I think the reason orcs live in caves is because they were inspired by monsters who turned to stone in the daylight. Those monsters had to live underground and only come out at night.
I like to lean on the idea of Orcs having been created as a race of soldiers for a Dark Overlord, and ask the question "what happens to the Orcs after the Overlord's defeat?" They were made for war, but now that they are no longer bound to their creator, they are scattered, trying to find their place in the world; some become nomadic raiders, others settle down in good locations and only occasionally go out to raid, Viking-style, and yet others offer their service as warriors to any nation or ruler who offers them land and protection.
My answer to the Dark Overlord question is "They form a culture of warriors for hire, raiders, traders who can survive harsh passages other races shun, and because they're the ones that killed the Overlord to throw off their shackles and the shackles of the other races, take over the Overlord's land, where they create a ruling class built around the idea of leadership being based around not just martial skill, but also on how well you can defend the weaker people."
In the oldest incarnation of my homebrew setting (though to some extent it's still relevant, now that I think of it...) I started from a premise: a prophecy saying the gods were coming and they were going to rain fire from above, trash the place, sow the earth with salt and be overall right nuisances. Then came the First King (the locals don't know whether he rose from the world or came to it from somewhere else), who read the prophecy and went "Fuck, gotta do something about it, but you lot look so weak and frail that not even in a thousand generations I can turn you into god-killing soldiers...", so he set out to make the perfect soldiers. (now, for context, the "gods" in this world aren't the gods of DnD-likes) And He made the Orcs: effectively autistic super soldiers, off-black so they could fight at night as well as during the day and, at least so they say, bound in obsidian. (Did he actually use obsidian? I don't know, but the Orcs think he did, so who am I to gainsay them?) Since the dawn of time, then, they have gained a fame for being pretty much the coldest motherfuckers around.
I have a similar thing going on with one of my fantasy worldbuilding projects, wherein the orcs who migrated away from their respective not-Mordor have been able to develop a variety of different warrior cultures, but many others closer to their original homeland have been assimilated and made worse by the various Saurons and Sarumans who rose up in the post-Morgoth power vacuum.
With a few campaign worlds now that I've messed with (well, two of them with one being a 3.5 one and then a 5e one that kind of started as an attempt to rework the old one but then went an entirely different direction into its own thing despite pulling some of the basic stuff from the older version), the Orcs, as they currently are, were bred into existence. The proto-orcs are, from a lore perspective, a result of the 3.5 Unearthed Arcana's Jungle Orcs where they're more of angry, territorial chimps. One of the elven empires found them and essentially bred them for different roles, but largely for heavy labor and expendable troops...and the rarer grey orcs were more of servants but still rather rare there. There's (possibly) more of the proto-orcs out there from wherever they originated from as even the elves don't really remember due to time and several major wars. 5e split the worker and warriors more and made the grey as just another. The soldier breed tended to be in greens/blues, the workers ended with a red/brown skin color. Though, outside of the elven lands where there are still several still as a servant class (having moved up due to cataclysms forcing the High Elves to allow them to start filling in lower classes), the coloration is more of a cultural thing though they greys are rare due to not being as much of use outside of what had been Elven lands. In an area where the elves had a more firm control during their war against an alliance of Humans and Goblinoids (mainly a Hobgoblin group with a few of the others) with a few dwarves mixed in then a LOT of other stupidity mixed in, the disaster at the end meant that there was a lot of the worker stock and the blue/green coloration had vanished, they're a nomadic culture with mammoths and other large beasts where they function as wandering traders in that area, normally welcome to show up. At the other end of the Empire, there are areas that the warriors had been abandoned and are in a more tribal culture, but it varies quite a bit from group to group, with several that could be peaceful to batshit crazy maniacs and a lot of others. I'd also revealed the existence of a 5th group that's referred to as the "Pale Orcs" who, during the cataclysm, when most of the area started dealing with a magically induced, sudden onset ice age, went underground due to some sort of magic calling to them...and whatever it was, wasn't something good. The other orc groups will try to wipe them out if they find them...and if they catch you, normally, you're lucky if they just kill and eat you...
An interesting possible biological result of being able to photosynthesise could be that if they have a way to store the metabolites of respiration (CO2 etc) in their blood or other organ or tissues instead of exhaling it (similar to how the tissues of many diving animals store oxygen), they could use photosynthesis to convert it back into O2, meaning they could live and even thrive in places where the air is far too thin for even the most height-adapted humans (being the main reason an organised human civilisation hasn't tried to wipe them out, they just can't invade the orcs' home without suffering altitude sickness), and while closer to sea level it would be a boost to oxygen availability which, even if it's not enough in the moment to grant them a boost to their strength or speed, could extend their endurance, reduce the rate of lactic acid buildup, and shorten their recovery period meaning they could be ready to go again while a human is still out of breath, all depending of course on the rate of oxygen generation compared to how much we take in through our lungs.
This could also let orcs who live in swamps or near oceans spend a higher portion of time in the water, as long as light is reaching them. They might hang out in water like alligators
So they would breathe in oxygen (and other stuff) and breathe out... Oxygen (and other stuff)? Or would they just store the oxygen as well, turning it back into Co2, which then gets turned back into oxygen and stored... Obviously it wouldn't be perfect, and would constantly be cycled, but I'd find it interesting that an Orc could potentially store a good amount of breath and just- Not have to breathe while in sunlight. You could come across an Orcish Monk sitting in a field bathed in sunlight, not breathing as they meditate. It's also occurred to me that if perhaps Orcs were designed by a god to essentially be better humans, I'm reminded of the old discussion of why Argonians in the Elder Scrolls have breasts, and the idea that they might be biological air tanks for being able to be underwater longer. What if Orcs have breast tissue that double as secondary lungs, or just as oxygen storage? An area that gets cut off from the rest of the respiratory system and is where the Co2 gets continuously recycled into Oxygen. I'm sure I'm missing some biological point where this doesn't work perfectly, and obviously they would still need other food and water and the like. But I could see there being enough leeway to have a community of Orcs somewhere very sunny that just never breathe in the presence of others or something, with no issues.
In my books, I have it that orcs primarily live on a tundra. Their skin is green in the summer and grey in the winter for camouflage. They often hunt mammoths and mastodons, with large mastiffs as common companions. They largely worship the Goddess of Fire, for the warmth of flame needed for the harsh cold, though ancestor reverence is a key component too. Orcs typically seek personal glory through great deeds, which they believe their ancestors will use to determine their role in the Afterlife. Shining a brighter light, as it were. Their ties to fire are more than cultural; it is like the dwarves' association with earth. Orc eyes glow a burning orange, and they are resistant to flame. Some may be tempted toward the corrupt fires of Hell and demons. Orcs historically raided due to their environment and losses by monsters, and the pursuit of glory through battle. The books take place in an industrial revolution, so that has largely been left behind, with orcs having a recognized nation. One orc character is a weaponsmith and engineer. Though, old fears and their more monstrous appearance doesn't make them strongly welcome everywhere.
I like the idea of seasonal skin colour change? What brings it on? ...Just the change in temperature ...or is it diet-related? ...or a mixture of the two? ...or do they just will it?
in my setting orcs are simply a more barbaric race of elves while mostly civilised they are a warrior culture, they look like elves but they have developed a green skin due to high amounts of copper mineral in their water and they're much taller than most elves and practice scarification and tattoo rituals to brand their skin with their clan markings
The Orcs in our recent setting are loosely based on the Chimera Ants from Hunter x Hunter, they have a slight chance to assimilate some of the genetic material of the creatures that they eat into their own body and eventually pass those traits on to their progeny. As such, they've developed a culture of being nomadic monster hunters, with an underlying practices based on eugenics. Essentially they min-max their lives to try to make their blood-line the most powerful it can be. It makes for interesting PC and NPC concepts at any rate.
What about reproductively? Do they assimilate DNA from Species that they capture & enslave? ...or is it just the case that the strong Orcish Geneline dominates/wamps the DNA of other species when interbreeding?
I think, ironically, orcs and elves share a lot of the same issues due to being adapted from Tolkien's works without carrying the context that makes them work in those settings. Elves, for example, are haughty and aloof because Elrond was haughty and aloof. But Elrond was haughty and aloof because he's _been alive for thousands of years_ and has watched almost all of his friends die horribly. He doesn't go with the Fellowship, or strike out to aid Gondor/Rohan, because he's already done this song and dance 5 times and is fucking tired. The last time he lead a big army to help the realms of men was the whole Angmar situation, and that ended with Arnor collapsing anyways and a bunch more of his people dying to only succeed in temporarily driving the Witch King away. The fact that he's still helping _at all_ is honestly a testament to his character, because his life has been one long train of watching evil _nearly_ be defeated only to escape to menace the world later. But then when you apply the Elrond archetype to characters who _aren't_ filled with centuries of trauma, it just makes them come off as assholes which is where you get the annoying snobby elf stereotype. And Orcs have the same problem. Orcs in Tolkien's work are a purely evil race meant to symbolize the worst of humanity. They are brutal, unclean, and murderous, caring only for things of utilitarian value, and motivated primarily by hate. They are mass produced, less people and more automatons of violence, and even among their own kind their lives are viewed as extremely cheap. Whatever Tolkien says about allegory, orcs are extremely allegorical of industrialism and the military industrial complex. They despoil everything they get and then look with greed and envy to lands that haven't been ravaged yet, in the way industrialism chews up the land for all of its resources and then looks to new lands for more. In the books, they're described as chanting the name "Grom" (That giant battering ram they break down the doors of Minas Tirith with) with reverence. They only revere things based on their utility, and love weapons of war especially. And this is why they're brutish and uncreative, because there is no room for art or expression in a world derived purely on utility. And they collapse into infighting without a strong unifying will, because their evil is self consuming. With no force to make them work each other, they don't expand from the lands they've despoiled and recede more and more until they only remain in the most fortified of mountain caves. They don't function without a dark lord... So when you take these character traits from Tolkiens orcs and put them on orcs who _don't_ have a dark lord, instead of being a well crafted critique of fascism, industrialism, and war in general, they just become a weird group of people who genuinely shouldn't be able to survive given how self destructive they are.
Thank you very much... I will second that with vigor. I will add that I'm all for naturalistic verisimilitude in D&D. It's not like with hobbits, were the Tolkien estate could protect their original conceptualization. Tolkien borrowed the word orc, but he really fleshed it out. So like if we are going to use it in D&D, let's accept that there is "alignment". Most Tolkien orcs would eat the falcon. Without a dark lord to discipline and nurture the orcs, they are destine for the endangered species list.
@@jamesnell1999 Oh, I don’t actually hate the idea of orcs diverting from Tolkien’s original vision for them. Quite the contrary, I think it’s necessary, and that’s largely what I was trying to get across. Orcs in Tolkien’s world are an extension of Sauron (who’s an extension of Morgoth, but I digress) and do not work without the context of their setting. They are _baked_ into the Lord of the Rings world, and as such feel disconnected when placed into other settings. Giving them any Dark Lord other than “Legally Distinct Sauron” would leave them with tons of loose ends that go nowhere narratively, while giving them that would make them derivative. My main point is that the orcs in Tolkien’s writings have _meaning_ and that meaning becomes lost and confused when placed into other settings without an understanding of what it was in the first place.
the orcs in my setting are not adapted from tolkein i built them from the ground up to be different, they're simply elves who happen to be taller and more muscular than other elves, they also are green due to copper in their water and they brand their bodies with tattoos and scarification. other than that they look like elves
I personally enjoy orcs portrayed as brutish ignorant muscular jerks, it makes rollplaying them really fun. I would still play them in my world as raiders with limited capacity for creating complex stuff, with few exeptions, but still I really liked the highland living reasoning and the using birds of pray to hunt for game or scout the land. I can totally see that also.
Orcs are green because Jabba's pig faced guards in Return of the Jedi are green. Remember that the AD&D Monster Manual had black and white art of pig faced Orcs at the same time both Star Wars and D&D were really big.
I think going the tolkien route of orcs being corrupted humanoids can still be interesting, as dragon age did with darkspawn, half orcs being the grey wardens who partake orc blood to better fight them. This could also lead to variations of orcs of what was corrupted (as is the case with darkspawn). Their origins could be divine, demonic or a dark lord (A BBEG is returning and making the orcs go on a rampage). This could be periodic as is the case in dragon age and could spread like zombies with bites too depending how you want to portray it. That's not to say orcs as people (like in eberron) isn't a bad idea either but I think both have merit to what sort of story is told. A threat outside the walls or allies in the untamed wilds.
I know this is a preference, but I actually dislike orcs being green. I think grey orcs just look cooler in my opinion. I know it's not everyone's taste, but I just don't like green lol.
Faerun actually does have green orcs, but they're a different species than the grey orcs, and they live outside the Sword Coast. That's why all the published books focus on the Grey Orcs. They also look different.
As much as i love warcraft and it's orcs, i have to deepen the deepdive and throw both under the bus here. That the modern orcs and the society they hail from live above ground sire is cool but they too were originally cave dwellers. As per Warcraft lore at the very birth of the race their home planet's surface was populated by giants larger than any orc made construction. elemental constructs made by titans to combat the even more dangerous effects of overabundant life magic. theorised to be the evolutionary ancestors to the orcs, ogres, gronn and so on. for supposed eons any orc caught above ground was either killed or enslaved untill naturally the orcs made their way to take their world. these giants aventually hunted and killed for sport. or rather, so the tail goes. Some orcish settlements having made their homes out of the bones of such giants. however though if these were the same giants or if the initial threats were even larger is to my knowledge made purposefully dubious.
Very cool to see you talk about Orcs as I am about to run a mini-campaign centered around one of the Orc subraces of my Homebrew World. I agree with your notion that keeping Orcs limited to one area/archetype/alignment is a little reductive, so for my world, I tried to create a presentation of Orcs that was not necessarily all bad, but also kind of justified their thirst to reclaim their ancestral lands while also giving them a bit of cultural/theme diversity. After a war with the allied "civilized" races as you called them, the Ancient Orcs (light green skin) were forced into a ceasefire, the terms of which mandated the great tribes of Orcs to disband and generally scatter to the furthest and most obscure locations in the land. Centuries and a bit of Divine intervention later, the survivors of that war had become four separate subraces by way of their secluded or isolated environments and the adaptations their deities provided them. Frost Orcs (shades of gray to stark white skin), Plains Orcs (yellow to orange and some red skin shades), Mountain Orcs (rich dark greens and brown skin shades), and Water Orcs (teal, blue, and seafoam green shades of skin). Your insights were quite thought provoking and it is neat to see someone with similar thoughts. I am quite happy to have stumbled onto your channel recently, and I am going through the back catalogue currently, cant get enough of the way you break down subjects and provide very sound reasoning to your perspective(s). Not to mention your voice and the cadence in which you speak is very calming and serves well to enthrall the audience. Keep it up my man, excited to see what else you come up with and I hope the channel grows as much as it deserves! Cheers!
Very nice, giving different variants of Orcs. I take the fact that humans have about five different "Races" to suggest that every Species will have similar Variation across the Species. My Elves are Goldenskins, though there also the Moon Elves who are are proper Whiteskins. My Goblins are Greenskins. There is another group of Goblins though that are Greyskins ...they are the ones who escaped the Ancient Ones or who were never caught by them & remained as Primitive Barbarians living in isolated locations, in some certain Mountain Cave, Coastal Cave areas, in some Deserts, Isles, dense Jungle etc. My Grey Elves/Drow are just Grey Goblins that became somewhat civilised. My Orcs are Redskins. My Ogres are Orangeskins. My Trolls are Brown-Skins. Lastly there are the "Night Elves", the blue-skinned Jinnai. Though are a part of the Aeldri-Urukku Line they do not consider themselves as belonging to either Kindred nor yet are they considered so by the others (for various reasons LOL). Yes, Elves, Orcs, Goblins, Ogres, Drow & Trolls are basically just the Caucasians, Asians, Indians, Africans, Melanesians of their Species except that they were explicitly created/engineered as Servant-Worker Castes by the Ancient Ones.
I noticed a distinct difference between a lot of modern fantasy Orcs and Tolkien Orcs; A lot of Orcs are stereotyped as being Violent and Brutish because they are "Uncivilized" but in Tolkien's work Orcs were the colonizers, they are extremely industrial destroying the natural world to fuel the war machine for the sake of conquest and progress. If you want to make "Evil Races" like Orcs the villians in a campaign wouldn't it be better to lean into that Industrial side of things and make Orcs the Industrial and Militaristic super power are invading to colonize and take the land for all it's worth. You could even have sympathetic Orc characters who feel crushed by the system that uses them as another resource.
In a lots of D&D style setting underground doesn't necessarily mean cramped because there is often an underworld of caves and tunnel vast enough to sometime host whole cities. Also their pigmentation doesn't have to be related to light, it's the case for humans and melanine, but even on our earth their is species that owns their color to their alimentation or other factor. I believe for instance Warhammer explains the color as a byproduct of a symbiosis between Orks and a kind of algae or fungi. Then again I dropped of D&D quite some times ago (3rd ed) and as you said the orcs are better treated in other settings. WoW, Pathfinder, heck even Warhammer in its own way flesh them better.
