My inspiration for orcs comes mainly from the nightmare sequence in An American Werewolf in London.

Quote from: John Morrow;482071It's radically different enough that it's not that hard to find their thinking described as if it were alien, if not actually calling it "alien" and the difference is not simply a social or cultural one.

Short-lived psychopathic / sociopathic cultures exist in the real world (just not intergenerational ones where child-rearing must be done by members of the psychopathic group). I don't see why a gang of orc psychopaths would be "radically different" from a gang of human psychopaths.

Quote from: Cranewings;482069That's awesome.

Back in the 3.0 days, I used to run a group of orcs (all with two hit dice of course), called "The Bane Lords." There deal was that they were the barbarians - demon worshiping lawful evil barbarians, which destroyed "Rome" and settled the city. The demon worshipers who ruled the orcs used magic to reconstruct the Roman culture (easy to do with Roman slaves).

One time I crushed 3 9th level characters with 3 Bane Lord orcs. They used a 20' spiked pit trap to keep a couple characters busy while they used nets and tridents to stab the other characters to death. Only one PC survived. Ever sense then the Bane Lords were famous.

Just imagine a big group of orcs marching in a disciplined phalanx, being led by a demon worshiper high priest in red robes, dear antlers, the huge ornate banner staff, all chanting some orc war song. It was great.

Nice, man. Shit like that is why I love intelligent humanoid opponents.

Some have suggested (well, Kyle has suggested) that this thread is no longer about RPGs.  Given that this entire most recent page is talking about rpg stuff, I can't say I agree.  So I'm not going to close the thread or anything like that.

However, I will issue a reminder to people that conversation about political topics as such are not allowed on the main RPG forum.  You can talk about RPGs and RPG-related issues, including the political context of RPGs, but make a point of sticking to that context or this thread could be closed or moved.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;482077Short-lived psychopathic / sociopathic cultures exist in the real world (just not intergenerational ones where child-rearing must be done by members of the psychopathic group). I don't see why a gang of orc psychopaths would be "radically different" from a gang of human psychopaths.

I think that's a fair point and you can also accomplish most of what's accomplished by non-human monsters with transformative evens on human individuals, which is what vampires, werewolves, zombies, and so on are pretty much all about.  The point would be to illustrate the changes such psychology would create in an entire species where they are the norm rather than isolated gangs rather, but there are other ways that could be done.

While Martin is incredibly picky about what he thinks qualifies as as being sufficiently alien in that essay (he gives lots of specific examples and picks on everything from Star Trek to Larry Niven) and it's not surprising that the Song of Ice and Fire series contains no non-human monsters, I think he raises a very good point, which is why settings need things like elves, halflings, dwarves, orcs, and so on at all.  Are they there simply because people borrowed them from Tolkien and others and keep using them because they are part of the game?  The main reason why they were in my D&D game is that the players wanted kitchen-sink D&D.  Earlier settings I've done, both science fiction and fantasy, had no non-human sentient creatures.

Why do you have orcs in your setting?  (ADDED: And, yes, I know you talk about them being considered the same species as humans in your one setting, so how different are they?)

Quote from: Cranewings;482073Nice.

What made the orcs different than humans if they have a human style culture? Why were they there if there was only one god? Who made them?

Well, the One God made all the races on the planet. The four "main" races were Human, Orc, Elf and Wolfen. Although their cultures had some similarities - all were fuedalistic in nature, what separated them (obviously) were their physical/mental characteristics. Orcs for instance were hardy but had relatively short life spans. They seemed to take to cultivating the land so made excellent farmers. Green fingers and all that.

God said that he many faces and they could worship him any way they chose and he would grant them power and all that good stuff. So the Elves started a enigmatic nature cult. The dwarves paid homage to Him with a guardian/hearth cult, humans who understand Him the most and started a Cult of Mercy. Everyone got with the program except for the Wolfen who said, sod this and went their own way. Who could blame them ? They were the baddest mofos around and in those early days were already experimenting with democracy.

Regards,
David R

My reason for having them is similar to yours, Morrow: I play kitchen sink D&D. When I can I cut them out or drastically simplify them so that there are only a few nonhuman species.

