Orc Thread

>Beautiful green orc serving up a porc head on a platter.

I didn't know I wanted this.

I grew up on Elder Scrolls, Warcraft and playing Half-Orcs in D&D.

Watching Lord of the Rings is painful and I hate how they're marauding brain dead monsters.

Frankly, I wish Orcs would replace Halflings in the Common Races pantheon

Orcs are universally evil in my campaign.

Even the ones in a shaky alliance with their neighboring kingdom to hold off an invasion from the Underdark are huge faggots that kill surrendering foes and their families. They have become the most prolific orc "house" in the land with the help of a few human military advisors and two hundred suits of masterwork platemail fitted to their best warriors.

This is becoming its own problem because the kingdom now has a neighboring tribe of orcs who understand logistics, march in file, fire in volleys and execute complex field maneuvers without losing cohesion.

>beautiful
>baby-tusks
Absolutely trash.

Tusks are beautiful no matter their size.

I just hate fat females of all kinds.

I wish halflings would just go away. Apart from the LoTR four-pack, I've never seen halflings done satisfactory.

Why are orcs the lewdest?

They enjoy the simple pleasures in life. Fighting, fucking, eating, drinking, and partying. Orcs are good people.

The only time I have had fun as a halfling is in dnd 4th ed as a trolly stealth paladin

>they enjoy the simple pleasures, sin, sin, sin, sin, and sin.

sounds like the paladins need to know

>I tend to avoid 'all race X is good/bad

This. This so much.

My DM told me that Races tend towards the alignments of their creator god though. Like Orcs tend towards Chaotic Evil because Gruumsh is. While Dwarves tend to be Lawful Good because Moradin made them in his image.

You got to respect the power of culture, and traditions.

Hey man, art from adversity. It sucks having a player race with no depth, so these vidya and RPGs will have to make it so you're not just playing as the mindless green horde(not a dig at 40k).
LotR orcs are meant to be the faceless mass of evil that the heroes have to overcome without the guilt of having to kill other humans. They're really not important in and of themselves, they just have to exist so the bad guy isn't just the one guy by himself.

while they are nomadic, they are in a constant fight against the Gauren for wild land to graze their beasts on, and sometimes this means that you have to raid a few trade caravans or a couple of elvish settlements to make ends meet.

at the end of the day, the only real bad guy is Xeranaar, and only because everyone else wouldn't want him to finish his goals, if they knew about the,

coincidently, one of my characters backstory involves a orc war host burning down his villagem with Xeranaar saving him

he doesn't know that Xeranaar put the orcs on a path to burn down his village intentionally 15 years ago

Gruumsh is only Chaotic Evil because he swore a blood fued with Correllon for poking his eye out. Correllon poked his eye out because He didn't want ugly Orcs living and propagating on the surface where His elves would have to see their ugliness.

My setting has both. They're actually entirely different species that just happen to look kind of similar due to weird magic/convergent evolution. Only one of them is actually capable of producing half orcs, however.

Nah, they're all right

further evidence the elves are awful because they worship a cock magnet like correllon

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Neat.

If your setting resembles Middle-Earth in any way (or even if it doesn't), rename them Hobbits. Just because the game can't call them that for copyright purposes doesn't mean you can't.

Seriously, I know it feels like a tiny nitpick, but I feel like calling them Hobbits dramatically changed how I think of them.

I think hobbit would have even less a place as an interesting pc race. It only works in lotr because the irony of how unsuited they are for it is part of the narrative

Bilbo did just fine in The Hobbit.

I think the issue is that when someone says "halfling" to me I see the grotesquely mangled proportions and complete lack of interesting characteristics that have defined every depiction of halflings in D&D-related media.

When someone says "Hobbit," I think of short people who hate adventure and yet have a weird tendency to find them drawn into adventures anyways. Sure, yeah, I wouldn't want to play Frodo Baggins, but Bilbo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin could all make perfectly decent PCs. They're underpowered in the original fiction (Tolkien's works) but there are tons of things from Middle-Earth that got totally dropped from fantasy inspired by it as time went on.

>Bilbo did just fine in The Hobbit.
That was the point. Bilbo was the weirdo with the unusual wanderlust. All the hobbit MCs are outliers in their own culture. Really only Sam is decent by hobbit standards and he's in it all entirely by accident. dnd halflings are wierd nomadic gypsy river people that lend themselves well to developing PC/interesting npc characteristics. Hobbits work in lotr cause the story was basically about the unexpected little folk saving the day. I don't see them working out outside that kind of narrative.

