D&D General What have you done with Orcs in your games?

[DND_Reborn]

What have you done with them in your games?

This...

Kill them.

Orcs are warlike and aggressive, often (but not necessarily) evil. Any evil is perpetuated by their culture and hostile, abusive upbringing. Rarely, orcs break away from their culture, splintering off. Traditional orcs do not tolerate such acts of weakness (as they see it) and will actively seek out such individuals or groups to destroy them.

FWIW, I've never had an orc PC, but would certainly allow one if a player wanted to play it. It would face very harsh reactions from most "civilized" areas and have to work to overcome it. I have had "good" orc bands and NPCs, certainly, so the players understand such things are possible, but rare (because the orc tribes try to stop it).

 

[Zardnaar]

That's the main inspiration, since I once took a graduate class on Ottoman history, though the same thing basically happened on some level almost every time a nomadic people conquered a sedentary people with a developed infrastructure. Suddenly they discover that sedentary civilization is great when you're in charge of it, but also gradually find less and less time to practice the nomadic warrior skills that got them there in the first place.

Ottoman empire could almost be a D&D campaign pick a time period.

 

[Mallus]

I've mainly done variant orcs in my campaign settings. I don't think I've ever used Pure Strain Tolkien orcs.

In the World of the Islands, orcs and their fellow monstrous humanoids were the creation of Changer, one of the seventeen gods. Modifier of old species into new. They weren't evil. Unfortunately, Changer had a rebellious Lucifer-esque first-created helper named Alpha who, unsurprisingly rebelled, fled their their holy mountain home with a chunk of population, and promptly got corrupted by demons.

In the World of CITY, orcs and their fellow monstrous humanoids were imported as menial laborers from other worlds and planes through the Gate Builder Empire's magical Gates. They were also experimented on and altered via alchemy, because apparently I like fantasy genetic engineering? Eventually the empire collapsed, and its successor state granted orcs and their kin full rights and citizenship, while doing little to reverse the effects of all the prior state-sponsored racism...

In the Port on the Aster Sea, orcs hailed from the Isle of Beasts, and despite the rather derogatory name of the homeland, were fairly well respected semi-mythic honorable warrior types. Known for being scrupulously honest mercenaries.

 

[Voadam]

My last half-orc PC I can't remember definitively but I think we decided he was narratively a full orc or that half-orcs were a true breeding thing.

In any case his view on gods was that they were definitely real, but a constantly changing cast. So the tribal stories would be that Gruumsh was in charge of the pantheon until he got eaten by The Great Bronze Tiger who was then top spirit until he got hunted down by The Black Archer who was later ambushed by The Blue Rhinotaur who gained the King of the Gods Crown from him. Basically WWE plot lines that changed and you expected to change every time you tuned in. Shamans telling stories around the fire were like ringside commentators and Orcs were expected to cheer and be interested and get pumped up by the stories, but not to worship the wrestlers.

 

[David Howery]

First one was Gruumsh! One-Eye sees all! We found you, Gruumsh!

The second one was Blood for the Blood God! Odin!

Orcs always struck me as a lot like Vikings.... one eyed chief god and his super strong son, prone to raiding the neighbors, etc. I went so far as to have them actually riding around in longboats in a short FR campaign I ran once...

 

[Voadam]

Orcs always struck me as a lot like Vikings.... one eyed chief god and his super strong son, prone to raiding the neighbors, etc. I went so far as to have them actually riding around in longboats in a short FR campaign I ran once...

You can easily view orcs as typically written as vikings who are biologically adapted to caves and the underdark so they have their D&D habitats instead of historical viking coastal regions.

 

[Voadam]

(Wasn't there a quote from one Conan story along the lines of, "Barbarians are politer than civilised people, because an insult is more likely to be met with an axe to the head"?)

“Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.” I think it is straight from Howard and not in a story.

 

[Garmorn]

I am thinking of using a suggestion that I ran across. I will give them a Klingon like culture. Fierce, normally lawful, and honorable. But with little regard to the morality of their actions beyond their honor code.

 

[Flamestrike]

My Orcs are the same as they ever were.

Humanoids that have the misfortune of being under the sway of Clerics of Evil Gods, and with all the Evil cultural norms (rapine, violence and killing are accepted) that go along with it.

They're not 'inherently' evil any more than Drow are, or Humans who come from a culture that also embraces social and cultural evil. They're evil because they're taught that might makes right, the weak deserve to be ruled by the strong, and if you cant keep something from being taken from you by force, you dont deserve to have it.

Alignment is a choice. One influenced by your environment of course, but ultimately a choice.

 

[Azuresun]

Orcs are warlike and aggressive, often (but not necessarily) evil. Any evil is perpetuated by their culture and hostile, abusive upbringing. Rarely, orcs break away from their culture, splintering off. Traditional orcs do not tolerate such acts of weakness (as they see it) and will actively seek out such individuals or groups to destroy them.

Funny thing is, that's probably the wildly original and radical take on orcs now,