Which system/world has the best Orc?

Burning Wheel's Orcs are pretty great. They have a stat called Hatred that expresses their self-loathing and rage at the world. You can tap into it to overcome obstacles and destroy your enemies, but doing so risks increasing the stat.

Increasing it makes you more powerful, but will eventually kill you -- if it gets too high you end up being overwhelmed by it, and either killing yourself or running off and getting into a fight you know you can't win or something to that effect, An orc's hatred will consume him in the end.

In the Legendarium, "orc," and "goblin," more or less mean the same thing. In some of the media goblins are portrayed as smaller and more cunning, but the elvish word for both is "urch," plural "yrch." Orcs/goblins in general have a bit more variety to them than men do, and living in the mountains and tunnels has made the orcs of the Misty Mountains (and in particular, below them) a bit more smaller and hunched; they are no less dangerous or cunning for that.

The only major difference is uruk-hai, which are implied genetically-modified orc soldiers. Treebeard considers the possibility that they are "altered," or that men were made orcs through evil corruption, or that goblins and men were indeed bred together. Fangorn refers to this as a "black evil."

>in general have a bit more variety to them than men do
Really?

Extremes notwithstanding, of course.

Wait, the players wouldn't WANT to become more powerful?

Seems like you would have to use it juuuuust enough.....

So, we would define all orcs based on what Tolkien defined them as?

Shouldn't we go back to the myths that inspired Tolkien?

I liked dragon ages take on them.
Pure corruption and slaughter filled hordes.

I used the words "the Legendarium," and I was using it to answer a question about the difference between orcs and goblins (I thought there was an implied "in Tolkien," because that was what the first guy had talked about). The Legendarium is the collection of Tolkien's works. I don't think the stuff that inspired his works is really all that relevant in this context.

Still, mankind is pretty varied.

Yeah. So I suppose in that case the difference between orcs as portrayed in Tolkien media isn't that difficult to comprehend.

Well yeah, but it's a dangerous temptation. Like you can use it now and risk it going up, or try to stay calm and get by without it. But what if that means the situation gets worse, and you have to use it a couple of times to get back out?
Tapping into your rage is fun at first, but then you start to worry about doing it, because sooner or later it's bound to kill you.

Elves get something different called "Grief" that expresses their sorrow that the world is not what it was or should be. You can use that emotional force to power you, to try to fix things, but if you keep it up eventually it overwhelms you and you give in to it and pass into the West.
Or you invert it into Spite and become a Dark Elf, ready to make the world pay for disappointing you.

Likewise, Dwarves get Greed, and Humans can either take no emotional stat, or take Faith, which can be pretty awesome too.

Anything that self-identifies as an Orc is an Ork.

Only 2 of those are orcs.

>you start to worry about doing it
There's your problem right there.

Nope, all orcs from Might and Magic:
mightandmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Orc

Well if you don't mind dying, then I guess more power to ya.

No, the one you name hobgoblin is an orc from the chaos town in HOMM IV

They're all orcs from Might and Magic.
They're not even from different franchises or something.

Did you just assume my species?

OP should have used this picture.

>Least Cool to Most Cool

No, no , I meant that the way the orcs look they would be classified as beastmen/goblins/trolls by the general fantasy audience if these orcs appeared in a generic fantasy/jrpg game.

I'm a fan of the orcs and trolls from the shadow of war game, especially the machine tribe orcs

Why? Can you define the look of an Orc for "the general fantasy audience."

Like, what features MUST it have that those ones do not?

I honestly think that Warcraft orcs are great, they are my favorite depiction of orcs so far but Thrall is a shitty purity-sue character that gives them all a bad name.

Gul'dan is 100 times the Sue Thrall is.
Just a Villain Sue, or Anti-Sue.

No. Orcs are all extinct in Dark Sun. Elves are conniving cheats, shady merchants, and tricksters.

Whats on the cover of the box set then?

Goblin is just the orc word for manlet

At least a villain sue is more befitting of being an orc character, Thrall seems to exist only for the sake of subversion "oh look hes the nicest guy and hes an orc!"

