Quote Originally Posted by AgentPaper View Post
That's not preventing anything, that's just describing what orcs are like. Nothing forces you to make the first thing players encounter orcs, or goblins, or anything else. There's plenty of rules for how to have humans, or elves, or dwarfs as your antagonists, who are much more likely to be able to be negotiated with.

If the DM wanted to have an encounter with negotiation, then he'd have a camp of humans. If he wants and encounter with lots of fighting, then he has a camp of orcs. If the players decide that they want to break the mold and parley with the orcs, or attack the humans, then there's plenty of rules for each of those as well.

The only thing that drives players away from having games not centered around combat, is the fact that players like combat. The only way to "fix" that is to force the players to do something they don't enjoy, which then leads to you being the "stop having fun guys" guy.

If you enjoy campaigns where you negotiate with the orcs instead of killing them, then that's fine, go for it, nothing's stopping you. But that doesn't mean that the rest of the player base would have more fun if they were forced to play the same way you do.
My response is exactly the same as my previous post: It's not about preventing, it's about not providing an effective and diverse set of tools. It just looks like we're talking in circles now, so I respectfully back out of this debate.