Got Orcs?

I've just put my newest fold-up paper minis set on DriveThruRPG.com, and it's all about them orcs.

Lair Pack 1: Orcs features all the orcs you need to fill up your battle mat when running adventures like the Caves of Chaos or your own orc lair dungeon. It features three orc "grunts" with sword, spear and bow respectively (14 figures each), a quartet of orc chieftains, an ogre, a troll, and a trio of wild boars.

Each mini is in its own layer on the page, with all text and formatting features in the background to save you printer ink when you only need to print a few figures.

Full disclosure, the orc with sword, orc chieftain, ogre and boar appear in my Basic Monsters series. The orc spearman, archer and troll are new. The ogre was modified, since the original in Basic Monsters printed too dark to see the details.

The best part about it? It's only $2. That's right, you can have all this orcish fun just for a mere $2. That's half the price of that Starbucks drink you've got.

Not all orcs are created equal

So, most of the people who read this blog probably also read certain other blogs in which over the past week or so there has been a big debate about whether Darwinian "survival of the fittest" as it's commonly misunderstood should apply to fantasy world orcs due to the laws of probability and statistical analysis.

The math has been covered several times by several blogs, and I'm not going to repeat it here.  Suffice to say that those orcs with more hit points are more likely to survive multiple rounds of combat than those with low hit points.

Now, does that mean that high hit point orcs should be more common than low hit point orcs?  It's logical that the veterans are more likely to be high hit point orcs.  But the argument ignores several factors, one of the most important one is that casualties tend to be replaced.

There will be (as I mentioned in comments on another blog) young orcs out on their first raid, wimps and shirkers finally forced to fight, not to mention the fact that some orcs you meet may have already taken a wound (assuming they are so bloodthirsty and battle-hungry) or may just be exhausted or sick or simply have fortune not smiling upon them that day.  Which if you go by Gygax's words in the AD&D DMG, are all perfectly fine ways of explaining why an orc has only 1 or 2 hit points (if it ever really needs explaining).

Now, we all know that Alexis, who started this, loves to track all sorts of things behind the screen that happen in his game world.  And trying to figure out logical consequences of actions as they would apply to his game world is his thing.  That's fine.  Nothing wrong with that.  But I know in my games, and I assume many others, I'm not tracking orc populations in the world.  All monsters exist in a Shroedinger's dungeon until encountered by the PCs.  So I see no need to try and explain why some orcs have only a few hit points and some have more.

I think the real meat of the issue, though, is not the number crunching.  It's your conception of what an orc actually is.  OD&D through 2E drew on Tolkien (the primary source for the orc in D&D), in which most orcs are small, weak, cowardly, and devious.

Most of the above orcs will fight, but they don't look like they're necessarily much stronger or tougher than humans, do they?   Some are, but not all of them or even most of them.

These guys, however, look like they've had the weaklings weeded out of their numbers.

So, what's your conception of an orc?  Is it of a hulking GW/Blizzard/WotC D&D (but not MTG) orc?  Then by all means, go along with Alexis and make sure most of them have above average hit points.

If you think they're more along the lines described by Tolkien and most older editions of D&D, then go ahead and let them have that flat 1 to 8 hit point distribution.

But please, even if you're Alexis, please don't try and track individual hit points of orc populations within your made up world.  I don't think that there's much fun to be had by that.  Orc activities, migrations and raids, sure.  Track those things. Those can make the game awesome.

The Dream Quest of Unknown Ripper

Last night's game was no where near as cosmically horrifying as a Lovecraft tale, but it was plenty bizarre, and really fun, too.  Last session, while fighting in defense of the Hive, Ripper was parted from his mortal coil, and last night we went to bring him back.  I'm getting ahead of myself, though.

First, for introductions.  Justin of course was running his Vaults of Ur game on G+.  Players included Jeremy playing Ripper's ghost; Dean playing Elder Karl, servant of the Great Bear; Alexei playing Maya Kulpar, Elf extraordinaire; Tedankhamen playing new PC Digger the Orc, Ripper's little brother, and of course myself playing Thidrek the Sleestak.

We started out the session taking Ripper's Ur-thly remains (did Justin mention something about hating puns last night?) to an island just off the coast from Fort Low, a sacred place to The Great Bear.  The priests charged us 3000gp, but since we could only scrape together 2200, we still owe them a debt, which we will likely discharge next session.  Anyway, they led us in a trance-session after giving us some weird herbal concoction to drink, and off we went through the Astral Plane to the Orcish Afterlife.

[map from the game, made by myself and Ted, here]
We arrived on a promontory above a void, with a tower there.  After a brief exploration, not finding anything there, we headed down a stairway to a castle below, where a battle was raging.  Orcish Heaven is sorta like Asgard, where the slain Orcs relish in endless combat.  But something wasn't right.  The enemy assaulting the gates was not orcish.

Entering the castle, we were brought before Ripper, and his commander Shredder (mask, claws, silly voice, etc.) allowed us to take the hero away, so that he could exact revenge upon the mortal sphere.  He told us we'd have to cross the island to get to the Ship of Souls.  That, of course, would not be easy.  We had three paths, and Shredder advised us to wait for nightfall to slip past the attackers after we'd chosen our path.  The three paths were along the Winding Stairs along the coast, through the deep Old Forest, or also through the forest, but a part of it that was overgrown ruins.

Thidrek pressed for the ruins, but was outvoted.  The Winding Stairs it was.  We were making our way along them, cliffs to one side, sea to the other, when we spotted several blue glowing shapes headed our way.  The soldiers attacking the orc castle had been sort of like terra cotta warriors.  Approaching were six of them on wings.  I suggested we lay low as they hadn't spotted us yet, but others wanted to run.  As soon as we started running, they spotted us and attacked.

