Greenies

look at your pic, its literal a human pig. its nothing more than a pig folk.

its as dumb as giving a elf cat ears and making it hairy with more cat features, doing what you can to make it look like a cat folk, and calling it an elf.

You Spelljammer the hell out of them, makign them smart, brutal warlords and tactical masters of spacefaring/seafaring combat, who learn the languages of their enemies so they can insult them with it, and never take NPC levels but always gain levels as if they were Pc's.

Worked wonders, and made them a legitimate threat to the universe, rather than an average enemy for average players to kill once in a while.

Give them more cultural traits than just Vandals or Navajo.

Just have them be tribal. Like Native Americans back in the day.

>its a weeb concept
That says nothing about how it's bad or good. It's just visualization, I spend most of the time of my post talking about their nature, nothing of this really hinges on them having pig-noses. It's just their to emphasize it. It would also mean that oldschool DnD orcs were not orcs. The comparison with catfolk doesn't work, because catfolk are not 750 years old ancient treehugger wizards. Not only the visuals, but also the core of the race is different.

Forgot to add orcs should be relatively short lived

your right, the pig face has nothing to give but visual, and its a stupid visual that could be done better. that comic you posted looks like pig folk, folk who are pigs. and its lame. youd be better focusing on the nature and culture of the Orcs and youd also be better if your orcs didnt look like pig folk.

thats my point, a orc isnt a pig folk, and a elf isnt a cat folk, changing them to look like it would only be retarded.

Old school DnD orcs were poorly done. thats a simple and correct statment. they look ugly because someone lazily slapped on a pig face and drew lame pig folk instead of making a race of violent ugly simple minded creatures.

>rapists
Were orcs always depicted this way? I can't help but feel this is something that sprung up in the last twenty years. Like every race is technically a rapist race since bad shit happens during conflict, but how did orcs get this title all of a sudden? Aren't they supposed to be repulsed by non orc women?

Probably porn.

I wish that literal one drawing of official pig orcs from decades ago didn’t exist

Good to know that 1st Edition AD&D never existed.

Fucking idiot.

>media never evolves
Pig orcs are fucking stupid, and guess what? Most people agree.

My evidence? We have the orcs we have now and not pig orcs, you aggressive, unpleasant fuck

>How are orcs, or their equivalent, like in your setting?
Dumb, violent, jolly, good-natured noble savages. They like a scrap but they'll buy you a drink afterwards, sort of thing. Nothing groundbreaking but it's fun and it fills a niche.

In my setting orcs are generally simple herders who are staunchly defensive of their territory. They were once widespread but are now mostly limited to the East of the main continent due to being pushed out by rising kingdoms in the West during an elf induced migration period. Some have begun to found city states of their own, modeling themselves after the many successor kingdoms of the Empire, but their culture is still very primitive.

Depends, one orc civilization is a fairly peaceful place aside from it's habit of exiling shitty but not quite worth executing criminals en masse, which is why they're prevalent in bandit groups in the surrounding area.
Some are highly clan-focused and live in the hills, and are mostly shepards who just want to be left alone to marry their cousins and fight over sheep, but are know for murdering the fuck out of anyone who comes to their territories and fucks with their families.
Others live on the north coast, and mostly are sailors, lunberjacks, shipbuilders and associated industries, and are mostly about the same as humans in those professions, but slightly more inclined to smack each other around because they're less likely to be seriously injured by it

They are brutal and violent, and pretty strong. But those same features were making them the butt of all jokes and led to them being just a footnote for the most of history. Meeting a single orc or a small band is scary but in large scale warfare they lost so hard it was not even funny. Orc slaves were a normal thing for many nations for hundreds of years.

They were pulled up by a half-orc slave who ran from his owner. His story had a lot of blood and luck ending in a creation of a first orc kingdom. Legend says that to establish it he needed to fight avatar of orc god who was not exactly pleased that his teaching and orc ways were subverted.

Orcs were bound by strict rules, to curb their violent tendencies and direct them against outside enemies. Which resulted in multiple expansionist wars that brought a couple of other countries down.