It's not so much that orcs are evil, but one of their most popular pastimes is animal cruelty.

>he doesn't like Bree Three-hands
So sad!

Your orcs, or official Standard Fantasy Canon Orcs?
Because only the first one actually exists.

I don't know dude, I've been doing that in my games and it honestly works just fine. I feel like plenty of people can get behind the idea that "I'm playing a Hobbit," whereas I virtually never saw Halflings in play in my groups prior to that particular change.

The juxtaposition of Hobbit stereotypes with the very-non-Hobbitty profession of adventuring is part of the appeal for a lot of people. It's never "I'm a Hobbit who's a Paladin," it's "Despite being a Hobbit, I chose to be a Paladin," and while I can get overplayed I honestly think that at least there's some theme there that can be expanded on (unlike D&D's Halflings who I've always felt were criminally boring).

Also, maybe this is because D&D art of recent years has been supergalactically ass (though 5e has been substantially better on that front imo), but Halflings are just too associated with the terrible art direction that official D&D art has taken with them in my mind for me to be able to take them seriously.

Pic related.

Orcs in my setting. Ironically, they're also the best folks to get beasts of burden from.

Orcs don't exist in my campaign. They come from the idea of corrupted humans, like Darkspawn. The closest you might get is a ghoul.

>Also, maybe this is because D&D art of recent years has been supergalactically ass (though 5e has been substantially better on that front imo),
>edition that gave us your pic, deformed gnomes and laughing elf guy
Can't say I understand your definition of substantially better bruh

In what setting?

I always imagined orcs would adore their worgs

They're perfectly civil fellows. They actually get along well with dwarves and haflings due to a common cultural work ethic. Orcs firmly believe that the value and worth of something is proportional to the effort put into it.

They mostly great with elves, gnomes, and humans for having the "I only work hard enough to make things easier in the long run" outlook.

This tends to mean orcs also have low birthrates due to deliberately being tsundere towards one another. Because, you know, you gotta work for your relationships.

Oddly, this also means while they like warriors and respect wizards, the most revered of them are warrior mages.

>pic
Gross. Halflings are irredeemable. Demote them to a "side race" status like gnomes and promote orcs in their place.

>Can't say I understand your definition of substantially better bruh

Art is subjective, and I'll admit it's a while since I've played/read 3.5 so maybe the terrible examples are stuck in my head, but honestly I can't remember a single instance of 3.5/4e art that I liked.

I'd much rather have left than right

...

My problem with how most Halflings are portrayed/played is that they are Rogues, and Rogues are Halflings.

It's hard to look at what Halflings get racially (Dex bonuses, easier hiding, can move through larger creatures) and not see a Rogue, and if you want to build a Rogue, it's almost always better to play a Halfling than anything else, outside of fluff reasons.

Yes, you can build other characters, but Halflings have moved from "fish-out-of-water adventurer" to "the correct choice for a thief", and I always hated one choice being "the right one".

Hell, even Orcs (or Half-Orcs, or whatever) can run the martial spectrum (Barbarian is a stereotype, Fighter if they have a civilization, Ranger if they live innawoods, Monk if they punch good), and they're seen as way more one-dimensional.

Orcs are never the bad guys, but always the grunts. You're most likely to fight an Orc mercenary as well as be allied to an Orc mercenary because of their fondness for combat and the warring states' lust for their battle prowess.

kind of funny you should say that.

My current party's halfling is basically a rogue... in all but class. He's actually a dex fighter and works for the mafia as a legbreaker, he has quite a decent skill sheet, but all in all, the dude actually functions as the party's dodge-tank.

>uses pf art when talking about dnd art
I'll give you that Reynolds worked on dnd art, but the piece wasn't one of them, and they always have many artists.

Besides, if we're gonna cherrypick, every edition has had good and bad art. 5e just unfortunately chose some of it's shittiest for phb races

Is that you, world-building fetish user?

Halflings have better bonuses for monks than half-orcs. They can also be rangers and suffer and work well as high ac fighters.
If anything half-orcs are more bottleneckee than them this editiin, with their racials and abilities very heavily favoring barbarian and having no range flexibility. Pity too, I was in love with 4e's str/dex half-orcs.

