The Forge Archives

Just your friendly neighborhood raven knock, knock, knocking on your chamber door to let you know I got up off my rear-end and posted two old, unfinished gaming systems on my site:  http://www.daegmorgan.net/rpgs/indie.shtml">The Pegasus Gaming Engine and Orcs

Pegasus is fairly old, written about three years ago, and well before I'd ever encountered GNS or any of its variants, and it shows.  I still like some of the ideas in it, however, particularly with task resolution and skills (and note the "there are no set attributes, you make them up as necessary for your game" bit...no, I'd never seen a game do this before when I'd written it).

Orcs is newer.  I started it before I heard about John creating "Orkworld", then abandoned it after I started reading his creation journals on GO and finding a couple other games published around the same time dealing with Orcs.

I picked it back up in the last year, which also shows, since it is heavily influenced by discussions and philosophies from the Forge.  It's also more comedic...and a completely unfinished mishmash of ideas, most half-finished (some from when the game was still about being orcish HEROES, a niche filled by "Orkworld", and filled better than I did (salute`, Mr. Wick!))...but, as I said, I decided to make it an almost-comedic game about orcish canon-fodder instead.

Check them out, and if you have any comments, post away!

You know, I really wouldn't MIND some feedback :smile:
[do I have to beg?]

Well, I will be honest and say that Pegasus looks like every other generic system I've ever seen. :smile:

Take care.

Peace,
Bret

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On 2001-12-05 01:04, Bret wrote:
I like the way you treated the orcs, which is basically the same way I've regarded them for sometime when I've played orc characters in games - primarily seeing combat and battle as something honorable. Very Klingonish, but still fun. :smile:

This is also how Earthdawn handles Orks. I wonder why the impetus exists to go off in this direction with orcs, which started as a D&D disposable villain (the term orc comes from the elvish for goblin in Middle Earth).

Mike

Luckily, orcs breed like rabbits... is what I say..

Good stuff - though, some of your html formatting could be a bit more friendlier.

More comments later...

--Nathan

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On 2001-12-05 14:27, Mike Holmes wrote:
This is also how Earthdawn handles Orks. I wonder why the impetus exists to go off in this direction with orcs, which started as a D&D disposable villain (the term orc comes from the elvish for goblin in Middle Earth).

Mike,

My uneducated guess would be to rationalize their tendency towards violence in a human way instead of just saying, "They like to fight and kill things." :wink:

Peace,
Bret

Excellent point Brett.

But this is what I find to be a cop-out. OK, that's going too far. Orkworld, Orcs, EarthDawn; these are all earnest in their attempt to make a detailed and interesting portrayal of a culture. What I'd like to see, however, is something that tried to rationalize an interesting culture out of what the more common perception of orcs is. That is, start with orcs being genetically and/or culturally inclined towards brutalism (moreso than humans, I'm looking for a non-human culture, here), and create material that would make the culture make sense internally.

Or, even more interesting, do the same with elves or dwarves. What I see in these other games are attempts to make allegories from these creatures so that you can have human stories with them. I'm more interested in the "What if?" factor of what non-human races might be like that having them just be analogues for certain types of humans or human cultures.

But that's just me; might make for a limited audience. :smile:

Mike

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What I'd like to see, however, is something that tried to rationalize an interesting culture out of what the more common perception of orcs is. That is, start with orcs being genetically and/or culturally inclined towards brutalism (moreso than humans, I'm looking for a non-human culture, here), and create material that would make the culture make sense internally.

Actually, as far as I can remember, TSR did this with their Orcs supplement for the original Mystara campaing, the D&D campaign, not the AD&D one.
They had over 150 pages of ork society, culture, rules for playing orcs and all you ever wanted to, and even all you didn't want to, know about orcs.

One thing in particular I remember was the small italics boxes, with small stories from the everyday life of an ork.
One of them was about an ork patrol enountering a band of adventureres, and while fighting the orks, the adventurers talk about how many xp they were gonna get from the puny orks, and whether to divide or not, since one them was eligible for a level raise if he got for all his own kills.
Those were some pretty scared orks!

