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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Oofta" data-source="post: 8034912" data-attributes="member: 6801845">Let's say I'm running a campaign is in the hinterlands.  A common theme is civilization on the edge, people worried about getting wiped off the map.A great option for that existential threat is orcs as written in the MM.  Raiding hordes, particular hatred of elves.  Okay, now let's say the humans and the elves aren't on the best of terms, maybe an alliance can be formed.  Somebody wants to play a half orc? Cool, some human barbarians allied with the orcs.  Both sides plan to wipe each other out eventually but in the mean time, let's have some fun and some babies.Awesome.  Start of a simple campaign with a couple of easy to grasp hooks, especially if I'm a newbie DM.But let's say orcs don't have an alignment.  Suddenly I have no go-to existential evil threat that everybody knows about*. I don't see why I need orcs at all at this point, I can just use that human barbarian tribe.Or I have some good orcs, some bad.  Okay, I still want a way to identify the bad orcs.  Okay, they all have the same religion.  They all wear cloth hats made of strips of cloth that they wrap around their heads.  Radical terrorist orcs ... oh ... wait.  Oops. I just made them a copy of a real world group of people.Maybe they just tend to be violent and evil menace to society like, I don't know "super predators".  D'oh!  That doesn't work either.Okay so scrap the super predator angle, scrap the headdress.  Nobody will notice that if someone is from a specific region and worships a specific religion they're evil radical terrorists.  But what if I kill all the soldiers?  What about the wife and kids they left at home, am I now responsible for them?  Suddenly we're spending more time discussing the morality and responsibilities of war than playing a beer and pretzels game.This is the reason I want evil orcs as a clear option, more than just "tradition".  I think a game is better if it supports both "traditional" tropes of good vs evil and subverting those tropes into invaders vs indigenous people or somewhere in between.If you subvert those tropes for specific campaigns like Eberron, fantastic!  It's showing of the strength of the game's flexibility.  Like alignment? Use it.  Don't like it? Ignore it, there's nothing mechanical about it anyway.*I assume the vast majority of people that will play D&D are familiar with evil orcs from LOTR.</blockquote>

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