I've only ever had one setting where I allowed them to proliferate, and that was the Dawnlands. There, the wide variety of demihumans allows me to subvert the tropes and cliches of them to reinforce the weirdness and oddity of the setting (the Dawnlands is a high weirdness setting). And even then, I originally built it as a kitchen sink D&D setting. Now that it's not, I'm thinking of reducing and combining some of the species (specifically, getting rid of Eladrin and replacing them with black elves who are otherwise identical to the Eladrin I currently have).

In Emern, the setting I'm currently using, the PCs are conquistadors and explorers in Emern's equivalent of the New World. Racism and imperialism are modestly important parts of the game (just as they were IRL in the early 16th century), and having hobgoblins and elves to hurl slurs against saves me the distaste and potential misunderstandings that using extremely racially charged terms might (this is also useful because our playing space has a lot of passers-by).

I've appropriated some of the early Spanish and Portugese ethno-racial classification system to help with the distance as well, since none of my PCs speak Spanish or Portugese so the terms mostly come off as exotic and strange rather than with the force of English racial slurs:

Moreno, mulatto, pardo = half-elf or half-hobgoblin;
Criollo = humans or dwarves born in Arkhesh  
The native population of Arkhesh is "mestizo", which means they are a blend of human, dwarf, elf and hobgoblin
Anyone who is unassimilated to Emern / Tash culture is a gente sin razon (people without reason), whereas the Emerns and Tash are gente de razon (people of reason).

Quote from: John Morrow;482108Why do you have orcs in your setting?  (ADDED: And, yes, I know you talk about them being considered the same species as humans in your one setting, so how different are they?)

This is actually most of my settings, when they are present. I see orc-human-elf as ring species, basically.

My orcs generally just serve as a readily identifiable group of barbaric humans that do not correspond to any specific real world race but whose culture is a vicious, violent, and greedy one, and whose goals are probably to loot and savage your home as a result of that. They can be reasoned with or ransomed off, though not always.

I tend to downplay the pig-man element and draw on the greenish skin, giant physique (my orcs tend to be between 6-8 ft. tall and mass 275+ lbs.) and prominent canines (but only rarely tusks).

Quote from: David R;482119Well, the One God made all the races on the planet. The four "main" races were Human, Orc, Elf and Wolfen. Although their cultures had some similarities - all were fuedalistic in nature, what separated them (obviously) were their physical/mental characteristics. Orcs for instance were hardy but had relatively short life spans. They seemed to take to cultivating the land so made excellent farmers. Green fingers and all that.

God said that he many faces and they could worship him any way they chose and he would grant them power and all that good stuff. So the Elves started a enigmatic nature cult. The dwarves paid homage to Him with a guardian/hearth cult, humans who understand Him the most and started a Cult of Mercy. Everyone got with the program except for the Wolfen who said, sod this and went their own way. Who could blame them ? They were the baddest mofos around and in those early days were already experimenting with democracy.

Regards,
David R

Pretty cool.

Quote from: Sigmund;481071This I think I can answer. The way I see it, absolute good and evil would be more of a mythic thing... I didn't see anywhere that referred to Perseus contemplating whether Medusa was redeemable. She was just evil, so he killed her for her head Dualistic alignments, IMO, create more of a mythic feel to a game. The alignments as a spectrum are what allow for more latitude in redeemability and shades of gray. It all depends on the feel a DM wants in the game. There's as much a place for mythic-style good vs. evil struggles as there is for ambiguous, gritty, shades of gray style games IMO. For me, postulating absolutely evil monsters (including orcs) is fine in a game striving for more of a mythic feel. There is no One True Way.

Perseus killed Medusa because he couldn't afford a horse.

Anyway, Greek myths are fucking weird, and usually have little to do with good and evil.

I'll let you guys return to whatever else you were talking about.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;482008"Naturalistically-portrayed" means portrayed as if real. In the case of humanoids, it means that you work out anthropological details about them and imaginatively extrapolate how things would be if they were "really real". When Wile E. Coyote falls off a cliff and then, a scene later, is up and around, still chasing the roadrunner, that's cartoon violence. If instead you show him shattered and bloody, only to be gruesomely and painfully reassembled by some mysterious process, that's a step in the direction of naturalism.

Sigmund, I'm not requiring realism. I'm pointing out the elaborate, but selective fashion, in which realism is being applied, in the name of justifying a scenario where "good" PCs are doing the right thing, with metaphysical certitude, in killing noncombatants.

As soon as you decide on using the genre of fantasy, realism is being selectively applied. I am challenging the assertion that some folks, including you, seem to be advancing that their selections are somehow superior than others.

