Greetings!

Well, Jhkim, when people are arguing about whatever Tolkien said in 1938, whatever he changed his mind about, what Tolkien said in Letter 156, what he said in some interview in 1965--and then argue about what HE REALLY MEANT--and on and on--all when we are talking about fighting against Orcs in a D&D game in 2025, it certainly seems to resemble a "Moralistic Struggle Session." *Laughing*

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK on February 22, 2025, 08:31:57 AMWell, Jhkim, when people are arguing about whatever Tolkien said in 1938, whatever he changed his mind about, what Tolkien said in Letter 156, what he said in some interview in 1965--and then argue about what HE REALLY MEANT--and on and on--all when we are talking about fighting against Orcs in a D&D game in 2025, it certainly seems to resemble a "Moralistic Struggle Session." *Laughing*

C'mon, SHARK. I know you're not actually stupid, and you can distinguish between a forum posting and RPG play.

If the topic is where the idea of orcs came from, then yeah, I'm going to post about Old English etymology and about Tolkien's writings.

Do your RPG sessions consist of your lecturing your players about Mongol history and then threatening to bathe them in napalm if they're communists? No? Then maybe you can make the distinction.

Quote from: jhkim on February 22, 2025, 10:55:46 AMDo your RPG sessions consist of your lecturing your players about Mongol history and then threatening to bathe them in napalm if they're communists? No? Then maybe you can make the distinction.

I used to be play Twilight 2000 back in the day for a short time and that was a legitimate scenario for players to potentially be faced with! 

Quote from: Quasquetonian on February 22, 2025, 01:27:14 AM

Quote from: jhkim on February 21, 2025, 04:21:30 PMThanks for the added detail. Does that invalidate the Klingon comparison, though? Even during the TNG era, the Klingons weren't nice. They eventually had a treaty with the Federation, but they were brutal and lusted for conquest. Pre-peace-treaty they tried to mass execute civilians like the Organians. Even in the TNG era, there were many Star Trek stories where evil Klingon subgroups or individuals were the enemy.

I'm not saying that Warcraft orcs and Klingons are identical, but it seems like they have the same broader archetype of the proud, brutal warrior race. It sounds like the first two games are like pre-peace-treaty Klingons under evil government, and the third game shifted them to be more like the proud barbarians of the TNG era.

I don't think a comparison between Klingons and the orcs from Warcraft is a compelling one.  (EDIT: At least the first two games in the series.)

When people think of the Klingons as a proud and honorable warrior race, they're usually thinking specifically of Worf, an outsider who tries to live up to a highly idealized conception of Klingon culture.  When he meets other flesh-and-blood Klingons, he finds that they cannot live up that same standard, or do not want to, or twist it to suit their own purposes, or merely pay lip service to it.  When Worf chides Yar by saying, "Cowards take hostages.  Klingons do not," it's not an accurate depiction of the Klingon honor code.  It's a guarantee that, by the end of the episode, a Klingon will take hostages and Worf will have to navigate that.

However, even if the Klingons were a proud and honorable warrior race, the orcs in the first two Warcraft games are definitely not.  They're explicitly evil.

You're arguing that early Klingons are not honorable in a human sense - which I would agree with. Klingons taking hostages and engaging in genocide (which they did) makes them more like the original evil Warcraft orcs. I originally used the term "Savage" to describe the archetype, and referred to them as "proud" but didn't mention honor. estar added the qualifier "honorable", and Ratman_tf mentioned "noble savage" early in the thread, which might contribute to some miscommunication.

Do you think there's a better way to describe the archetype that Warcraft orcs represent - especially taking into account the later games?

I want to refer to a "Savage" or "Proud Warrior Race" archetype isn't necessarily noble or honorable - though some could potentially be honorable. It sounds to me like Warcraft orcs go from being sinister evil savages (in the first two games) into being more ambiguous and possibly noble savages in World of Warcraft. But maybe there's a better way to communicate that.

Quote from: jhkim on February 22, 2025, 02:16:45 PM

Quote from: Quasquetonian on February 22, 2025, 01:27:14 AM

Quote from: jhkim on February 21, 2025, 04:21:30 PMThanks for the added detail. Does that invalidate the Klingon comparison, though? Even during the TNG era, the Klingons weren't nice. They eventually had a treaty with the Federation, but they were brutal and lusted for conquest. Pre-peace-treaty they tried to mass execute civilians like the Organians. Even in the TNG era, there were many Star Trek stories where evil Klingon subgroups or individuals were the enemy.

I'm not saying that Warcraft orcs and Klingons are identical, but it seems like they have the same broader archetype of the proud, brutal warrior race. It sounds like the first two games are like pre-peace-treaty Klingons under evil government, and the third game shifted them to be more like the proud barbarians of the TNG era.

