An Orc's Purpose

 We love orcs. They're our lovely little fighting monster featured in - one way or another - so many narratives. They can wear many different hats! The created as slaves to a dark master's army variety from Lord of the Rings. The noble shamanistic species corrupted by dark magics that we see in the Warcraft series. The brutal, fungal monsters created to be an army of insane football hooligans that we see in the Warhammer 40k universe. WAAAAGH! etc.

A Face only a Mother could love. -- Orc mask, Grim Zombie. CC-by-SA.

In all of these, they act as a narrative device. They're an antagonistic force that is meant to be battered against and survived. Or not, as the case may be. In TTRPG fantasy, the orc exists in an ecosystem of such forces. Demi-human or humanoid monsters are there in the various monster manuals to be faced as antagonists. But each one fits a distinct niche.

• Goblins are craven, sneaking thieves and murderers who make due on the fringes of society.
• Bugbears are thuggish, lurking bullies who want to get fat off civilized folk or be used as muscle and mercenaries by others.
• Hobgoblins are militaristic expansionists with high amounts of discipline who wish to build an empire from the conquered.
• Gnolls are insane, bloodthirsty man-eaters with little interest in material wealth.
• Kobolds are isolationist, cunning trap makers who wish to remain hidden and secreted away (but are not above dropping a burning pot of oil into a greased hallway to eliminate intruders.)

Orc on the other hand, are a bit different from these. They're big and tough like bugbears, savage like gnolls, and militaristic like hobgoblins. At least, according to the various fantasy influences that are the most popular versions of them. In WOTC's Forgotten Realms lore for instance, they are isolationist tribals who generally act as raiders and occasionally decide its time to go on a rampage to eliminate the world of man. (Based on a reading of a few of the more general books. I am not a FR lore-master by any stretch.)

Orcs in Context

The orc calls to mind something like a swarm of locusts. They generally are a nuisance, eating crops and whatnot, but aren't too bad until they reach a critical mass. Then the real trouble begins. They sweep across the land, destroying everything they come across and forcing the people to flee or die. The orcs do not care who you are. All they know is that you do not deserve your property because you are weak and they are strong.

The small group of orcs that are generally a nuisance but not dangerous is the framing that most tables are likely to use. There are orcs in the dungeon/wilderness and they want to kill you and take your stuff. The players kill the monsters and then move on. A good GM may have worked out who their leader is and given them a goal besides lurking in the wilderness so they can be a larger antagonistic faction.

If the GM leaves it at that, then that is all is really needed. That's the orc's primary function. The small group of orcs ekes out their existence in a dungeon and sets out for a raid every so often. That feels good in play! A small shadow of the dangers that lurk throughout the land in the form of monsters that desire things without 'earning' them in traditional means.

But lets say you're building a setting and you'd like to have orcs be a larger part of it. Who can blame you? Orcs are awesome! But you don't want your orcs to be racist pastiche, where its feels like they're evil just because they're orcs. I can appreciate that.

Real life Orcs?

The cultural idea of a raiding, warlike society is not new or unique among real-life human civilizations. There are a great number of them throughout our history. The Celtic tribes were constantly raiding and pillaging. The Vikings were a terror of northern Europe for hundreds of years. The raiders of the Barbary Coast struck fear in the hearts of all manner of sailors around the Mediterranean. The Mongolian tribes famously led by Genghis Khan turned raiding and pillaging into an enormous empire. The list just goes on and on. The things these cultures did to their neighbors were certainly evil, but they were not Evil.

Orcs are the same way. They are a representation of the very real and very human inclination to supplement or replace peaceful economics with war. They show up from elsewhere, the wild and untamed regions of the world, to pillage and rob and murder. Then they either move on or push out the locals and settle the lands themselves. Using these motivations does not make your orcs problematic. It makes them allegorical for those base human drives. In the real world there were and are real cultures that view a settled, peaceful life as one of opulence and weakness. That not fighting and conquering your neighbors makes you a potential victim. That is, I think, at the crux of the law vs chaos dynamic that lay near the heart of Old-School play.