Currently orcs mostly comprise kind of a warior/knight class in the kingdom with other races doing farming, trading and so on. There are some orcs who do non-combat related work, but even after all the reforms they are not treated very well - though they at least stay alive.

Boars are one of the more terrifying pest the wilds have produced. They eat anything and everything, they can grow to hundreds of pounds, and they're aggressive as hell.

Your big green warrior man idea is watered down Barsoom crap from the 1910's, user, nothing more.

Orcs have no sense of personal space, and will say all sorts of rude shit. They have a history of getting into wars with elves over land that the orcs want to use for grazing their cattle, and the elves want to use for growing orchards. Orcs are masters of animal husbandry to the point of having a supernatural knack for it. Orcs also have a supernatural knack for animal cruelty, and bear-baiting, running of the bulls, and watching whatever it is a matador and his posse does are extremely common pastimes.

The only reason anyone probably bothered to change them at all was to make them "more relatable" by making them ambiguously more human than they were. The noble orcs bullshit probably happened because of that too because they no longer resembled the pure monsters they were supposed to be.

didnt say it didint exist retard. just say they did shit on the orcs.

have you even played it faggot? lets bring this down to name calling you fucking retard.

fuck you, that guy and other people agree, pig folk are gay!!!

This is ironically what my orcs are like, though they aren't evil so much as belligerant and territorial, like the boars they borrow some traits from. They also live underground and practice geophagy. They are the Dverqui (a portmanteau of Dverg and Orqui, the root words for Dwarf and Orc), more commonly known as Rockbiters due to their tendency to eat clay and other minerals.

Having been pushed out of their ancestral territories first by the Lyjosal (elves), and then by the Homs (humans), for the first time they're starting to comingle with the other races out of necessity, though they still face stiff racism and many of their people remain isolationist

Their skin is grey to sallow and leathery, and they have prominant jaws from chewing stone, and flattened upturned noses

Genocide

>How are orcs, or their equivalent, like in your setting?
They're fucking dead. God dsmned greenies.

So Hobgoblins.

>no one has ever subverted the concept that Orcs are burtal warriors with violent tendencies
eberron

>having stupid names for the races in my setting makes me more original guys, I swear!

It's like one of those 1000s of zombie movies/tv shows where they just keep giving stupid names to zombies. Walkers, Risen, The Living Dead, The Resurgent, yada yada yada

Rube

>How are orcs, or their equivalent, like in your setting?
Mix between Warcraft and TES. Green Conan. I know it triggers the fuck out of Veeky Forums and I love it.

Good taste

They're the Crossed. Like, basically the Crossed. Psychotically violent, evil, but with a frightening kind of insight. They're so evil they might as well be an alien race.

Orcs in lord of the rings were actually more advanced tech wise than most of the races.

Well, on Agone ogres are effectively the setting's orc equivalent. They're brilliant tacticians who once ruled in a matriarchal clan system ruled by the clan leaders (clans are sort if female lead harems of males... Not all live like this, but it is the traditional way, and those who choose not to are still respected and supported by the clans) and the council of veterans (all old male warriors). They lost their kingdom when the giants forced them to cease their war with the Minotaurs. The ogres refused, and the giants killed their leaders... Easily... Now the clans are mostly just mercenary organizations of great renown.
The council of veterans still meets in secret and directs the clans from the shadows however, but it is unlikely they will ever be organized enough to return to their former glory again.

Weirdly their very much akin to paladins of pelor in a sense, as they worship Diurne, God of the sun, and as a gift, are immune to being blinded by bright lights, and their strength increases in the light of the noon sun. Their standard martial technique is using torches and really polished armour and shields to blind and then burn their opponents.

In my setting, there's green Warhammer orcs, orange Warcraft orcs, Tolkienesque orcs, pig orcs, all kinds of orcs. Despite their different appearances they are all the same species. Their unifying characteristics: characteristics are:
>violent temper
>a knack for some form of warfare
>attraction to powerful individuals
>high capacity for stable, hereditary mutations, both genetic and magically induced
Due to the first two racial traits of orcs, they usually find themselves in the employ of conquerors, tyrants, wizards with no sense of right or wrong, and their ilk. The particularly ruthless ones among these chose to modify their orcish minions to better suit their purposes, creating an entirely new orc subspecies in the process. This became so prevalent at times that it's hard to tell which kind of Orc is the original one. Some theorize that orcs are in fact an entirely artificial race, purposely made so that they could adapt to any job their masters would give them.

you replace them with the objectively superior Onis

I don't like orcs and I didn't use them until I came up with a cool way to think about them (war fairies).
It's easy to circumvent both evil and misunderstood noble savages. They live for combat, but will happily just fight each other in circles forever until someone pisses them off. There's nothing noble about that, but nothing inherently evil either.

