The earliest version of Orcs in DnD was a simple, violent threat to civilization that needed to be pacified by brave adventurers, which unfortunately echoed stereotypes used against tribal and indigenous human cultures. The latest version of the Player’s Handbook gives Orcs a sunnier disposition, but this only makes it more obvious how much the core fantasy of DnD relies on the existence of uncomplicated ‘baddies’ that players can bash without remorse.
In the very first ‘white box edition’ of Dungeons and Dragons, the Orcs warranted four paragraphs of exposition and one table in the ‘Monsters and Treasure’ pamphlet. The text is given over almost entirely to the military capabilities of Orc settlements: how Orc villages are defended by a ditch and palisade, while cave complexes have sentries: how likely a village is to be led by a high-level Fighting Man or Magic User; the odds of encountering a defended Orc wagon train.
What little is said about Orc culture and biology is lifted from Tolkien. “Orcs do not like full daylight, reacting as do Goblins”, suffering a penalty to attack and morale. Though the “number of different tribes of Orcs can be as varied as desired”, the only advice given to the game master is that Orcs will “attack Orcs of different tribes on sight unless they are under command of a stronger monster” and pass “an obedience check”.
DnD at this primordial stage was an experimental campaign system that had branched off from the fantasy appendix to the medieval miniature wargame Chainmail. The Orcs actually get a pretty generous write-up compared to some other species. The description for Giants begins: “Giants act as mobile light catapults with a 20-foot range”. Monsters are functional, and that function is combat. When considered as groups, they are considered by a military analyst, not an anthropologist.
And for the purposes of original DnD, that was enough. If you’ve read any fantasy literature, you know what to do with them: monsters lurk in lairs and dungeons and prey upon the unwary, unless they’re under the command of a great evil that can rally them to the banner of darkness. They are a necessary test for the heroes to reveal their prowess.
DnD’s Orcs grew beyond their simple origins, as just about all the sentient DnD races received their own unique history, culture, and religion over the years. Still, DnD was narrowly focused on mimicking a particular mode of fantasy fiction, somewhere between Tolkien and the Wild West, where peace is won through violence, and both the wilds and the sentient people inhabiting it are antagonistic forces that must be subdued.
I’m not calling that a flaw – the first-ever tabletop RPG had to come from somewhere, and the aesthetic tastes and interests of Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson are as valid as anyone else’s.
But the less abstract the worlds of DnD became, the more awkward it was to accommodate the functional role of Orcs and other monsters – threats to be conquered – with their expanding complexity within the narrative. Orc villages imply Orc civilians and Orc children. Orc culture implies Orc values, Orc subjectivity, and Orcs with as much right to live as the player characters.
For light fantasy entertainment, choosing to simply ignore this moral dimension – or even to embrace it with ironic detachment – is fine, provided everyone playing is having a good time. No one has a responsibility to make their leisure time morally challenging. But attempts to make Orcs more rounded and realistic run counter to that disengagement.
The Orcs in the new DnD 2024 Player’s Handbook are a smiling family of nomads. They have children, elders, well-cared-for horses, and pet hawks. We’re supposed to recognize them as ‘us’, rather than ‘other’.
But DnD – considered purely as a rule system – is not a game about creating intercultural harmony in a multiracial community. The rules have become more expansive since 1974, but their focus remains consistent. They still center violence, exploration, acquisition, and growth through adventure.
The modern DnD classes might have more interesting abilities than the Fighting Man and Magic-User, but everything on the character sheet with mechanical weight is a tool for navigating a world that exists to be conquered.
The 2024 Player’s Handbook Orcs are presented to us as whole people. But to actually use the rules of DnD, we must not think too hard about the personhood of whoever we’re slaughtering in our latest adventure. Making Orcs more than mindless antagonists, in a world that requires henchmen and goons, simply passes the buck to someone else – hobgoblins, bugbears, giants, whoever.
Even if the Orcs are no longer stereotypical savages, the narrative and mechanical role of ‘justifiable punching bag’ must be filled. DnD’s rules aren’t designed to facilitate an honest, satisfying, or educational engagement with intercultural exchange, or peace treaties, or postwar processes of truth and reconciliation. Someone must be waiting beyond the walls with violent intent for the game to function.
And to be clear, I don’t really want DnD to be honest about the cycles of violence embedded in its game world. The closest media I’ve encountered to a realistic depiction of a DnD adventure is Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.
It follows a nameless protagonist as he falls in with a band of bounty hunters on the Mexican American border tracking, murdering, and scalping Native Americans. It’s a long, stark book, a quiet elegy to the indifferent beauty and cruelty of the American landscape punctuated by sharp explosions of harrowing violence, and it would make a very, very, very bleak DnD campaign.
To me, the new Orcs look like frontiersfolk: more like the pilgrims who took the Oregon Trail than the native American nations deposed from their lands and forced to walk the Trail of Tears. They have been recognized as equals, not because the adventurer’s worldview has expanded to encompass the way of the Orc, but because the Orc is now assimilated into the way of the adventurer.
Keep your eyes on the DnD release schedule: perhaps the Monster Manual has a radical reappraisal of Orcs (and other sentient and traditionally ‘evil’ monsters) tucked inside. And for a recap of what else Wizards of the Coast got up to in 2024, here’s how we’re feeling on the cusp of D&D’s 51st year.
Source: Wargamer
