Why Even Play an Orc?

The question that serves as the title for this post came from d-Infinity Live! super-fan El Sijo, and ended up being what I consider the most provocative question asked during last night's episode, "Let's Play Orcs". The question seems simple at the face of it, but after the hour long discussion I had with my co-hosts on Orcs, I found it to be the one that I was thinking about most after I stopped broadcasting last night. "Why even play an Orc?", indeed, and here's why I think they are important, and why my co-hosts were totally wrong last night.

My co-hosts all insisted that Orcs should be given sophisticated and nuanced cultures, that a universal proclivity toward evil in the Orc race was a bad thing and that their alignments should run the same gamut as humans and other races, but I believe this overly humanizes them and defeats their purpose from a storytelling perspective. In discussing this subject with Mike he said, "they are a device for feeling morally superior, not culturally correct", and I am inclined to agree. Orcs are the canvas onto which you paint depravity and farce in your stories. Fantasy settings are already rife with races that can be used to serve up moral conundrums, but Orcs exist because players need a race that can be slaughtered with impunity and still leave them feeling like they unquestionably did the right thing.

When I designed the scenario that I ran for my players a couple of play-test sessions ago, I intentionally chose a human antagonist. I wanted them to slow down and consider the implication of betraying their boss in order to keep the remains of a pair of children from the hands of a Necromancer. Was this the right choice to make? Would they still have the favor of the god Hermes, who demands that business agreements be honored? If the Necromancer Akomos had been an Orc, these questions would never have been asked and the party would have done battle with him immediately.

That is the point of Orcs, they give a reprieve from the moral decision making that typically surrounds killing in stories. A chance for players to laugh and cut loose during a session. Orcs give the storyteller a chance to bring parody into their game without compromising the more sophisticated races in their setting. Players cutting down a band of Orcs can feel good about their accomplishments, because they removed a source of ugliness from the story, without having to agonize over whether they've made an ethical decision. And when they are used this way, without the sophistication and nuance my co-hosts demanded, the storyteller can make damn sure that the difference is felt when humans or other races are used.