Is that a bicep piercing? WTF am I looking at?

And we don't need to fix orcs. If you're so inclined, Blizzard did that for you.

Mix between Spartans and Haiti.

mine are thralls of a cosmic eldritch god and are something of a blood cult

Turns Orcs into Mongols.

As much as I love the Mongol Orc angle, it's more about taking a culture your main human or elven culture would be most angry or displeased with.
Ex. Currently, the players are in a campaign based on 19th century China. Humans are Han. Elves are Mongols.
Orcs are the British.
Even without the overt looting and horseback archery skills, 4/5 players have agreed that the British Orcs are a better fit for orcs in that setting than Elves.
-Elves had their chance to rule during the Yuan Dynasty.
-Now a faded people clinging to the outskirts of civilization with magic and superstitition.
-Noted archery.
Versus.
-Obsessed with opening the borders to earn silver, drink all your tea, and infiltrate civilization
-Strange faith based on self-serving principles
-Warlike and aggressive in mindset.

After that came the more traditional Mongol Orcs in the Ruin of Baghdad game.

But...

Pig orcs are the best orcs. These are my orcs.

If you disagree you can suck me.

Meet Hamma.
He is the captain of the city watch.
Don't mess around when he's about, he means serious business!

Non-orkish rapists is just grimdark and brutal world. Ork rapists is so close to bestiality it's magical realming.

So, yeah, Porn.

Wasn’t the technology Sauron’s and Saruman’s and not the Orc’s?

Regardless, I’d argue that Elves were more advanced when it comes to everything non-warfare related

Noice

There is a bit in the hobbit about how orcs have a knack for technology, especially wwhen it comes to things like warmachines.

I doubt they're supposed to be more skilled then Dwarves/Elves though.

My Orcs are warrior tribes who aren't bright but know how to party.
They detest humans, thinking they are weak. And probably can't party as hard.

The adventure party hellbent in re-approaching the humans with the Orcs, once threw a party human themed to the Orcs.

It went well, Orcs respect Humans party making now.

>all the posters ITT who have never read Tolkien

In the setting I created, they are part of the four original races that existed, and they have more of a survivalist culture than a reaider one, since they ended up living in the most dangerous areas of the world. Places like deserts, jungles or similar places that are hard to live in.
worldanvil.com/w/deos-happilyevil321/a/orcs-article

The best kind of orcs are post apocalyptic orcs who are just radiated, degenerated humans.

Fallout's Super Mutants?

>Disregard boring green man
>Have pig folk and call them orcs
Having a race which call themselves "something" folk is fucking stupid and only works on the languages of other races. Humans don't call themselves "naked ape folk"

Green, tribal, get by as bandits in secluded camps. Each camp has a designated sheriff like figure to keep the peace, plan jobs, keep meat and booze coming into the camp. Keep goblins as comic relief pets to brutalise in their downtime.

I play them like Vulcans. Rationality and mysticism veil their innately violent nature, but they are always on the brink of losing control.

Warcraft orcs are pretty good in terms of humanizing orcs. Nomadic honor based society of hunters and warriors who feel to corruption and now are trying to redeem themselves by helping the trolls and Tauren.

They have explosives, don't they?

They should, though.

I T
D E P E N D S
O N
T H E
S E T T I N G

Mine are vat grown.

>How are orcs, or their equivalent, like in your setting?
Piss off, you illiterate monkeyl

The way I usually do orcs in my settings is that they live a tribal lifestyle but are for the most part similar to humans. However, the one major difference is that their bodies react to adrenaline like a drug, so they tend to be thrill-seekers and are much more likely to fight for the hell of it than most other races. Sometimes this leads to them becoming evil raiders, other times they just become mercenaries or just spend their free time in simple combat sports.