>I'll give you that Reynolds worked on dnd art, but the piece wasn't one of them, and they always have many artists.

I'll admit that all my 3.5 PDFs are on an old computer so I kind of just Googled "3.5 Art" and found something that had a lot of the features I disliked about 3.5's art.

There's definitely cherrypicking involved (5e has some horrible art as well) but I think there's also some consistent differences in the styles of the two editions which is why I don't look back fondly on 3.5 art whereas I generally like 5e art.

In particular, I dig the sorta painterly thing a lot of 5e's art has going on, and I like the slightly more grounded approach that 5e took with a lot of its character design. I felt like 3.5's art was often really generic, blended too many stylistic influences, was too cluttered and overdesigned, and in general just didn't capture my attention or imagination.

> Orcs are marauding, murderous, savage monsters
> If you cross them
> If you pay them taxation in the form of gold, meat, wheat and slaves, you earn their protection
> Protection entails access to a massive, highly protected market that bypasses racial restrictions and regional alliances
> Orcs don't give a shit about your religion or your race so long as you pay your taxes and don't prevent others from accessing your markets
> If you try to resist their rule, they kill you, cut your head off, eat your flesh, fill your skull with oil and turn what used to be your head into a siege projectile for the next poor fuck who resists them
> They'll do this to everyone in your city
> Orcs are simultaneously the most savage race on the planet with an unsurpassed death toll AND tolerant overlords who have made travel between distant lands possible for the first time ever
> Orcs can live off of grass alone (they don't care for it, but they can do it) and run all day without tiring, making them the fastest land army

Are the Mongols evil? Did the Mongols do good?

I have one of those groups that always play evil in normal RPGs, they're always opportunistic dicks so I offered to run a Orc-centric Burning Wheel warband building campaign because why not? Full authority to be monsters.

Now they're making alliances with other races and acting unusually goody good, constantly harping about honor and staying true to their word. It's like I'm in bizzaro world

I post 4e tho
yeah yeah, worst edition, nobody played, but the art was nice dammit

People like subverting stereotypes. Why else are there so many Drizzt clones and dickass Aasimar?

Yeah, I read the filename lol. I was just articulating my complaints w 3.5's art.

The art you posted isn't really my thing either (it feels a bit too rendered for my tastes) but at least it's proficiently done.

Can't really comment anything else about 4e's art because I only played it a few times and never bought any of the books. I think people unfairly give 4e flak, but it's also really just not my kind of game.

I like Middle Earth type Orcs.

Some wholly antagonistic,aggressive, monstrous species that will match any other in ingenuity and drive.

Their values and customs so alien and repulsive to Human (or elf, dwarf, etc...) eyes that peaceful co-existence is impossible.

I really like this interpretation. Probably my favorite so far.

When you consider Mongolia sucks ass for farming and doesn't have a lot of large beasts to eat, you kinda understand how they fed their families. Vikings, while obviously not good guys, lived in arctic tundras and needed to eat too.

That's how I imagine Orcs. They're forced to live underground where the best meal is fungus. Can't blame the evil ones for raiding. Well, you can, but they gotta eat

Well they set the middle east on the downwards spiral that plagues it to this day. China also would tell you they were monsters and they basically were

You can blame them for the slaughter and conquest though. Even the vikings were largely just traders and opportunists, and readily integrated with other civilizations when the chance arose.

We talking stereotypical D&D Orcs? My only defense is they gotta eat. Subterranean agriculture is difficult to the point that the energy spent making it work makes the payoff not worth it.

We see from the Many-Arrows Tribe that, given the opportunity, Orcs can somewhat peacefully coexist with other races if they're allowed to live in sunlight without being attacked by the Goodly Races

>Are orcs bad guys in your campaign?
>Do you prefer good or evil orcs?

They're a very goal-driven, incidental species concerned about the moment or their latest perceived motive and a lot of what they do and make reflects that.
They're destructive and disrespectful to their environment: flooding it and digging it up like the hogs that they are in an effort to terraform it for their own needs or to otherwise strip it of useful resources before converting it into a bog.
Exceptionally industrious and crafty, many of their inventions, weapons, tools, function and do so with little difficulty or orientation, but they're of poor quality, mass produced, and purposefully disposable- You don't fix anything orcish; you throw it away, burn it, blow it up, recycle it, and get a new one.

