Do you want to add more depth to orc culture but still keep the stereotypical violent savages? Then justify their behavior by giving them a religion that literally claims god hate orcs!
Do you want to introduce a culture of good orcs alongside the stereotypical evil orcs? Then drop in the leonorks from Children of the Planes by Tangent Games, an entire race of goodly orc paladins right out of the mirror universe!
Giving depth to orcs:
- Orcs as corrupted elves. (Lord of the Rings, Elder Scrolls)
- Orcs as fantasy indigenous peoples displaced by human colonialism.
- Orcs as distant relatives of humans who lack self-awareness but excel at learning. (Ravenflight)
- Orcs as fantasy Mesoamericans who sacrifice people to keep the sun burning. (God hates orcs)
- Orcs as an entire culture of fantasy Christian crusaders. (Ravenflight)
- Orcs as a fallen people enslaved by conniving demons. (Warcraft)
- Orcs as the mellow descendants of a collapsed expansionist empire. (World of Aruneus)
- Orcs as cute monster girl amazons.
- Orcs as pig men. (Animal Races: Clan of the Pig)
- Orcs as Gaia's vengeance (13th Age).
Other ideas:
- Pig-faced orcish Clans: Boar, Hippo, Orca, Pig, Warthog,
- The Orcish Empire was a Mordor-like expansionist empire that ruled and conquered vast tracks of land in ancient times. After reaching its peak the empire collapsed and its citizens were left to fend for themselves.
- Amazonian Orcs: The Amazons are an orc ethnicity characterized by several distinct biological and cultural traits. They are all-female and cannot carry sons to term. They are dismissive of orc males and view human males as optimal mates. They specialize almost exclusively in violent pursuits such as hunting and warfare. They raid human villages to acquire slaves to perform other roles required to sustain their tribe.
Orc Ethnicities, see Tome of Horrors series
- Orc, Black... death worshiping orcs
- Orc, Blood ... even more violent orcs
- Orc, Common
- Orc, Ghost-Faced ... shadow orcs
- Orc, Greenskin ... forest orcs
- Orog (Greater Orc)
- Leonorks ... aasimar orcs
While I have nothing against people who prefer the traditional portrayal of orcs, if you want something new or fresh then I will provide. My cosmology uses a mix of Stormbringer and Manicheanism that divides the universal factions into Cosmos, Order, Discord and Chaos. All of them except for Cosmos are objectively evil, but all four sides consider themselves morally right.- Orcs serve the forces of Chaos. Like most humanoids, their belief system is a strange mix of Aztec and Gnostic. They openly worship the evil archdemons and believe that the gods of demikind are evil too (why else would they prohibit drinking, prostitution, gay marriage, etc?). If the archdemons and gods are not entertained, then they will kill everyone or worse. So the orcs engage in raiding and other activities that cause suffering, but themselves are fully capable of altruism. They might adopt human orphans and raise them in the orcish faith.
- Orcs have multiple ethnic groups, like black, blood, greenskin, ghost-faced, etc. One incongruous ethnic group in particular is the leonorks, who are characterized by their allegiance to Cosmos and proclivity for the paladin profession.
Options: The problem with treating orcs as people is that fiction typically uses this as an excuse to turn them into caricatures of Africans and Native Americans. Indeed, most of the time these stories don't have people of color at all. The WarCraft movie is a particularly racist example: all the orcs are played by black actors and all the humans, dwarves and elves are played by white actors.
- http://incrediblevehicle.com/2014/09/24/evil-races-in-dd/
- https://cartographyofdreams.wordpress.com/2014/07/10/orcs-the-irredeemable-race/
- http://www.haresrocklots.com/words/essays/yrch/
- http://keepontheheathlands.com/2017/07/06/presentation-tropes-monster-races-fantasy-games/
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