I don't think a comparison between Klingons and the orcs from Warcraft is a compelling one.  (EDIT: At least the first two games in the series.)

When people think of the Klingons as a proud and honorable warrior race, they're usually thinking specifically of Worf, an outsider who tries to live up to a highly idealized conception of Klingon culture.  When he meets other flesh-and-blood Klingons, he finds that they cannot live up that same standard, or do not want to, or twist it to suit their own purposes, or merely pay lip service to it.  When Worf chides Yar by saying, "Cowards take hostages.  Klingons do not," it's not an accurate depiction of the Klingon honor code.  It's a guarantee that, by the end of the episode, a Klingon will take hostages and Worf will have to navigate that.

Many times in the various Trek series, especially the Enterprise episode "Judgement", there are Klingons who claim that their society was more honorable and less bloodthirsty. Granted it's off screen, but if we can take that at face value, then it's not unreasonable to think that Klingon society has gone through phases. More honorable, less honorable, more expansionist, less expansionist, etc.
So the Klingons have gone from the more honorable times of pre ENT, to the villany of ENT and TOS, to a more honorable period during TNG and a slide into the hypocracy of DS9 Klingons not living up to the Klingon ideal, and then potentially returning to it after Martok is made Chancellor. Meanwhile individual Klingons (like Worf) try to navigate the shifting culture as best they can.

This is pretty comparable to Warcraft orcs. Who started out as villians, were revealed to have been under the control of demons to explain how shitty they were, broke away and reformed themselves into proud warriors, and then went through various phases of being sympathetic or assholes, depending on the needs of the current game expansion.

Quote from: GnomeWorks on February 19, 2025, 07:15:46 PMAt this point, implementing whatever version of orcs pisses off the most half-shaved-head blue-haired "people" (communists aren't people) possible is the goal.

How about this?  Long ago, on the continent of Africa analogue, a nasty, brutish race evolved from the nasty brutish primates that lived in the jungles.  They engaged in an endless series of tribal wars with stronger tribes terrorizing and enslaving the weaker tribes.  Because of their brutish, violent nature, their societies never advanced and they still live in huts after thousands of years.  A few of them, fed up with the endless bloodshed and barbarism, fled North to Europe analogue or East to China analogue.  They were uplifted into the first humans by benevolent deities who taught them civilization.  They have returned to the cradle of their kind to attempt to bring civilization and advancement to the savage orcs.  They have found that a single powerful orc warlord has revolutionized orc warfare and united many tribes under his banner.  Let's call him Shakaroun the Great.  He plans to wage a war of annihilation against the humans who he sees as a perversion of orc purity.  The orcs are no longer a gaggle of bickering tribes.  They are an organized, disciplined force under a powerful, intelligent leader and they are coming.   

One notion I've had and never capitalized on is an Alexander the Great figure who is leading orcs and the orcs never get tired of marching on to further war and conflict.  Many years later they return to his homeland from the opposite direction having circumnavigated the world.

Quote from: jhkim on February 21, 2025, 12:28:11 PM

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 21, 2025, 11:25:05 AM

Quote from: SHARK on February 21, 2025, 03:55:05 AM*SIGH* I really don't understand all of the hand-wringing over Orcs. There somehow is this kind of deep-seated need to excuse the Orcs, to forgive them, to shelter them or lift them up as somehow good and virtuous and redeemable.

Why all of this desperate need to have Orcs be just misunderstood, and ultimately redeemable to the Light?

Speaking only for myself, it's my basic Catholic disposition that, like Tolkien, wrestles with the moral implications of a race of sapient beings created irredeemable.

To SHARK and Steven Mitchell - Tolkien is the one who created the current archetype of orc, and he is the one who wrote at length about moral implications and said they were not irredeemable -- back in 1954. One of his central themes was about mercy, summed up by Gandalf's quote that Brad posted earlier, "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement."

So the thought of orc redemption isn't a modern SJW thing -- it was something that Tolkien wrestled with in the 1950s.

You're free to have orcs however you want in your campaign. The orcs in my Shadowrun campaign aren't the same as orcs in Tolkien's Middle Earth or orcs in your world of Thandor.

To Chris24601:

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 21, 2025, 11:25:05 AMIn short, they're bad neighbors to all the free cities and other successor states that arose after the Cataclysm wiped the Empire off the map along with 99.9% of the population. They're an evil empire-in-the making and you definitely shouldn't have moral qualms about killing their soldiers in the process of liberating villages and slave camps from their clutches. But they also aren't intrinsically evil. They grow up in an evil culture and most start committing grave moral evils as soon as they reach the age of reason; but if you were to raise them free of their culture they'd just be another mutant with a particular mixed-bag of "cursed blessings" that all mutants in the setting have.

That also solves the moral issues of the orcs, just in the opposite direction of the Shade version. They have moral agency and choose to do evil like the worst stereotypes of the Roman Empire they're built on.

