2019-01-15 Orcs

@lula wrote a blog post about Tolkien’s orcs and find that Tolkien poured all the anti-Asian sentiments into it. Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part I: A Species Built for Racial Terror.

@lula

Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part I: A Species Built for Racial Terror

I like his test: “Show me a fantasy game with orcs in it, and my first question is whether I can play as one.”

Gotta check my orcs, now. I feel like there a few influences in my game:

my orcs

orcs are pig people like minotaurs are cow people, basically humans with animal heads (and they call humans “monkey people” because we’re like them, except with monkey heads)
pigs have a good sense of smell
they are a classic non-civilized people, in the sense that they are not city dwellers, not farmers, they are hunter gatherers (to be fair, their peaceful hunting and gathering doesn’t show up a lot in my game, but perhaps it should)
they are tribal with the Tolkien heraldry (“white hand”, “red eye”)
they are macho in that they portray themselves as violent in their tribe names (“cracked skull”)

In my last campaign, the orcs from the dungeon got killed, resettled, betrayed, and killed some more by the player characters. Uuuugh. Another orc tribe attacked their castle construction site and that led to some killing. The orcs from the wilderness got treated well, and turned into allies, on the other hand. So... sort of OK, I guess?

killed, resettled

betrayed, and killed some more

attacked their castle construction site

some killing

treated well

turned into allies

Generally speaking, I don’t think there’s too much racism in my game. The inherent problem is, of course, that the major fault line between Law and Chaos is the same old city dwellers vs. nomads conflict, except that almost all the humans and dwarves are on one side and everybody else is on the other side. Race stands in for civilization and progress. Although I hope that as a referee I manage to avoid equating chaos with evil.

chaos

I think the first thing I will add to my monster handbook is the option of playing an orc. 😄

#RPG

Comments

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Probably classism in mine. Every time I’ve run orcs it’s been as backwood violent xenophobic rednecks.

– Michael Julius 2019-01-15 14:59 UTC

Michael Julius

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I remember somebody somewhere had orcs all be French cheese connoisseurs. I love the idea.

– Alex Schroeder 2019-01-16 07:53 UTC