Oh, and here's the "black coded orcs" argument in a nutshell.

Quote from: Insane Nerd Ramblings on June 25, 2024, 10:40:34 PMWhat's ironic about this whole story is that Eru talks to the first Men in Hildórien, where he doesn't speak to the Elves at all. The Vala Oromë finds the Elves and protects them from the depredations of the Orks (aka corrupted Men in service to Melkor) and then later the Maiar Melian (future wife of Thingol Greycloak), Tarindor (Curumo/Saruman), Olorin (Mithrandir/Gandalf), Hrávandil (Aiwendil/Radagast), Palacendo (Pallando/Rómestámo) and Haimenar (Alatar/Morinehtar) arrive to shepherd the Quendi (and do so in their resplendent forms, unlike how they appeared later as The Istari). However, the Valar take no notice of Men having been born....except MAYBE Ulmo and Mandos. Ulmo because he is everywhere water is present and Mandos because all of a sudden Men start coming to him in The Halls WAY before they should have.

   Tolkien has a recurring theme in his later work that the Elves are closer/more like the Valar, while Men have a more unique relationship directly with Eru. As a theologian, I'm inclined to see a subtext of Elves being closer to a state of 'pure nature', and thus falling more under the purview of the Valar, who deal with the natural order, while Men are elevated to the supernatural order and thus have a destiny 'beyond the Circles of the World.'

It still boggles my mind that a sign of someone being "progressive" and "not racist" is to immediately connect but ugly savage Orcs with black people.

I grew up and still live in a Red state and my friends and I played D&D during our most edgy and retarded years. If anyone was going to try and make Orcs into black people it would've been us...yet not a single fucking time did we ever imagine that a god damn Orc is "code" for blacks.

Holy fuck the cultural carpetbaggers that infiltrated the hobby have done irreparable damage and they're just going to get away with it. When their bellies are full from sucking the blood from the hobby scene, they're just going to move to the next unfortunate host, leaving another shriveled corpse in their wake.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on June 26, 2024, 06:30:43 AMOh, and here's the "black coded orcs" argument in a nutshell.

Bull's eye!  You have to be racist to start with in order to be offended by Orcs.

Quote from: jhkim on June 26, 2024, 01:53:26 AMThanks for the details, but I'm not sure how or if we're disagreeing. Do you think that orcs are redeemable, as Tolkien expressed in his 1954 letter? That's the central point I was commenting on.

Well, first of all, D&D Orks and Tolkien's Orks aren't remotely the same. The latter are Humans (Elves, Men, Dwarves, Hobbits and Orks are, in fact, hominids) and fall within the purview of Tolkien's Catholicism. D&D Orks, on the other hand, aren't subject to Catholic thought, being the offspring of a God of Evil (Gruumsh) in a setting where Good & Evil are definable, measurable forces like Electromagnetism. The entire conceit of D&D is that Good/Evil are manifest and not simply something 'in the hearts of Men' and in 'the eye of the beholder'. Once you abandon that core conceit, you may as well give up.

Greetings!

Yeah, "Black Coded" Orcs is simply BS.

As for WOW and D&D--there are vast differences. In WOW, the Draenei, the Orcs, the Goblins, and so on, are all cool, funny, and interesting. The WOTC D&D Woke rationale for Orcs and such is just pathetic, stupid, and hateful.

In WOW, the various races are seasoned with different cultural maps, and are generally positive frameworks. Any kind of criticisms on a racial or social level are merely implied at best. The virtues are front and center, and are also fairly universalized. There is no particular negative stereotyping going on. At the end of the day, WOW's races are all fun.

Noone gets offended.

People--most normal, sane people--remember that WOW is a game. It's supposed to be a bit cartoonish and outlandish, and a bit silly. Extremes are embraced, and highlighted to be fun. Normal people get all of this.

For D&D, well, normal people know this is just a game, too, and have fun with everything. As I mentioned earlier, any "Offense" is really just Marxist crying and racist hatred and division, and drama shrieked about by delusional people.

The hateful Woke ideology is adapted and inspired by its roots in Marxism and Feminism. The "Personal IS Political." Everything is political for the Woke, and their revolutionary, screaming ideology demands that everyone around them must conform to their ideology, or be attacked and destroyed.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Incidentally, does anyone around here know much about the history of how Orcs are portrayed in The Elder Scrolls? After LOTR, D&D, Warhammer, and Warcraft, TES is probably the next most influential fantasy franchise of the last 30 years.

Quote from: SHARK on June 26, 2024, 03:36:42 PMAs for WOW and D&D--there are vast differences. In WOW, the Draenei, the Orcs, the Goblins, and so on, are all cool, funny, and interesting. The WOTC D&D Woke rationale for Orcs and such is just pathetic, stupid, and hateful.

