How could humans have a chance against civilized orcs?

[Kromm]

Aggression, cruelty, and violence seem universal among orcs whatever their physical gifts (durable, strong, night hunters, etc.). These predilections are useful up to a point in shock troops, but a race that thinks this way and is gifted at tactics will turn out a lot of proud warriors – too proud for jobs like "charcoal burner" and "miner." If they're using tech to win wars, they'll still need those jobs done (along with others, like "farmer" and "rancher"). As they expand their empire and need more and more troops to hold it, they'll likely enslave more and more humans to do that work. They'll eventually run out of humans to conquer, peace will break out, and it will become evident that aggression, cruelty, and violence are almost useless for winning the peace. At which point an orcish empire that relies on human subjects for supply and logistics will have a civil war.

Warrior races tend to build their empires on loyalty and on resolving conflicts with honor. They often find betrayal, mind games, and sabotage repugnant . . . and humans are good at that stuff, probably more so than at fighting toe to toe. Humans remember past wrongs, retain "dead" cultural identities from generations or centuries ago, bide their time, and then spawn all manner of partisans and guerrillas and "terrorists." When the orcish civil war comes, some factions will emancipate the slaves to raise additional troops, and come to regret it, while others will be sabotaged from within by their slave workers.

I think a fun model would be an N-sided conflict within a large orcish empire, with various orc armies fighting each other at the same time as they're dealing with human uprisings all over. Resistance fighting makes for a really great campaign . . . especially if the resistance has a decent chance of victory. And orcish tactics and tech don't guarantee victory if they're mostly being turned against other orcs, and rely extensively on human slaves to do the labor needed to feed and equip the legions.

[Phantasm]

My own setting's orcs are essentially Vikings: inhabiting the fjords of the Northern Frontier and organized into clans led by Jarls (who are not necessarily hereditary), with a strong leader who is trying to forge the disparate clans into a nation. The leader is in fact a half-orc, and a lot of the Jarls tend to be half-orcs.

That said, there are fully- and mostly-human raider clans in the setting, who live and fight with and alongside their orc cousins.

My Orc template:

Average Height: 5' 2".
Average Weight: 215 lbs.
Age of Maturity: 9 years.
Average Lifespan: 45 years.

Attribute Adjustments: ST +2 [20]; IQ -1 [-20].
Secondary Characteristic Adjustments: Will +1 [5]; Per +1 [5].
Advantages: Claws (Blunt Claws) [3]; DR 1 (Tough Skin, -40%) [3]; Fit [5]; Hard to Kill 3 [6]; Less Sleep 2 [4]; Rapid Healing [5]; Resistant to Disease (+8) [8]; Teeth (Fangs) [2]; Universal Digestion [5].
Disadvantages: Easy to Read [-10]; Short Lifespan 1 [-10].
Quirks: Bloody Mess [-1].


And my Half-Orcs:

Average Height: 5' 4".
Average Weight: 165 lbs.
Age of Maturity: 13 years.
Average Lifespan: 70 years.

Attribute Adjustments: ST +1 [10].
Advantages: Claws (Blunt Claws) [3]; DR 1 (Tough Skin, -40%) [3]; Rapid Healing [5]; Resistant to Disease (+8) [8]; Teeth (Sharp Teeth) [1]; Universal Digestion [5].
Disadvantages: Easy to Read [-10].
Features: Early Maturation [0].



There is nothing stopping a player from making an Orc with IQ 13 or 14, of course, or one with a head for trade instead of war (Vikings were noted traders as well as raiders, so it fits). Orc peons (to use a Warcraft term) are often used in the Northern Frontier for mining, farming, and lumbering, but even they may be encountered among the warship crews that raid the more southerly human, dwarven, elven, and goblin nations.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Ransom

I like your analysis, but it's worth mentioning that betrayal, mind games, and sabotage are all quintessential orcish qualities, at least for Tolkienian orcs. So we either decide that orcs capable of organizing into a civilized empire are able to overcome these qualities, or come up with a model for their civilization that incorporates them.

OTOH, Tolkien orcs aren't really an effective warrior race as a rule. They're a minion/fodder race that are rarely capable of much more than picking at the edge of crumbling powers or being weaponized by a powerful non-orcish warlord.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

OTOH, Tolkien orcs aren't really an effective warrior race as a rule. They're a minion/fodder race that are rarely capable of much more than picking at the edge of crumbling powers or being weaponized by a powerful non-orcish warlord.

Agreed.