Thanks for the overview of orcs in your campaign world. In my recent campaign world, the Solar Empire (based on the Incans) is objectively good - ruled by a divinely-inspired king chosen by the good-aligned sun god. So you're taking the worst stereotypes of the Roman Empire, and I'm taking the best stereotypes of the Incan Empire.

It's fantasy, so we can do what we want in our own worlds. But in this case, it's made your Roman-inspired orcs evil and my Incan-inspired orcs good.

It isn't "the current archetype of orcs", he invented orcs. They did not exist at all before that. I don't like that you keep implying that there was some kind of old Norse monster called an orc that Tolkien borrowed from, that other writers were also borrowing from later. We don't know anything about what the Norse thing was other than the word, so the whole concept of an orc, the idea that it's the same thing or a related thing to goblins, the idea that they're footsoldiers, the idea of half orcs, the appearance, the behavior, it's all from Lord of the Rings and nowhere else.

Original D&D orcs are taken directly from these orcs. They assumed that you knew what they were already, the same way halflings were originally straight up called hobbits and treants were straight up called ents, and a balor was a balrog.

The iteration comes later as we've already identified with Warcraft and Warhammer, but that has nothing to do with some revival of an old Norse concept. (For what it's worth, elves and dwarves are from old Norse lore or whatever, but in this case you're right, Tolkien created the modern archetype.)

People also keep getting sidetracked on the origins of LOTR orcs and whether they have souls, are redeemable, etc. It doesn't matter. Their depiction in LOTR itself is consistent and doesn't get into those details. Those questions are separate questions from whether they're bigger and stronger than humans (no), green (no), stupid (no), are noble savages (no).

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 21, 2025, 07:52:41 PM

Quote from: crkrueger on February 21, 2025, 07:08:34 PM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 21, 2025, 06:44:16 PM

Quote from: crkrueger on February 21, 2025, 04:33:03 PMThis is all I ever needed for D&D Orcs...

The Grummsh story is cute, but raises some questions about the "good" gods being dicks, and the orcs being justified in their actions due to being unfairly treated.

Well, the point is, no matter what the truth is, the Orcs' entire culture is based on destroying the other races.  Why do Orcs make war?  Because that's what Gruumsh made them for.  They're his weapons in the War against the peoples of the other Gods.  Whether their origin story is true compared to everyone else's, or whether Corellon shot out Gruumsh's eye, etc. is moot.

If Grummsh was just a chaos god of destruction, then he doesn't need an excuse. The chaos gods of 40k (for example) are unrepentant in their aspects. But the story insinuates that Grummsh does have some sense of fairness, if only to make the argument that the other gods cheated him and the orcs hatred (and his) is justified.

This was in the days when Orcs were Lawful/Evil...

Quote from: David Johansen on February 21, 2025, 11:55:45 PMAs for Warhammer Orcs, they changed over time.  Early on, Warhammer Mass Combat Roleplay (ie first edition) Orcs were more Tolkienesque, perhaps because GW moved a lot of their Lord of the Rings line into their Warhammer line when the rights expired.  They were often shorter than men. Around the time of third edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle and First Edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay they got bigger and bulkier.   Possibly starting with the purchase of Nick Lund's orc range of miniatures.  Still Strength 3 toughness 4 though.  Warhammer 40000 Rogue Trader got a three book treatment on Orcs that seems to be where a lot of the Waaaaagh came in as well as much of the silliness though Paul Bonner and Kev Adams certainly gave us some goofy orcs.  I think the biggest change was Brian Neilsen's orcs, especially the multipart orcs with the bigger, beefier arms.  These guys are all miniature Hulks.  This is where we start seeing the Orcs with special rules for "Choppas" and eventually the upgrade to Strength four.  Fantasy Battle has long had a nebulous relationship to 40k, but the idea of Orcs as fungus was certainly hinted at heavily in the Old World Bestiary for second edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.  Best bestiary I've ever read, so much fun.

There's a 19 year gap between the Old World of WFRP1, which predates 40K, and the post-Shitstorm of Chaos second edition.  In WFRP2 (in which WFB and 40K have been legally separated) they're dropping an Easter Egg to the idea that the Old World in a planet in 40K.