I mean, Warhammer Orks are literally the funniest thing ever and they're perfect the way they are. Also yes, Warhammer Orks are green because they have chlorophyl in their DNA. Which doesn't make sense considering their a fungus/animal hybrid and fungus are categorized on the fact that they specifically _don't_ have chlorophyl. But hey, it's Warhammer, respect the Rule of Cool.
In Tolkien "orc" was a generalized term for what would be goblins and hobgoblins. Orcs came into their own later on possibly in early D&D. The third origin story given for orcs was Peter Jackson's movie adaption, avoiding Saurman's horrific breeding program hinted at in Tolkien's work. The modern massive beefy orcs are more Warhammer and WoWC, classic AD&D orcs are just human-sized. Not a big fan of the whole "Noble Savage" reimagining of orcs. Keep the monsters monstrous unless you're running an adult only gaming group. Fantasy monsters are used to shield younger gamers from all the savagery and sticky moral issues of living in violent dark age raiding cultures. It's OK to kill them and take their stuff because they're monsters.
Orcs as a race of demonic creatures who kill humans predates Tolkien. Orcus is originally a Roman god of the underworld, and orcs were his creatures of shadow that would drag people down into their hell. Tolkien just made them corporeal beings. So fighting against them being evil has always been weird to me, orcs are monsters with no culture or society they only know destruction because they're crafted from chaos (they cannot create, only through destruction can they bring about change).
in my world the orcs played a massive part in the destruction of elven dominion over the continent, and as such are venerated for their role in the wars that liberated everyone from elven rule. they are now rare in the world, but are a deeply respected people exactly because their destruction tends to brings about good, even if it isnt the most diplomatic way forward
I have two variants Alhaihai allies and privateers of the empire before they went to the stars they were shipbuilders and traders Vikorric they were once alhaihai but experimented and propagandized by the dark lord their ideology and whom they serve can effect their literal biology the villains are a race of liches known as serics
in my setting there are species related gods and goddesses but then there's also the common gods for example humanity has the goddess Serona of the healing springs while originally a human god, non-humans also have taken to worshiping her. who's to say race specific gods cannot find worship outside of that race
I remember an online novel I read called "Praise the Orc!" which described the orcs as tribal groups that like strength and honor above all else, but that others despise them due to their innate strength advantage, vilifying them for generations and generations with wrongful stereotypes.
@@Miraihi Not only that, but every new fantasy writer wants to do "new" orcs. I bet you that you will not find "evil orcs" other than in D&D and Tolkien's works and, the rest of the time orcs are depicted, they are all of the noble savage stereotype. I want my damn pig orcs back.
I find it weird how they're always depicted as tribal and low tech when Tolkiens orcs are associated with industry and make "make no beautiful things but they maje many clever ones"
I love the functional connection between your orcs and cacti and succulents xD (and I cannot but smile at the possibly involuntary parallel with GW's take on orcs as mushrooms)
In my world, I mostly combined D&D Lore with my own personal lore, which made them more like the Orc's from WOW: Basically, Orcs originally were much like how they are in D&D (only they're green and live ON mountains & plains rather than caves). the main thing is that one orc chieftain in particular discovered lost history involving Grummsh and Corelion and how the different races choose where to live. Eventually, after several tribes heard about this, they eventually decided to take the duty of the gods in their own hands and choose where they settle, eventually deciding to choose to live in valley's, hills, and mountaintops. they also eventually learned their biological relationship to Goblinoids (Goblins, Hobgoblins, Bugbears, etc.) and started living alongside them, along with other being who share their DNA, which eventually became known as the Goblino-Orcen Collective, which is a treaty which brings together several groups, including, but not limited to: Orcs Goblins Hobgoblins Ogres Etten's Troll's Oni Kappa Tengu (the last three being relatives to ogres, goblins, and hobgoblins respectively, caused by the mutations caused by a region known as Yokaima, which is heavily inspired by Japanese mythology) and Hill Giants Despite this, some other "Raider" groups are usually common enemies to the collective, such as gnolls, Tlincalli (Scorpion People), Sahagun, Bullywugs, etc. as well as their enemies, there are still some Orcs loyal to Grummsh and his hatred for elves. besides their enemies, they usually tend to be prideful warriors who always want to become stronger (only with those part of the collective, its less intense and can come with several meanings, such as skill in a craft, magic, or even interpersonal stuff). They do wield absolutely powerful warbows, rivalling elven bows in quality, along with their tendency to use either more militarized weapons such as Polearms or war swords, or more stylized and flamboyant weaponry, more often used in sparring (yes they have gladiator fights like they did in Rome, although they usually aren't as dangerous or unfair as Rome's gladiators).
Other ideas for the orc/goblin thing I've come up with: * Orcs are goblins who were modified by some wannabe dark-lord to become foot-soldiers, but who eventually rebelled, and afterwards, returned to their original home, becoming guardians to the goblins, who, in turn, became the orcs' craftsmen. * Orcs and goblins are the same species but different genders.
Orcs are females & Goblins male? or vice versa? I like the idea of Orcs as bred up Goblins who now rule as a Military Caste over the Goblin Peasants/Farmers. Maybe Hobgoblins are the Artisans/Craftsmen :)
@@KevinWarburton-tv2iyWell my original idea was ogres and orcs, rather than orcs and goblins, but that's just downsizing. My idea was that females are much bigger, because that allows them to pop out (mostly male) babies at a significant rate, with the males emerging already semi-independent. This supports a nomadic lifestyle in a landscape filled with dangerous predators.
I find it incredibly annoying that so far everyone who "fixes" orcs (not make them fit the world but actually "fix" them) just does some variation of the exact same thing. Noble nature themed warrior culture. Ya'll will go on about the evil races being unrealistic, unimaginative, and boring, but you always do the same thing every time yourselves. You know what i find boring? A fantasy world where nothing actually needs to be fought against. And that is exactly what this hobby is creating.
Since green skin is such a distinguishing and unique trait, I tend to prefer to keep it for the goblinoids, which in my mind are fey descendants (explaining the green colour and aversion to daylight). Instead orcs are more neanderthal-like, with stockier frames built for strength rather than the endurance and speed of humans. Due to their large body mass and shorter limbs, they’re less vulnerable to cold climates, but require more energy dense food such as animal products to survive.
Orcs are first seen in beowulf, as one of the "tribes hated by god." This makes them functionally similar to Nordic trolls, Celtic Sidhe, etc. as a race. That said, I prefer them as a sort of combination of the barbarian tribes from Conan and Chinese steppe nomads.
I would fight 500 elves and I would fight 500 more, just to be the Orc that fought 1000 elves for Gruumsh! I like my 1st edition orcs and am not changing them!
I was yelling "Stop! Cut! Perfect!" around ten minutes. I have nothing against a wide-ranging loose discussion of ideas about orcs like the last 8 minutes. But my Tolkien orcs BBQed your falcons. Sorry about that. It's just the way my orcs are. ; )
Don't know why my comment is not here but the Green Skin of Orcs did not get invented by Gamesworkshop's Warhammer IP. Tim Kirk's "The JRR Tolkien Calendar" from 1975 in the month of September is where they get their Green Skin. Gamesworkshop does this thing where they steal ideas, concepts and names from Tolkien, Dune, Moorcock and DND and change one letter amd claim as their own. It's not a secret. The 8 pointed star of chaos has existed in our real world. But it was Moorcock that used it first to symbolize the Chaos Gods of his universe, not GW. Assume everything GW "creates" came from somewhere else, unless proven otherwise.
games workshop ironically cannot claim Eldar as a trademark because it in the LOTR books is the collective name of elf kind across middle earth if you were a elf you were one of the many peoples of the Eldar and when Arwin chose to become human her father Elrond stated the light of the Eldar was leaving her soul after which she would be human though a human with an extraordinary long life span
I think your idea works best for those that want to be more like tolkien's orcs. I fully believe tolkien's orcs was inspired by how england saw genghis khan's mongol empire. From doing "barbaric actions" for fear tactics to the fact they seem unstoppable but then they suddenly retreat and just disappear only to learn that their leader died causing that retreat and they never could regain that power. So it makes sense to have them respectfully take inspiration from mongolia which also includes the horseback archery as well as plains and mountain life. To me this should be the default rather than mixing it with racist views of africa. Me personally i rather have orcs either be the main sea faring race with a heavy polynesian inspiration because samoan orcs seems great to me and my samoan friends. Can also have them take the role of fantasy humans were they are the western europe inspired castle builders that are constantly waring with the other kingdoms next to them. Plus looking at how the typical fantasy races are with the elves being very agile and able to climb trees, dwarves being great miners with their strength and small size, then why aren't orcs the builders? They can easily carry heavier stone that would require multiple humans and possibly the use of tools when you can just have a orc doing it. It's why for some settings i have the humans being the nomadic plains wakers and for other settings i have humans take the elf spots as the forest dwellers with the elves being the plains walkers with using their bigger ears to be able to hear more from the vast openness of the plains. To me have fun with a idea and get as much out of it as you can. If you're going have them being mongolian inspired take advantage of that with orcs being feared horseback archers and using birds as help.
Glad to see I'm not the only one going Pacific for inspiration. In my world I have the Ma' Uri & the Ma'Ori ...two different branches of Orcs that parted company in the distant past. One settled on the northern coasts of the Southern Continents and built a great Maritime Empire. The other in their ships ventured ever further becoming even greater Seafarers & opening up the way to the colonisation of far-flung Isles and even making it to the eastern shores of the Western Continents. In their explorations though they also faced competition from the Minotaurs of the Sea of Isles, The Halflings of the eastern Migrations and many others. I'm still working on it but just about every Polynesian, Austronesian, Melanesian & Micronesian group will represent a different species.
Many D&D races (particularly Forgotten Realms) in general suffer from their gods being too openly present, but at the very least it does make the amount of monoculturalism feel believable (even if it isn't enjoyable)
Honestly I love orcs as they are in most settings, I personally don't think they need to be fixed. I especially like how they're developed in the Elder Scrolls. They have a lot of depth there without abandoning the core identity of the orc. I think there is an appeal to being somewhat monstrous and unsophisticated in thinking and appearance. Humanizing them too much IMO just takes away what makes them interesting. I think it's a general issue in D&D nowadays that races are basically just becoming humans with an aesthetic coat of paint on top and a few small quirks here and there.
There are two interesting orc civilizations in Pathfinder namely the Belkezen orcs, who outside of a handful of major cities and keeps living seminomadic lives coming back to the largest major river during it annual flooding called the flood truce to hunt and capture game and is slowly dabbling with both trade and alliances with there human nations, and the Matanji, who are effectively a military oligarchy that incorporates and allies with its human and elvish neighbors against the city of Usaro and are renowned Demon hunters because of this.
O! Great topic, I have an example about this very thing from my fantasy setting. For me, orcs are a sub-race of people who lived in a harsh and infertile climate. They developed natural strength and vitality, and also went through a series of internal wars, which hardened them and militarization became the key to their culture. For the most part, they united and were able to develop greatly, especially in terms of military technology, which at that time was ahead of humans and other races, which made them equal to all of them even if they united in one alliance. However, the weakness of the orcs lay in their little knowledge of magic, simply due to the fact that all the ancient dungeons from where the ancient art of magic was dug up were located in the center of the continent where humans and others lived. And the Orcs simply did not have the opportunity to study magic before they migrated to the regions of the human kingdoms. In fact, they are not hostile and do not want war, and will simply try to contact people. However, if aggression is shown towards them first, they will be forced to expect the worst and defend themselves.
I like a lot of these ideas! I do the skin situation a little differently. Rather than making them all categorically one pigmentation (grey, green, etc.) I make my Orcs a wide variety of skin tones, usually pulling from the classics people know. So we have Grey Orcs like DND, Green Orcs like Warhammer, and Terracotta skinned Orcs like the Mag'har in WoW. Just keeps things varied, and it only makes sense that Orc skin would have multiple shades like humans and other fantasy creatures.
In my own campaign I based orcish culture heavily on ancient Mongolian society, with a smattering of other cultures to make then not just an expy. Animal husbandry is incredibly important to my orcs; mundane beasts like horses, dogs, oxen and chickens serve as mounts, companionship, food and labor, not because the orcs CANT do heavy labor but because if you CAN outsource it, why wouldn’t you? But they also tame more exotic creatures, like any of a variety of monsters, primarily as mounts, hunting companions and warbeasts. A horse (or warg, or rhino, or dire lion, or whatever have you) can move significantly faster and let the rider save stamina for fighting, if needed. My orcs also have their own smithing tradition; they craft outstanding weapons and armor in their own distinctive styles, with totems of protector spirits, deities and ancestors unique to either the craftsman or commissioner, and they keep secret the methods of smithing a metal called orichalcum, which (properly worked) can warp time subtly. They’re also not so prolific as raiders. While they do raid in times of hardship (when wild forage is hard to come by and the herds are thin and weak) they’re intelligent enough to know that overdoing it is an easy way to trigger a crusade. Rather, they trade gathered and crafted goods to settlements in areas they travel through; orcish goods are known for being hard wearing and durable to an extreme, and they’re a reliable source of wild plant and animal products from far afield. A common saying is; “If you want a painting or a poem to make you weep, find an elf; for a house or a statue to stand a century, ask a dwarf; for a dagger or a shirt to last a lifetime, seek an orc.” However, they also take up tribute from both caravans and settlements. This is grudgingly accepted because orcs in an area will typically kill or chase off more dangerous threats; both to keep the area safe for themselves and the herds they depend on, and to seek glory in hunting dangerous monsters. Thus, the presence of orcs means a region is going to be much safer, but a bit more expensive.
I've never seen the problem with Orcs being simple. If you want more complex enemies, you use humans, or elves, or some other group who have some practical motivation for their actions. If you want violent brutes without nuance, you use orcs. There's no reason why in a magical setting orcs could not exist as intended. They would be just like humans with innate psychological injury. They are naturally psychopaths, naturally have hyperactive amygdala, etc. Their baseline state is to be the worst of damaged humanity. Some very few might through accident or effort rise above these base instincts, but they would far and away be the exception to the rule. An orc that could behave like an average human would take an equivalent amount of luck and effort as a human behaving like a pure sage. Now, could such a group evolve naturally? It might be unlikely, they stand a good chance of failing to climb the evolutionary ladder to the form of an Orc. But in a magical setting where some rogue wizard or god could take some other sapient creature and "break" them into a shape that fills their purposes, orcs make perfect sense, and would be ecologically stable _enough_ to last throughout the timeline of most fantasy settings.
If orcs are capable of photosynthesis, then their biology is so far removed from humans that it would almost certainly be impossible for them to interbreed. Humans would have a better chance of having kids with an egg-laying species like kobolds, lizardfolk or aarakocra than with a creature so different on the cellular level that it has chloroplasts. If half-orcs existed at all in such a setting, they would have to be created in labs by wizards, much like owlbears and similar oddities.
Interesting video, but I disagree with some of your opinions yet respect your right to discuss opinions. I don't mind the stereotyping that much & yet am open to breaking the stereotype in some ways. Anyhow, my issues with Orcs is simply they have too short of a lifespan potential in the lore! I unfortunately don't have a group to play with:( But, I have created 12 different Lvl 1 Characters in case I found a group. They are all either Elves/Elf Adjacent or Gnomes or Dwarves since they have the best Lifespan Potential and best lore!
In my setting Orcs used to be savage tribes until recently one chieftain united them and started to adopt the organization and strategies of the surrounding civilizations. He declared himself King of the Orcs and started modernizing his kingdom. Due to Orcs' natural endurance and determination, they managed to turn their land into an organized agricultural and military power in just over 60 years. Turns out they are just just about as capable at complex and innovative thinking as humans are, its just they kept getting kicked into the undesirable parts of the continent where survival was too much of a struggle.
In RuneScape a tribe of goblins went underground to avoid “The God Wars” and have evolved to have pale skin but instead of losing eye sight they have super large eyes because as a species they still have use of their eyes. On top of their physical evolution, they became highly intelligent, peaceful and incredibly advanced living isolated for thousands of years
One thing I have always found interesting is that it wasn't the settled peoples who developed things like the Stirrup or other forms of horse technology and development. It was the nomadic or semi-nomadic peoples who developed these things, and then they spread to the settled peoples who used them to solidify their empires. An Orc might not be the kind of person to come up with new forms of smiting or construction, but they'd likely be the leading experts in other fields where they actually do have activity. Taming or using animals, living on the move without major discomfort or risk, living in lands others find dangerous but they find just fine, and using resources they have access to that others do not like special kinds of wood and metal. And these things can have as dramatic effects when introduced, by peace or war, to their settled neighbours just as their advances might shake up the lives of the more nomadic or rural Orcs.
Where do you get the idea from that orcs live in caves? I can't think of a single IP that has orcs mostly living in caves. Goblins yes, but orcs never really. Tolkien maybe, but the orcs as seen in most of fantasy is more taken from the orcs of Mordor and the Uruk Hai from Isenguard, it's the goblins of Moria that are depicted that way, which gave way to the modern idea of goblins, which are far more suited for cave life. Tolkien never really made the distinction between orcs and goblins as such, but after Tolkien the assumption is almost never that orcs live in caves. In D&D I've seen far more orcs in forests and plains than caves. And both in Warhammer and Warcraft orcs are mostly found in badlands, not caves. Caves seem to be mostly a goblin thing in most of fantasy, a much smaller race that is known for its agility, not its strength.
