that looks like shit

>>97874856
No, because they aren't mindless animals.

>>97874883
Orcs should never be portrayed as "noble savages." They should always be pure evil, murderous marauders.

>>97874891
They should, regardless, have working brains.

>>97874891
Never say never, anon.
No race is entirely made up ENTIRELY of pure evil, murderous marauders.. that is, except for yours of course

>>97874891
>Should be
I don't care about what some random faggot on 4chan thinks something "should be". They aren't even savages in my system.

You fags need to stop aping tolkein, you're not him, nothing you make will live up to what he did, and making a cheap imitation of his works just makes you seem lazy.

>>97874984
People have been "urm actually what if orcs weren't pure evil?" for so long it's actually less derivative to do pure evil orcs.

>>97874856
Orcs, goblins and hogoblins in my setting vary between
>livestock raiders in chariots
>warbands that convert old ruins and mines into functioning lairs
>loose oppida type city states on plains and in mountains who send out raiders but might have a more complex economy and political order

>>97875028
In practice, Turkic peoples like the Seljuks weren't evil but it was a pain in the rectum to have to deal with Saladin.

>>97874919
Cool it with the antisemitism

>>97875067
What if there was a society that found the perfect balance of all those to maintain function, and the levels must be rigorously maintained

There are no orcs in my setting.
Nor are there any equivalents to orcs in my setting.
There are also no famines in my setting because food scarcity isn't what my games or stories are about. It's deeply uninteresting to me and I rather spend my time on warriors and wizards fighting monsters. Anything that gets in the way of that martial and magical combat against the forces of destruction is also getting in the way of what I find fun and interesting.

Let me ask, what is your goal?
Not in your non-existent setting. I mean what is your goal with these spammed out threads?

Fuck off

>>97874856
>in your setting
Yes, but what game?

File: Wizard Apprentice.jpg (1.52 MB, 2459x3500)

1.52 MB JPG

>>97874856
Yes, it's a bit of a problem, such that assignment to rural farming settlements is standard for royal battlemages fresh out of the college.

>>97874856
No in my setting they played The Land by getting really crappy things made and then flooding the land with them until the place becomes unusable for the actual citizenry.

Usually they have terrible portraits of themselves commissioned.
The warlord is named pecker12

>>97875028
No, it's really not. The only reason pure evil orcs exist is because of Tolkein's copycats. Even in his setting they were fucked up corrupted elves. Everything that copied him just said "Erm they're evil because they just are??" without considering what that means for them as a species.

Something cannot have free will and be ontologically evil at the same time. If a creature has free will, it can choose to be good and thus cannot be always evil. If a creature cannot choose to be good, it cannot have free will. So, you either have orcs that are little more than mindless animals that are always evil, or you have orcs that have free will and thus are individuals who can choose good or evil and thus are not always evil.

I don't care for shitty things like alignment, so my system doesn't have that. It doesn't have "always" anything species, because freedom is the right of all sentient beings and it will always be more compelling to have a villain who chooses evil for some reason or another, even if that reason is as simple as "doing good is hard" or "Doing evil is fun". Having a creature be always evil is just lazy worldbuilding, it's an excuse to dumb down any adventures that happen.

Before you whine, no, this does not mean all your villains have to be or should be relatable or morally gray. You can have bad guys, but it's that choice of doing evil that makes them compelling. Why did they go down this path? Are any of the PCs potentially going down a similar one? Is their goal understandable in its purpose but disgusting in its methods? Are they in it for some complex reason, or just love of the game? Having creatures be "always evil" takes away all of that. They become target dummies for the party to mow down. They make for incredibly boring games.

>>97876635
The only reason orcs as a fantasy race exist is Tolkein copycats. Every fantasy setting that does "what if orcs...but not evil?" is still deriving itself from either Tolkein or one of the myriad of other modern fantasy settings that copied the idea of Orcs but just made them green humans.

Orcs are cringe and don't exist in my setting
>>97874891
And this is why. It's lame. I rather stick to real monsters or just bad humans who still have motivations beyond "cuz Im evil nigga I do nefarious acts nigga"

>>97875028
It would be less derivative to just not do the elves/dwarves/orcs shit

>>97874856
Kill yourself redditor

>>97876635
What about Warhammer orks, beastmen, and skaven? They love to kill, maim, and destroy, it's in their nature. They clearly have free will, they would just never use that free will to make "good choices". The problem, I think, is that you equate sentience with human thought, not realising that non-human sentience could be wildly different in how it perceives the world.