There's a sad irony in the fact that you can draw a direct causal line from well-meaning fantasy writers in the 90s/00s who probably thought of themselves as liberal, wanting to give orcs and goblins more depth and narrative, to their ideological inheritors in the 2020s forcing D&D to remove any kind of depth or character from them. Warhammer/40k, which has never seriously entertained its Orks being anything other than marauding violent simpletons, doesn't really have this controversy. Talk about the road to hell being paved with good intentions.

Quote from: Insane Nerd Ramblings on June 26, 2024, 02:15:13 PMThe entire conceit of D&D is that Good/Evil are manifest and not simply something 'in the hearts of Men' and in 'the eye of the beholder'. Once you abandon that core conceit, you may as well give up.

I mean...why? Lots of fantasy settings get along just fine without that conceit.

Quote from: ForgottenF on June 26, 2024, 06:47:36 PMI mean...why? Lots of fantasy settings get along just fine without that conceit.

Do you realize just how many fucking spells and abilities are built around the detection of Alignment? If you abandon that, congratulations, you're not playing D&D. You're playing some other fantasy game.

The woke like to sweep under the rug the fact that listed alignments are not set in stone even. AD&D explained that in one of the core books. Either the MM or DMG.

Quote from: Insane Nerd Ramblings on June 26, 2024, 07:08:40 PM

Quote from: ForgottenF on June 26, 2024, 06:47:36 PMI mean...why? Lots of fantasy settings get along just fine without that conceit.

Do you realize just how many fucking spells and abilities are built around the detection of Alignment? If you abandon that, congratulations, you're not playing D&D. You're playing some other fantasy game.

Arguing over how alignment works is about the most quintessentially D&D thing I can think of.

Quote from: Valatar on June 26, 2024, 03:30:24 AM

Quote from: jhkim on June 26, 2024, 01:53:26 AMThanks for the details, but I'm not sure how or if we're disagreeing. Do you think that orcs are redeemable, as Tolkien expressed in his 1954 letter? That's the central point I was commenting on.

What does it matter?  Generally any fantasy race is portrayed as sentient and intelligent to some degree; with sufficient perseverance and tolerance to pain one could find a goblin, gnoll, orc, drow, naga, whatever, that was not ravenously homicidal.  Spelljammer and Planescape back in the day both had scenarios where, due to various environmental pressures, races that would be at each others' throats were forced to coexist, so in theory one could go and have a chat with an illithid and walk away with their brain still in their skull.  But that didn't alter the general proclivities of those races; by and large they were still evil and still had an eye out for an opportunity to benefit from causing harm to others.  The fact that an orc can theoretically turn out to be a good person does nothing to change the situation when ten of them are running at you with axes.

You're jumping around settings here. That question was specific to Tolkien - and orcs in Tolkien aren't the same as orcs in Planescape, which aren't the same as orcs in Shadowrun, Eberron, or a dozen other settings.

In an RPG, there are a lot of other situations than pure combat. In my D&D campaign a few years ago, the PCs allied with some kobolds to defeat a tribe of goblins, but they recruited some surviving goblins to work for them instead of turning them over to the kobolds. Those goblins became long-term NPCs in the group. So the question of goblins' nature was important.

This isn't a new thing. G1 had some escaped orc slaves engaged in a fight against the hill giants. B2 had explicit notes on allying with some tribes of humanoids against others. And there's the even older question about what to do with non-combatant orcs, given that the 1977 Monster Manual specified non-combatant orc women and children in every lair.

Different games and settings do different things with orcs. I had a fire-and-brimstone half-orc cleric in a previous campaign, who was dead set against evil. I had a rich-but-shady arms dealer who was an orc as a PC in a GURPS Fantasy campaign. Shadowrun has lots of orcs as a normal part of society, as did my last D&D campaign because of the setting.

Quote from: Insane Nerd Ramblings on June 26, 2024, 02:15:13 PM

Quote from: jhkim on June 26, 2024, 01:53:26 AMThanks for the details, but I'm not sure how or if we're disagreeing. Do you think that orcs are redeemable, as Tolkien expressed in his 1954 letter? That's the central point I was commenting on.

Well, first of all, D&D Orks and Tolkien's Orks aren't remotely the same. The latter are Humans (Elves, Men, Dwarves, Hobbits and Orks are, in fact, hominids) and fall within the purview of Tolkien's Catholicism. D&D Orks, on the other hand, aren't subject to Catholic thought, being the offspring of a God of Evil (Gruumsh) in a setting where Good & Evil are definable, measurable forces like Electromagnetism. The entire conceit of D&D is that Good/Evil are manifest and not simply something 'in the hearts of Men' and in 'the eye of the beholder'. Once you abandon that core conceit, you may as well give up.