I like the BECMI origin of the chaotic humanoids. They were descended from Beastmen from the north, who were reincarnated humans. The beastmen had highly varied appearances at first but over the millennia numerous distinct races appeared as the beastmen’s chaotic mutations began to yield to stable inheritance of features and traits. Thus Orcs, goblins, kobolds, bugbears, etc. eventually came about and invaded all the lands looking for more hospitable land.
To me, fantasy races (of all kinds) are reflections of human qualities, both positive and negative. Dwarves are about honor, pride, and craftsmanship. Elves are about wisdom, beauty, and harmony. Halflings are about community, friendship, and courage. Meanwhile, Orcs reflect our tendency toward violence, destruction, and conquest (which we absolutely do have in us; just crack open a history book). Stripping the evil out of orcs, in my opinion, strips away their entire purpose as a reflection of the dark aspects of humanity. They're more than just a convenient enemy: they're a warning, that we humans can be just as evil as them, and we should strive to be more like the dwarves, elves, and halflings.
Thing is, you can do that without just making them evil. Elves and orcs as walking allegories strikes me as...well reductive and not a little bit dull. At least when you boil them down to that extent. Dwarves can be stubborn isolationists who hide themselves away from the world behind walls, refusing to take help. Halflings can be overly content, neglecting to consider practical matters of defense due to their somewhat unjustified confidence that everything will be alright in the end. So why can't orcs be noble savages rejecting overly civilized ways without being evil murder raiders.
@@elegantoddity8609 Being "noble" in any capacity implies that there is more good in orcs than bad. Which means they cease to be dark reflections of humanity - they cease to be the bad guys for our fantasy RPGs, which need bad guys. They cease to be warnings of what not to be like. They cease to be _orcs_. That's not to say that there can't be any good orcs ever - there exceptions to every rule. But every exception weakens the identity of the thing. And clear identities for things is what helps people make sense of fantasy worlds, with all sorts of things that don't exist in reality. That's why orcs shouldn't be noble savages.
I think this is very fitting for a story told in the form of a book or a movie, but not for a TTRPG. Essentially the "problem" with orcs starts when players want to play orcs - then they have to go against the idea of orcs as a dark reflection of humanity since players often play heroic or at least not evil characters. This also means orcs have to be more nuanced, and quickly they lose any symbolic meaning they once had. So i agree with you, but i think your idea just doesn't work in table top games.
@@greatestcait Ok but why can't they be reflections without being evil reflections. Yeah we need bad guys but we don't have to make them like, a species of sapients. We have literal demons for this purpose, at least in dnd and similar such stuff, who can do that more literally. Besides entire species of evil just being boring (because no matter what interesting aspects you give them you will be massacring them at the end of the day) we have the dark elves. Should they not exist because elves are supposed to be idealized humanity? If we can have them, why can't we have ascended orcs, (or even make the nobler orcs the original ones like in that Pointy Hat video, even if I have my problems with that itself). I'm all for symmetry and making things make sense. I even understand the usefulness of having enemies whose sole purpose is being bad, who the players can look at and focus on the most efficient way to dispatch them. But there's a point where doing that makes your world bland, lifeless and dull, where you aren't using the trope as effective shorthand anymore but relying on it like a crutch. Instead of making groups of creatures with divergences in how they think compared to us you're just spawning mobs and npcs whose role in stories and games is entirely functional and utilitarian. The halfling farms, the dwarf makes stuff, the elf teaches magic.
The best part, in the Forgotten Realms the grey orcs are a newer subspecies to the more common mountain orcs. In fact, the grey orcs were far more calmer when compared to the mountain orcs. These variants had a dull green skin pigment, but often had a varied appearance overall. The greyification of modern orcs is a recent trend. Also don't be fooled by the mountain orc name, they were just the most common species. They kind of existed everywhere they could.
Lovely video! I personally don't mind alignments being stapled on an entire race and that race having a god associated with them for these things do open up interesting dynamics. But such things must be justifiable: some instinctual need or desire Assuming an entirely different race would have the same needs, tendencies and all is superficial imo, but I do like the direction you're taking it. It's important to note: just because it makes sense doesn't mean it'll happen or is culturally transferrable. Religion and culture are such crucial parts of civilization and how history takes its course, so it's difficult to talk about how orc civilization without that context
It’s funny that you mention Vikings in a video about orcs because Scandinavians at that time were also more than just Vikings; their women had more rights, they had a social hierarchy (Thralls, Karls, and Jarls specifically), there’s a whole mythos with a pantheon of gods, they traded as far as the Byzantine Empire (and some served the Byzantine Emperor as mercenary guards), they had an abundance of amber that they used in their jewelry, and they were quite fond of hygiene and appearance. Heck, they even traveled to North America before the pilgrims. This is kind of a long-winded way of saying Scandinavian culture might be cool to take inspiration from for orcs as long as we give their society more details like that rather than “capture, pillage, and burn everything”
this is true but women were still banned from fighting, shield maidens job was to carry their husband's shield on long marches as well as repairing the shield and if their husband died in battle to bring them back home on their shield so to speak
There are actually two types of Orcs in Forgotten Realms. The grey orcs you mentioned originate from another world and traveled to Faerun via big portal, similar to the orcs in Warcraft. The orcs native to Toril are mountain orcs, and they are generally more hairy and boar-like
8:18 So, this is just making me think of the bond-birds of the Hawkbrothers from Mercedes Lackey. The natural magic thing (and the mental connection to the first mentioned thought) brings to mind an awesome variation on Orcs: Ages ago there was a war of the gods upon the the face of the world. The forces unleashed by these gods walking the physical realm and their mortal champions caused horrible devastation and terrible changes in places, places where everything was altered by the spilled blood of gods or the overwhelming magical energies unleashed there. Warped creatures and plant life abounded in those areas, and can still rise from them as new life is exposed to it especially if born there. (Note: Picture wild magic zones, areas full of living spells, Fallout style mutations, creatures and plants with traits of others or strange magic properties for good or ill.) The only surviving “mortal” race, Elves (Dwarves had yet to breach the surface, they and their gods having stayed out of the conflict) worked to create something to restore the world, a slave-race which would be immune to the corrupting miasma of those areas, the ability and knowledge to cleanse and restore nature in those areas. So were born the Orcs, with natural affinity for Druidic and shamanistic magics (for the spirits of the land and the dead were as twistedly dangerous as warped nature itself in those lands). Long they toiled to restore the twisted and corrupted places, growing more discontent as time passed, for their Elven masters grew ever more contemptuous of their short lives and “crude” forms, becoming increasingly uncaring and cruel towards them. The final spark, which led to rebellion against their creators and an abiding hatred, came when they discovered a new race, the Goblins. The Elves were horrified by them, and the thought that the corruption twisted either their own kin or one of the other Dawn Races into such twisted primitive things, they ordered their Orc slaves to destroy them, wipe them out. The Orcs refused, turning against their creators and waging war against them to save the Goblins, who committed no crime beyond existing as something the Elves didn’t control and being beneath the Elves standards of beauty and decorum. The Elves, already in a war with the newly emerged Dwarves, had no hope of retaining control of their creations. The Orcs now continue their semi-nomadic lifestyle, searching for places or creatures of the old corruption (or any newly created such places/creatures) cleansing such places, ending such creatures (if they need to be), and aiding nature.
The way that I run orcs is borrowed from their depiction in Delicious in Dungeon, Dhakaani goblins from Eberron, and the Wildlings from Ice & Fire. Orcs were once the most prominent humanoid species which had their own more permanent kingdoms and civilizations before being forced into a diaspora by the elves (who invaded and dominated orcish land), forcing them into remote locations like caves, deserts, and mountains as well as sparking a nomadic culture. This culture coupled with the fact that their resources were nearly entirely depleted by the elves (and subsequently the dwarves and humans) forced them to adopt either raiding or druidic practices (druids being the majority) to sustain their tribes. Human civilizations only recently began accepting more orcs into some specific cities but the prejudice toward them is still fairly negative due to the formerly mentioned raiding practices of a small number of tribes. In my fantasy, orcs are a misunderstood people who, due to their situation, have had to adapt and make hard decisions. I also let orcs have a wide variety of pigmentation: green being more prominent in grasslands and forests, tan in deserts, grey in rocky areas and caves, and even blues in snowy regions. I really like these guys LOL.
I imagine orcs as nomadic with the ability to not only survive but thrive anywhere. And the only animals they work with being large dire wolves hunting and working together.
I did two different methods in my D&D world for orcs. The 'blatantly evil' Orcs are all followers of an Evil Ravager god. The other Orcs are all Vikingesque, built a kingdom and are traders, also they do raid south during harsh seasons.
I've been working on an orc-like race for my worldbuilding and it's surprising how similar it is to what you're describing. Although i feel like they would absolutely maintain herds of animals. Bigger bodies means a higher food requirement, a reliable source of food is necessary on top what can be foraged and hunted.
The green color and the aversion to sunlight and blood thirst, and seemingly aversion to positive energies, perhaps hints at something involving necromancy/vampirism/ghoulism
I like to think orcs team up with goblins because they look similar to orcish children. Like they know they’re not children but is similar to how humans feel about things that reminds them of children
I think you’d really like the comic book ‘The Hunger and the Dusk’ by G. Willow Wilson and Christian Wildgoose. The Orcs in the series are heavily inspired by the Mongols, with a semi-nomadic culture built around their herds of oxen. Their ongoing war with the humans is driven by their need for grazing land clashing with the sedentary humans’ need for land to plant crops. One Orc even says to a human at one point “where your crops grow, our herds starve’.
I don't think Tolkien really portrayed orcs as uncreative. In his works, orcs are depicted as singing, decorating their armor with painted designs, producing different styles of armor, and even having distinctive architecture in places like Mordor where they weren't living in caves.
My favorite orc homebrew culture so far has been basically "horse nomads but in the sky" crossed with the classic orcish warriors and raiders. So they were nomadic raiders hunters and mercenaries who rode giant bats. Orcish bat bows and air lancers served a lot of cities as warbands for a price and frequently facilitated trade
in one of my home brew campaigns, my orcs were created as that cannon fodder by the fallen giants, who were at war with their children the dwarves , however these orcs were freed by there brothers the dwarves and had a slavic type of culture , where the dwarves had a very norse like culture, i had a hobgoblin otterman style empire, this also lead to orc-dwarf parented children etc .
in my setting orcs are simply a more barbaric race of elves, they look like elves but they have developed a green skin due to high amounts of copper mineral in their water and they're much taller than most elves and practice scarification rituals to brand their skin with their clan markings
There is a quote attributed to Tolkien, that goed as: "we where all orcs in the great war". How truly is that quote from Tolkien aside, I think Tolkien himself never was quite satisfied to the origin of his orcs, and how they could be "better orcs" as you put it. In Tolkien's writings, orcs are adversarial and antagonists, but even there, here and there are bits that show that they do have a culture, a life beyond their dark lords wars. I personally like in modern fantasy, where the magical creatures of the past have become races of peoples, to be people. And people can do terrible things, but they often justify it to themselves.
A thing about the war bow : Pretty much every ranged weapon becomes more deadly with greater strenght ... Atlatals or javelins would also carry immense amounts of momentum to the target , And since we have both modern day evidence from african hunters using javelin and spears to hunt elephants , As well as archelogical and experimental evidence of atlatals being able to pierce deep into large preys , I suggest to make javelins and atlatals the weapon of choice for megafaunal hunters
I could see an underappreciated potential for synergy and trade between centaurs and orcs if they both prefer relatively continental environments, but have different diets and habitat preferences. They're just different enough to have overlapping territories without competing, and their abilities mean comparative advantages in food production will help encourage trade.
I have orcs in my world but there are three types on their homeworld. - Green Orcs: Who live in forests. - Blue Orcs: Who dwelled in tundras and boreal forests gaining blue skin and a lot of white hair similar to fur and humans made the legends of Yetis from them. - Red Orcs: Also called Ash Orcs evolved in volcanic areas and can gain nutrition from igneous rocks.
Orcs in my setting were initially mountain and hill people -- largely ribal, and crepuscular/nocturnal since the have sunlight sensitivity and good night vision. As of the "present" in the world -- very few orcs in the north part of the worls still live in mountains and hills; most have been pushed into swamps, by the exxpansions of dwarves, elves, and humans. Which is an environment they can ... kind of get by in, but not thrive in generally. A lot of their raiding is because the environment they've been pushed to is difficult for them to survive in, and they routinely need to raid for materials and resources that are lacking in the areas they've been forced into. They also have a historical, ancestral claim to the hills and mountains, and occasionally they put together an army to try to reclaim some of the lost territory (with mixed results); others have integrated into the societies that forced them out, or find ways to survive as small scattered communities in their former homelands. The orcs in the west -- where they were able to keep their mountains -- are less prone to aggressive raiding and war activities; though still engage in it to some extent because often they just can't get enough food in the mountains for their current population and so have to come raid the neighboring societies to make up the difference. (They also... just don't have the lack of creativity, some of the northern orcs have cities and all of them have had some creative adaptions to make their new home more hospitable and such.)
I feel obligated to bring Fateforge Orcs here : two very different cultures, born of a mightily important event (the ascend to godhood of an half-orc and how some orcs saw him as going overboard and totally not respecting orcish culture and tradition in his conquests as a mortal while others followed suit and paid a heavy price) but each being complex, with good and bad parts and frankly an overall awesome take on orcish violence being actually extremely borned and controlled through faith, traditions and sets of rules (no slaves for instance!). ANd they did so for all goblinoids and it rocks.
My orcs are one of the first races created, and thus resemble their patron god the most closely. This being Gruumsh, who's more of a god of conflict and violence. As such, they view the world through a lens of winning fights. Mining is winning fights against the ground, woodsmanship is winning fights against trees etc. They are also renowned surgeons, skilled in nonmagical healing (which is still important since magical healing has limits), since they view it as 'battle against death itself'. However, this leads to two persistant problems. The first is that they're not great at writing stuff down or solving problems permanently, because that ends the cycles of conflict and violence that they see as personal growth and holy tribute to Gruumsh. The second is that this extends to greetings and socialisation - Orcs will happily raid each other's villages, viewing it as a social gathering. Unfortunately, this applies to other races. It took a very long time to finally bridge the gap and bring about relative peace, and there's still many tribes that prefer the old ways of doing things.