But, the point is, the supplement was quite good, and will be available soon from WoTC if they fullfill their promises about Classic Downloads :smile:

QuoteMike Holmes wrote:

What I'd like to see, however, is something that tried to rationalize an interesting culture out of what the more common perception of orcs is. That is, start with orcs being genetically and/or culturally inclined towards brutalism (moreso than humans, I'm looking for a non-human culture, here), and create material that would make the culture make sense internally.

Heck, I'd just like to see them do that once with Klingons.

Fang Langford

(The anti-Star Trek Fan – I am a fan of criticizing it.)

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On 2001-12-06 19:17, Le Joueur wrote:
Heck, I'd just like to see them do that once with Klingons.

You mean space orcs? As opposed to space elves...I mean vulcans?

Mike

At the risk of continuing the thread-hijack . . .   Here's a quote from Ryan Dancy about Orcs in D&D.  Make of it what you will:

Here's why saying "orcs are all chaotic evil" is a good idea.

If the monster's alignments are determined by their own personal belief systems, actions, upbringing and culture, then it would be an evil act to slay, out of hand and without attempts to parlay, a monster. Because that particular monster, unlike all the other members of its race might be the "good and kindly" one.

It also brings in issues of ethics regarding children and noncombatants. Do you kill the orc babies? You do if they always without exception period grow up to be Orcs (sadistic, evil creatures). You probably don't if you could send them back to your home village and have them raised under better circumstances to be productive members of civilization.

In the D&D cosmology, some creatures are evil because the gods want them that way. Not because they're misunderstood, or uneducated or come from barbarous uncivil tribal backgrounds. Gruumsh, the One-Eyed, on the day of creation, stirred a little bit of evil into the soul of each and every Orc ever to be born, so that they would satisfy some diefic and fiendish plan.

Thus, it is "OK" for the characters to slay orcs on site, kill the orc babies and noncombatants, put their villages to the torch, and salt the earth when the embers cool.

Gordon

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Well, I will be honest and say that Pegasus looks like every other generic system I've ever seen. :wink:

Heh...yes, it does, doesn't it? Heh.
Well, I warned you I wrote it a long time ago...its predecessor was a god-awfully complex, simulationist-biased pure D&D ripoff.

Unh, I just realized how absurd that sounds given what it looks like now...it really was!  I'm not kidding!  I had ten pages of rules, RULES, for casting a single spell!

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I like the way you treated the orcs, which is basically the same way I've regarded them for sometime when I've played orc characters in games - primarily seeing combat and battle as something honorable. Very Klingonish, but still fun. :smile:

Actually, that's a hold-over from the earliest incarnation.  Orkworld definitely does a better job with providing and defining a serious Orcish-culture...right now the niche for Orcs is "spoofing."  Or I should say spoofing with a serious undertone.

That is, we all know what orcs are "supposed" to act like (stupid and brutal), and that they're little more than canon-fodder for the Dark Lord's armies...so why not a game about *playing the canon-fodder?

They don't realize they're just canon-fodder, but you do...that's the twist.  Though you're playing an individual and the orc SHOULD mean more than a chess piece to you, in reality, we all know it isn't anything more than fodder.

Does that make sense to anyone else, or just me?

Anyways, it's spoofy.
It's "look at what goofy, stereotypical thing my orc did now!  And he's a hero!" or "And now he's paying for it!  DAMN!"

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This is also how Earthdawn handles Orks. I wonder why the impetus exists to go off in this direction with orcs, which started as a D&D disposable villain.

Because that's the way we see them?

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some of your html formatting could be a bit more friendlier

Yeah, I just kind of threw it up on the web.  Any specific suggestions to improve readability?  (My main pages are due for a rehaul as well...ends up too dark on cheaper monitors)

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What I'd like to see, however, is something that tried to rationalize an interesting culture out of what the more common perception of orcs is.

Ok, now this is an interesting statement...I'm not quite certain what you mean by it, but intrigued.  I personally thought Orkworld was quite well-written in terms of explaining Orcish culture based on biological and cultural factors.  Is there something in OW that you see as being internally inconsistent?

