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Thread: Orcs are people, too!
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2012-08-03, 11:55 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2008
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- Forest Grove, Oregon
- Gender
Re: Orcs are people, too!
The question is whether it is a meaningful question here. The orcs are the designated enemy... from a race that's apparently always chaotic evil. Tycho does not defend the concept of a designated enemy while conceding the point about always chaotic evil races. He draws no distinction.
I thought it was pretty obvious what the OP was getting at and how it was relevant.
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2012-08-04, 12:23 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2008
Re: Orcs are people, too!
The question is whether it is a meaningful question here. The orcs are the designated enemy... from a race that's apparently always chaotic evil. Tycho does not defend the concept of a designated enemy while conceding the point about always chaotic evil races. He draws no distinction.Thanks to Elrond for the Vash avatar.
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2012-08-04, 12:34 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2008
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- Forest Grove, Oregon
- Gender
Re: Orcs are people, too!
If he were not making any kind of statement related to always chaotic evil races it's very interesting the only traits he brings up are racial traits when "designated villains" need not be defined by their race -- they can be defined by anything. You have no indication at all he's making some statement about designated villains except to the point designated villains overlap with always chaotic evil races, which he does talk about. But he makes no distinction between the two.
Last edited by B. Dandelion; 2012-08-04 at 12:35 AM.
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2012-08-04, 12:40 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2008
Re: Orcs are people, too!
Except he doesn't directly talk about the use of always chaotic evil races at all, but entirely in terms of his wife's displeasure of having no options besides simply killing enemies in certain games. So he is making a distinction (perhaps not even consciously) by actually discussing one aspect and not discussing the other.
Thanks to Elrond for the Vash avatar.
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2012-08-05, 10:16 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2012
Re: Orcs are people, too!
The "humanoid races are always evil and we can freely kill them" thing and its opposition have been around a long time. I remember discussions on it in Dragon when I first started playing, back in the days of 1st edition AD&D.
Back then, I took a cue from a couple of things -- first, the association of orcs and goblins with worgs; and second, Gamma World's "Arks", which were a race of humanoid dogs. I decided that my orcs would be psychologically wolf/dog-like, with strong territoriality, a drive to establish dominance in a pecking order, the chief orc being the one with best access to breeding, etc. (Yeah, I know, a lot of this has been discredited as applying mainly to artificially-formed packs of 'stranger' wolves rather than to wolves in their natural family groups in the wild. Still, it gives me a basis.)
This gives orcs basic behavior that, while not necessarily 'evil', would generally qualify them as unpleasant and bullies from a human point of view. That in turn feeds into social and environmental factors to give something approximating the stereotypical 'evil orcs'.
Still, though, in my game worlds genetics is not destiny. There are good orcs, there are circumstances in which negotiation is the better tactic, orcs and other humanoids will surrender when it becomes evident that they can't win, and so on.
Honestly, I've found that the biggest thing in getting players out of a 'slaughter them all' mindset is surrendering. When opponents surrender and can then be questioned / negotiated with, the players are much more likely to let them go. Most humanoids in my games will honor their surrender promises, but, to keep players on their toes, a few don't.
I also have a sort of theme in my games of the stronger humanoids forcing the weaker ones to work for them. Quite a few times, my players have managed to get a group's slaves to help them by promising them their freedom once the group is defeated.
I like having things this way, because it injects an element of roleplaying, even in combat - can you trust this offer of surrender? Can you persuade the orcs' cringing goblin slaves to help you? And, of course, the players then gain promises that they have to keep, and new NPC contacts who might just show up later working for some other bad guy now....
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2012-08-05, 11:35 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2006
- Location
- Michigan
- Gender
Re: Orcs are people, too!
Redcloak approves of this.
I would be a procrastinator, but I keep putting it off.
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2012-08-05, 06:55 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2003
- Location
- Philadelphia, PA
- Gender
Re: Orcs are people, too!
This, in a nutshell.
There are no fantasy worlds. There are no orcs. They don't exist. All that exists is a bunch of humans writing stories to each other about how cool it would be if we could finally let loose and stab some folks that looked different without having to worry about boring stuff like their inalienable rights. I happen to think that maybe we should be a bit better than that.
If nothing else, it would increase the overall quality of the genre's storytelling if every antagonist needed to actually have a reason for deserving death.
It is my highest pleasure to continue to disappoint you in that regard.
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All that being said, this discussion smacks of a "Morally Justified" thread, with multiple dips into real-world analogies. Thread locked.Rich Burlew
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