I posted this on Pointy Hat's video as well, but a while back I was also frustrated with Orc lore and tried to fix it a little, even made a blurb from the Orc's perspective. Here it is if anyone wants to use it: Little is as often told or as poorly understood as Orcish history. The Elves hold they were born from the blood of the god Gruumsh when he lost his eye in battle. The Dwarves tell that when the One-Eyed God marched on their ancient kingdoms he realized he would need an army, and so fed his blood to wild boars giving them humanoid form. Many Humans maintain He Who Watches led the Orcs from the depths of the Abyss to wage war upon the Material Plane. What is truly fascinating is how far removed these tales are from what the Orcs themselves tell. Recent scholarship focusing on using Half-Orcs as mediators and contributors in interviewing various tribes about their religious traditions has allowed us to piece together a consistent cultural narrative, which follows. In their own tongue the Orcs are called _Margumhai_, or “the Exiled People'' for where they are is not where they are from, and where they are from they can never return. Where they are from differs from telling to telling depending on the location and the neighbors of the orcs, sometimes it is an idyllic cave, sometimes a sylvan forest, other times verdant fields or green valleys. It is always called _Bhoguzg_ ``good land” and it is said that in those times the orcs knew no war and ate no meat, but farmed and foraged in harmony with the land. Then came the _Ashurzish_ “first enemy” and they were driven out and hunted like animals, their homes burned, their land stolen, never to be returned, who the first enemy is varies from telling to telling as well, but it is usually one of the longer lived races like Elves or Dwarves, though some vivid and savage tales of the first enemy depict them as being Humans. It is said for three days and three nights the survivors fled from the first enemy, until they could run no more and collapsed exhausted. The land they came to was not as good as from where they they had fled, but it was still good. So they set themselves down there, keeping careful watch for others, but living in peace, and for a time they prospered. Then they found the _Grakish_ ``second enemy”. The second enemy is almost always the Drow or the Humans, though occasionally it can be more exotic races like the Dragonborn or even a group of fiends. The Orcs tried to introduce themselves to the _Grakish_, but to no avail, the _Grakish_ raided them constantly, enslaving all they caught, and killing many. The Orcs tried to resist, but to no avail, they were too weak and knew little of war, and so they fled. For thirty days and thirty nights they fled, resting little and eating less, until the _Grakish_ were far behind them, and none could recall the way back to _Bhoguzg_. This land was much harsher, and they struggled to feed themselves from the meager bounty of the land. They persevered despite this, and there was peace for a time. Then they found the city of the _Gakhish_ “third enemy”, usually Dwarves, Elves, or Humans. Wary after so much conflict they hid their tribes and sent scouts to see what kind of folk were in this city. They saw many wonders there, and hiding their faces spoke to the _Gakhish_, and found them reasonable, and friendly. So the tribes came out of hiding, seeking to join hands with their neighbors, so that their wandering might end at last. But it was not to be, for the Orcs were hateful to the sight of the _Gakhish_. The city-folk reviled them as bestial, ugly, even demonic. The _Gakhish_ drove the orcs away, mobs searching the countryside for them. Outnumbered 100 to 1, they once again fled. For 300 days and 300 nights they traveled, until they came to the edge of the world. There it was truly barren, and there was little to eat, and many predators seeking to eat them. The elders despaired, for now they were truly lost, too weak to go anywhere else, but not strong enough to live there. There, at the edge of the world they found their god, Gruumsh. He was tired, he was battered, wounded, defeated, and driven out just like they were. Yet he was strong, proud, and unafraid. They had been driven there because of their weakness, but he had come there to regain his strength. Then _Durub_, first High Chief of the Orcs whose name now simply means “ruler”, knelt before the resting war god in supplication. “Oh Mighty One, we have traveled far in weakness, driven from place to place by the cruel will of others. We offer you our service for ever and ever, if you will only lead us in strength.” Gruumsh looked down with his one remaining eye, and his mouth twisted into a fierce grin as he replied “Know that *I AM Gruumsh*. As long as I have walked I have not known peace, and as long as you walk with me your fate shall be the same. But I can promise strength to you beyond what you have ever known.” So the deal was struck, and Gruumsh gave each man and woman of age a spear and took them on a hunt. The _Ashurzaz_ “first kill” is its own legend, but when the tribe drank the blood of the kill and ate its flesh they grew strong, and resolved to never be driven away again. They would reclaim their homeland, and if they had forgotten where it was that simply meant they would have to keep conquering until they found it. Then they would build strong walls and sturdy gates, and their children would grow fat on fruit and grain. But the men and women would be ever vigilant, never again would they suffer exile, never again would they be helpless. Now they were war made flesh, and flesh made strong. Such is the history of the Orcs, according to the tales they tell themselves. --John Reuel, Professor of the College of Lore
In my world Orcs are heavily inspired by the Monster Hunter franchise. Orcs and Goblins are green and striped, brindled or spotted to blend in with the jungle areas that cover most of the islands. The islands where they are native to also hold gargantuan monsters of all kinds that attack pretty much any permanent settlement, so they keep their camps on the move and largely forgo metal unless totally necessary because they can't just set up a village and a forge and all that. They are naturally very strong and train to be far stronger, they have a deep culture of hunting, and wrestling in outfits inspired by the monsters they hunt. They use their incredible strength and resilience to kill the monsters that come their way and harvest everything they can from it. Meat to feed the tribe, scales and fur for cloth and clothes, bones and sinew for structure or for armour and weapons. They journey between forges hidden deep in the volcanic mountains to use the heat for forging metal on rare occasions, typically the hunt-leader gets their own metal weapon when they take the position, and any other metal is used for ceremonial knives used in the Ritual of Carving at the end of each hunt. Goblins fill a similar niche to Palicoes in this setting, I thought the idea of these little green guys who are incredibly durable and just wanna do their best to help out the big strong orcs is fun, they typically take on the role of caretakers and artisans whenever the tribe sets up camp for the week, cooking, crafting or patching up clothes and helping set up tents etc. When Humans and Elves and other folks come to the islands where Orcs live, they find out how much of a bad idea it is to try colonise the place and set up castles and try to arrange political marriages with the daughters of hunt-leaders. The Orcs fight colossal lizards and megafauna for a living, crushing humans is child's play. Not that they need to fight them when said megafauna rolls up and destroys the entire colony after only a month of magically erecting the castle.
I am really firmly against this movement to make every fantasy race much more human in mindset. I say "race" because "species" is not technically accurate, but in a lot of ways, the fantasy races really are distantly related or not related at all. We shouldn't expect them to conform to human sensibilities, although most of the time, they do over-express some aspect of humanity (hence orcs' preference to violence). The Forgotten Realms actually DOESN'T paint orcs with a single brush; that's just an assumption people make about it. There are two main subraces with different origins and many different tribes. I'm not a huge fan of adopted Warhammer lore (I think that franchise is pretty ridiculous) or Wacraft lore, and even grey-skinned orcs deviate far from the original D&D concept where they were pig-like (like Ganon). With that said, I'm not really for making them green. I'm definitely against making them photosynthetic because a lot of people play as then, and effectively removing survival gameplay from the game is not the direction I like things to go in. However, if you are going to go there, their photosynthesis would go a long way to explain their CON. We get fatigued primarily not due to a lack of oxygen, but because of a build-up of CO2. Photosynthesis uses CO2. So if they could process some of the CO2 they are making (at least when exposed to sunlight), they would become less fatigued from activity. Of course, that would only work in daylight, so it doesn't completely work. I find it a bit ironic that you set out to excise biological essentialism from the orcs and then proceeded to start rebuilding the race by how the color of their skin defines them. Almost everything you said about them related to their biology. I don't actually think that's bad, but I don't see how you removed the biological essentialism. I'd also like to point out that there are plenty of evil civilizations in D&D. So implying that D&D singles out nomadic cultures as evil is absolutely wrong. And I also find it weird that you are so bothered by racial pantheons. Like... back in the bronze age, each people group had their own pantheon.
I think the balance is in the middle. Yes each Race/Species would have their own Folklore/ Mythology/Pantheon/Religion ...but they would not be limited to just that/constrained just by that. In a real fantasy world, people mingle, ideas cross-fertilise. Aspirational Universalist Cults/Religions are born. Crusades & Jihads are called. People are converted by sword & flame or by Missionaries, or by Traders, or a particular localised Cult or a particular species FMPR is adopted as a State Religion by an Emperor (eg Rome) or another Emperor mandates Freedom of Religion with a certain amount of State support for/incorporation of each FMPR (eg Cyrus The Great) or a Ruler builds or attempts to build a Synthesist State Religion eg Akhenaten or Akbar or two religions mix/intertwine in a border area and give birth to something new eg Sikhism hybridising elements of both Islam & Hinduism. Sometimes a conquered peoples takes religion of the Conqueror but puts a new spin on it eg Shiah Iran.
@KevinWarburton-tv2iy Yeah, what you say is true, but I have a different perspective on it. I think the openness of religion (as well as other aspects of it) are directly related to the needs of a people. Humans are always creating and reforming ingroups and outgroups. To Bronze Age tribes, it was important to have a more insular religion. Now, it is more important to have a religion of recruitment. I don't think one or the other is necessarily superior to the other, it just depends on the type of world. More insular religions have more precise shibboleths, for instance. If your religion or group is being targeted by others, that security is more important than recruitment. As far as balance goes... I just today came up with an idea that was indirectly inspired by Delicious in Dungeon. I came up with some racial abilities that could fit a pig-person race, but seemed inappropriate for orcs as we envision them. Specifically, a good sense of smell that can be used to discern information. Pigs are known to have good senses of smell, after all, but that doesn't jive with our idea of orcs. So what if orcs had two opposing gods that were pulling them in two different directions: A bestial god and a martial god, both evil. These gods actually influence the bodies of the orcs. The martial god turns the orcs into the Warhammer-style green orcs, and the bestial god turns orcs into the OG D&D/Zelda pig orcs. These gods fight for control of the orcs, setting them against each other if necessary. This fratricidal violence and fluidity of allegiance/form is the reason why orcs remain uncivilized. The martial orcs do try to organize into armies, but the beastial god and conflict with humanoids rarely allows them to get too big. Both types of orcs are pulled toward evil. However, orcs technically can escape the influence of their gods in the moment when they are pulled from one to another. If they balance their inner nature between the beast and the martial, they can attain a form in-between the two extremes and avoid the notice of their gods. It is still possible to fall in one direction or the other if their inner selves go out of balance too long, although some orcs can lean more in one direction than another. If we do this, the monstrous orcs can have the most extreme features that are good for opponents, PCs can customize their racial bonuses by selecting from different benefits of each form, their race can be an active part of the game and story, and their bonuses and appearance can adjust over the course of the game. It's also a pretty unique idea, IMO. Perhaps the bestial god may also fight over the kobolds, giving us the two different types of them? Anyway, I think I'm going to go with this for my experimental game system, but I don't think the Forgotten Realms version needs to be shamed. That's why I reacted in such a way to the video.
It's become one of my favorite things, when Tom does videos like this, to see if I remember official bits in D&D that line up with the amount of thought he puts into the subject. In the case of Orcs and the mountains, a bit of old lore suggested that, after the other gods had made their personal races and given them domains for their own - Dwarves below the earth, elves in the forest, etc. - Gruumsh found that all that was left for his own species were the wastelands and the rough mountaintops. Furious, he swore a vendetta against the other gods, and passed it on to his created people, to wage it against the species of the other deities. Of course, none of that explores what the details of their culture might be quite so vividly. Tolkien's orcs were the concept of the worst of the barbarian horde; the savage, murderous, and innumerable strangers who sweep in to ruin and pillage. They are the vikings, and the mongols, and the huns. This is where the uncomfortable concepts attached to the Half-Orc are born, in a very real historical trauma that many societies have suffered. 'Orcs' burned the Library of Alexandria. 'Orcs' did worse things to the Irish people than even the British of comparable time frames, to hear the Irish tell it. 'Orcs' savaged China, with the latter helpless to even slow them down. Give Orcs better weapons than everyone else, and they are Europe through all of recent human history. And the word is in vogue again these days, for a reason we're all aware of. This raises all the problems people fixate on of course: an entire race of murderous raiders with no culture of their own, but full sentience nonetheless, is bio-essentialism at its worst. And the Christian themes that were baked in to D&D's early days also mean you have the dichotomy of 'natural magic' against the power of gods and their clergy. See Tom's video on Shamans and Druids for a good look at that. Tolkien's 'created to be monsters' explanation ducks the bio-essentialism problem: his orcs aren't truly 'people', they're monsters that imitate sentient behavior, but aren't capable of making choices or experiencing emotions the same way. A tragedy, but a deadly threat nonetheless. But as always following authors were less skilled than him, or just missed the point. D&D 5e approached it a fascinating way, removing the 'inherent evil' from the species but making their culture deeply religious. And all of their gods warlike and cruel. I've mentioned Karen Miller's Empress and its following books before, but if you want a good, viciously awful look at what THAT would be like, look there. D&D 3.5, or its novels, approached it from the perspective that Gruumsh actually is capable of caring for his creations. And they had R.A. Salvatore explore what it might look like if a god as violent and terrible as Gruumsh demanded of his people to establsh a *Society*. Not to raid and pillage and murder, but to carve out a place for themselves and LIVE with the others, for the betterment of the race as a whole. It is some of Salvatore's greatest work, to my thinking. And frankly I love all of it. I love having orcs as the terrible threat from the badlands and the mountainsides, I love the idea that they aren't inherently evil (the "is it right for a Paladin to murder baby orcs?" question was always easy to answer for me), but their *gods* either are or are so hostile that the distinction doesn't matter when they're sweeping down on you in a murdering horde. And I love the idea that even with this they can have a full and elaborate society as sentient creatures, instead of just monsters aping the concept. And I like the answer I landed on. The gods are not hundreds of different glorified Outsiders, they are what is True. And several of them crafted species of their own. Corellon is the god of Art in all its forms, a fey being that also holds dominion over love as Mania. Moradin is the god of Craftwork, again in all its kinds, of building things and skills passed down mapped out in math and learned instinct. And Gruumsh is the god of *Violence*. And the orcs are His. And while violence isn't inherently evil, it is inherently *destructive*. And so they are a species made to be the most ferocious, the best at conflict and physical contest. And His hold on the orcs, and His changing feelings over time, informed their role in the world.
I also kid of like the Jagermonsters from Girl Genius, while not actually called "Orcs" they have a similar reputation being seemingly ageless or at least long lived group of super solders that were experimented on by the sparks of their kingdom a long time ago and routinely sent out to raid and pillage their neighbors.... They also place a lot of importance on their hats.
Given the sheer variety of their depictions across the fantasy works I've read, orcs have become my favorite race to explore in fantasy. I'm casually writing two stories featuring orc protagonists and decided to make very different takes on common tropes for them in my stories. For the first, they are heavily influenced by Tolkien and come in a few varieties, while for the second I wanted to swing away from the typically depictions and actually made them the closest fantasy race to human.
In my games, full orcs are demonic in origin, where they're produced through ritualistic practice requiring a fallen foes' body placed in a mud pit. Boar-faced, large creatures standing at average 10-12ft tall, green/brown skin tones, some fur, large tusks, cannibalistic, culture derived from fighting, marauding and raiding, and their language involves a lot of oinking, grunting and squealing. Even the 'small' ones bear strength that even the most successful bodybuilders can barely hope to grasp. A single full orc (or pig orc) can decimate a well-balanced fifth level 5e party by using huge weapons, sheer brute strength, damage resistances, and more. Their abilities grow when they consume magic, which includes spellcasters, fae creatures such as gnomes and elves, and magic items which they can chew up without issue. The only voice they follow is that of the biggest, most successful full orc among them, very much like in Warhammer. Their big weaknesses are sunlight and silver. Sunlight burdens them with significant debuffs, while silver causes their flesh to burn up on contact. Meanwhile, 'normal' orcs are actually half orcs, and the 'normal' half orcs are actually quarter orcs. People typically see half orcs more often and think they're full orcs, not knowing there is an entire step above them lurking beneath the mountains just waiting for the right moment to come up when the nights are longest.
Its an old game but kingdom under fire, orcs still generally look like standard orcs but are actually the best farmers of all the races. It makes sense, beyond just being good soldiers, their naturally burly size and muscles make them excellent on farms and most manual labor, though they arent the best craftsmen.
I always worldbuild my orcs as obsessed with written knowledge, as their awareness of their own short lives means they know they have less time to learn, teach, and discover new knowledge. In some of my worlds, many alphabets are descended from the original orcish writing systems which were among the oldest writing systems, as well as orcs frequently inventing the printing press in various forms (woodblocks, individual letters, stencils). The result is that orcish libraries are expansive, well organized, filled with books that teach the basics of skills and professions fairly quickly, and orcish educational theory is some of the most advanced (become fully fluent in a foreign language in half to two-thirds of a year? Thank orcish teaching techniques).
I’m not quite sure how I feel about the idea where orcs can essentially photo synthesize and their green skin tone is a reflection of that trait but I absolutely love the anthropological approach to orc society and culture in regard to the location of their settlements, potential falconry skills, and the idea of the orcish war bow. While I personally prefer orcs being nomadic, I wouldn’t mind introducing the idea of permanent settlements being located in more hilly terrain. In regard to the traditional depiction of orcs being war loving raiders, I personally like to split orc society into two main groups with the more violence prone raiders stemming from tribes who worship the orcish god of war and conquest while more peaceful tribes would worship the orcish god of the hunt. They are simply to different life style that stem from the god that their tribe worships. Perhaps I can combine this idea with something similar to your idea of orcs participating in an eternal crusade toward the rising sun which I personally find fascinating.
I think the reason orcs live in caves is because they were inspired by monsters who turned to stone in the daylight. Those monsters had to live underground and only come out at night.
I like to lean on the idea of Orcs having been created as a race of soldiers for a Dark Overlord, and ask the question "what happens to the Orcs after the Overlord's defeat?" They were made for war, but now that they are no longer bound to their creator, they are scattered, trying to find their place in the world; some become nomadic raiders, others settle down in good locations and only occasionally go out to raid, Viking-style, and yet others offer their service as warriors to any nation or ruler who offers them land and protection.
My answer to the Dark Overlord question is "They form a culture of warriors for hire, raiders, traders who can survive harsh passages other races shun, and because they're the ones that killed the Overlord to throw off their shackles and the shackles of the other races, take over the Overlord's land, where they create a ruling class built around the idea of leadership being based around not just martial skill, but also on how well you can defend the weaker people."
In the oldest incarnation of my homebrew setting (though to some extent it's still relevant, now that I think of it...) I started from a premise: a prophecy saying the gods were coming and they were going to rain fire from above, trash the place, sow the earth with salt and be overall right nuisances.
Then came the First King (the locals don't know whether he rose from the world or came to it from somewhere else), who read the prophecy and went "Fuck, gotta do something about it, but you lot look so weak and frail that not even in a thousand generations I can turn you into god-killing soldiers...", so he set out to make the perfect soldiers. (now, for context, the "gods" in this world aren't the gods of DnD-likes)
And He made the Orcs: effectively autistic super soldiers, off-black so they could fight at night as well as during the day and, at least so they say, bound in obsidian. (Did he actually use obsidian? I don't know, but the Orcs think he did, so who am I to gainsay them?)
Since the dawn of time, then, they have gained a fame for being pretty much the coldest motherfuckers around.
I have a similar thing going on with one of my fantasy worldbuilding projects, wherein the orcs who migrated away from their respective not-Mordor have been able to develop a variety of different warrior cultures, but many others closer to their original homeland have been assimilated and made worse by the various Saurons and Sarumans who rose up in the post-Morgoth power vacuum.
