The morality of Orcs

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by b-dog

I just think of orcs as monsters and they do not make sense in a Darwinian sense where the race needs to take care of each other to survive. For some reason they breed quickly and the babies mature and live like rats among the rest of the tribe until they are big enough to fend for themselves. They really should not make sense as a culture and are sort of alien to the reality that we live in.

Exactly, and again, we see that Tolkien knew what he was about, because the emboldened phrase applies precisely to his Orcs, they aren't natural. They were deliberately warped and bred by the prototypical evil spirit, and it shows. They can breed like rabbits when under control of an overarching will like Sauron, but when the supernatural evils are weak, the Orcs are marginal, they can't compete with Elves and Men. They can't work together well so they don't build effective socieites or technology, they are parasitic off other cultures. They don't really make their own languages (an important point for Tolkien) or anything else, they just adapt what Elves and Men do for their own use.

(Presumably the breed just as fast when Sauron is weak as when he is strong, but probably the vast majority of the offspring don't make it when the Orcs aren't under heavy discipline.)

Orcs in the classic sense only make sense if someone or something made them so, or twisted them so.

[Miles]

Taking something from the third post in this thread, I actually really like the idea of saying that every orc has the mental makeup of a born soldier. Now, that doesn't mean they have to be brutal or even unpleasant, but they can easily be. Perhaps they were bred as a soldier race, since the traits I'm thinking of probably couldn't be the result of natural selection. In any case, the orc racial template I'm thinking of includes the disadvantages Code of Honor: Pirate, and the Combat Reflexes advantage.

Combat Reflexes means that even an orc who somehow lacks combat skills is significantly better than an untrained human in a fight. It also means that orcs are hard to catch off their feet and pass more fright checks.

Code of Honor: Pirate means that even the nastiest orcs will instinctively form (somewhat) cohesive war bands. They may beat each other up, but they'll drop their feuds when it's time to fight with outsiders. It also means that even a nice Orc doesn't let insults slide. Of course, the civilized ones will take a subtler revenge.

With that base, it's easy to make your orcs good or bad.

The archetypal "Bad Orc" mental trait is probably either Callous or Bully. A Callous orc racks up a bunch of people who are just south of indifferent towards him (-1 reaction), is absolutely terrifying when demanding information, and doesn't spare people with the Pitiable advantage. A Bully Orc has a lot of people who really don't like him (-2) and trys to pick on anyone weaker than him, and a lot of people who aren't. Alternatively, if you want really nasty Orcs, give them the SS Code of Honor from the Infinite Worlds book, appropriately modified.

There aren't really any archetypal "Good Orc" traits, but we can make plenty work. Taking the Code of Honor: Pirate and turning it into Code of Honor: Soldier makes your orcs at least somewhat decent, and adding Stays Bought would do the same thing, although neither makes the orc particularly noble. For that, you want Chivalry, Sense of Duty, Selfless, Intolerance (Evil, criminals, etc), or possibly Honesty or Charitable. Pacifism is of course unlikely, but you never know.

[Phantasm]

Orcs as a playable PC race:

I've always found that orcs as "the race everyone uses as cannon fodder" to be useful. This makes them useful as shock troops, mercenaries, and the like for the good guys as well as the bad guys.

Of course, not every orc can be a warrior, but the orcish afterlife could be very Norse: die fighting, so that you can spend eternity fighting all day and partying all night, in preparation for the Final Battle where you take your final stand alongside the gods. Those that don't die in battle aren't considered "worthy" of this "honor". This would lead to even orc merchants and craftsmen being willing and able to fight; it's possible orc caravans won't need guards, if their drivers fight tooth and nail. Some could even go so far as to say that "the difference between an orc merchant and an orc raider is how much loot he's carrying;" the ones carrying a lot of gear would be more willing to sell it, while those not carrying much would be looking to get more by any means possible.

Just my $0.02 worth.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

Orcs in the classic sense only make sense if someone or something made them so, or twisted them so.

There are two completely separate folkloric origins for "Orc" that vastly predate Tolkien.

[Anders]

However, when people say "Orc" they think "Tolkien".

And they could work as a hive-race. Big Mama Orc squirts out lots of very immature young that are tended by specialized Orcs. Warrior caste, Slave caste, etc.

Another possibility is to think about what Orcs represented for Tolkien. He was a WWI veteran and his writings were partly a way to deal with his memories from the Great War. They were the faceless infantry of the trenches as compared to the (highly idealized) individual warriors of the Saxons. Men who fought personal duels on the battlefield. Men for whom valor and skill were vital, not just the discipline to charge over a muddy field on command. So Orcs could be represented as faceless masses of enemies. Which is the role they tend to play.

[Xenarthral]

I kind of like the idea of putting a bit of exaggerated/caricatured Massai into
the mix.
As in "All n is our rightful property. Anybody else currently in possession of nis a filthy thief and should be treated accordingly".
(And judging from some things I've read that attitude seems to have been
the nicest thing about 19th century Massai warriors.)

[Kuroshima]

Take Harn's Gargun!

[b-dog]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

However, when people say "Orc" they think "Tolkien".

And they could work as a hive-race. Big Mama Orc squirts out lots of very immature young that are tended by specialized Orcs. Warrior caste, Slave caste, etc.

Another possibility is to think about what Orcs represented for Tolkien. He was a WWI veteran and his writings were partly a way to deal with his memories from the Great War. They were the faceless infantry of the trenches as compared to the (highly idealized) individual warriors of the Saxons. Men who fought personal duels on the battlefield. Men for whom valor and skill were vital, not just the discipline to charge over a muddy field on command. So Orcs could be represented as faceless masses of enemies. Which is the role they tend to play.

Yes, that is the role they usually play as endless masses of warriors that fight constantly. The represent the meaninglessness of war as they slaughter maim and kill for no apparent reason other than that is what they do. They really are the "Dogs of War."

[sjard]

Dead Orcs are reborn to live again. However the only memory of their previous lives are the deaths. This makes them understandably angry.


Yes, I'm stealing this idea from an episode of Battlestar Galactica.

[SolemnGolem]

In my campaigns, "morality" is basically subjective and any given race will tend to label something that's aberrant behavior to them as "immoral".

Humans reproduce faster than elves and are better at warmaking than elves are. Elves look down on human culture and magical knowledge and call them immoral brutal thugs.

Orcs reproduce faster than humans and are better at warmaking than humans are. Humans look down on orcish culture and magical knowledge and call then immoral brutal thugs.


I'd be completely unsurprised to learn that something similar happened between Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals. The beauty of GURPS is that you don't have work within the strictures of a Good/Evil alignment system. If one of your PCs wants to kill a load of orcish babies instead of enslaving them or finding them a good human family who wants to adopt orcs, you don't have to worry about alignment-sensitive issues.