The catalyst for this entry is (not surprisingly I suppose) the many posts on the internet by innumerable Gamemasters touting how utterly unique their particular snowflake Orcs are.
Then I got to thinking about this one post of mine. Also question and answer number 46 on this one. There are other posts as well. (If you are interested, use the Search function in the upper left hand corner with the key word 'Orc')
What spurred me on further was this recent post, which was inspired by this one, which in turn originated with this one I believe. None of which I really care about (Nothing wrong with them. As valid a discussing as any other in the gaming blogsphere I suppose) as they get into too much book-keeping minutiae for my tastes.
They did get me to thinking about Orcs though...and how much I thoroughly despise them.
Let me get this off my chest, right from the start.
I hate Orcs. Hate'em.
Not 'creature-I-love-to-hate' kinda hate. I just vehemently dislike them.
For me, the Orc* symbolizes a lot of what I don't like about Dungeons & Dragons type fantasy.
They are not creatures of myth or folklore no matter how hard the Wikipedia entry tries to relate them to something from a pre-Middle Earth source. They originated in the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien, and have since gone on to infest and permeate so many fantasy related stories and games that, for me, black mold and hay fever are more welcome.
They are uninteresting to me in the extreme. Mechanically they do nothing exciting. No special or challenging abilities, no unusual traits, nada. Why use them instead of a Goblin, a Hobgoblin, or simply a Human brigand? Ah yes, because that are the ones in the rulebook with the correct set of hit points and such. No Goblin could have that many hit points! No Troll would be that weak! The others can't be altered now can they? This makes Orcs the ONLY choice obviously. Logic I say!
Visually they are usually fairly boring in design. What is special about the Orcish face, the Orcish visage? Anything? Fifty percent of the time they are muscular, bulky, and green. The other half of the time they are muscular, bulky, pale and even uglier. So varied!
The Orcs of Warhammer and World of Warcraft. Or is it Warcraft and Warhammer?
I mean, I can totally tell them a part. For reals.
Oh how I long for those rare occasions when they look like gray, frog-beast people or green lizard-pigs. Ah, those were the days.
All in all, I just don't care for them. This feeling is made all the more intense by all the GMs who take them and, Roddenberry help us, 'do something different with them'. Spare me. Doing something different with them would be not using them. Better yet, something different would be creating your own, original monstrous humanoid.
Tolkien made these guys up. Go make up your own mainstay monsters ya lazy bastards.
Your Orcs are not different. Neither are mine.
in the interest of equal ridicule, here are my Orcs:
On the rare occasions when I run D&D (usually my homebrewed 'D&D AD' system, aka, 'D&D-But-Not'), you will practically never run into an Orc. It is extremely unusual to even see an Orc in games set on my world of Aerth.
According to my world's myths and historical records, Orcs (a Kind** of Goblin) were quite numerous and widespread at one time. That is no longer the case.
The legend goes that after all the pantheons of gods divvied up the world, each taking a region for their people, they chuckled, and said to the first great Goblin King, "You can have all the rest.".
Overjoyed, the Goblin King looked at the Map of the World that the gods had laid out to survey his domains. All that was left for him and the Goblin race were swamps, bogs, dark corners of drafty caves and canyons, burnt out forests, and farmland where nothing would grow.
The Goblin King's face fell but his eldest son began to laugh - a bitter, cold sound like icicles cracking in a deep cavern. "You seek to rob us of the world's riches but have handed us the keys to take them. We will flourish in the rotten and unhappy places. We will breed in the swamps and play in the marsh. We will hunt on the sallow farmland, and grow Goblin fruit in the desiccated woods. We will live in the caves. We will strike from the darkness."
During the Great Goblin War, when the then current Goblin King united all the Kinds** of the Goblin race together, it was Orcs, said to have descended from the first king's eldest son, who served as the first strikers and the front lines of nearly every battle. At the wars end, with the alliance of Man, Dwarf, Elf, and Wilder victorious, Orcs needed a way to rebuild. Knowing little beyond fighting, most adult male Orcs took jobs as mercenaries, guards, and other soldiers of fortune. Many tribes of Orcs took to living in the ruins of old castles and in dungeons, or inside the wrecks of ships that had crashed on rocks or run aground.
Time is not kind to that way of life and the victors of the war were in no hurry to aid the defeated. Many Human warriors hunted and killed Orcs as revenge for that latters wartime 'atrocities'. Others were killed purely out of fear and hate. If something as menacing as an Orc lived near by, surely that threatened the safety of a Human settlement. Better to get them first before they get us.
Now, many years later, Orcs are nearly extinct. The vast majority have been killed off, not just by Humans, but Elves, Dwarves, Wilders, and their allies. Barely 500 Orcs remain on the world of Aerth. The most of them dwell on an island off the Southern Coast on the Old World continent. They were moved there by members of The Order of The Winghorn Guard as a means of protecting the Orcs and their way of life from total annihilation. While this was truly their intent, they were also trying to calm the locals. "Don't worry, the Orcs are not out to steal your land. No, Orcs aren't coming for your children in the night. They all live on an island far away. Don't worry, we'll be watching them."
Sometimes, when players ask why there are so few Orcs, I answer, "Because PCs killed them all and took their stuff."
The typical Aerth Orc is virtually identical to a Hobgoblin to the uneducated eye. They stand around 6 feet on the average, but can easily be as tall as 6 foot 6 inches, or as short as 5 feet. They resemble prehistoric Humans but have large, wide, pointed ears, bestial noses, pronounced teeth, and [to varying degrees] an underbite. Their coloration varies widely, though it is usually a pale green-grey, blue-grey, or blue-tan. Their eyes and brows resemble those of gorillas but are not identical.
The Hobgoblin can be identified by a redder, often ruddier complexion, and a black, or blue-black nose. Hobgoblins have longer ears that end in a more definitive point. Orcs stoop forward slightly, especially when they run, whereas the stance of Hobgoblins is the same as Humans.
Hobgoblins are the more intelligent of the two, though Orcs can be quite clever, cunning, and have a much better sense of their environment and the world around them. The senses of an Orc are somewhat more acute than a Hobgoblin's.
Mechanically (crunch time!), Orcs possess two abilities unique to their natures.
First, they have Adaption. This ability eliminates any penalties for movement or general actions in the environment their tribe comes from. A Orc of the Northern Forests moves at his normal speed through the snow and undergrowth of his homeland. Orcs of the South Eastern swamps are not hindered when fighting or running through bogs.
Their second ability is called Feral. This gives them a bonus on any perception check involving their heightened senses of hearing and smell. They can get a visual bonus, but only at night or in the deep dark.
***
Are they different? Meh. Not really. Are they interesting? I hope so.
Now my Dragons...
AD
Barking Alien
*Orc - On Aerth there are numerous types of Goblins. The people of different regions have given the Goblin 'Kinds' (see below) different names based on their different appearances, locations, the language of the people of the area, etc.
The Orc is really another name for the Hobgoblin, although they do differ as noted above. Hobgoblins tend to be better organized and actually build huts, small houses, and will even take up residence in an abandoned Human house and maintain it to some degree. Orcs tend to live in or near woods and will only live in the ruins of a building, dungeon, or similar construction. They do not build their own homes and can not fix or maintain anything too complex.
**Kind - On Aerth, the term 'Kind' is sometimes used to describe subspecies of the same species or species of genus. For example, Orcs, Hobgoblins, Bugbears, Bugaboos, Boggles, Buggle Nahs, and Norkies are all 'Kinds' of Goblins.
