Why Orcs beat Elves

[Virel]

Which is why the elves in my 24 year old AD&D campaign expend vast resources on "managing the orcs" or "population reduction". Keeping a viritual civil war of orc tribe verse orc tribe is required. Ensuring the human who also breed rapidly have extreme conflict with orcs is also required. As long as the humans and orcs kill each other in very large numbers Celene thrives.

Happily for the elves with some Gamma World goodies they finally managed to very nearly exterminate the orcish population. It's very necessary for the elf PC's to stay proactive otherwise the orc numbers will increase rapidly again.

This as resulted in fairly large number of evil PC elves in the campaign that are involved with a very shady guild that preforms the functions of MI5/MI6/SAS to an extreme. However, the majority of elves are able to bake their cookies, play the flute, frolic and enjoy life due to the freedom provided by those shady elves that are involved with the guild.

Some players have draw comparisons to the Middle East and a certian nation that is surrounded by hostile forces.

well, by the time elves reach their age of maturity - what is it now, 100? - the orcs will have had 8-9 generations of breeding. It's simple math that orcs will win over time.

So, by the time elf mommy and elf daddy have elf baby #1, the orc mommy from 100 years ago maybe had 8-10 orc babies. Say half made it to breeding age due to violence/war/survival of the fittest, so 4-5. Let's conservatively say 4. If things go similarly for each generation , those 4 orcs will each produce 4 more that reach breeding age.

4x4, or 16 orcs after 22 years
16x4, or 64 orcs after 33 years
64x4, or 256 orcs after 44 years
256x4, or 1012 orcs after 55 years
1012x4, or 4048 orcs after 66 years
4048x4, or 16,000+ orcs over 77 years
16,000+ x4, or 64,000 orcs over 88 years
64,000x4, or 256,000 orcs over 99 years when the baby elf reaches maturity a year later.

 

[fireinthedust]

Frankly, I agree that once we can "turn off the death gene" we wouldn't have to worry aboutr evolution so much that death would be important for it.

HOWEVER: do we have an understanding of what aging is? I mean, is it apoptosis or are we talking about general cell degradation due to wear and tear? Those single-celled organisms didn't die from old age, maybe, but that doesn't mean our process of ageing is anything related to theirs. What causes it?

Also: skill development. The idea that over time we'd perfect skills and technology isn't a bad one. The only problem is learning new concepts rather than relying on old material scientifically; but for the general population i don't see this as an issue. In short, the Elves would spend eons learning to kill orcs, being high-level characters, while Orcs start and finish as low-level threats, mostly.

AD&D had a rule that "demi-humans" had level caps. The reason being that if they didn't, long-lived elves would be vastly more powerful than humans, upsetting the status quo of a human-centered campaign setting. This is an artificial fix for a fairly obvious reality.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Orcs only beat the Elves because they violate the recruitment restrictions.

 

[mmadsen]

In short, the Elves would spend eons learning to kill orcs, being high-level characters, while Orcs start and finish as low-level threats, mostly.

I think the D&D rules lend themselves to an adventurer-centric view, where all experts are expected to be high-level and thus high-hit points. "Real" elves would probably include a tiny subset of master archers and fencers and a much, much larger population of peaceful experts in various crafts.

I'm reminded of the Taarna segment from Heavy Metal, where the advanced, peaceful city is ransacked by orc-like mutant barbarians and has to summon the last of a warrior race to protect -- or, rather, avenge -- them.

AD&D had a rule that "demi-humans" had level caps. The reason being that if they didn't, long-lived elves would be vastly more powerful than humans, upsetting the status quo of a human-centered campaign setting. This is an artificial fix for a fairly obvious reality.

If we go back to the much-debated source material, almost all the high-level characters in Tolkien's Middle Earth are long-lived elves or other not-so-common races.

 

[Stalker0]

I think that the experiment neglects to consider the fact that once humanity is capable of achieving immortality, we will have reached a point where our evolution will most likely be conscious and directed. Essentially, once we're able to turn off the "death gene", we'll be at a point where we don't need nature to do our "pruning" for us; we should be capable of doing so ourselves.

I completely agree with this.

I can easily believe that evolution favors ageing over immortality. And if humanity had arisen to be immortal it could have been a hinderance in our early survival.

But as a species technology has allowed us to adapt quicker than any other species is capable of. While we do not have the genetic variety of many (heck most) species on the planet, we have adapted tremendous inventions that evolution cannot match.

We are now reaching the age where genetic engineering is becoming reality. Even if we become immortal, I see no reason the genetic code of our species could not be adapted to cope with changing times should the need arise.

 

[Kaodi]

I was thinking about this a little bit more over the weekend, and I am beginning to think more and more that it is implausible that elves would beat orcs unless the environment itself was heavily skewed towards the survival of the elves. Also, elves also are in the weird position where their chaotic position would in fact be detrimental to their survival.

Think about it. All you need is one intelligent orcish commander to train his legions for the most brutal war of attrition possible. Elves are known for their women fighting alongside the men, but this is absolutely the best thing that could happen for the intelligent orc commander. If he commands his troops to always go for killing the female elf over the male elf, the population of female elves, needed for child bearing, is going to be eventually depleted. This would be far less of a problem if elves were an orderly society with clearly defined gender roles. But that is not how they are portrayed at all. Similarly, orcs should prefer killing older elves to younger elves.

 

[mmadsen]

All you need is one intelligent orcish commander to train his legions for the most brutal war of attrition possible.

I think the orcs already want to kill all the elves and take their land, whether or not they have a farsighted leader guiding them.

We have a situation where presumably the first few orc hordes fail, but each failure costs the orcs very little in the long term, unless the elves counter-attack and seize orc lands, because the orcs bounce back to full horde-size in a decade or two, while the elves dwindle with each war, because it takes them three or four times as long to raise their next generation.

 

[S'mon]

Elves are known for their women fighting alongside the men, but this is absolutely the best thing that could happen for the intelligent orc commander. If he commands his troops to always go for killing the female elf over the male elf, the population of female elves, needed for child bearing, is going to be eventually depleted. This would be far less of a problem if elves were an orderly society with clearly defined gender roles. But that is not how they are portrayed at all.

In Tolkien & Gygax (see eg 1e MM1) the female elves don't fight/are noncombatant. In Tolkien this is explicitly because they are too precious to risk in battle. I noticed that Peter Jackson didn't retcon this, no female elf warriors - though he did give Elrond's magic power to Arwen.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I was thinking about this a little bit more over the weekend, and I am beginning to think more and more that it is implausible that elves would beat orcs unless the environment itself was heavily skewed towards the survival of the elves. Also, elves also are in the weird position where their chaotic position would in fact be detrimental to their survival.

It depends on the technology gap. And the magical gap. Could high magic wielding elves beat orc warbands? Probably although they might be vulnerable to raids. Putting an army in front of a powerful mage might be as smart as lining one up for a machine gun.

I noticed that Peter Jackson didn't retcon this, no female elf warriors - though he did give Elrond's magic power to Arwen.

I think you mean he gave Glorfindel's power to Arwen.

 

[tuxgeo]

I noticed that Peter Jackson didn't retcon this, no female elf warriors - though he did give Elrond's magic power to Arwen.

I think you mean he gave Glorfindel's power to Arwen.

I think it is both, as follows: Glorfindel had the power to ride alone against the Nine ringwraiths; and Elrond had the power to induce a flash flood in the river Bruinen; and Arwen ended up with both of those powers in the movie version of The Fellowship of the Ring.