[Fantasy] When not to kill the Orcs

[Michael Hopcroft]

Orcs in most fantasy campaigns exist for only one reason -- to die at the end of the adventurers' swords. They are mainly threatening because they come in vast numbers, and the usual human response to their presence, which most consider reasonable, is to try and exterminate them utterly because that's what they want to do to you.

Players with modern sensibilities are hopefully a little bit uncomfortable with having a situation where genocide is the appropriate response to a problem. Of course, many are not, but we won't go there just yet. My question is whether there are circumstances where exterminating the Orcs is not the way to solve the problem. A reason that it is good or necessary to leave some alive or not to go into their camps and slaughter the children.

[LemmingLord]

sure - how about religious beliefs? maybe to kill a sentient creature who has been defeated is against the law of the gods.

practical wise, there is always slavery.

[Purple Haze]

In Middle Earth or D&D where orcs are inherently irredemebly evil, genocide is the reasonable solution to an "orc problem", in a more intelligently designed game it should never be.

What is the instatiating myth for orcs in your game?

[cybermancer2k1]

Sensible GMs will realize that just like not all Elves are good and not all Dwarves are industrious, not all Orcs (or Orc tribes) are bad and structure the game accordingly.

[LemmingLord]

if your game world has "orcs are all evil" then make sure that is known fron the beginning... that way if a player wants to play a character who is kindly and unwilling to kill, she will know what she is getting into....

"you know the orcs WILL not meet your goody expectaions right?"

[Ulzgoroth]

When the orcs are people and you (or the society you want to go home to) don't go in for exercises in genocide, is one.

When the greater orc population can and will retaliate would be another.

There's also plenty of times when killing the orcs won't actually fix your problem, but is an option.

[Phantasm]

When not to kill all the orcs you encounter? When there are orcs on your side as well as the enemy. After all, if orcs make excellent shock troops, chances are your bosses are using them as well as your enemies.

[Bruno]

Definitely the #1 way to make the players feel better about not murdering all the orcs is to show them as people.

If the GM makes them a series of one dimensional cardboard cutouts meant for the hacking and the slaying, and plays them as suicidal fanatics who hate all flat-faced blunt-toothed weaklings, you put the players in a really awkward position. They might feel bad for exterminating them all, but they feel self-destructive for leaving any alive.

So show the orcs as "human", and not hateful humans who hate everyone who isn't like them, either. Encounter orcs who don't immediately try to kill them. Have orcs break and run, or throw down their weapons and surrender, or when they seem to getting the upper hand, have them demand the players surrender (instead of screaming "NOW YOU DIE FOR THE GLORY OF ORCUS PINKIE!")

Have orcs beg for their lives, and try to buy their lives and freedom. After all, the only thing adventurers care about is money, right?

If you want players to treat orcs like reasonable people, they have to act like reasonable people. If all orcs ever do is come screaming over the hill, waving their axes and scimitars and throwing torches into the roof thatching, then the players will be inclined to treat them the way humans have treated murderous raiders since men first murdered strangers. Which is to say, like monsters.

[Apache]

Ran a Yrth Fantasy game where the players were in command of a Megalan cohort composed primarily of orcs, and they were responding to Dark Elf terrorists operating out of a nearby pocket of the Blackwoods.

Fun times.

[tg_ambro]

When the game world doesn't have Dungeon Fantasy sensibilities . . . but even then, some orcs are players. :)