I've never understood why orcs and half-orcs have darkvision. I just don't see them as subterranean creatures. To me they are the quintessential barbarian cultures. Which means living outdoors a great deal. Possibly nomadic or semi-nomadic. And it would seem to me to be a whole lot more useful if they had low-light vision. In my last campaign I gave them low-light vision as a replacement for darkvision. Has anyone else ever questioned their darkvision?

Not really, but your reasoning's certainly sound.

I would say it is a hold over from Tolkein orcs of which the D&D orcs have diverged considerably.

I'd agree with Novastar, the reasoning is solid.

I think it does seem to be the Tolkien thing giving them darkvision/daylight penalties. I looked at wikipedia to see if the source for orc in Old English might have a different interpretation but its pretty vague (evil spirit or ogre).
In 3E, there are a couple of other racial variants ( e.g. jungle orc + I think desert orc, in Unearthed Arcana) that don't have the darkvision, if you want to mod them easily for your campaigns.

I can't think of any race more strongly associated with living in "dungeons" than orcs (unless you count Drow as a race, rather than a subrace). The answer to "what kinds of people live in dungeons?" inevitably leads to the answer "orcs" within the top five if it isn't the first answer given.

Living in a dungeon environment without darkvision is basically impossible, so orcs having darkvision is about as necessary as darkvision for dwarves and drow.

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;397807I can't think of any race more strongly associated with living in "dungeons" than orcs (unless you count Drow as a race, rather than a subrace). The answer to "what kinds of people live in dungeons?" inevitably leads to the answer "orcs" within the top five if it isn't the first answer given.

Living in a dungeon environment without darkvision is basically impossible, so orcs having darkvision is about as necessary as darkvision for dwarves and drow.

-Frank

"What kinds of people live in dungeons?"

To me the answer would be, no one. No 'race' lives in a dungeon. Individuals can live in dungeons. It's like asking, 'What race lives in office buildings?'. No one 'lives' in office buildings. Some people however do work in office buildings. For me, orcs are barbarians and the favored class of the half-orc is barbarian. Which means living a lot of your time in the field on raids. And under those circumstances, low-light vision would be a godsend. You can't really use darkvision with missile weapons effectively. Sixty feet is a long distance on a miniature mat. But that is short range in the real world. I'll take low-light vision thanks. Being a barbarian is an outdoors sort of a life. And the orc is the consummate barbarian.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;397807I can't think of any race more strongly associated with living in "dungeons" than orcs (unless you count Drow as a race, rather than a subrace).

See, my answer would be Dwarves and Goblins.
I tend to think of Orcs more as "savage plains barbarians", than dungeon dwellers.

Quote from: Novastar;398086See, my answer would be Dwarves and Goblins.
I tend to think of Orcs more as "savage plains barbarians", than dungeon dwellers.

Exactly. Hordes of savage raiders. descending like an inhuman tide upon the unsuspecting country-side.

The D&D underdark has more living space than Australia. It's a continent. You can be a "Barbarian" and still live in a "Dungeon". Indeed, a ridiculous number of D&D civilizations do exactly that.

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;398100The D&D underdark has more living space than Australia. It's a continent. You can be a "Barbarian" and still live in a "Dungeon". Indeed, a ridiculous number of D&D civilizations do exactly that.

-Frank

And rather than being quite pale, all of them have black or swarthy skin, and are "ebil", too.
I don't tend to jump on the "D&D is racist!" bandwagon, but the Underdark is one of those "Err...ugh..." moments for me.

(The only good arguement I've seen is that Drow & Duegar are "marked", much like Cain from the Bible. But then you get the person going "Why's it gotta be BLACK, though?")

Quote from: Novastar;398133And rather than being quite pale, all of them have black or swarthy skin, and are "ebil", too.
I don't tend to jump on the "D&D is racist!" bandwagon, but the Underdark is one of those "Err...ugh..." moments for me.

(The only good arguement I've seen is that Drow & Duegar are "marked", much like Cain from the Bible. But then you get the person going "Why's it gotta be BLACK, though?")

Both of those races in my campaigns are albino.

Quote from: Novastar;398133And rather than being quite pale, all of them have black or swarthy skin, and are "ebil", too.
I don't tend to jump on the "D&D is racist!" bandwagon, but the Underdark is one of those "Err...ugh..." moments for me.

(The only good arguement I've seen is that Drow & Duegar are "marked", much like Cain from the Bible. But then you get the person going "Why's it gotta be BLACK, though?")

Drow are an "err..." moment for me as well. I ended up running a D&D game for some kids at the local library at one point who I hadn't met and was intending to use a half-drow as an (bad) NPC, only to find a couple of the kids were black. Didn't cause as much fuss as you might expect, but still a bit awkward.

Quote from: Tetsubo;398134Both of those races in my campaigns are albino.

D&D Basic/Mystara had "Shadow Elves" which were albino. In FR canon I think drow were originally jungle-dwellers but migrated to the Underdark.
Come to think of it, Mystara mostly had aboveground orcs in the broken lands ("Orcs of Thar") - shadow elves "exposed" their deformed babies aboveground where they got raised by the orcs.

Drow are black of skin because they are folkloric residents of Helheim. They have skin the color of night, because that's fucking scary and makes a good story. Derro have black skin because they are the same creatures and that is a different transliteration of the same word.

Gygax went off on a nonsensical tirade about how Drow had black skin because of the "ultraviolet radiation" under ground, and they had "ultravision" instead of "infravision" and that was deeply and thoroughly retarded. But in the days since AD&D, D&D has dropped that ultraviolet misunderstanding and we don't really have to think about it at all if we don't want to. And since it's really retarded, we don't want to.

For people who grew up with 3rd edition D&D and not AD&D based anything, it makes perfect sense that Drow are black skinned and that they see in the dark. They have darkvision. Because they live underground, and things that live underground in D&D land have darkvision. They have black skin because black skin is totally cool looking and they are blessed by Lloth.

-Frank

Strangely the exact same thought was on my players minds this Sunday, and thus on mine early, early this morning as i worked on codifying my homebrew houserules (which will replace the patchwork of books from different companies we are currently using, eventually. When I get unlazy enough to actually write out details instead of ideas...).

Yes, Tolkeen's Orcs lived underground, and yes 'orcs' are commonly found in dungeons in some  mythic Ur-D&D we all know about but have probably never actually experienced... but frankly, as subterranian monster humans, they really were co-opted by the Goblinoids in that particular role. More, as Gobliniods are smart critters where as D&D Orcs...well, calling them rocks is an insult to the intelligence of rocks and earth elementals everywhere.   Smart critters can easily be nasty threats due to proper use of tactics, where as Orcs are mostly a threat because they can cut you in half in one blow and apparently feel no pain.