So, yes, they could be considered evil. They're 'boarish': rude, inconsiderate, thinking only of achieving their short sighted goals.

Maybe should have said Dark Arrow Keep instead of Many-Arrows Tribe. I think they're villains in games and a campaign, but I'm talking about the novels.

I like them with a K

Evil. They were create to be random bad guys, their damn name means evil. If I was in charge of D&D they would come with the [evil] subtype.

In my campains they are destruction in humanoid shape, they go to places and murder everything till nothing is growing, if they aren't killing others they kill themselves, their babys murder each other in the uterus like those sharks then the newborn simply pops from the mother and starts eating the carrion arround.

Don't mind me while I fucking steal this.

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>Big, green, snu snu musclegirls
I wonder why

How come they haven't slaughtered or aborted themselves to extinction within a few generations?

Uniform fangs is an underrated look for Orcs. Everyone seems to go with tusks or just crooked human teeth.

>Rails against Elfs
>Posts a green Elf

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Hobgobbos > Orcs

Discipline beats courage.

Orcs should be evil in RPGs with Judeo-Christian morality alignments.
But they should only be considered evil due to how warlike and brutal their society is.

They aren't demons but they will still raid you and try and nick land from you.

Evil, not stupid or suicidal.
It's no wonder most GMs don't allow evil characters if they have to deal with retards like you.

Not him but you said they murder each other in the womb and murder each other for teh lulz when they can't find a non-orc to murder. Sounds pretty Chaotic Stupid to me too.

Orcs - kobold food, in my setting all of them were pushed out into a desert (Where only few remaining females of the species created desert orcs with humans), while the rest was either killed by elfs, dwarfs, humans or best party - bunch of kobolds who cause a stampead of boars to kill the last warchief.

I said fuck all, I'm .

In general, no. In my setting, orcs are an isolationist society undergoing an industrial revolution. The orcs are particularly worried about humans trying to wipe them out again if they ever get their shit together, so specific orcs may be antagonists as their diplomats try to cause friction between human factions, and their arms dealers supply rebels, etc.

Also, there are isolated pockets of primitive tribal orcs who refused to integrate with orc society that give orcs a bad rap when they raid humans over old grudges.

>I said fuck all

You called someone a retard for questioning how a species that impulsively kills everything around it could ever survive, even if you weren't the original poster.

>hobgoblin
This looks more like an edgy orc-poser elf than a hob to me. I always preferred hobs to be more... gobbo. See Example provided.

not an orc
meh orcs and really gay looking female
shitty, so average
nice orc
meh
pretty fkn bad
why did you post this img? kill yourself please. faggot
for a gay drawing this is nice
lol
why did you post this img? kill yourself please. faggot
pretty bad
why did you post this img? kill yourself please. faggot
way too dumb
why did you post this img? kill yourself please. faggot
cool but generic wc
nice
not orcs
not orcs
generic waifubait. KYS FAGGOT
very nice
good
why did you post this img? kill yourself please. faggot
why did you post this img? kill yourself please. faggot
generic waifubait KYS, not a hobgoblin
nice

What strain of autism compels you to seek out orc threads to shit up with such unerring dedication?

""""""""""orc thread"""""""""""" full of shitty unorc imagery

>Vikings, while obviously not good guys, lived in arctic tundras and needed to eat too.
No. That's the sami, the norse lived more to the south of Scandinavia

yes

evil as majority, some as the scum of society but neutral

I wish I could reports bad taste on mobile.

Good orcs in general but rather roudy, no race is inherently evil in my setting.

I dont have many orc pics to contribute.

you dont have any orc pics*

you are just posting green anime faggotry

Yeah yeah we get it, you are a faggot who would rather fuck porcs than see an orc. Fuck off.

this is not an orc
this is green white male with tusks, non human ears and nigger hair

Not him, but he's right. It's not just orcs though. Every monster or humanoid monster thread gets spammed with anime-style waifus and cartoonish shit.

You aren't posting porcs or orcs.
You are posting green humans and elves with tusks.
There has to be something to signify they are a different species besides the colour green.

Sure which is why the only one he says is good is the one that looks like it got hit by a meat grinder.

Sure just like elves cannot be humans with long ears right? Oh wait.

Havent seen tales of arcana stuff in a while. Nice.