The battle lasted a while, with Thidrek putting in a fairly good performance.  Except for one round, when I rolled a natural 1 making me miss that round and go last the next, I hit every time.  I did sustain two wounds, though, taking me precariously close to death.  Maya also took a severe wound, which we thought had killed her, until Justin graciously reminded Alexei that he uses max hit points at first level, which meant Maya would have just barely survived (death in the afterworld meant us returning from the dream-trance, and losing a point from one random ability score).  Digger and Elder Karl each also took hits, but we prevailed, with Maya and Thidrek using spear and crossbow to take down the last flying warrior as it tried to run (Maya lost the cool spear she picked up in the Hive, though).

At the end of the Stairs, we came to the Plain of Bones.  Pretty much what you'd think from the sound of it.  There was a large mesa in the middle, and at the far end the Burning City we'd seen in the distance from the tower above the orcish castle.  After debating which way to go, we decided to skim the forest edge.  We heard many wolf-cries, but didn't meet any wolves.  We also saw a giant bird with a 30' wingspan fly over and head for the mesa.  Coming close to the Burning City, we saw ranks of the strange enemy soldiers in front of it, and decided to try another way.  That's when Digger noticed the giant worm-maggot things out in the Plain of Bones.

We made for the Mesa, and the Worms finally noticed us, and came searching for our vibrations (like in Tremors).  I climbed the mesa, didn't find the giant bird's nest, but did see that above the Burning City was the banner of the Spiked Circle.  Curious.  Something is rotten in Orc-mark.  I also detected some ruins far off across the Bone Plains.  I'd expressed this crazy idea already (in true Ray Harryhausen Sindbad fashion), and finally got to pull it off.  We found the cave where the giant bird nested in the side of the mesa.  When it emerged, Thidrek lassoed it.  Everyone else grabbed on, and the bird flew us out over the Bone Plains.  Well, most of the way.

We were dropped about 50 feet from the start of the ruins, and the worm-maggots were coming quickly.  We ran, and made it.  The ruins were full of shades of the departed.  We found the docks, and the Ship of Souls.  The iron-clad boatman raised a hand to Ripper for payment.  He tried coppers.  No good.  Silver?  Also no good.  The boatman then reached out and took one of Ripper's eyes.  The stoic Orc took it like a man.  The ship set sail.

As we road through the mists, we noticed the Burning City come detached from the Orc Valhalla and start to follow us, but then the mists closed, and we awoke back at Great Bear Island, our mission a success.  Ripper now has one all red eye.  Not sure what strangeness that will cause, but we're looking forward to the next session.  And it's nice to have our main warrior back!

Of course, now we're broke and indebted to the Cult of the Great Bear...

Map of the Orcish Underworld

Here's the map of tonight's G+ game, in which we entered the lands of the Orcish dead. 

Full play report will come tomorrow.  It's after midnight and I'm kinda beat.

I went ahead and did it.

So, I'm about to start keying some locations on the second level of the Megadungeon.  As with the first level, I'll mostly be starting with some special locations, and the locations of the 'keystone treasures.'  Then I'll fill out the rest of the rooms with a short bit of room description, plus any monsters, traps, other specials, or treasure.

Anyway, you know how there are those who put down the whole idea of the Megadungeon as 'orc and pie' silliness?

Well, I had to do it.  There's a 10'x10' room on the first level, which contains an orc.  And it's got a pie.* 

I had a disagreement with a fellow about a gooseberry pie.

Why?  Well, as old Jack Burton always says, "What the Hell."

Now, for a JOESKY:

Magical Pie
These pies are always hot and delicious when first discovered.  Each pie mimics the effects of a certain type of potion if eaten while still hot (pies cool within 2d4 Turns of being discovered).  One pie may be sliced into at most 8 pieces.  Eating multiple pieces of pie will not have extra effects, except in the case of a healing pie.

Different pies should have their effects keyed to their flavor (for example, if a lemon meringue pie is a Pie of Strength, all future lemon meringue pies should also be Pies of Strength).

*My Megadungeon orc's pie is a gooseberry pie, but it's non-magical.

How about them Orcs?

Over at Grimmhaus, Josh has posted his ideas about the evolution of the RPG Orc, and how he doesn't like the way they went from evil bastards to misunderstood noble savages.

I completely agree. I don't want to drag in all sorts of post-modern, political correctness into my games. I assume anyone I game with is reasonably sane enough to realize that monsters in the game are just that--monsters. Not some way to explore the "Other" or something. Go take a Literature class at your local college for that.

One thing that has always colored my impressions of Orcs were both a) the fact that in Mentzer, my first encounter with the monster as I hadn't read Tolkien yet, they are one of the few monsters listed with family present in lairs and b) the fact that they, along with Goblins, appear on the Expert set Mercenary lists.

Because of this, I see Orcs as being social creatures, not just destructive evil villains. They have families at home, and they can be bargained with at least enough to serve as troops for Chaotic rulers. Gnolls, Lizard Men and others will just happily gut you and eat you if they can, but Orcs will often be open to offers from powerful or at least wealthy parties.

This impression was reinforced by the D&D cartoon, where there were a few episodes in which Venger's stronghold of the week was guarded by Orcs (good old green, pig-faced Orcs to boot).

The 3E Orc-as-super-strong-savage never felt right to me. I think another thing that influenced this was the 1E Half-Orc, who excelled as an Assassin. That made me think that Orcs should be a bit more wiley/sneaky, the way Goblins are often portrayed (especially in 3E).

So for me, Orcs are: evil, raiding tribal humanoids, who can be bargained with and who do have some things they are willing to fight for. They are not mindless engines of destruction, nor are they combat power-houses, and they are perfectly willing to resort to subterfuge or tactical maneuver to deal with foes.