QuoteThis plays right into the quote in the OP, which I also object to. It's just that in one case you've got somebody saying that D&D and similar games glorify genocide, while in the other, you've got an argument that killing noncombatants can be "necessary" and good. The "facts" being asserted on the two sides aren't too different.

I think you are not reading folk's posts correctly. I have not sen anyone who is saying that killing non-combatants is "good". I am reading that killing evil non-combatants does not automatically make the killer evil, in the context of D&D and it's alignments. There is a major difference if you care to see it.

QuoteWhat this really points out is the logical leap in the OP. The early D&D books (which are the only ones I care about) state that Orcs, goblins, and so forth are evil and/or chaotic. (Some of them IIRC go from Chaotic to LE in the jump from OD&D to AD&D.) AD&D also adds pseudo-anthropological detail about females and young, chieftains, and forth, suggesting that Orcs have culture of a sort.

However, it doesn't follow that characters are compelled or justified in seeking out Orcs to kill and rob (as the OP would have it). Nor does it follow that the scenario of deciding what to do with humanoid young should arise in play, or that, if it does, the right thing to do is to exterminate them. As I believe one of the comments on G+ noted, conflicts with Orcs can be framed by the GM in terms of defense against Orcs who are the aggressors, or punitive/pre-emptive action against Orcs who have done, or are believed to be about to do something nasty.

I don't think there's a whole lot of folks advocating for "good" characters in fantasy games to seek out humanoids to kill just because they are "evil". Even if they are, it does not automatically lead to D&D being designed for the express purpose of this sort of pretend activity. I have not played in such a simplistic game since my early teens, and then it was just because I was still learning the rules. The point is, while there's nothing wrong with pretending such moral dilemmas, there's also nothing wrong with not pretending such moral dilemmas. Groups who pretend their characters just go in and lay waste to the place are not somehow suddenly racists, colonists, lazy, unimaginative, or any other derogatory labels we can apply. They are using a game in a way that entertains them. Who are any of us to judge?

QuoteEven if the action ends up with PCs in control of an Orc settlement, the D&D texts don't state that killing the females and children is necessary, justified, or "good". That's an interpretation brought about by a confluence of elements brought to the table: it's an overly literal interpretation of things like alignment and the listed alignments of humanoids, leading to a grotesque thought-experiment which (I would argue) is outside the scope of the original material. IMO it's perfectly okay to say that naturalistic orcs (shown as having females and young, etc.) are evil in a pragmatic sense--they're attacking you, or you're in a protracted conflict with them, and there's no immediate prospect of their changing their ways. But the scenario of exterminating young, as a good thing, demands this concept of "irredeemable" with absolute foreknowledge that goes well beyond pragmatism.

I agree with you  right up until the last bit. IMO it's also ok to say that orcs are evil in the supernatural sense, including their non-combatants, and that exterminating them is no worse alignment-wise as killing baby dragons, baby beholders, baby harpies, etc. I see absolutely nothing wrong with a DM and group that postulates that orcs are inherently and irredeemably evil for whatever reason, pragmatic or not. It's their fantasy, who are we to say it's wrong? Sure, you might not enjoy that, but that's your personal taste and absolutely nothing more.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;482023If you wish to simply deal with the gods of Deities and Demigods and ignore the many other campaign settings and campaigns hat exist, you are welcome to. You will be alone in doing so, though.

Bullshit. I hold up the Deities and Demigods only as a demonstration of possible approaches, nothing more. If you want to argue otherwise, you will be the one arguing alone. Your approach and ideas are not the only valid approach or ideas. Plus, most of the other published settings contain idea of "gods" that are little different from those included in Deities and Demigods. I am talking about RAW D&D because that's what the OP was talking about. If you want to have a different discussion, perhaps a new thread would be more useful.

QuoteWhile I do not disagree that Melkor himself does not map well to D&D mechanically, certainly he and Sauron are the inspiration for many of the "Supreme Evil Dark Gods" that litter both fantasy fiction and RPG campaigns. Lord of the Rings is mentioned in Appendix N, so this is hardly out of the blue.