Oni are more analogous to ogres, in my opinion.

Are they spicy?

Orcs should go and stay go.

that's actually fitting, especially because orcs, for some fuckin reason, are mongol-like hordes of raiders with shit mobility rather than industrialists bullying less developed cultures

Is demon ichor spicy?

I don't get why Scro and Hobgoblins existed in the same setting.

But yeah orcs used to be LE. Now they're Mini Ogres. I don't see why we need Mini Ogres, Ogres, and Hill Giants. I'm inclined to use Ogres as Orcs, and always have.

I always liked the Orcs and the Horde of early Warcraft. The different clans that show allegiances through ritual mutilations, or trophies and symbols of power. It was multicultural, with Orcs, Trolls, Goblins, and Ogres. There was even a clan led by an ogre magi named Cho'gal. I also loved that it is a brutal meritocracy. Any Orcs I've used have emulated these ideas. I know Warhammer has similar concepts, but my first exposure was the Warcraft Battlechest collection.

This. Big fucking Pesudo fae, can't not fight.

In my setting they were killing all the human farm settlements east of the mountains and then some. So the gods got together and told the God of War that the Orcs where his responsibility and to fix it (the fae God couldn't really control them) so the War God taught them a special war game where they just fight each other over a hill in the middle of their designated land. Any orc that lives outside "Orc Land" (better name incoming one day) has to adhere to a more peaceful life. (So limiting their violence to the law of the land. Ex: bar fights, merc, hunting, caravan guard)

...

I like this thread because a pig folk fag got out in his place.

I decided to throw the racial alignments usually used in D&D to the trash, and actually make the monstrous humanoids in my setting into believable and functioning societies that might trade, coexist and even form alliances with humans and other "civilized" humanoids, instead of either waging war or ignoring them.
In my setting, orcs are taller, tougher and stronger than humans but less intelligent, have tusks, grayish skin tones and live in tribal communities for the most part. In tribes, the elderly and the shamans help the tribe chief in making the right decisions for the good of the tribe.
There is a major orc kingdom which chooses its king through ritual combat between eldest sons of each family who choose to participate, instead of iheritance. Might makes right when it comes to becoming the ruler, but everyone is expected to respect the greater good of their family, tribe or kingdom. Even the king, whose rulership can be challenged by his former competitors mid-term, should the council of elders and shamans deem his rule to be questionable.
Ritual fighting between tribes and duels, to the death if the case is serious, as a form to settle disputes are common. While the tribes are largely self-sufficient, they might trade or raid for more material wealth depending on their tribal ways.

You keep calling them 'pig folk' despite the fact that the term has always meant 'orcs' in every fucking setting except for you, you pedantic shit.

Fuck off bitch and keep your projections to yourself. I wans't trying to copyright p'orcs

Focused more on their opposition to the goblins than their hatred of elves and love of dwarfholds.
Made them middle eastern in culture to oppose the Mongolian styling of hobgoblins. Focused on making them coastal communities using their tusks for prying open shellfish and greenskin for blending into beautiful waters. Spears for fishing, axes and hammers for cracking open various fruits and veggies. They're united by worship and food. They're aggressive because they're hotblooded, not bloodthirsty. They switch between emotions, all emotions, very quickly and experience them very deeply. Like all seafaring communities, they're willing to raid but due to their almost pacific islander climes they inhabit its not their primary economic function. They're still very willing to entertain travelers and adventurers and won't force their gods upon them, knowing that orc gods are for orcs as human gods for humans and so on, but will go apeshit for refusing food.

Fuck dude I clicked the wrong post to reply too.
Sorry my guy.

In the beginning there were humans. Some embraced civilization. The others spurred such thoughts or didn't have the luxury. The world is stupidly dangerous. Over time the feral humans changed to adapt to living outside the walls on a death world.

There's fewer of them than there are civilized people, but they're all super dangerous bad asses to exist how they do.

Very slight twist on the trope. Think tharn from the iron kingdom.

I'm sure you could bullshit in something about exposed flesh and flora staining, or flamingo it and have something about what they eat changed the pigmentation.