Oh, I get it. Your Sue is OK because you like Edge Lords. It's not like WoW Orcs are any more inherently evil than WoW humans. The only reason they seem that way is because Gul'dan fucked with them. That's right, Gul'dan is so much a sue he tainted his whole race. You might as well have said
>At least a villain sue is more befitting of being an orc character, because a villain sue made them like that.

Why is a "100x Villian Sue" any better than a "Purity Sue," regardless of race?

>At least a villain sue is more befitting of being an orc character, Thrall seems to exist only for the sake of subversion "oh look hes the nicest guy and hes an orc!"
MAN, you have that ass backward.

Thrall is what WoW Orcs were originally, before Gul'dan corrupted them with evil green magic.

I actually like the middle one.

Who gives a shit about that?

Why do you give a shit about that?

>oh look hes the nicest guy and hes an orc
I can't blame you because I'm assuming you have nothing but WoW to go off of. But Thrall is literally meant to be an orc that isn't a giant evil dick for no reason. Through the novels and WC3 he never backed down from a fight, he just didn't fight when there was literally no reason for it.

In WoW, he went from doing nothing for three expansions, to turning into a jesus analogue, to doing nothing/moping.

1995 - 2006 more or less good.

>we wuz noble shamanz and sheet

Reminder that Warlords confirmed that WC Orcs have always been punch of bloodthirsty cunts.

>It seems each system and every world has a strain of this 'monster' race.
Dragonlance
Ravenloft
Glorantha

And that's just from the top of my head. Orcs aren't nearly as universal as you seem to think.

Is the Hulk an Orc?
>Big and muscular
>Green
>Likes battle
>Berserker rage

If Hulk counts as an orc then special ed classes are filled them.

>If Hulk counts as an orc then special ed classes are filled them.
Special ed classes have green people?

Educate yourself, my dude:
wow.gamepedia.com/Orc#History

tl;dr
Gul'dan dun fucked 'er up for everyorc.

Except Warlords proved that even free of Gul'dan's and the demonic blood's influence they still decided to chimp out and invade Azeroth.

Garrosh lied to the Draenor clans in the Alt timeline.

And considering the fact that he helped them avoid demonic enslavement they were inclined to believe him.

Thats why they attack the Draenei and Azeroth.

See I think if WoD hadn't been effectively abandoned by blizzard we would've gotten more scenes with the good guys explaining to Grom that Garrosh lied to him.

>Dragonlance
Denzil the assassin was half-orc.
>Ravenloft
Calibans are close enough.
>Glorantha
The Uz are thickset, with snouts and fangs or tusks, with mottled gray skin. AKA: basically orcs

But, sure. not every setting has Orcs. Not every setting has humans either.

So does that mean the Hulk is close enough to an orc then?

Why not? Lots of settings call mutated humans "orcs."

Hulk happy to be part of orc club.

Tolkien Orcs are corrupted/mutated elves.
Are you going to say they don't count either?

i would say;
>green
>has tusks
>around the size of a man
>muscular
Basically warcraft/warhammer orcs in appearance and tolkien/warhammer orcs in personality.

>Why do you give a shit about that?
Because I'm on a forum talking about fantasy races and setting, why would I go to Veeky Forums if I didn't care about the subject matter?

>5’11”
>6’01”

>The only major difference is uruk-hai, which are implied genetically-modified orc soldiers.
Uruk-Hai just means "Orcs", as in a designation of the species.
The bigger varietyy of orcs call themselves Uruk-Hai to imply that they are the only "real" orcs.

Saruman' Uruk-Hai were probably some sort of orc-human crossbreed, since they could stand sunlight, but they*re not the only strand od orcs that's called that.

Azog's design is actually pretty solid; it was everything else that was the problem, including him being Azog instead of Bolg.

I feel I would be in love with those games if they were an original IP....

I like how you can clearly see in this chart at which point World of Warcraft was released.

P'Orcs are the best.

That's what makes it good. If it would be a purely negative thing it would be meaningless, because you'd have no incentive to use it.

>green
>has tusks
>around the size of a man
>muscular
You're saying this isn't an orc?

Tolkien would like a word....

>"...they are (or were) squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes; in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types."