No, of course not, and I agree with you here. The problem, however, in holding up Sauron or Melkor as examples in relation to D&D is that in D&D, characters very often can and do travel to other planes to fight and kill "Gods". These D&D gods are not omniscient or omnipotent, and are much closer to the Gods of Greek, Roman, and Scandinavian myth than Tolkien's world. In many campaigns, orcs are imagined as being created by Gruumsh, who's a right evil and angry feller, so orcs being evil and angry is no surprise. In Gruumsh's mythology, he created them to specifically campaign against and exterminate all the other races, who Gruumsh hates. Therefore, it's not out of the realm of believability to pretend that orcs are inherently and irredeemably evil simply because that's the way Gruumsh made them. It's not the only way to view it, of course, but there's nothing wrong with viewing orcs that way, and it doesn't mean such a group are automatically a bunch of racists for doing so.

QuoteThat is equally irrelevant. Tolkien, in Melkor, is using a fictional gloss on a well-established concept in Western religion that _has_ been extensively developed by theologians and artists prior to him (the concept of Satan).

Perhaps for inspiration, but I see very little in Melkor or Sauron that resembles the biblical Satan. Plus, not being a Christian, to me that still holds very little value. Hell, even these so-called theologians and artists can't agree on the nature of God, Satan, or even religion in general. It's definitely not rocket science.

QuoteI talked about omnipotence, not omniscience. An omniscient evil god is almost as problematic conceptually, though.

Fair enough. Most D&D Gods, at least in the RAW, are not omnipotent either. It makes it much harder to travel to the planes of the Gods and kill them if they are omni-anything.

QuoteNo. Nor is it "elitism" to want to have a well-constructed, well-thought through world where things make sense.

What is elitist is to say that not using a well-constructed, well-thought through world where things make "sense" (in as much as they can when the characters can fly, shoot lightning from their hands, and travel to other planes) is inherently better than worlds not given the same treatment in our games of pretend. I will do whatever I and my group wants to do when building our game-world and there is nothing about your choices that makes them inherently better than mine. Let's say I grant JJ his assertion that making orcs iredeemably evil is a feature of lazy and unimaginative world-building (which I'm not, but for argument's sake let's say I do), it still does not make that world-building inherently inferior to JJ's. If I want to be lazy in building my world for my game of pretend, I will. It's just a game of pretend. As long as I and my group are sufficiently enjoying my "lazy" world-building, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it.

Quote from: beejazz;482131Perseus killed Medusa because he couldn't afford a horse.

Anyway, Greek myths are fucking weird, and usually have little to do with good and evil.

I'll let you guys return to whatever else you were talking about.

Depends on how you define "good" and "evil". The myths might not come out and directly address "good" and "evil", but Perseus wasn't there killing Medusa just for fun. He killed Medusa simply to gain a weapon against the Kraken. That it didn't bother him to do so was because Medusa was evil, and delighted in the death of her victims.

I agree, Greek myths are weird.

Quote from: Sigmund;482138Depends on how you define "good" and "evil". The myths might not come out and directly address "good" and "evil", but Perseus wasn't there killing Medusa just for fun. He killed Medusa simply to gain a weapon against the Kraken. That it didn't bother him to do so was because Medusa was evil, and delighted in the death of her victims.

I agree, Greek myths are weird.

He killed Medusa because he promised Polydectes* any gift he wanted because he couldn't afford a horse. He succeeded with the help of Athena, who made Medusa a monster for the sin of being raped (by Poseidon) in her temple. Perseus encountered a serpent called Cetus (not the Kraken) in an unrelated incident on the way home. He killed it because he was interested in Andromeda, who was to be sacrificed to it. Probably not to save any villagers, or he would have killed the many serpents he personally was responsible for spawning on the way home with Medusa's blood.

*some asshole who wanted to bang his mom.

EDIT: That it didn't bother him is because killing monsters (and other heroes) is what Greek heroes do, and that has little to do with morality or external justification.

Quote from: beejazz;482151EDIT: That it didn't bother him is because killing monsters (and other heroes) is what Greek heroes do, and that has little to do with morality or external justification.

Indeed, Greek Mythology is a prime example of ambiguous morality. The gods crap on mortals for the most petty of reasons, blameless victims suffer a great degree of injustice (being turned into monsters and killed by thoughtless heroes for example) and even the heroes themselves are bastards in one form or another - cheats, womanisers, kidnappers, rapists, fratricidal murderers, human sacrificers and so on.

In ancient times 'Hero' did not equate with being good... it just meant he was somebody dangerous who you paid wary respect to.