With a few campaign worlds now that I've messed with (well, two of them with one being a 3.5 one and then a 5e one that kind of started as an attempt to rework the old one but then went an entirely different direction into its own thing despite pulling some of the basic stuff from the older version), the Orcs, as they currently are, were bred into existence.
The proto-orcs are, from a lore perspective, a result of the 3.5 Unearthed Arcana's Jungle Orcs where they're more of angry, territorial chimps. One of the elven empires found them and essentially bred them for different roles, but largely for heavy labor and expendable troops...and the rarer grey orcs were more of servants but still rather rare there.
There's (possibly) more of the proto-orcs out there from wherever they originated from as even the elves don't really remember due to time and several major wars.
5e split the worker and warriors more and made the grey as just another. The soldier breed tended to be in greens/blues, the workers ended with a red/brown skin color.
Though, outside of the elven lands where there are still several still as a servant class (having moved up due to cataclysms forcing the High Elves to allow them to start filling in lower classes), the coloration is more of a cultural thing though they greys are rare due to not being as much of use outside of what had been Elven lands.
In an area where the elves had a more firm control during their war against an alliance of Humans and Goblinoids (mainly a Hobgoblin group with a few of the others) with a few dwarves mixed in then a LOT of other stupidity mixed in, the disaster at the end meant that there was a lot of the worker stock and the blue/green coloration had vanished, they're a nomadic culture with mammoths and other large beasts where they function as wandering traders in that area, normally welcome to show up.
At the other end of the Empire, there are areas that the warriors had been abandoned and are in a more tribal culture, but it varies quite a bit from group to group, with several that could be peaceful to batshit crazy maniacs and a lot of others.
I'd also revealed the existence of a 5th group that's referred to as the "Pale Orcs" who, during the cataclysm, when most of the area started dealing with a magically induced, sudden onset ice age, went underground due to some sort of magic calling to them...and whatever it was, wasn't something good. The other orc groups will try to wipe them out if they find them...and if they catch you, normally, you're lucky if they just kill and eat you...
You've created the Krogan
The way I understand it, if Orcs represent law of the jungle, hobgoblins represent a military industrial complex
An interesting possible biological result of being able to photosynthesise could be that if they have a way to store the metabolites of respiration (CO2 etc) in their blood or other organ or tissues instead of exhaling it (similar to how the tissues of many diving animals store oxygen), they could use photosynthesis to convert it back into O2, meaning they could live and even thrive in places where the air is far too thin for even the most height-adapted humans (being the main reason an organised human civilisation hasn't tried to wipe them out, they just can't invade the orcs' home without suffering altitude sickness), and while closer to sea level it would be a boost to oxygen availability which, even if it's not enough in the moment to grant them a boost to their strength or speed, could extend their endurance, reduce the rate of lactic acid buildup, and shorten their recovery period meaning they could be ready to go again while a human is still out of breath, all depending of course on the rate of oxygen generation compared to how much we take in through our lungs.
This could also let orcs who live in swamps or near oceans spend a higher portion of time in the water, as long as light is reaching them. They might hang out in water like alligators
So they would breathe in oxygen (and other stuff) and breathe out... Oxygen (and other stuff)? Or would they just store the oxygen as well, turning it back into Co2, which then gets turned back into oxygen and stored...
Obviously it wouldn't be perfect, and would constantly be cycled, but I'd find it interesting that an Orc could potentially store a good amount of breath and just- Not have to breathe while in sunlight. You could come across an Orcish Monk sitting in a field bathed in sunlight, not breathing as they meditate.
It's also occurred to me that if perhaps Orcs were designed by a god to essentially be better humans, I'm reminded of the old discussion of why Argonians in the Elder Scrolls have breasts, and the idea that they might be biological air tanks for being able to be underwater longer. What if Orcs have breast tissue that double as secondary lungs, or just as oxygen storage? An area that gets cut off from the rest of the respiratory system and is where the Co2 gets continuously recycled into Oxygen.
I'm sure I'm missing some biological point where this doesn't work perfectly, and obviously they would still need other food and water and the like. But I could see there being enough leeway to have a community of Orcs somewhere very sunny that just never breathe in the presence of others or something, with no issues.
i like this
Or they just have green pigments in their skin. They're not part plants.
@@insertname9736 Do you have some kind of condition that makes you averse to speculative thought or are you just that boring?
In my books, I have it that orcs primarily live on a tundra. Their skin is green in the summer and grey in the winter for camouflage. They often hunt mammoths and mastodons, with large mastiffs as common companions.
They largely worship the Goddess of Fire, for the warmth of flame needed for the harsh cold, though ancestor reverence is a key component too. Orcs typically seek personal glory through great deeds, which they believe their ancestors will use to determine their role in the Afterlife. Shining a brighter light, as it were.
Their ties to fire are more than cultural; it is like the dwarves' association with earth. Orc eyes glow a burning orange, and they are resistant to flame. Some may be tempted toward the corrupt fires of Hell and demons.
Orcs historically raided due to their environment and losses by monsters, and the pursuit of glory through battle. The books take place in an industrial revolution, so that has largely been left behind, with orcs having a recognized nation. One orc character is a weaponsmith and engineer. Though, old fears and their more monstrous appearance doesn't make them strongly welcome everywhere.
I like the idea of seasonal skin colour change? What brings it on? ...Just the change in temperature ...or is it diet-related? ...or a mixture of the two? ...or do they just will it?
in my setting orcs are simply a more barbaric race of elves while mostly civilised they are a warrior culture, they look like elves but they have developed a green skin due to high amounts of copper mineral in their water and they're much taller than most elves and practice scarification and tattoo rituals to brand their skin with their clan markings
Ooh nice. I like it.
Goblins could also be what became of the orcs that remained in the caves
The Orcs in our recent setting are loosely based on the Chimera Ants from Hunter x Hunter, they have a slight chance to assimilate some of the genetic material of the creatures that they eat into their own body and eventually pass those traits on to their progeny. As such, they've developed a culture of being nomadic monster hunters, with an underlying practices based on eugenics. Essentially they min-max their lives to try to make their blood-line the most powerful it can be. It makes for interesting PC and NPC concepts at any rate.
I have a similar thing except it is done through alchemy rather than through their biology.
What about reproductively? Do they assimilate DNA from Species that they capture & enslave? ...or is it just the case that the strong Orcish Geneline dominates/wamps the DNA of other species when interbreeding?
I think, ironically, orcs and elves share a lot of the same issues due to being adapted from Tolkien's works without carrying the context that makes them work in those settings. Elves, for example, are haughty and aloof because Elrond was haughty and aloof. But Elrond was haughty and aloof because he's _been alive for thousands of years_ and has watched almost all of his friends die horribly. He doesn't go with the Fellowship, or strike out to aid Gondor/Rohan, because he's already done this song and dance 5 times and is fucking tired. The last time he lead a big army to help the realms of men was the whole Angmar situation, and that ended with Arnor collapsing anyways and a bunch more of his people dying to only succeed in temporarily driving the Witch King away. The fact that he's still helping _at all_ is honestly a testament to his character, because his life has been one long train of watching evil _nearly_ be defeated only to escape to menace the world later. But then when you apply the Elrond archetype to characters who _aren't_ filled with centuries of trauma, it just makes them come off as assholes which is where you get the annoying snobby elf stereotype.
And Orcs have the same problem. Orcs in Tolkien's work are a purely evil race meant to symbolize the worst of humanity. They are brutal, unclean, and murderous, caring only for things of utilitarian value, and motivated primarily by hate. They are mass produced, less people and more automatons of violence, and even among their own kind their lives are viewed as extremely cheap. Whatever Tolkien says about allegory, orcs are extremely allegorical of industrialism and the military industrial complex. They despoil everything they get and then look with greed and envy to lands that haven't been ravaged yet, in the way industrialism chews up the land for all of its resources and then looks to new lands for more. In the books, they're described as chanting the name "Grom" (That giant battering ram they break down the doors of Minas Tirith with) with reverence. They only revere things based on their utility, and love weapons of war especially. And this is why they're brutish and uncreative, because there is no room for art or expression in a world derived purely on utility. And they collapse into infighting without a strong unifying will, because their evil is self consuming. With no force to make them work each other, they don't expand from the lands they've despoiled and recede more and more until they only remain in the most fortified of mountain caves. They don't function without a dark lord... So when you take these character traits from Tolkiens orcs and put them on orcs who _don't_ have a dark lord, instead of being a well crafted critique of fascism, industrialism, and war in general, they just become a weird group of people who genuinely shouldn't be able to survive given how self destructive they are.
Thank you very much... I will second that with vigor. I will add that I'm all for naturalistic verisimilitude in D&D. It's not like with hobbits, were the Tolkien estate could protect their original conceptualization. Tolkien borrowed the word orc, but he really fleshed it out. So like if we are going to use it in D&D, let's accept that there is "alignment". Most Tolkien orcs would eat the falcon. Without a dark lord to discipline and nurture the orcs, they are destine for the endangered species list.
@@jamesnell1999 Oh, I don’t actually hate the idea of orcs diverting from Tolkien’s original vision for them. Quite the contrary, I think it’s necessary, and that’s largely what I was trying to get across. Orcs in Tolkien’s world are an extension of Sauron (who’s an extension of Morgoth, but I digress) and do not work without the context of their setting. They are _baked_ into the Lord of the Rings world, and as such feel disconnected when placed into other settings. Giving them any Dark Lord other than “Legally Distinct Sauron” would leave them with tons of loose ends that go nowhere narratively, while giving them that would make them derivative.
My main point is that the orcs in Tolkien’s writings have _meaning_ and that meaning becomes lost and confused when placed into other settings without an understanding of what it was in the first place.
@@archsteel7 Ok... thanks for the clarification and your thoughtful comments. My orcs are evil and fun to kill.
the orcs in my setting are not adapted from tolkein i built them from the ground up to be different, they're simply elves who happen to be taller and more muscular than other elves, they also are green due to copper in their water and they brand their bodies with tattoos and scarification. other than that they look like elves
A party if ircs using shared vision with falcons would be scary as hell
Finally a use for the long shot sniper build
I personally enjoy orcs portrayed as brutish ignorant muscular jerks, it makes rollplaying them really fun.
I would still play them in my world as raiders with limited capacity for creating complex stuff, with few exeptions, but still I really liked the highland living reasoning and the using birds of pray to hunt for game or scout the land. I can totally see that also.
Orcs are green because Jabba's pig faced guards in Return of the Jedi are green. Remember that the AD&D Monster Manual had black and white art of pig faced Orcs at the same time both Star Wars and D&D were really big.
Nice to see you doing a response to ponty hat, the other day I saw a guy doing a response to your dwarf video
I enjoy your more anthropological approach to TTRPG world building. These videos have given me a lot to think about throughout a day.
I think going the tolkien route of orcs being corrupted humanoids can still be interesting, as dragon age did with darkspawn, half orcs being the grey wardens who partake orc blood to better fight them. This could also lead to variations of orcs of what was corrupted (as is the case with darkspawn). Their origins could be divine, demonic or a dark lord (A BBEG is returning and making the orcs go on a rampage). This could be periodic as is the case in dragon age and could spread like zombies with bites too depending how you want to portray it.
That's not to say orcs as people (like in eberron) isn't a bad idea either but I think both have merit to what sort of story is told. A threat outside the walls or allies in the untamed wilds.
I know this is a preference, but I actually dislike orcs being green. I think grey orcs just look cooler in my opinion. I know it's not everyone's taste, but I just don't like green lol.
Leave the greenskins to 40k. I like my orcs in shades of grey. I like them looking boar-ish too with tusks, pig nosed & eared.
Faerun actually does have green orcs, but they're a different species than the grey orcs, and they live outside the Sword Coast. That's why all the published books focus on the Grey Orcs. They also look different.
Agreeable take
Mystara's orcs vary in skin tone, just like humans IRL. Always unpleasant colors, but varied.
It looks so cartoonish and silly. It makes orcs into caricatures of the Incredible Hulk with ridiculous underbites.
As much as i love warcraft and it's orcs, i have to deepen the deepdive and throw both under the bus here. That the modern orcs and the society they hail from live above ground sire is cool but they too were originally cave dwellers. As per Warcraft lore at the very birth of the race their home planet's surface was populated by giants larger than any orc made construction. elemental constructs made by titans to combat the even more dangerous effects of overabundant life magic. theorised to be the evolutionary ancestors to the orcs, ogres, gronn and so on. for supposed eons any orc caught above ground was either killed or enslaved untill naturally the orcs made their way to take their world. these giants aventually hunted and killed for sport. or rather, so the tail goes. Some orcish settlements having made their homes out of the bones of such giants. however though if these were the same giants or if the initial threats were even larger is to my knowledge made purposefully dubious.
Very cool to see you talk about Orcs as I am about to run a mini-campaign centered around one of the Orc subraces of my Homebrew World. I agree with your notion that keeping Orcs limited to one area/archetype/alignment is a little reductive, so for my world, I tried to create a presentation of Orcs that was not necessarily all bad, but also kind of justified their thirst to reclaim their ancestral lands while also giving them a bit of cultural/theme diversity.
After a war with the allied "civilized" races as you called them, the Ancient Orcs (light green skin) were forced into a ceasefire, the terms of which mandated the great tribes of Orcs to disband and generally scatter to the furthest and most obscure locations in the land. Centuries and a bit of Divine intervention later, the survivors of that war had become four separate subraces by way of their secluded or isolated environments and the adaptations their deities provided them. Frost Orcs (shades of gray to stark white skin), Plains Orcs (yellow to orange and some red skin shades), Mountain Orcs (rich dark greens and brown skin shades), and Water Orcs (teal, blue, and seafoam green shades of skin).
Your insights were quite thought provoking and it is neat to see someone with similar thoughts. I am quite happy to have stumbled onto your channel recently, and I am going through the back catalogue currently, cant get enough of the way you break down subjects and provide very sound reasoning to your perspective(s). Not to mention your voice and the cadence in which you speak is very calming and serves well to enthrall the audience. Keep it up my man, excited to see what else you come up with and I hope the channel grows as much as it deserves!
Cheers!
Very nice, giving different variants of Orcs. I take the fact that humans have about five different "Races" to suggest that every Species will have similar Variation across the Species.
My Elves are Goldenskins, though there also the Moon Elves who are are proper Whiteskins.
My Goblins are Greenskins. There is another group of Goblins though that are Greyskins ...they are the ones who escaped the Ancient Ones or who were never caught by them & remained as Primitive Barbarians living in isolated locations, in some certain Mountain Cave, Coastal Cave areas, in some Deserts, Isles, dense Jungle etc.
My Grey Elves/Drow are just Grey Goblins that became somewhat civilised.
My Orcs are Redskins.
My Ogres are Orangeskins.
My Trolls are Brown-Skins.
Lastly there are the "Night Elves", the blue-skinned Jinnai. Though are a part of the Aeldri-Urukku Line they do not consider themselves as belonging to either Kindred nor yet are they considered so by the others (for various reasons LOL).
Yes, Elves, Orcs, Goblins, Ogres, Drow & Trolls are basically just the Caucasians, Asians, Indians, Africans, Melanesians of their Species except that they were explicitly created/engineered as Servant-Worker Castes by the Ancient Ones.
I noticed a distinct difference between a lot of modern fantasy Orcs and Tolkien Orcs; A lot of Orcs are stereotyped as being Violent and Brutish because they are "Uncivilized" but in Tolkien's work Orcs were the colonizers, they are extremely industrial destroying the natural world to fuel the war machine for the sake of conquest and progress.
If you want to make "Evil Races" like Orcs the villians in a campaign wouldn't it be better to lean into that Industrial side of things and make Orcs the Industrial and Militaristic super power are invading to colonize and take the land for all it's worth. You could even have sympathetic Orc characters who feel crushed by the system that uses them as another resource.
In a lots of D&D style setting underground doesn't necessarily mean cramped because there is often an underworld of caves and tunnel vast enough to sometime host whole cities. Also their pigmentation doesn't have to be related to light, it's the case for humans and melanine, but even on our earth their is species that owns their color to their alimentation or other factor. I believe for instance Warhammer explains the color as a byproduct of a symbiosis between Orks and a kind of algae or fungi.
Then again I dropped of D&D quite some times ago (3rd ed) and as you said the orcs are better treated in other settings. WoW, Pathfinder, heck even Warhammer in its own way flesh them better.
I mean, Warhammer Orks are literally the funniest thing ever and they're perfect the way they are. Also yes, Warhammer Orks are green because they have chlorophyl in their DNA.
Which doesn't make sense considering their a fungus/animal hybrid and fungus are categorized on the fact that they specifically _don't_ have chlorophyl. But hey, it's Warhammer, respect the Rule of Cool.
