always somewhat put off that everything in D&D that was big and strong seemed to be also evil and dumb. I personally was drawn to orcs in Warcraft 3 for the same reason why Worf was my favorite character on The Next Generation - because as a bigger, stronger yet socially awkward kid (who at the time only felt normal when wrestling or playing football) they felt a lot more like me than some elf or dwarf.

I did grow up at the time where Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft were pretty much it.

 

[Helpful NPC Thom]

I like ugly Middle Earth orcs. I like greenskin Warhammer orcs. I like they're-just-humans-with-a-different-skin-tone-and-also-tusks World of Warcraft orcs. I love ugly-but-good orcs, too. It just depends on the type of game I'm running.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Would anyone expect otherwise? Pop culture got its first ideas of orcs in 1974. That's 47 years ago. The world today isn't the same as it was a lifetime ago, the people are not the same people - the original players remaining have grown up, and are not the same people they were, and new players with still different thoughts, have entered play.

The world hasn't remained static. The players have not remained static. Cultural artifacts will similarly not remain static. This should not be a surprise.

Exactly. It made all the sense in the world in the mid-late 70s for the great divides in the hobby to be* 'Tolkien or Howard/Lieber/etc?', but at this point there are thousands of influences upon how people view a fantasy game, and people are not beholden to the old framing.
*also: 'did you come from wargaming or not?', but that one's not pertinent to the question at hand.

Mind you, plenty are (my niece is reading LotR now, and loving them fine), just like many people still turn to Star Trek, Star Wars, and Dr. Who for their sci fi (and there are new incarnations of your favorite childhood IP every year), but those are by no means the exclusive ones.

 

[BookTenTiger]

To be honest, I love ugly orcs.

But I also love ugly, strange looking dwarves and elves and halflings and... humans!

I almost never play a traditionally beautiful or handsome character. (After all, I like to play something different than what I'm already so used to.)

 

[Lyxen]

To me there's an interesting parallel that's going on and that's the Drow. Drizzt in a lot of ways falls under the same umbrella as Worf son of Mogh. A member of an "evil" race that fights for good. And while we're moving towards 3 dimensions with the orcs, we don't seem to be doing the same thing with the drow. They're still evil, they still take slaves, and they're still worshiping Lloth.

First, in 5e, orcs by default worship evil orcish deities and are therefore at least drawn/forced to evil (this is in the PH and has never been revised). Second, it was never the case with drows, even though some worship Lolth, not all of them do, and although their society is overall evil, even in Vault of the Drow, Drows are more nuanced than this ("The bands with elven-Drow members will be hostile to all they perceive as part of the system which prevails in their world, and the Dark Elves with them are of the few who are neither totally degenerate nor wholly evil—they are haters of the society around them and see no good in it.").

So, right at the start, and despite what alignement-haters and people with a political agenda claim, it's never been that manichaean and degrading.

And although there is now a strong movement in defense of free will, having entire races and population totally subjugated to evil deities and powers is a strong and interesting fantasy trope, especially when, as intended from the original design, there is room for interesting characters, whether PCs or NPCs, who defy that norm and that corruption, who struggle against it or maybe succumb to it.

So for me, while it's good that there is progress on the overall front of fighting racism in the real world, let's not make unsustained claims about what it actually was even in early D&D or what is currently in the game.

 

[Oofta]

To me there's an interesting parallel that's going on and that's the Drow. Drizzt in a lot of ways falls under the same umbrella as Worf son of Mogh. A member of an "evil" race that fights for good. And while we're moving towards 3 dimensions with the orcs, we don't seem to be doing the same thing with the drow. They're still evil, they still take slaves, and they're still worshiping Lloth.

I think the core problem with orcs that makes it so that we're giving them more depth is that fantasy races were traditionally very white and orcs weren't. There was a lot of discussion around whether orcs were a stand in for people of color and having orcs in that situation while also having them be blanket "evil and dumb" is a BIG issue.

Two things. First, drow are getting a makeover. There are now 3 variations of drow, with the Lollth version being just one. There's been other discussion, if you want to read an article about it: D&D: WotC Adds Three New Types Of Drow, Retcons Drow Lore - Bell of Lost Souls

As far as what group orcs are associated with it has shifted over the years. At one point, people accused Tolkien of basing orcs on the Japanese.

 

[Oofta]

Would anyone expect otherwise? Pop culture got its first ideas of orcs in 1974. That's 47 years ago. The world today isn't the same as it was a lifetime ago, the people are not the same people - the original players remaining have grown up, and are not the same people they were, and new players with still different thoughts, have entered play.

The world hasn't remained static. The players have not remained static. Cultural artifacts will similarly not remain static. This should not be a surprise.

That doesn't really answer anything though. I accept that things change. The question is, why orcs? Fiends are still evil as are gnolls. Why the segregation of "it's okay for these imaginary creatures to be evil, but not these"?