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I'm more interested in the "What if?" factor of what non-human races might be like that having them just be analogues for certain types of humans or human cultures.

But that's just me; might make for a limited audience.

No, I'm actually very interested in this subject as well...I long-ago became sick of "humans with pointy ears" syndrome, which is why all elves in my games act more like traditionally frightening, mysterious faeries and changelings than haughty, long-lived human hippies (or stereotyped Native Americans) with pointy ears living in the woods in harmony with nature (or whatnot).

However, what are your suggestions in this case; I'm having a little trouble following what exactly you mean by your statements.  If none of the games you mention above avoid this syndrome, are there any that do? How do they do so?

OrkWorld is wonderfully consistent. As is Earthdawn, and your Orcs (well, yours is only consistent in that it is too short to have inconsistencies).

What I would like to see is the same sort of consistency applied to orcs as the violent, brutal, craven, and honorless monsters that they are in most games. As somebody pointed out, there is an AD&D book that tries to acomplish this, something I was unaware of, and cannot speak to as to it's effectiveness. But that's what I want. A description of how such a society works on a day-to-day basis, their psychology, etc. No product that I've seen so far does justice to the subject of orcs (mostly because its easier to leave them as unexplainably violent and a good target for PC violence).

It seems to me that the whole "honorable" orc concepts are just an attempt to make them seem misunderstood by other races, and that changes their natures considerably. It makes them more like humans with an attitude. This is a fine interperetation for those who want that, but I'd like to see a less "revisionist" version. Something that looks more at the "alien-ness" or the creatures.

I'm particularly fond of how Traveller materials handle discussions of alien races. A more violent race (say the Vargr) than humans is described in objective terms meant to give an impression of the race that allows their better use as PCs or NPCs in play. They are not left as disposable villains, nor is their predeliction for violence rationalized away as a misundrstanding. It is simply explained in terms of their psychology, cultures, physiognomy, etc.

Mike

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That is, start with orcs being genetically and/or culturally inclined towards brutalism (moreso than humans, I'm looking for a non-human culture, here), and create material that would make the culture make sense internally.

Like the Kaffers in Traveller 2300. They're an alien species born dumb, sub sentient, at best dog like. They have an interesting alternative to adrenaline, instead of fueling them physically it adjusts their brain chemistry so that they get smart. The trick is that when it wears off they end up just a little smarter than before. So the casual violence of their society drives them to greater and greater competance.

Eventually some of them rise to levels where they remain sentient even when they get dull and these individuals earn names, some of them get so that even in their dull state they are smart. Named Kaffers are heroes, they are also violent, the engineers and doctors and all the rest got where they were because of violence, unlike the peace and nurturing required by humans.

Cheers, Julian Kelsey.

Yeah, the Kafer were cool, one of the best opportunities for First Contact RPG published to date.  The problems arose in the relative species understanding of one another: Kafer computers had to be huge things with steel bars because the Kafer had a tendency to hit things that did not give them the result they wanted - to make them smarter.  And they'd do the same thing to human prisoners, which tended to drive them into shock, which made them uncomunicative, which made the Kafer think they were stupid and needed to be hit again...

If this is what you are trying to getting at, I see where you are coming from Mike.  This would make a cool alternative psychology to play against rather than the simple Evil approach.  Although it has to be said, given the prevalence of the concept of "barbarian" among "civilised" states - that pretty much any fur-wearing club-wielders are routinely seen as fair game, with no recognition of mutual humanity.  In a sense, D&D orcs are perfectly accurate in this regard, although this also appears to have been construed as Stupid, which Tolkiens orcs were not, IIRC (healing magic etc).

However, thats also why they have been banished from my games.  I am uncomfortable with propagating such a view of biologically-determinate psychology (despite being a materialist).  I see too much 20th Century racism in D&D's "races" of humanoids: pale smart peaceful elves as the antithesis of dark stupid violent orcs.  All a bit too close to the bone, in my case anyway.  My fantasy worlds have nothing but humans, and various human cultures.  Its more interesting that way anyway, I think.