In Tolkien "orc" was a generalized term for what would be goblins and hobgoblins. Orcs came into their own later on possibly in early D&D. The third origin story given for orcs was Peter Jackson's movie adaption, avoiding Saurman's horrific breeding program hinted at in Tolkien's work. The modern massive beefy orcs are more Warhammer and WoWC, classic AD&D orcs are just human-sized. Not a big fan of the whole "Noble Savage" reimagining of orcs. Keep the monsters monstrous unless you're running an adult only gaming group. Fantasy monsters are used to shield younger gamers from all the savagery and sticky moral issues of living in violent dark age raiding cultures. It's OK to kill them and take their stuff because they're monsters.
Orcs as a race of demonic creatures who kill humans predates Tolkien. Orcus is originally a Roman god of the underworld, and orcs were his creatures of shadow that would drag people down into their hell. Tolkien just made them corporeal beings. So fighting against them being evil has always been weird to me, orcs are monsters with no culture or society they only know destruction because they're crafted from chaos (they cannot create, only through destruction can they bring about change).
I mean, it's sort of late for that then. They're already not corpses or spirits or undead at all.
Exactly!
in my world the orcs played a massive part in the destruction of elven dominion over the continent, and as such are venerated for their role in the wars that liberated everyone from elven rule. they are now rare in the world, but are a deeply respected people exactly because their destruction tends to brings about good, even if it isnt the most diplomatic way forward
I have two variants Alhaihai allies and privateers of the empire before they went to the stars they were shipbuilders and traders
Vikorric they were once alhaihai but experimented and propagandized by the dark lord
their ideology and whom they serve can effect their literal biology
the villains are a race of liches known as serics
Before Tolkein "orc" was a prefix. TPlkein can be credited with inventing orcs as a fantasy race
"I find species related gods [boring]..." Effing PREACH BROTHER
in my setting there are species related gods and goddesses but then there's also the common gods for example humanity has the goddess Serona of the healing springs while originally a human god, non-humans also have taken to worshiping her. who's to say race specific gods cannot find worship outside of that race
I remember an online novel I read called "Praise the Orc!" which described the orcs as tribal groups that like strength and honor above all else, but that others despise them due to their innate strength advantage, vilifying them for generations and generations with wrongful stereotypes.
This has been done since the 00's... this is more stereotypical at this point than the normal orc depiction.
@@theravenousrabbit3671 I guess we can thank Warcraft for that transformation into the "noble savages"
@@Miraihi Not only that, but every new fantasy writer wants to do "new" orcs. I bet you that you will not find "evil orcs" other than in D&D and Tolkien's works and, the rest of the time orcs are depicted, they are all of the noble savage stereotype.
I want my damn pig orcs back.
Professor Dungeon Master also had a good video on orcs recently. Worth the watch. As always, Tom, insightful vid.
The thumbnail is perfection
I find it weird how they're always depicted as tribal and low tech when Tolkiens orcs are associated with industry and make "make no beautiful things but they maje many clever ones"
I love the functional connection between your orcs and cacti and succulents xD (and I cannot but smile at the possibly involuntary parallel with GW's take on orcs as mushrooms)
I would also like to see a prosperous and advanced Orc civilization too in fantasy fiction
In my world, I mostly combined D&D Lore with my own personal lore, which made them more like the Orc's from WOW:
Basically, Orcs originally were much like how they are in D&D (only they're green and live ON mountains & plains rather than caves). the main thing is that one orc chieftain in particular discovered lost history involving Grummsh and Corelion and how the different races choose where to live. Eventually, after several tribes heard about this, they eventually decided to take the duty of the gods in their own hands and choose where they settle, eventually deciding to choose to live in valley's, hills, and mountaintops. they also eventually learned their biological relationship to Goblinoids (Goblins, Hobgoblins, Bugbears, etc.) and started living alongside them, along with other being who share their DNA, which eventually became known as the Goblino-Orcen Collective, which is a treaty which brings together several groups, including, but not limited to:
Orcs
Goblins
Hobgoblins
Ogres
Etten's
Troll's
Oni
Kappa
Tengu (the last three being relatives to ogres, goblins, and hobgoblins respectively, caused by the mutations caused by a region known as Yokaima, which is heavily inspired by Japanese mythology)
and Hill Giants
Despite this, some other "Raider" groups are usually common enemies to the collective, such as gnolls, Tlincalli (Scorpion People), Sahagun, Bullywugs, etc. as well as their enemies, there are still some Orcs loyal to Grummsh and his hatred for elves. besides their enemies, they usually tend to be prideful warriors who always want to become stronger (only with those part of the collective, its less intense and can come with several meanings, such as skill in a craft, magic, or even interpersonal stuff). They do wield absolutely powerful warbows, rivalling elven bows in quality, along with their tendency to use either more militarized weapons such as Polearms or war swords, or more stylized and flamboyant weaponry, more often used in sparring (yes they have gladiator fights like they did in Rome, although they usually aren't as dangerous or unfair as Rome's gladiators).
Other ideas for the orc/goblin thing I've come up with:
* Orcs are goblins who were modified by some wannabe dark-lord to become foot-soldiers, but who eventually rebelled, and afterwards, returned to their original home, becoming guardians to the goblins, who, in turn, became the orcs' craftsmen.
* Orcs and goblins are the same species but different genders.
Orcs are females & Goblins male? or vice versa?
I like the idea of Orcs as bred up Goblins who now rule as a Military Caste over the Goblin Peasants/Farmers. Maybe Hobgoblins are the Artisans/Craftsmen :)
@@KevinWarburton-tv2iyWell my original idea was ogres and orcs, rather than orcs and goblins, but that's just downsizing. My idea was that females are much bigger, because that allows them to pop out (mostly male) babies at a significant rate, with the males emerging already semi-independent. This supports a nomadic lifestyle in a landscape filled with dangerous predators.
I find it incredibly annoying that so far everyone who "fixes" orcs (not make them fit the world but actually "fix" them) just does some variation of the exact same thing. Noble nature themed warrior culture. Ya'll will go on about the evil races being unrealistic, unimaginative, and boring, but you always do the same thing every time yourselves.
You know what i find boring? A fantasy world where nothing actually needs to be fought against. And that is exactly what this hobby is creating.
Since green skin is such a distinguishing and unique trait, I tend to prefer to keep it for the goblinoids, which in my mind are fey descendants (explaining the green colour and aversion to daylight).
Instead orcs are more neanderthal-like, with stockier frames built for strength rather than the endurance and speed of humans. Due to their large body mass and shorter limbs, they’re less vulnerable to cold climates, but require more energy dense food such as animal products to survive.
Orcs are first seen in beowulf, as one of the "tribes hated by god." This makes them functionally similar to Nordic trolls, Celtic Sidhe, etc. as a race.
That said, I prefer them as a sort of combination of the barbarian tribes from Conan and Chinese steppe nomads.
I've been making my way through your videos, and I can tell this channel is going to really blow up. Great, thoughtful work
I would fight 500 elves and I would fight 500 more, just to be the Orc that fought 1000 elves for Gruumsh! I like my 1st edition orcs and am not changing them!
I'm gonna be the Orc that smashed a thousand elves for Yooooooou!
I would like to see more Fiction with ''Orc Philosophers'' tbh
What about people who aren't fed up with classic orcs? I love those old stories. Why would I not want to play in that world?
The reason my orcs raid is because they've been forced to live in the bad lands and can't grow or hunt enough for for themselves
I was yelling "Stop! Cut! Perfect!" around ten minutes. I have nothing against a wide-ranging loose discussion of ideas about orcs like the last 8 minutes. But my Tolkien orcs BBQed your falcons. Sorry about that. It's just the way my orcs are. ; )
Don't know why my comment is not here but the Green Skin of Orcs did not get invented by Gamesworkshop's Warhammer IP. Tim Kirk's "The JRR Tolkien Calendar" from 1975 in the month of September is where they get their Green Skin. Gamesworkshop does this thing where they steal ideas, concepts and names from Tolkien, Dune, Moorcock and DND and change one letter amd claim as their own. It's not a secret. The 8 pointed star of chaos has existed in our real world. But it was Moorcock that used it first to symbolize the Chaos Gods of his universe, not GW. Assume everything GW "creates" came from somewhere else, unless proven otherwise.
games workshop ironically cannot claim Eldar as a trademark because it in the LOTR books is the collective name of elf kind across middle earth if you were a elf you were one of the many peoples of the Eldar and when Arwin chose to become human her father Elrond stated the light of the Eldar was leaving her soul after which she would be human though a human with an extraordinary long life span
In the campaign that I'm not DMing for, I play as a Thri-Kreen whose favourite food is Orc.
I think your idea works best for those that want to be more like tolkien's orcs. I fully believe tolkien's orcs was inspired by how england saw genghis khan's mongol empire. From doing "barbaric actions" for fear tactics to the fact they seem unstoppable but then they suddenly retreat and just disappear only to learn that their leader died causing that retreat and they never could regain that power. So it makes sense to have them respectfully take inspiration from mongolia which also includes the horseback archery as well as plains and mountain life. To me this should be the default rather than mixing it with racist views of africa. Me personally i rather have orcs either be the main sea faring race with a heavy polynesian inspiration because samoan orcs seems great to me and my samoan friends. Can also have them take the role of fantasy humans were they are the western europe inspired castle builders that are constantly waring with the other kingdoms next to them. Plus looking at how the typical fantasy races are with the elves being very agile and able to climb trees, dwarves being great miners with their strength and small size, then why aren't orcs the builders? They can easily carry heavier stone that would require multiple humans and possibly the use of tools when you can just have a orc doing it. It's why for some settings i have the humans being the nomadic plains wakers and for other settings i have humans take the elf spots as the forest dwellers with the elves being the plains walkers with using their bigger ears to be able to hear more from the vast openness of the plains. To me have fun with a idea and get as much out of it as you can. If you're going have them being mongolian inspired take advantage of that with orcs being feared horseback archers and using birds as help.
Glad to see I'm not the only one going Pacific for inspiration.
In my world I have the Ma' Uri & the Ma'Ori ...two different branches of Orcs that parted company in the distant past. One settled on the northern coasts of the Southern Continents and built a great Maritime Empire. The other in their ships ventured ever further becoming even greater Seafarers & opening up the way to the colonisation of far-flung Isles and even making it to the eastern shores of the Western Continents.
In their explorations though they also faced competition from the Minotaurs of the Sea of Isles, The Halflings of the eastern Migrations and many others.
I'm still working on it but just about every Polynesian, Austronesian, Melanesian & Micronesian group will represent a different species.
Many D&D races (particularly Forgotten Realms) in general suffer from their gods being too openly present, but at the very least it does make the amount of monoculturalism feel believable (even if it isn't enjoyable)
Honestly I love orcs as they are in most settings, I personally don't think they need to be fixed. I especially like how they're developed in the Elder Scrolls. They have a lot of depth there without abandoning the core identity of the orc. I think there is an appeal to being somewhat monstrous and unsophisticated in thinking and appearance. Humanizing them too much IMO just takes away what makes them interesting. I think it's a general issue in D&D nowadays that races are basically just becoming humans with an aesthetic coat of paint on top and a few small quirks here and there.
There are two interesting orc civilizations in Pathfinder namely the Belkezen orcs, who outside of a handful of major cities and keeps living seminomadic lives coming back to the largest major river during it annual flooding called the flood truce to hunt and capture game and is slowly dabbling with both trade and alliances with there human nations, and the Matanji, who are effectively a military oligarchy that incorporates and allies with its human and elvish neighbors against the city of Usaro and are renowned Demon hunters because of this.
O! Great topic, I have an example about this very thing from my fantasy setting.
For me, orcs are a sub-race of people who lived in a harsh and infertile climate. They developed natural strength and vitality, and also went through a series of internal wars, which hardened them and militarization became the key to their culture.
For the most part, they united and were able to develop greatly, especially in terms of military technology, which at that time was ahead of humans and other races, which made them equal to all of them even if they united in one alliance.
However, the weakness of the orcs lay in their little knowledge of magic, simply due to the fact that all the ancient dungeons from where the ancient art of magic was dug up were located in the center of the continent where humans and others lived.
And the Orcs simply did not have the opportunity to study magic before they migrated to the regions of the human kingdoms.
In fact, they are not hostile and do not want war, and will simply try to contact people. However, if aggression is shown towards them first, they will be forced to expect the worst and defend themselves.
I like a lot of these ideas! I do the skin situation a little differently. Rather than making them all categorically one pigmentation (grey, green, etc.) I make my Orcs a wide variety of skin tones, usually pulling from the classics people know. So we have Grey Orcs like DND, Green Orcs like Warhammer, and Terracotta skinned Orcs like the Mag'har in WoW. Just keeps things varied, and it only makes sense that Orc skin would have multiple shades like humans and other fantasy creatures.
In my own campaign I based orcish culture heavily on ancient Mongolian society, with a smattering of other cultures to make then not just an expy. Animal husbandry is incredibly important to my orcs; mundane beasts like horses, dogs, oxen and chickens serve as mounts, companionship, food and labor, not because the orcs CANT do heavy labor but because if you CAN outsource it, why wouldn’t you? But they also tame more exotic creatures, like any of a variety of monsters, primarily as mounts, hunting companions and warbeasts. A horse (or warg, or rhino, or dire lion, or whatever have you) can move significantly faster and let the rider save stamina for fighting, if needed. My orcs also have their own smithing tradition; they craft outstanding weapons and armor in their own distinctive styles, with totems of protector spirits, deities and ancestors unique to either the craftsman or commissioner, and they keep secret the methods of smithing a metal called orichalcum, which (properly worked) can warp time subtly.
They’re also not so prolific as raiders. While they do raid in times of hardship (when wild forage is hard to come by and the herds are thin and weak) they’re intelligent enough to know that overdoing it is an easy way to trigger a crusade. Rather, they trade gathered and crafted goods to settlements in areas they travel through; orcish goods are known for being hard wearing and durable to an extreme, and they’re a reliable source of wild plant and animal products from far afield. A common saying is; “If you want a painting or a poem to make you weep, find an elf; for a house or a statue to stand a century, ask a dwarf; for a dagger or a shirt to last a lifetime, seek an orc.” However, they also take up tribute from both caravans and settlements. This is grudgingly accepted because orcs in an area will typically kill or chase off more dangerous threats; both to keep the area safe for themselves and the herds they depend on, and to seek glory in hunting dangerous monsters. Thus, the presence of orcs means a region is going to be much safer, but a bit more expensive.
I've never seen the problem with Orcs being simple. If you want more complex enemies, you use humans, or elves, or some other group who have some practical motivation for their actions. If you want violent brutes without nuance, you use orcs.
There's no reason why in a magical setting orcs could not exist as intended. They would be just like humans with innate psychological injury. They are naturally psychopaths, naturally have hyperactive amygdala, etc. Their baseline state is to be the worst of damaged humanity. Some very few might through accident or effort rise above these base instincts, but they would far and away be the exception to the rule. An orc that could behave like an average human would take an equivalent amount of luck and effort as a human behaving like a pure sage. Now, could such a group evolve naturally? It might be unlikely, they stand a good chance of failing to climb the evolutionary ladder to the form of an Orc. But in a magical setting where some rogue wizard or god could take some other sapient creature and "break" them into a shape that fills their purposes, orcs make perfect sense, and would be ecologically stable _enough_ to last throughout the timeline of most fantasy settings.
If orcs are capable of photosynthesis, then their biology is so far removed from humans that it would almost certainly be impossible for them to interbreed. Humans would have a better chance of having kids with an egg-laying species like kobolds, lizardfolk or aarakocra than with a creature so different on the cellular level that it has chloroplasts. If half-orcs existed at all in such a setting, they would have to be created in labs by wizards, much like owlbears and similar oddities.
Interesting video, but I disagree with some of your opinions yet respect your right to discuss opinions. I don't mind the stereotyping that much & yet am open to breaking the stereotype in some ways.
Anyhow, my issues with Orcs is simply they have too short of a lifespan potential in the lore!
I unfortunately don't have a group to play with:(
But, I have created 12 different Lvl 1 Characters in case I found a group.
They are all either Elves/Elf Adjacent or Gnomes or Dwarves since they have the best Lifespan Potential and best lore!
In my setting Orcs used to be savage tribes until recently one chieftain united them and started to adopt the organization and strategies of the surrounding civilizations. He declared himself King of the Orcs and started modernizing his kingdom. Due to Orcs' natural endurance and determination, they managed to turn their land into an organized agricultural and military power in just over 60 years. Turns out they are just just about as capable at complex and innovative thinking as humans are, its just they kept getting kicked into the undesirable parts of the continent where survival was too much of a struggle.
In RuneScape a tribe of goblins went underground to avoid “The God Wars” and have evolved to have pale skin but instead of losing eye sight they have super large eyes because as a species they still have use of their eyes. On top of their physical evolution, they became highly intelligent, peaceful and incredibly advanced living isolated for thousands of years
One of my DnD version of the orks are they are humans that are changed to orcs during dark rituals. Orcs are savage and like horde of locusts.
One thing I have always found interesting is that it wasn't the settled peoples who developed things like the Stirrup or other forms of horse technology and development. It was the nomadic or semi-nomadic peoples who developed these things, and then they spread to the settled peoples who used them to solidify their empires.