>>97874856
>puckee spamming his commission again
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/1f7fyl0/artcomm_orc_by_pedro_silva/
https://desuarchive.org/_/search/image/tsy_l8sbr_q-AwGFvIghuw/
>47 times since September 2024
>>97875657
>puckee spamming his commission again
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/1m1pnnd/artcomm_phineas_gavran_wizard_apprentice_by/
https://desuarchive.org/_/search/image/Dfqh8B0ovwZwGynzIrC5vg/
>10 times since July 2025

>>97879456
I came into this thread because I went "Huh, this doesnt look like what puckee normally commisions" low and behold I was wrong

>>97875028
Yeah, it's gotten old. One thing I like about Goblin Slayer (I know) is that goblins will fake repentance to get an advantage.

>>97878380
Being Derivative > Having no cultural touchstones for instant context

>>97875028
good, its the new standard

>>97876635
to add to this, the main source of "modern" orcs after tolkien was warcraft
orcs were only pure chaotic evil in the first two games, and mostly because the first two games had paper thin plots to go with it
but the third game firmly depicted orcs as being far more complex and nuanced

the "all orcs are evil forever because we said so" isnt nearly as universal as people think

>>97874883
No. because they are too stupid to understand seasons.

>>97874919
Honestly. I like the idea of them being the divine gank squad that were burried before the world got nice and now literally have to be dug up. Makes the idea of Orkish Mud Farmers a bit more terrifying. The Orks were literally the children of one dick ass god who hasn't been seen in a long time but he prepared literally billions of them down there. they don't breed, they barely eat but can march for days and are aggressive and militarily smart. Inevitably some man of letters digs some up and asserts control over them, until he doesn't. Turns out they have an instinctive knowledge that god's and leaders are only good for as long as they win. If the Orks are routed there's a near 100% chance that they will sack their current leader (starting from the top) and homeland, and disperse, looking for a new supreme leader.

>>97878671
But there literally are reasons why Skaven are doing what they do. They're doing it out of fear. The core of the Skaven is fear. They fear their enemies, they fear each other, they worship a monstrous and unloving out of fear that he will manifest and start eating titanic mouthfuls of rats for fun. There is a reason, a rationale to what they are doing what they do. Skaven aren't robots programmed to kill people.

>>97874856
I think I've only ever even had orcs exist in a total of 1 campaign. And they went unused because the players just didn't go that way.

>>97874856
There was a dead orc thread on >>>/qst/6397021 (fuck you, I don't remember how to cross-board ref).

That reminded me that the essential characteristic of orcs is transience - they can only exist in instability, temporarily, or while being used by a greater power. Otherwise they just get wiped like any low-iq / high physical attributes animal.

>>97874856
Traditional games?

>>97877157
>copied the idea of Orcs but just made them green humans.
This "X Humans" shit is reductionist and is just faggots who don't like change whining about something being different than what their autism says it should be. By your logic, Elves have always been "Humans but pointy ears", dwarves have always been "Humans but angry" and hobbits have always been "Humans but short and hairy".

>>97878671
>Warhammer
Lazy setting with lazy writers. They don't have free will if they are incapable of choosing their course of action. You also confused Sentience with Sapience. Animals are sentient. Humans are Sapient. Orks, Skaven, and beastmen are not Sapient. They are sentient. They lack free will and are bound to instinct. They are animals. They are not people, and incapable of free will.

>>97880445
Don't know why you replied to me with that.

>>97881068
To add to this, orcs just aren't that complex, again:
> low average IQ (on normal distribution, with some outliers)
> ridiculously high test (with all the consequences - aggression, high muscle mass, etc)

Derived
> semi-nomadic culture
> rule of strength
> arguably, heroism/feats
> semi-nomadic / low construction skill

other lore:
> shamanistic / demon magic
> more chanellers than anything else

That's it, there is nothing else to orcs. So basically they are NPCs that can get used by the PCs and redditors can have "exceptional" orcs that defy their orc characteristics. So they are like goblins and kobolds when you want to place some boring chaos into the setting.

>>97880303
Then rip off myth and culture instead of other people's attempts to do the same
That's the differene between Tolkien and most of his derivatives

>>97874883
>>97874891
I have both and they frequently fight each other just as much as they raid into the Dwarven empire's frontiers. Marauder orcs like to kill, my noble savages like slavery. That's the balance in Orkendom.