I agree that Tolkien and D&D orcs are different, and it sounds like you agree that Tolkien's orcs are in some way human and redeemable. This is contrasted with Eirikrautha's point:

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 25, 2024, 05:07:58 PMModern reframing of orcs as analogues or representations of historical cultures miss the point entirely.  Orcs were never intended to be human-adjacent.  They were "enemies," in a truly existential sense.  Humanizing orcs makes as much sense as humanizing ghouls or leeches...

Point being, I agree that orcs were humanized even to a degree in Tolkien, and I don't see anything wrong with there being very different takes on orcs in different games and settings.

As for D&D requiring manifest Good/Evil alignment, that sounds like a definition question. In practice, D&D has been used for everything from exploring alien spaceships, to historical Vikings, to steampunk-like Eberron, to Gothic Earth, etc. By how you put it, some of these will be "not-D&D" instead of D&D. I don't personally care about that label.

Quote from: ForgottenF on June 26, 2024, 06:47:36 PMIncidentally, does anyone around here know much about the history of how Orcs are portrayed in The Elder Scrolls? After LOTR, D&D, Warhammer, and Warcraft, TES is probably the next most influential fantasy franchise of the last 30 years.

I think of Tamrielian Orcs as stand-ins for stereotypical Germanic tribes on the frontier of Rome: they come across as aggressive and warlike, have good smithing, far less centralised organisation, somewhat different gods, practice weregild, and individually make really good recruits for your legions but maybe you don't want to let them become the majority of the unit... Some will assimilate just fine.

Quote from: Insane Nerd Ramblings on June 26, 2024, 07:08:40 PM

Quote from: ForgottenF on June 26, 2024, 06:47:36 PMI mean...why? Lots of fantasy settings get along just fine without that conceit.

Do you realize just how many fucking spells and abilities are built around the detection of Alignment? If you abandon that, congratulations, you're not playing D&D. You're playing some other fantasy game.

You seem to be stating that as if it were a bad thing; instead of just a thing. There is a vast world of fine fantasy games outside of D&D.

If anything, my biggest gripe would be how many of those alternatives still include far too many elements absorbed from D&D/Tolkein instead of going their own way.

There are way too many settings with savage orcs, magic human-sized elves in the woods and mining mountain dwarves as their defaults. Enough of them also make sure to have a halfling/hobbit expy and when you note the color-coded dragons you know you're dealing with a content creator whose only experience with fantasy is D&D.

Even TSR did better back in the day with its settings like Dragonlance (the whole reason for Draconians was wanting something other than orcs as the foot soldiers of the bad guys), Birthright (each monster was a unique creature, no orcs, only one type of dragon), or Dark Sun (orcs were extinct, no gods, psionics, only a single dragon, etc.) were NOT just repeating the same assumptions with minor variations again and again.

Every WotC supported setting is just a regurgitation of the same things again and again to the point you could mostly define the entire place with a map and what singular trivial element of each race is different (i.e. this time the Halflings live in small communities on the rivers instead of in The Shire or maybe they live on the plains and ride dinosaurs; and the Drow... because every setting must have drow now... are primitives on the Isle of Giants).

Corporate D&D is a tired self-referential property that basically needs outrage marketing to keep eyes on it and edition churn (and splats to sell you the DLC-equivalent character options they left out of the initial release so they could sell it to you later) rather than actually engage in anything genuinely creative.

The real source of "Orcs are coded black" is probably someone from WotC/Hasbro's own marketing department looking for a way to stir up some controversy/virtue signaling points for free advertising.

Sure, as the OP suggests, they probably reached that idea by drawing from WoW's version of orcs (which D&D has been steering their art towards ever since it exploded), but it was the need for more outrage/attention by someone IN WotC that got that connection made in the first place.

Quote from: Chris24601 on June 27, 2024, 08:29:50 AM

Quote from: Insane Nerd Ramblings on June 26, 2024, 07:08:40 PM

Quote from: ForgottenF on June 26, 2024, 06:47:36 PMI mean...why? Lots of fantasy settings get along just fine without that conceit.

Do you realize just how many fucking spells and abilities are built around the detection of Alignment? If you abandon that, congratulations, you're not playing D&D. You're playing some other fantasy game.

You seem to be stating that as if it were a bad thing; instead of just a thing. There is a vast world of fine fantasy games outside of D&D.

If anything, my biggest gripe would be how many of those alternatives still include far too many elements absorbed from D&D/Tolkein instead of going their own way.

There are way too many settings with savage orcs, magic human-sized elves in the woods and mining mountain dwarves as their defaults. Enough of them also make sure to have a halfling/hobbit expy and when you note the color-coded dragons you know you're dealing with a content creator whose only experience with fantasy is D&D.