An Orc might not be the kind of person to come up with new forms of smiting or construction, but they'd likely be the leading experts in other fields where they actually do have activity. Taming or using animals, living on the move without major discomfort or risk, living in lands others find dangerous but they find just fine, and using resources they have access to that others do not like special kinds of wood and metal.
And these things can have as dramatic effects when introduced, by peace or war, to their settled neighbours just as their advances might shake up the lives of the more nomadic or rural Orcs.
Where do you get the idea from that orcs live in caves? I can't think of a single IP that has orcs mostly living in caves. Goblins yes, but orcs never really. Tolkien maybe, but the orcs as seen in most of fantasy is more taken from the orcs of Mordor and the Uruk Hai from Isenguard, it's the goblins of Moria that are depicted that way, which gave way to the modern idea of goblins, which are far more suited for cave life. Tolkien never really made the distinction between orcs and goblins as such, but after Tolkien the assumption is almost never that orcs live in caves. In D&D I've seen far more orcs in forests and plains than caves. And both in Warhammer and Warcraft orcs are mostly found in badlands, not caves. Caves seem to be mostly a goblin thing in most of fantasy, a much smaller race that is known for its agility, not its strength.
I prefer to use Hobgoblins over Orcs
I prefer hobgoblins being smaller than goblins
I prefer: hobgoblins=homegoblins
?
I like the BECMI origin of the chaotic humanoids. They were descended from Beastmen from the north, who were reincarnated humans. The beastmen had highly varied appearances at first but over the millennia numerous distinct races appeared as the beastmen’s chaotic mutations began to yield to stable inheritance of features and traits. Thus Orcs, goblins, kobolds, bugbears, etc. eventually came about and invaded all the lands looking for more hospitable land.
To me, fantasy races (of all kinds) are reflections of human qualities, both positive and negative.
Dwarves are about honor, pride, and craftsmanship. Elves are about wisdom, beauty, and harmony. Halflings are about community, friendship, and courage.
Meanwhile, Orcs reflect our tendency toward violence, destruction, and conquest (which we absolutely do have in us; just crack open a history book). Stripping the evil out of orcs, in my opinion, strips away their entire purpose as a reflection of the dark aspects of humanity. They're more than just a convenient enemy: they're a warning, that we humans can be just as evil as them, and we should strive to be more like the dwarves, elves, and halflings.
Thing is, you can do that without just making them evil. Elves and orcs as walking allegories strikes me as...well reductive and not a little bit dull. At least when you boil them down to that extent. Dwarves can be stubborn isolationists who hide themselves away from the world behind walls, refusing to take help. Halflings can be overly content, neglecting to consider practical matters of defense due to their somewhat unjustified confidence that everything will be alright in the end. So why can't orcs be noble savages rejecting overly civilized ways without being evil murder raiders.
I absolutely agree!
@@elegantoddity8609 Being "noble" in any capacity implies that there is more good in orcs than bad. Which means they cease to be dark reflections of humanity - they cease to be the bad guys for our fantasy RPGs, which need bad guys. They cease to be warnings of what not to be like. They cease to be _orcs_.
That's not to say that there can't be any good orcs ever - there exceptions to every rule. But every exception weakens the identity of the thing. And clear identities for things is what helps people make sense of fantasy worlds, with all sorts of things that don't exist in reality.
That's why orcs shouldn't be noble savages.
I think this is very fitting for a story told in the form of a book or a movie, but not for a TTRPG. Essentially the "problem" with orcs starts when players want to play orcs - then they have to go against the idea of orcs as a dark reflection of humanity since players often play heroic or at least not evil characters. This also means orcs have to be more nuanced, and quickly they lose any symbolic meaning they once had.
So i agree with you, but i think your idea just doesn't work in table top games.
@@greatestcait Ok but why can't they be reflections without being evil reflections. Yeah we need bad guys but we don't have to make them like, a species of sapients. We have literal demons for this purpose, at least in dnd and similar such stuff, who can do that more literally.
Besides entire species of evil just being boring (because no matter what interesting aspects you give them you will be massacring them at the end of the day) we have the dark elves. Should they not exist because elves are supposed to be idealized humanity? If we can have them, why can't we have ascended orcs, (or even make the nobler orcs the original ones like in that Pointy Hat video, even if I have my problems with that itself).
I'm all for symmetry and making things make sense. I even understand the usefulness of having enemies whose sole purpose is being bad, who the players can look at and focus on the most efficient way to dispatch them. But there's a point where doing that makes your world bland, lifeless and dull, where you aren't using the trope as effective shorthand anymore but relying on it like a crutch. Instead of making groups of creatures with divergences in how they think compared to us you're just spawning mobs and npcs whose role in stories and games is entirely functional and utilitarian. The halfling farms, the dwarf makes stuff, the elf teaches magic.
The best part, in the Forgotten Realms the grey orcs are a newer subspecies to the more common mountain orcs. In fact, the grey orcs were far more calmer when compared to the mountain orcs. These variants had a dull green skin pigment, but often had a varied appearance overall. The greyification of modern orcs is a recent trend.
Also don't be fooled by the mountain orc name, they were just the most common species. They kind of existed everywhere they could.
and yet they're now saying players cannot be a half-race like half-elf half-orc or half-dragon
Could someone guide me to what era/years to research Persian culture to match the nomadic orc falconer culture/ lifestyle
Lovely video!
I personally don't mind alignments being stapled on an entire race and that race having a god associated with them for these things do open up interesting dynamics. But such things must be justifiable: some instinctual need or desire
Assuming an entirely different race would have the same needs, tendencies and all is superficial imo, but I do like the direction you're taking it.
It's important to note: just because it makes sense doesn't mean it'll happen or is culturally transferrable. Religion and culture are such crucial parts of civilization and how history takes its course, so it's difficult to talk about how orc civilization without that context
It’s funny that you mention Vikings in a video about orcs because Scandinavians at that time were also more than just Vikings; their women had more rights, they had a social hierarchy (Thralls, Karls, and Jarls specifically), there’s a whole mythos with a pantheon of gods, they traded as far as the Byzantine Empire (and some served the Byzantine Emperor as mercenary guards), they had an abundance of amber that they used in their jewelry, and they were quite fond of hygiene and appearance. Heck, they even traveled to North America before the pilgrims.
This is kind of a long-winded way of saying Scandinavian culture might be cool to take inspiration from for orcs as long as we give their society more details like that rather than “capture, pillage, and burn everything”
this is true but women were still banned from fighting, shield maidens job was to carry their husband's shield on long marches as well as repairing the shield and if their husband died in battle to bring them back home on their shield so to speak
"... that we're all a bit fed up with seeing"
All.... Are you sure?
For Orc (and Ork) deities I really enjoy Gork and Mork. Honestly Warhammer Orcs are just the best
There are actually two types of Orcs in Forgotten Realms. The grey orcs you mentioned originate from another world and traveled to Faerun via big portal, similar to the orcs in Warcraft. The orcs native to Toril are mountain orcs, and they are generally more hairy and boar-like
8:18 So, this is just making me think of the bond-birds of the Hawkbrothers from Mercedes Lackey.
The natural magic thing (and the mental connection to the first mentioned thought) brings to mind an awesome variation on Orcs: Ages ago there was a war of the gods upon the the face of the world. The forces unleashed by these gods walking the physical realm and their mortal champions caused horrible devastation and terrible changes in places, places where everything was altered by the spilled blood of gods or the overwhelming magical energies unleashed there. Warped creatures and plant life abounded in those areas, and can still rise from them as new life is exposed to it especially if born there. (Note: Picture wild magic zones, areas full of living spells, Fallout style mutations, creatures and plants with traits of others or strange magic properties for good or ill.) The only surviving “mortal” race, Elves (Dwarves had yet to breach the surface, they and their gods having stayed out of the conflict) worked to create something to restore the world, a slave-race which would be immune to the corrupting miasma of those areas, the ability and knowledge to cleanse and restore nature in those areas. So were born the Orcs, with natural affinity for Druidic and shamanistic magics (for the spirits of the land and the dead were as twistedly dangerous as warped nature itself in those lands). Long they toiled to restore the twisted and corrupted places, growing more discontent as time passed, for their Elven masters grew ever more contemptuous of their short lives and “crude” forms, becoming increasingly uncaring and cruel towards them.
The final spark, which led to rebellion against their creators and an abiding hatred, came when they discovered a new race, the Goblins. The Elves were horrified by them, and the thought that the corruption twisted either their own kin or one of the other Dawn Races into such twisted primitive things, they ordered their Orc slaves to destroy them, wipe them out. The Orcs refused, turning against their creators and waging war against them to save the Goblins, who committed no crime beyond existing as something the Elves didn’t control and being beneath the Elves standards of beauty and decorum. The Elves, already in a war with the newly emerged Dwarves, had no hope of retaining control of their creations.
The Orcs now continue their semi-nomadic lifestyle, searching for places or creatures of the old corruption (or any newly created such places/creatures) cleansing such places, ending such creatures (if they need to be), and aiding nature.
The way that I run orcs is borrowed from their depiction in Delicious in Dungeon, Dhakaani goblins from Eberron, and the Wildlings from Ice & Fire. Orcs were once the most prominent humanoid species which had their own more permanent kingdoms and civilizations before being forced into a diaspora by the elves (who invaded and dominated orcish land), forcing them into remote locations like caves, deserts, and mountains as well as sparking a nomadic culture. This culture coupled with the fact that their resources were nearly entirely depleted by the elves (and subsequently the dwarves and humans) forced them to adopt either raiding or druidic practices (druids being the majority) to sustain their tribes. Human civilizations only recently began accepting more orcs into some specific cities but the prejudice toward them is still fairly negative due to the formerly mentioned raiding practices of a small number of tribes. In my fantasy, orcs are a misunderstood people who, due to their situation, have had to adapt and make hard decisions. I also let orcs have a wide variety of pigmentation: green being more prominent in grasslands and forests, tan in deserts, grey in rocky areas and caves, and even blues in snowy regions. I really like these guys LOL.
I imagine orcs as nomadic with the ability to not only survive but thrive anywhere. And the only animals they work with being large dire wolves hunting and working together.
in Tolkien, while he used "orcs" and "goblins" interchangeably at times, his intent is "orcs" are bigger Goblins(so the sizing are Goblin
I did two different methods in my D&D world for orcs. The 'blatantly evil' Orcs are all followers of an Evil Ravager god. The other Orcs are all Vikingesque, built a kingdom and are traders, also they do raid south during harsh seasons.
I've been working on an orc-like race for my worldbuilding and it's surprising how similar it is to what you're describing. Although i feel like they would absolutely maintain herds of animals. Bigger bodies means a higher food requirement, a reliable source of food is necessary on top what can be foraged and hunted.
The green color and the aversion to sunlight and blood thirst, and seemingly aversion to positive energies, perhaps hints at something involving necromancy/vampirism/ghoulism
I like to think orcs team up with goblins because they look similar to orcish children. Like they know they’re not children but is similar to how humans feel about things that reminds them of children
I think you’d really like the comic book ‘The Hunger and the Dusk’ by G. Willow Wilson and Christian Wildgoose. The Orcs in the series are heavily inspired by the Mongols, with a semi-nomadic culture built around their herds of oxen. Their ongoing war with the humans is driven by their need for grazing land clashing with the sedentary humans’ need for land to plant crops. One Orc even says to a human at one point “where your crops grow, our herds starve’.
didnt expect you to reference pointy hat out the gate. Thought it was a funnu coincidence. Kudos to you
I don't think Tolkien really portrayed orcs as uncreative. In his works, orcs are depicted as singing, decorating their armor with painted designs, producing different styles of armor, and even having distinctive architecture in places like Mordor where they weren't living in caves.
My favorite orc homebrew culture so far has been basically "horse nomads but in the sky" crossed with the classic orcish warriors and raiders. So they were nomadic raiders hunters and mercenaries who rode giant bats. Orcish bat bows and air lancers served a lot of cities as warbands for a price and frequently facilitated trade
in one of my home brew campaigns, my orcs were created as that cannon fodder by the fallen giants, who were at war with their children the dwarves , however these orcs were freed by there brothers the dwarves and had a slavic type of culture , where the dwarves had a very norse like culture, i had a hobgoblin otterman style empire, this also lead to orc-dwarf parented children etc .
in my setting orcs are simply a more barbaric race of elves, they look like elves but they have developed a green skin due to high amounts of copper mineral in their water and they're much taller than most elves and practice scarification rituals to brand their skin with their clan markings
There is a quote attributed to Tolkien, that goed as:
"we where all orcs in the great war".
How truly is that quote from Tolkien aside, I think Tolkien himself never was quite satisfied to the origin of his orcs, and how they could be "better orcs" as you put it.
In Tolkien's writings, orcs are adversarial and antagonists, but even there, here and there are bits that show that they do have a culture, a life beyond their dark lords wars.
I personally like in modern fantasy, where the magical creatures of the past have become races of peoples, to be people. And people can do terrible things, but they often justify it to themselves.
A thing about the war bow :
Pretty much every ranged weapon becomes more deadly with greater strenght ...
Atlatals or javelins would also carry immense amounts of momentum to the target ,
And since we have both modern day evidence from african hunters using javelin and spears to hunt elephants ,
As well as archelogical and experimental evidence of atlatals being able to pierce deep into large preys ,
I suggest to make javelins and atlatals the weapon of choice for megafaunal hunters
I could see an underappreciated potential for synergy and trade between centaurs and orcs if they both prefer relatively continental environments, but have different diets and habitat preferences. They're just different enough to have overlapping territories without competing, and their abilities mean comparative advantages in food production will help encourage trade.
I have orcs in my world but there are three types on their homeworld.
- Green Orcs: Who live in forests.
- Blue Orcs: Who dwelled in tundras and boreal forests gaining blue skin and a lot of white hair similar to fur and humans made the legends of Yetis from them.
- Red Orcs: Also called Ash Orcs evolved in volcanic areas and can gain nutrition from igneous rocks.
Definitely stealing these ideas for my setting
Great video, even though I dislike pointy hat as of late. Would you perhaps make a video on giants as well some day? Giants are even more odd :)
Orcs in my setting were initially mountain and hill people -- largely ribal, and crepuscular/nocturnal since the have sunlight sensitivity and good night vision.
As of the "present" in the world -- very few orcs in the north part of the worls still live in mountains and hills; most have been pushed into swamps, by the exxpansions of dwarves, elves, and humans. Which is an environment they can ... kind of get by in, but not thrive in generally. A lot of their raiding is because the environment they've been pushed to is difficult for them to survive in, and they routinely need to raid for materials and resources that are lacking in the areas they've been forced into.
They also have a historical, ancestral claim to the hills and mountains, and occasionally they put together an army to try to reclaim some of the lost territory (with mixed results); others have integrated into the societies that forced them out, or find ways to survive as small scattered communities in their former homelands.
The orcs in the west -- where they were able to keep their mountains -- are less prone to aggressive raiding and war activities; though still engage in it to some extent because often they just can't get enough food in the mountains for their current population and so have to come raid the neighboring societies to make up the difference.
(They also... just don't have the lack of creativity, some of the northern orcs have cities and all of them have had some creative adaptions to make their new home more hospitable and such.)
I feel obligated to bring Fateforge Orcs here : two very different cultures, born of a mightily important event (the ascend to godhood of an half-orc and how some orcs saw him as going overboard and totally not respecting orcish culture and tradition in his conquests as a mortal while others followed suit and paid a heavy price) but each being complex, with good and bad parts and frankly an overall awesome take on orcish violence being actually extremely borned and controlled through faith, traditions and sets of rules (no slaves for instance!). ANd they did so for all goblinoids and it rocks.
My orcs are one of the first races created, and thus resemble their patron god the most closely. This being Gruumsh, who's more of a god of conflict and violence. As such, they view the world through a lens of winning fights. Mining is winning fights against the ground, woodsmanship is winning fights against trees etc. They are also renowned surgeons, skilled in nonmagical healing (which is still important since magical healing has limits), since they view it as 'battle against death itself'. However, this leads to two persistant problems.
The first is that they're not great at writing stuff down or solving problems permanently, because that ends the cycles of conflict and violence that they see as personal growth and holy tribute to Gruumsh. The second is that this extends to greetings and socialisation - Orcs will happily raid each other's villages, viewing it as a social gathering. Unfortunately, this applies to other races. It took a very long time to finally bridge the gap and bring about relative peace, and there's still many tribes that prefer the old ways of doing things.