>>97874856
this looks like shit

>>97880309
>the "all orcs are evil forever because we said so" isnt nearly as universal as people think
Adding onto this is that D&D hasnt had "orcs are completley evil always" for a very long time. AD&D 2e had literal Lawful Good orcs who were farmers, the Ondonti. In 3e they were listed as Often Evil, which amounts to about 30 to 60% being evil. Drow were more evil than orcs, at Typically Evil. That leaves a whole lot of them that are neutral or even good. So weve got nonevil or even good orcs for at least 40 years now. The only truly always evil orcs arent even actually always evil (Tolkien struggled with this decision) and come from a fantasy book and not a ttrpg.

It looks and seems like tourists (aka culture warriors with an agenda) trying to force a wide variety of settings and rules about orcs into a singular specific stereotype based on old /lit/ shit. The contrarian desire for "always evil" orcs is some very stupid "old good, new bad" cock sucking of Tolkien, despite him eventually saying they weren't.

>>97882718

Why are you putting genuine conversation into a puckee thread?

>>97883042
I simply do not care anymore. Since there are no more actual genuine threads as this board is basically a rotted corpse puppeted by bots, I do not care about whether puckee spams his shit. May as well post as normal until this board shuts down or I stop coming here.

>>97882718
Or maybe it's people who are just true fans and not on board with revisionist slop, the I'm-so-special shit that would eventually metastasize as the tiefling plague.

>>97885736
>Or maybe it's people who are just true fans
If you were true fans you'd know that orcs weren't "always evil". Youd know that Tolkien had eventually said they weren't always evil. You and your supposed true fans simply arent.
>not on board with revisionist slop
It cant be revisionist slop if its been the functioning status quo for literal decades. Youre the one revising shit and being revisionist, trying to force all forms of orc into a singular static vision based on a poor understanding of even their original form.

>the I'm-so-special shit that would eventually metastasize as the tiefling plague.
Ahh, there's the actual stupid reason for why you're engaging in this revisionist bullcrap. There is no tiefling plague except that which resides in the heads of propagandized idiots. The numbers of actual tieflings being played, and especially doing that "im so special" routine so commonly brought up but never substantiated, is far less than you fucking idiots think. Most of it is based on imagined feelings and fucking fan art from teenagers and young adults. Youve invented a stupid boogeyman that makes you look like an insecure dipshit.

Grow the fuck up.

>>97882718
>>97885736
>>97887344
Doesn't all of that just mean we've circled all the way back around to the fact that having always-evil orcs is less derivative?
If Tolkein Orcs weren't always evil, and D&D dropped always-evil orcs as early as 2e (and earlier on only had law and chaos), then that just means there was a single game for a few years that actually had always-evil Orcs.

All of this implies that always-evil Orcs are a relatively rare and unexplored idea.

>>97889172
>Doesn't all of that just mean we've circled all the way back around to the fact that having always-evil orcs is less derivative?
No.
And the idea that your games have to be less derivative is a false choice. We arent here to make some award-winning piece of literature or media (most of which dont feature always evil orcs anyway), were here to play fucking elf games. Every argument for Always Evil Orcs boils down to a lack of understanding how humanoids function in D&D or its derivatives, a misreading of Tolkien, attempts at shaming worldbuilders into being supposedly better writers, or plain and simple culture war narratives/bigotry. All of these are tired nonsense.

>All of this implies that always-evil Orcs are a relatively rare and unexplored idea.
What is there to explore? Nothing. "These orcs kill, rape, and pillage and will do nothing more than that". Thats the entirety of always evil orcs. Boring one-dimensional shit everybody moved past because it was boring and shit. Theres a reason every setting and piece of media gave them nuance, gave them culture, gave them more than a single specific "hat" of being the evil raider race with no redeeming features. Because there is nothing else to do with them if they are always evil bullshit. We explored the concept completely and then media moved the fuck on to more interesting and intricate ideas of them.

Its why demons and devils need so much variety in shape and form, and thousands of various themes around evil, it provides something interesting to these rather one-dimensional beings.

Why the fuck are you weirdos so desperate for Always Evil Orcs? Enough so that you have to come to 4chan to evangelize it and tell everyone they have to have them or else theyre bad. It reeks of contrarian insecurity or childish idiocy. You need to have something that goes against the mainstream ideas to feel special or you're simply too stupid and unable to understand anything more complex. Either way, grow the fuck up.

>>97874914
I'm thinking they should be pragmatic enough for humans to hire on unscrupulous tasks like running prisons, carrying out executions, fighting as mercenaries, any dirty jobs humans can wash their hands of while satisfying orcs' violent impulses

https://desuarchive.org/tg/search/filename/orc%20low/image/tsy_l8sbr_q-AwGFvIghuw/type/op/