Quote from: crkrueger on February 23, 2025, 12:50:57 PM

Quote from: David Johansen on February 21, 2025, 11:55:45 PMAs for Warhammer Orcs, they changed over time.  Early on, Warhammer Mass Combat Roleplay (ie first edition) Orcs were more Tolkienesque, perhaps because GW moved a lot of their Lord of the Rings line into their Warhammer line when the rights expired.  They were often shorter than men. Around the time of third edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle and First Edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay they got bigger and bulkier.   Possibly starting with the purchase of Nick Lund's orc range of miniatures.  Still Strength 3 toughness 4 though.  Warhammer 40000 Rogue Trader got a three book treatment on Orcs that seems to be where a lot of the Waaaaagh came in as well as much of the silliness though Paul Bonner and Kev Adams certainly gave us some goofy orcs.  I think the biggest change was Brian Neilsen's orcs, especially the multipart orcs with the bigger, beefier arms.  These guys are all miniature Hulks.  This is where we start seeing the Orcs with special rules for "Choppas" and eventually the upgrade to Strength four.  Fantasy Battle has long had a nebulous relationship to 40k, but the idea of Orcs as fungus was certainly hinted at heavily in the Old World Bestiary for second edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.  Best bestiary I've ever read, so much fun.

There's a 19 year gap between the Old World of WFRP1, which predates 40K, and the post-Shitstorm of Chaos second edition.  In WFRP2 (in which WFB and 40K have been legally separated) they're dropping an Easter Egg to the idea that the Old World in a planet in 40K.

My impression was that 40K miniatures quickly became the dominant game, though, after it was first created in 1987. Right? That it took 19 years for a second edition seemed to be because the RPG side languished in obscurity compared to the miniatures.

If so, then I think orks from Warhammer 40K miniatures are much more relevant to the cultural zeitgeist.

Sure, but various hints at Warhammer's world existing in the 40k universe predate slotta bases which were a third edition thing.  It's most pronounced in the Realm of Chaos books. There's also an older game called Star Farers from 1981 Citadel Miniatures with Dark Disciples fighting the Space Marines of the Empire with "Bolt Guns" so the ideas are old and intermixed. 

My point is that the Warhammer Ork evolved conceptually over time and there were even female orks if you roll the clock back far enough.

Quote from: jhkim on February 23, 2025, 01:13:44 PM

Quote from: crkrueger on February 23, 2025, 12:50:57 PM

Quote from: David Johansen on February 21, 2025, 11:55:45 PMAs for Warhammer Orcs, they changed over time.  Early on, Warhammer Mass Combat Roleplay (ie first edition) Orcs were more Tolkienesque, perhaps because GW moved a lot of their Lord of the Rings line into their Warhammer line when the rights expired.  They were often shorter than men. Around the time of third edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle and First Edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay they got bigger and bulkier.   Possibly starting with the purchase of Nick Lund's orc range of miniatures.  Still Strength 3 toughness 4 though.  Warhammer 40000 Rogue Trader got a three book treatment on Orcs that seems to be where a lot of the Waaaaagh came in as well as much of the silliness though Paul Bonner and Kev Adams certainly gave us some goofy orcs.  I think the biggest change was Brian Neilsen's orcs, especially the multipart orcs with the bigger, beefier arms.  These guys are all miniature Hulks.  This is where we start seeing the Orcs with special rules for "Choppas" and eventually the upgrade to Strength four.  Fantasy Battle has long had a nebulous relationship to 40k, but the idea of Orcs as fungus was certainly hinted at heavily in the Old World Bestiary for second edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.  Best bestiary I've ever read, so much fun.

There's a 19 year gap between the Old World of WFRP1, which predates 40K, and the post-Shitstorm of Chaos second edition.  In WFRP2 (in which WFB and 40K have been legally separated) they're dropping an Easter Egg to the idea that the Old World in a planet in 40K.

My impression was that 40K miniatures quickly became the dominant game, though, after it was first created in 1987. Right? That it took 19 years for a second edition seemed to be because the RPG side languished in obscurity compared to the miniatures.

If so, then I think orks from Warhammer 40K miniatures are much more relevant to the cultural zeitgeist.

The RPG side has always been viewed poorly by the GW suits.  Dark Heresy sold out in minutes and BL closed up shop the next day.

Warhammer Fantasy as an IP however, kept selling at least 150+ novels, at least a couple dozen video game titles, including an MMO, not to mention another 5 Editions of WFB.

In Warhammer 40K, Orks are a bioengineered Doomsday weapon, a fungal lifeform who are (not born...fruited?) with skills they need genetically encoded.  They also have a psychic aura that increases as they gain in numbers.  Ork vehicles painted red "go fasta" because Orks believe they do.  Their leaders keep growing in size as they win until they can dwarf a small mech.

Warhammer Fantasy Orcs (yes the K vs. C matters) are in a quasi-Tolkienian mode.

I don't think 40K Orks contribute much to the Cultural Zeitgeist outside of 40K.

Quote from: crkrueger on February 23, 2025, 06:57:30 PMIn Warhammer 40K, Orks are a bioengineered Doomsday weapon, a fungal lifeform who are (not born...fruited?) with skills they need genetically encoded. 

Lol, that's actually a good (terminology) question.  Assuming normal fungal terminology, I believe the correct term would be germinate, lol.