I posted this on Pointy Hat's video as well, but a while back I was also frustrated with Orc lore and tried to fix it a little, even made a blurb from the Orc's perspective. Here it is if anyone wants to use it:
Little is as often told or as poorly understood as Orcish history. The Elves hold they were born from the blood of the god Gruumsh when he lost his eye in battle. The Dwarves tell that when the One-Eyed God marched on their ancient kingdoms he realized he would need an army, and so fed his blood to wild boars giving them humanoid form. Many Humans maintain He Who Watches led the Orcs from the depths of the Abyss to wage war upon the Material Plane. What is truly fascinating is how far removed these tales are from what the Orcs themselves tell. Recent scholarship focusing on using Half-Orcs as mediators and contributors in interviewing various tribes about their religious traditions has allowed us to piece together a consistent cultural narrative, which follows. In their own tongue the Orcs are called _Margumhai_, or “the Exiled People'' for where they are is not where they are from, and where they are from they can never return. Where they are from differs from telling to telling depending on the location and the neighbors of the orcs, sometimes it is an idyllic cave, sometimes a sylvan forest, other times verdant fields or green valleys. It is always called _Bhoguzg_ ``good land” and it is said that in those times the orcs knew no war and ate no meat, but farmed and foraged in harmony with the land. Then came the _Ashurzish_ “first enemy” and they were driven out and hunted like animals, their homes burned, their land stolen, never to be returned, who the first enemy is varies from telling to telling as well, but it is usually one of the longer lived races like Elves or Dwarves, though some vivid and savage tales of the first enemy depict them as being Humans. It is said for three days and three nights the survivors fled from the first enemy, until they could run no more and collapsed exhausted. The land they came to was not as good as from where they they had fled, but it was still good. So they set themselves down there, keeping careful watch for others, but living in peace, and for a time they prospered. Then they found the _Grakish_ ``second enemy”. The second enemy is almost always the Drow or the Humans, though occasionally it can be more exotic races like the Dragonborn or even a group of fiends. The Orcs tried to introduce themselves to the _Grakish_, but to no avail, the _Grakish_ raided them constantly, enslaving all they caught, and killing many. The Orcs tried to resist, but to no avail, they were too weak and knew little of war, and so they fled. For thirty days and thirty nights they fled, resting little and eating less, until the _Grakish_ were far behind them, and none could recall the way back to _Bhoguzg_. This land was much harsher, and they struggled to feed themselves from the meager bounty of the land. They persevered despite this, and there was peace for a time. Then they found the city of the _Gakhish_ “third enemy”, usually Dwarves, Elves, or Humans. Wary after so much conflict they hid their tribes and sent scouts to see what kind of folk were in this city. They saw many wonders there, and hiding their faces spoke to the _Gakhish_, and found them reasonable, and friendly. So the tribes came out of hiding, seeking to join hands with their neighbors, so that their wandering might end at last. But it was not to be, for the Orcs were hateful to the sight of the _Gakhish_. The city-folk reviled them as bestial, ugly, even demonic. The _Gakhish_ drove the orcs away, mobs searching the countryside for them. Outnumbered 100 to 1, they once again fled. For 300 days and 300 nights they traveled, until they came to the edge of the world. There it was truly barren, and there was little to eat, and many predators seeking to eat them. The elders despaired, for now they were truly lost, too weak to go anywhere else, but not strong enough to live there. There, at the edge of the world they found their god, Gruumsh. He was tired, he was battered, wounded, defeated, and driven out just like they were. Yet he was strong, proud, and unafraid. They had been driven there because of their weakness, but he had come there to regain his strength. Then _Durub_, first High Chief of the Orcs whose name now simply means “ruler”, knelt before the resting war god in supplication. “Oh Mighty One, we have traveled far in weakness, driven from place to place by the cruel will of others. We offer you our service for ever and ever, if you will only lead us in strength.” Gruumsh looked down with his one remaining eye, and his mouth twisted into a fierce grin as he replied “Know that *I AM Gruumsh*. As long as I have walked I have not known peace, and as long as you walk with me your fate shall be the same. But I can promise strength to you beyond what you have ever known.” So the deal was struck, and Gruumsh gave each man and woman of age a spear and took them on a hunt. The _Ashurzaz_ “first kill” is its own legend, but when the tribe drank the blood of the kill and ate its flesh they grew strong, and resolved to never be driven away again. They would reclaim their homeland, and if they had forgotten where it was that simply meant they would have to keep conquering until they found it. Then they would build strong walls and sturdy gates, and their children would grow fat on fruit and grain. But the men and women would be ever vigilant, never again would they suffer exile, never again would they be helpless. Now they were war made flesh, and flesh made strong. Such is the history of the Orcs, according to the tales they tell themselves. --John Reuel, Professor of the College of Lore
In my world Orcs are heavily inspired by the Monster Hunter franchise.
Orcs and Goblins are green and striped, brindled or spotted to blend in with the jungle areas that cover most of the islands.
The islands where they are native to also hold gargantuan monsters of all kinds that attack pretty much any permanent settlement, so they keep their camps on the move and largely forgo metal unless totally necessary because they can't just set up a village and a forge and all that.
They are naturally very strong and train to be far stronger, they have a deep culture of hunting, and wrestling in outfits inspired by the monsters they hunt.
They use their incredible strength and resilience to kill the monsters that come their way and harvest everything they can from it.
Meat to feed the tribe, scales and fur for cloth and clothes, bones and sinew for structure or for armour and weapons.
They journey between forges hidden deep in the volcanic mountains to use the heat for forging metal on rare occasions, typically the hunt-leader gets their own metal weapon when they take the position, and any other metal is used for ceremonial knives used in the Ritual of Carving at the end of each hunt.
Goblins fill a similar niche to Palicoes in this setting, I thought the idea of these little green guys who are incredibly durable and just wanna do their best to help out the big strong orcs is fun, they typically take on the role of caretakers and artisans whenever the tribe sets up camp for the week, cooking, crafting or patching up clothes and helping set up tents etc.
When Humans and Elves and other folks come to the islands where Orcs live, they find out how much of a bad idea it is to try colonise the place and set up castles and try to arrange political marriages with the daughters of hunt-leaders. The Orcs fight colossal lizards and megafauna for a living, crushing humans is child's play.
Not that they need to fight them when said megafauna rolls up and destroys the entire colony after only a month of magically erecting the castle.
Love this video. I think we need to move away from Forgotten Realms/WOTC lore in general.
I am really firmly against this movement to make every fantasy race much more human in mindset. I say "race" because "species" is not technically accurate, but in a lot of ways, the fantasy races really are distantly related or not related at all. We shouldn't expect them to conform to human sensibilities, although most of the time, they do over-express some aspect of humanity (hence orcs' preference to violence).
The Forgotten Realms actually DOESN'T paint orcs with a single brush; that's just an assumption people make about it. There are two main subraces with different origins and many different tribes. I'm not a huge fan of adopted Warhammer lore (I think that franchise is pretty ridiculous) or Wacraft lore, and even grey-skinned orcs deviate far from the original D&D concept where they were pig-like (like Ganon).
With that said, I'm not really for making them green. I'm definitely against making them photosynthetic because a lot of people play as then, and effectively removing survival gameplay from the game is not the direction I like things to go in. However, if you are going to go there, their photosynthesis would go a long way to explain their CON. We get fatigued primarily not due to a lack of oxygen, but because of a build-up of CO2. Photosynthesis uses CO2. So if they could process some of the CO2 they are making (at least when exposed to sunlight), they would become less fatigued from activity. Of course, that would only work in daylight, so it doesn't completely work.
I find it a bit ironic that you set out to excise biological essentialism from the orcs and then proceeded to start rebuilding the race by how the color of their skin defines them. Almost everything you said about them related to their biology. I don't actually think that's bad, but I don't see how you removed the biological essentialism.
I'd also like to point out that there are plenty of evil civilizations in D&D. So implying that D&D singles out nomadic cultures as evil is absolutely wrong. And I also find it weird that you are so bothered by racial pantheons. Like... back in the bronze age, each people group had their own pantheon.
I think the balance is in the middle. Yes each Race/Species would have their own Folklore/ Mythology/Pantheon/Religion ...but they would not be limited to just that/constrained just by that. In a real fantasy world, people mingle, ideas cross-fertilise. Aspirational Universalist Cults/Religions are born. Crusades & Jihads are called. People are converted by sword & flame or by Missionaries, or by Traders, or a particular localised Cult or a particular species FMPR is adopted as a State Religion by an Emperor (eg Rome) or another Emperor mandates Freedom of Religion with a certain amount of State support for/incorporation of each FMPR (eg Cyrus The Great) or a Ruler builds or attempts to build a Synthesist State Religion eg Akhenaten or Akbar or two religions mix/intertwine in a border area and give birth to something new eg Sikhism hybridising elements of both Islam & Hinduism.
Sometimes a conquered peoples takes religion of the Conqueror but puts a new spin on it eg Shiah Iran.
@KevinWarburton-tv2iy Yeah, what you say is true, but I have a different perspective on it. I think the openness of religion (as well as other aspects of it) are directly related to the needs of a people. Humans are always creating and reforming ingroups and outgroups. To Bronze Age tribes, it was important to have a more insular religion. Now, it is more important to have a religion of recruitment. I don't think one or the other is necessarily superior to the other, it just depends on the type of world. More insular religions have more precise shibboleths, for instance. If your religion or group is being targeted by others, that security is more important than recruitment.
As far as balance goes... I just today came up with an idea that was indirectly inspired by Delicious in Dungeon. I came up with some racial abilities that could fit a pig-person race, but seemed inappropriate for orcs as we envision them. Specifically, a good sense of smell that can be used to discern information. Pigs are known to have good senses of smell, after all, but that doesn't jive with our idea of orcs.
So what if orcs had two opposing gods that were pulling them in two different directions: A bestial god and a martial god, both evil. These gods actually influence the bodies of the orcs. The martial god turns the orcs into the Warhammer-style green orcs, and the bestial god turns orcs into the OG D&D/Zelda pig orcs. These gods fight for control of the orcs, setting them against each other if necessary. This fratricidal violence and fluidity of allegiance/form is the reason why orcs remain uncivilized. The martial orcs do try to organize into armies, but the beastial god and conflict with humanoids rarely allows them to get too big. Both types of orcs are pulled toward evil.
However, orcs technically can escape the influence of their gods in the moment when they are pulled from one to another. If they balance their inner nature between the beast and the martial, they can attain a form in-between the two extremes and avoid the notice of their gods. It is still possible to fall in one direction or the other if their inner selves go out of balance too long, although some orcs can lean more in one direction than another.
If we do this, the monstrous orcs can have the most extreme features that are good for opponents, PCs can customize their racial bonuses by selecting from different benefits of each form, their race can be an active part of the game and story, and their bonuses and appearance can adjust over the course of the game. It's also a pretty unique idea, IMO.
Perhaps the bestial god may also fight over the kobolds, giving us the two different types of them?
Anyway, I think I'm going to go with this for my experimental game system, but I don't think the Forgotten Realms version needs to be shamed. That's why I reacted in such a way to the video.
It's become one of my favorite things, when Tom does videos like this, to see if I remember official bits in D&D that line up with the amount of thought he puts into the subject.
In the case of Orcs and the mountains, a bit of old lore suggested that, after the other gods had made their personal races and given them domains for their own - Dwarves below the earth, elves in the forest, etc. - Gruumsh found that all that was left for his own species were the wastelands and the rough mountaintops. Furious, he swore a vendetta against the other gods, and passed it on to his created people, to wage it against the species of the other deities.
Of course, none of that explores what the details of their culture might be quite so vividly.
Tolkien's orcs were the concept of the worst of the barbarian horde; the savage, murderous, and innumerable strangers who sweep in to ruin and pillage. They are the vikings, and the mongols, and the huns. This is where the uncomfortable concepts attached to the Half-Orc are born, in a very real historical trauma that many societies have suffered.
'Orcs' burned the Library of Alexandria. 'Orcs' did worse things to the Irish people than even the British of comparable time frames, to hear the Irish tell it. 'Orcs' savaged China, with the latter helpless to even slow them down.
Give Orcs better weapons than everyone else, and they are Europe through all of recent human history.
And the word is in vogue again these days, for a reason we're all aware of.
This raises all the problems people fixate on of course: an entire race of murderous raiders with no culture of their own, but full sentience nonetheless, is bio-essentialism at its worst. And the Christian themes that were baked in to D&D's early days also mean you have the dichotomy of 'natural magic' against the power of gods and their clergy. See Tom's video on Shamans and Druids for a good look at that.
Tolkien's 'created to be monsters' explanation ducks the bio-essentialism problem: his orcs aren't truly 'people', they're monsters that imitate sentient behavior, but aren't capable of making choices or experiencing emotions the same way. A tragedy, but a deadly threat nonetheless. But as always following authors were less skilled than him, or just missed the point.
D&D 5e approached it a fascinating way, removing the 'inherent evil' from the species but making their culture deeply religious. And all of their gods warlike and cruel. I've mentioned Karen Miller's Empress and its following books before, but if you want a good, viciously awful look at what THAT would be like, look there.
D&D 3.5, or its novels, approached it from the perspective that Gruumsh actually is capable of caring for his creations. And they had R.A. Salvatore explore what it might look like if a god as violent and terrible as Gruumsh demanded of his people to establsh a *Society*. Not to raid and pillage and murder, but to carve out a place for themselves and LIVE with the others, for the betterment of the race as a whole.
It is some of Salvatore's greatest work, to my thinking.
And frankly I love all of it. I love having orcs as the terrible threat from the badlands and the mountainsides, I love the idea that they aren't inherently evil (the "is it right for a Paladin to murder baby orcs?" question was always easy to answer for me), but their *gods* either are or are so hostile that the distinction doesn't matter when they're sweeping down on you in a murdering horde. And I love the idea that even with this they can have a full and elaborate society as sentient creatures, instead of just monsters aping the concept.
And I like the answer I landed on. The gods are not hundreds of different glorified Outsiders, they are what is True. And several of them crafted species of their own. Corellon is the god of Art in all its forms, a fey being that also holds dominion over love as Mania. Moradin is the god of Craftwork, again in all its kinds, of building things and skills passed down mapped out in math and learned instinct.
And Gruumsh is the god of *Violence*. And the orcs are His. And while violence isn't inherently evil, it is inherently *destructive*. And so they are a species made to be the most ferocious, the best at conflict and physical contest.
And His hold on the orcs, and His changing feelings over time, informed their role in the world.
I also kid of like the Jagermonsters from Girl Genius, while not actually called "Orcs" they have a similar reputation being seemingly ageless or at least long lived group of super solders that were experimented on by the sparks of their kingdom a long time ago and routinely sent out to raid and pillage their neighbors.... They also place a lot of importance on their hats.
Given the sheer variety of their depictions across the fantasy works I've read, orcs have become my favorite race to explore in fantasy. I'm casually writing two stories featuring orc protagonists and decided to make very different takes on common tropes for them in my stories. For the first, they are heavily influenced by Tolkien and come in a few varieties, while for the second I wanted to swing away from the typically depictions and actually made them the closest fantasy race to human.
In my games, full orcs are demonic in origin, where they're produced through ritualistic practice requiring a fallen foes' body placed in a mud pit. Boar-faced, large creatures standing at average 10-12ft tall, green/brown skin tones, some fur, large tusks, cannibalistic, culture derived from fighting, marauding and raiding, and their language involves a lot of oinking, grunting and squealing. Even the 'small' ones bear strength that even the most successful bodybuilders can barely hope to grasp. A single full orc (or pig orc) can decimate a well-balanced fifth level 5e party by using huge weapons, sheer brute strength, damage resistances, and more. Their abilities grow when they consume magic, which includes spellcasters, fae creatures such as gnomes and elves, and magic items which they can chew up without issue. The only voice they follow is that of the biggest, most successful full orc among them, very much like in Warhammer. Their big weaknesses are sunlight and silver. Sunlight burdens them with significant debuffs, while silver causes their flesh to burn up on contact.
Meanwhile, 'normal' orcs are actually half orcs, and the 'normal' half orcs are actually quarter orcs. People typically see half orcs more often and think they're full orcs, not knowing there is an entire step above them lurking beneath the mountains just waiting for the right moment to come up when the nights are longest.
Its an old game but kingdom under fire, orcs still generally look like standard orcs but are actually the best farmers of all the races.
It makes sense, beyond just being good soldiers, their naturally burly size and muscles make them excellent on farms and most manual labor, though they arent the best craftsmen.
I always worldbuild my orcs as obsessed with written knowledge, as their awareness of their own short lives means they know they have less time to learn, teach, and discover new knowledge. In some of my worlds, many alphabets are descended from the original orcish writing systems which were among the oldest writing systems, as well as orcs frequently inventing the printing press in various forms (woodblocks, individual letters, stencils).
The result is that orcish libraries are expansive, well organized, filled with books that teach the basics of skills and professions fairly quickly, and orcish educational theory is some of the most advanced (become fully fluent in a foreign language in half to two-thirds of a year? Thank orcish teaching techniques).
What's that awesome little tune in the background of your videos? I want that album. 🔥
I’m not quite sure how I feel about the idea where orcs can essentially photo synthesize and their green skin tone is a reflection of that trait but I absolutely love the anthropological approach to orc society and culture in regard to the location of their settlements, potential falconry skills, and the idea of the orcish war bow. While I personally prefer orcs being nomadic, I wouldn’t mind introducing the idea of permanent settlements being located in more hilly terrain.
In regard to the traditional depiction of orcs being war loving raiders, I personally like to split orc society into two main groups with the more violence prone raiders stemming from tribes who worship the orcish god of war and conquest while more peaceful tribes would worship the orcish god of the hunt. They are simply to different life style that stem from the god that their tribe worships. Perhaps I can combine this idea with something similar to your idea of orcs participating in an eternal crusade toward the rising sun which I personally find fascinating.