—

I favor Tolkien's earliest explanation of orcs as created from slime: dimwitted golems given life by magic and born into bondage. They're pathologically incapable of plotting against and betraying their masters – which is what I was talking about – because they're in abject magical slavery to them. They might advance in rank among themselves via the "Klingon promotion scheme," but that's because they're aggressive and violent, not because they're traitorous and scheming. It isn't backstabbing to refuse an order and kill your superior; it's a dominance challenge, and for orcs it isn't possible to take that up the line to the ruler because that wizard can unmake you with a thought. I think the ratio of conniving to dominance duels is much, much higher among humanity than among Tolkien-inspired orcs, who mostly aren't smart enough to conspire and can't actually aspire to autonomy.

Mind you, I don't think Tolkien-inspired orcs are best kind for fantasy RPGs. I prefer the "orcs as stand-ins for the 'barbarians' on the edges of civilization" vision. That's nothing much like Tolkien's orcs at all. In point of fact, Tolkien's orcs were essentially fascist armies; they might have been barbaric in their thinking, but the slave-drivers who controlled them were very organized and had their own views of "civilization." Fantasy RPG orcs who govern themselves and don't mindlessly serve wizards are more interesting, as their relationship with humanity is easier to understand in terms of the hordes at the edges of the empire.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Mind you, I don't think Tolkien-inspired orcs are best kind for fantasy RPGs.

Unless there's a whole lot of stuff in untold stories about orcs, there's not all that much in Tolkien to tell us what orcs are actually like, and it's sort of inconsistent anyway.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Warrior races tend to build their empires on loyalty and on resolving conflicts with honor. They often find betrayal, mind games, and sabotage repugnant . . . and humans are good at that stuff, probably more so than at fighting toe to toe. Humans remember past wrongs, retain "dead" cultural identities from generations or centuries ago, bide their time, and then spawn all manner of partisans and guerrillas and "terrorists." When the orcish civil war comes, some factions will emancipate the slaves to raise additional troops, and come to regret it, while others will be sabotaged from within by their slave workers.

Those are not orcs. Those are dwarves.

That description could actually be the reverse though. Warrior races not uncommonly are thief races. Actual soldiering is a deindividualizing process and no bard sings songs about any given soldier in a phalanx. Whereas stylish display of plunder makes one's name known. If orcs spend to much time fighting for status they cannot cooperate.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Ransom

There are multiple examples in The Lord of the Rings of orcs plotting against their masters and aspiring to autonomy, and it is mentioned a couple times that the villains don't use orcs for sensitive missions due to the risk of betrayal.

In The Lord of the Rings, orcs aren't the slime-golems Kromm mentioned, but rather tortured and twisted elves. Additionally, many of the ones encountered there are Uruks, who are implied to be half-orcs (or at least orcs with some human blood), and thus function a bit differently from normal orcs.

Of course, the orcs seen in most stories are much more like Uruks than the more goblin-like orcs anyway, so Uruks are probably a better jumping-off point. I'll refrain from further comment until Athelstan gives us a better idea of what his orcs are like, stat-wise.

[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

Originally Posted by thrash

For an example of a physically smaller and weaker people defeating an individually larger, stronger invader (with a technological advantage, even) I point you to the Vietnam War. Arguably, the key takeaway is the need to focus on strategy (winning the war) rather than tactics (winning the battles). This could reasonably be applied to a human-orc conflict as well, with humans baiting orcs into a series of costly Pyrrhic "victories" that ultimately undermine their will to fight.

See also Geo. Washington vs. England, ironically. Lost almost every battle -- but who sailed away in 1783?

Napoleon said after his campaign in Egypt that a single mounted Mamluk warrior would kill a French cavalryman every time. Four against four -- a tie. A hundred vs. a hundred -- always a French victory.

The Mamluk was a warrior -- superb horsemanship and skill with weapons. But he wasn't trained or experienced in working & fighting in harmony with his fellows. The Frenchman was OK at horsemanship & skill at arms -- but was very good a fighting in a cohesive unit.

So if the Orcs, even if stronger & more savage than humans, are unable to work together, any Human force has a major advantage.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by Kromm

I think a fun model would be an N-sided conflict within a large orcish empire, with various orc armies fighting each other at the same time as they're dealing with human uprisings all over. Resistance fighting makes for a really great campaign . . . especially if the resistance has a decent chance of victory. And orcish tactics and tech don't guarantee victory if they're mostly being turned against other orcs, and rely extensively on human slaves to do the labor needed to feed and equip the legions.

I've been running a game similar to this: civilized orcs conquered the human nations centuries ago, but the recent assassination of the Empire caused a civil war in the capitol region. The PCs are mostly peasants in a fairly remote province, and most of the orc garrison troops left to fight in the civil war. The PCs managed to beat the remaining garrisons (with vastly superior equipment, training, and organization) due to mass recruiting and inspired generalship. They and their armies have gotten better, but it's only been recently that they could field armies that could fight the orcs on a 100 to 100 basis.

Of course, some of the players in the civil war have begun to notice the upstart peasant rebellion, and now the PCs are scrambling to deal with quality orc generals and veteran troops.