Do all orcs need to be this way in your setting? No! Absolutely not! If the game you want to play in is about the cultural differences leading to war and overcoming those differences to usher in peace, then go right ahead. But I would point out however that that sounds less like a fantasy adventure game and more like a game of statecraft. A ragtag group of adventurers is unlikely to sway the mind of a orc warlord who is convinced that the festival of the moon practiced by local elves is not actually a mockery of his deeply held religious beliefs that the moon is actually an enormous elephant that walks the sky each night. That's more the job of like, say, a group of Elven diplomats who come to the warlord's court bearing gifts.

Using orcs can be made more interesting by developing a culture though. Maybe your orcs are heavy inspired by the Mongol culture pre-Genghis. They are driven to pillage the world around them from the backs of their dire wolves because of a holy mandate from their gods. But they leave behind their camps full of women and children who practice fascinating ritual cooking in earthenware pots made from the ceramics of conquered people. Their banners are made from the tattered clothes of the armies they've defeated, or captured standards. Their warlord wears a golden crown with a single gem from every king he's beheaded. His riders worship him as an incarnation of the god Kiltarnim, the dripping hand. See? More interesting than just wolf-riding raiders with big teeth and a bad complexion.

Orcs in Play

Once you've got an orc problem in your setting, though, how do the players go about resolving it? Conflict resolution through war crimes may be distasteful for you or your table (and rightly so!). So a good GM must come up with a win condition. A method to make the threat go away so the campaign can move on to something else. That win condition answers the question "What do they want and how can we stop that?"

If your orcs are in fact just mindless cannon fodder a la LOTR that exist almost solely to kill or be killed, then you need to have a dark lord or evil artifact or something similar that drives the force of darkness forward. You need a specific, manageable, attributable, relevant and timely goal. Perhaps after the Six Rings of Conquest are found and destroyed, then all orcs across the world turn to dust because they were always essentially cruelty made manifest on the material plane. Or they are the creation of a communicable pledge manufactured by a long-dead cabal of wizards. The party has to find the Lekythos of Holy Oil and bring it to the Well of Prismus so the world can be cleansed of the orcish bloodlust. Maybe when they do so, all remaining orcs are transformed into whatever they were before contracting the disease.

On the other hand, if your orcs have a culture and are not mindless brutes but nevertheless are dangerous, then its difficult to defeat them without total obliteration. This culture must be defeated in other ways. For example, say you've got the kingdom of Regaria in the valley. In the mountains, a culture of orcs is raiding and pillaging. You may drive them off by infiltrating outposts in the hills that the raiding parties use as supply depots. Add more patrols to the space between the civilized lands and the orc clan. Create more space between the two parties and peace will follow. The orcs driven by looking for easy prey, and so if the prey stops being easy then the orcs will not raid your farms and raze your cities.

Some cultures are not compatible with peace under any definition. If the orcs are more like the Mayan Empire with a ritual, religious component to the taking of captives during raids who would be sacrificed to their gods, then the solutions change a bit. Particularly if the adventurers get captured during a raid and then need to escape from the Temple of the Emperor of Skulls before they are sacrificed to Viktuku the Goddess of the Blood Abyss! (I feel like I should write that adventure. If you get to it first, throw me a credit for the idea.) Then your solution looks more like killing the high priest and escaping with life and limb. At which point, maybe the Emperor of Skulls's power structure is rocked to the point of near collapse to infighting and peace returns for a time to the land.

Here's a brief recap.

• Orcs are an allegory for human depredations on itself. They take from the weak because they are strong.
• Orcs can take inspiration from any warlike raiding culture, but you as a GM must make it more than just caricature.
• If orcs are a small part of the setting, don't worry about it too much. They're just a small group. If they're a large part, though, put some meat on those bones. Think about what real-world cultures you want to take inspiration from. Think about what motivated those sorts of cultures. What may make them move on? What happens if they win?

Do not be afraid to make your orcs act evilly. Understand that they may have a rich and varied culture across the world of your campaign setting, but they also serve a real role as antagonists and they deserve the hacking and slashing that comes with that.

Until next time!