Even TSR did better back in the day with its settings like Dragonlance (the whole reason for Draconians was wanting something other than orcs as the foot soldiers of the bad guys), Birthright (each monster was a unique creature, no orcs, only one type of dragon), or Dark Sun (orcs were extinct, no gods, psionics, only a single dragon, etc.) were NOT just repeating the same assumptions with minor variations again and again.

Every WotC supported setting is just a regurgitation of the same things again and again to the point you could mostly define the entire place with a map and what singular trivial element of each race is different (i.e. this time the Halflings live in small communities on the rivers instead of in The Shire or maybe they live on the plains and ride dinosaurs; and the Drow... because every setting must have drow now... are primitives on the Isle of Giants).

Corporate D&D is a tired self-referential property that basically needs outrage marketing to keep eyes on it and edition churn (and splats to sell you the DLC-equivalent character options they left out of the initial release so they could sell it to you later) rather than actually engage in anything genuinely creative.

The real source of "Orcs are coded black" is probably someone from WotC/Hasbro's own marketing department looking for a way to stir up some controversy/virtue signaling points for free advertising.

Sure, as the OP suggests, they probably reached that idea by drawing from WoW's version of orcs (which D&D has been steering their art towards ever since it exploded), but it was the need for more outrage/attention by someone IN WotC that got that connection made in the first place.

Greetings!

Chris, I get your frustration and critique of WOTC and D&D for lack of creativity, or any kind of originality.

However, as I have long observed, people in general, and the market as a whole, REJECT NON-STANDARD D&D as a foundation. TALISLANTA provided originality and vast creativity by the trainload...and yet, was a disappointing failure. Tenbones, ever a champion of Talislanta along with myself, also agrees with such an assessment.

All of the frustration and chewing about "I want original worlds and true creativity! Something that breaks away from the Tolkien bubble!" is actually the lament of a distinct minority. The fact is, Talislanta came out in the 1980's. Before that, there was another outstanding and creative game world--Arduin. Both were failures. That was some 40 years ago, and the dynamic has carried through every decade, including the present. The majority *want* Tolkien-Bubble recycles. That's the deep truth, my friend.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Chris24601 on June 27, 2024, 08:29:50 AMEvery WotC supported setting is just a regurgitation of the same things again and again to the point you could mostly define the entire place with a map and what singular trivial element of each race is different (i.e. this time the Halflings live in small communities on the rivers instead of in The Shire or maybe they live on the plains and ride dinosaurs; and the Drow... because every setting must have drow now... are primitives on the Isle of Giants).

WOTC has painted themselves into this creative corner, due to their desire for marketing purposes to have all of their race/class options be playable in all settings.

In fairness, this can be kind of a difficult trap to write your way out of. I often see fantasy settings with unique races and find myself thinking "OK, but you just re-skinned elves, dwarfs and halflings, so what was the point?". I've even seen the reskinning allegation leveled at the Legend of Zelda, with its Zoras, Gorons and Kokiri, though I wouldn't necessarily agree.

Quote from: SHARK on June 27, 2024, 10:02:52 AMAll of the frustration and chewing about "I want original worlds and true creativity! Something that breaks away from the Tolkien bubble!" is actually the lament of a distinct minority. The fact is, Talislanta came out in the 1980's. Before that, there was another outstanding and creative game world--Arduin. Both were failures. That was some 40 years ago, and the dynamic has carried through every decade, including the present. The majority *want* Tolkien-Bubble recycles. That's the deep truth, my friend.

The pattern I've seen in my time with the RPG world is that there is a demand for more out-there and creative concepts, but they have a hard time sticking. You see complaints like Chris' (with which I hugely sympathize) all the time. I believe there's even a TV Tropes entry for "my elves are different". Most DMs go through a phase of trying to make their homebrew settings as unlike classic D&D as possible, but inevitably they always go back to the Tolkien/Gygax standards after a while.

I tend to attribute this to the limitations of the medium. I'm sure I've said this before, but the big difficulty with RPG world-building is getting 4-6 people around the table to all imagine close enough to the same thing. If as a DM you try to describe things to your players that they aren't already familiar with, you up the chances of confusion at the table, and increase the amount of game time you have to spend on exposition. When non-standard fantasy settings are successful, it's usually by importing other extremely well known tropes from horror, scifi or history.

I suspect that if Talislanta had been introduced to the world via a visual medium like a videogame or comic book, it would have had an easier time getting traction. I browse the Roll20 listings from time to time, and there is almost always someone running a One Piece campaign. One Piece is one of the zaniest and most original fantasy settings out there today, but it has 20+ years of comics, movies, TV and videogames out there to explicate its world, and which anyone signing up for that game is going to be familiar with.