So honestly the shortcut of "evil species" of enemies is so that you can have throngs of sentient beings that you can kill without having to deal with morality in games. It's just a shortcut for "Those are the bad guys." and frankly been going since Tolkien who used it interchangeably with goblins which in folklore goblins were throughout Europe in one form or another which and are typically evil and mischievous for the most part. Weirdly in our RPGs, Hobgoblins seems to be the bigger, nastier goblin but in lore they're typically friendly, just gonna play tricks. This creating "peoples of evil" is a tale as old as our mythologies. On one hand, I get it, it's an easy part instead of trying to be JRR Martin and build a political machine with all the workings and the easy button of "And then the orcs invaded." I mean, Tolkien did it, I need batches of enemies... uh... "Uruk-hai!" And partially too, unlike "Real Life" us gamers/readers/movie watchers want our bad guys to have motivations that make sense, and complain when someone "acts out of character"... yet we see daily people who get to in charge positions do things that screw themselves up for... reasons? But many people don't have that issue of "Well, why are they invading? Why can't we talk them out of it? They should be more logical!" (that last one being frustrating "no, there are some jerks out there you *can't* just talk out of a violent situation) when you have them as orcs. This is the "Look, I just *REALLY* want to have a swashbuckling tale and don't want to have to think about geopolitics because real life has way too much going on with exactly that." It's not a wrong way to play, just a way. On the flipside... I agree with you that it isn't interesting in beyond "I need a mook machine" and far more interesting, especially in the right GMs hands, that gives them a whole society. Hell Shadowrun covers that when the goblinization came, *SUDDENLY* Trolls and Orks everywhere in modern day society, and the age old hatreds of these species can go off... when that Ork over there might have just been a dude who suddenly bulked up, got lower fangs and pointy ears after April 2021. They're just people, and especially not being long lived and "not a pretty race" to humans, they get treated roughly. Ork social circles are trying to bring back the old ork language from the era last orks existed... it's fun to have an ork rocker screaming in Or'zet as a yell against the system. This is exactly what you're talking about, lots of nuance and people are just people. The third, which I think my group runs into the *most* is the "evil races" might be used by the GM, but often ignored by everyone, including the GM. Everything from your standard "We found this goblin and he's our mascot now!" to trying to change a faction to the side of good, to one time because we were playing a one-shot and I was doing a silly bit, my elf was so long lived she was once a BBEG, and the GM rolled with my recognizing a Kobold as a former hired minion, scolded him out of a fight, got his friends together to unionize against his dragon and work for the tavernkeep because she pays better. Reality of this wall of post is me bringing a discussion to a meme lol, I really hold no opinions about what Charlatans of the Shore doing anything as I've wandered off of D&D a few years ago. People are gonna people and if they need a "Light side" and a "Dark side" alignment in their story without a lot of deep discussion of politics/ethics/and philosophy, then having a species of "this thing is bad" removes a lot of complication. Sometimes *I* want that story the same way I sometimes want junk food, but sometimes I want the dramatic, sweeping plots and the Orc lands are their own tribe of people and the fight is a massive cultural misunderstanding between sides.

So honestly the shortcut of "evil species" of enemies is so that you can have throngs of sentient beings that you can kill without having to deal with morality in games. It's just a shortcut for "Those are the bad guys." and frankly been going since Tolkien who used it interchangeably with goblins which in folklore goblins were throughout Europe in one form or another which and are typically evil and mischievous for the most part. Weirdly in our RPGs, Hobgoblins seems to be the bigger, nastier goblin but in lore they're typically friendly, just gonna play tricks. This creating "peoples of evil" is a tale as old as our mythologies. On one hand, I get it, it's an easy part instead of trying to be JRR Martin and build a political machine with all the workings and the easy button of "And then the orcs invaded." I mean, Tolkien did it, I need batches of enemies... uh... "Uruk-hai!" And partially too, unlike "Real Life" us gamers/readers/movie watchers want our bad guys to have motivations that make sense, and complain when someone "acts out of character"... yet we see daily people who get to in charge positions do things that screw themselves up for... reasons? But many people don't have that issue of "Well, why are they invading? Why can't we talk them out of it? They should be more logical!" (that last one being frustrating "no, there are some jerks out there you *can't* just talk out of a violent situation) when you have them as orcs. This is the "Look, I just *REALLY* want to have a swashbuckling tale and don't want to have to think about geopolitics because real life has way too much going on with exactly that." It's not a wrong way to play, just a way. On the flipside... I agree with you that it isn't interesting in beyond "I need a mook machine" and far more interesting, especially in the right GMs hands, that gives them a whole society. Hell Shadowrun covers that when the goblinization came, *SUDDENLY* Trolls and Orks everywhere in modern day society, and the age old hatreds of these species can go off... when that Ork over there might have just been a dude who suddenly bulked up, got lower fangs and pointy ears after April 2021. They're just people, and especially not being long lived and "not a pretty race" to humans, they get treated roughly. Ork social circles are trying to bring back the old ork language from the era last orks existed... it's fun to have an ork rocker screaming in Or'zet as a yell against the system. This is exactly what you're talking about, lots of nuance and people are just people. The third, which I think my group runs into the *most* is the "evil races" might be used by the GM, but often ignored by everyone, including the GM. Everything from your standard "We found this goblin and he's our mascot now!" to trying to change a faction to the side of good, to one time because we were playing a one-shot and I was doing a silly bit, my elf was so long lived she was once a BBEG, and the GM rolled with my recognizing a Kobold as a former hired minion, scolded him out of a fight, got his friends together to unionize against his dragon and work for the tavernkeep because she pays better. Reality of this wall of post is me bringing a discussion to a meme lol, I really hold no opinions about what Charlatans of the Shore doing anything as I've wandered off of D&D a few years ago. People are gonna people and if they need a "Light side" and a "Dark side" alignment in their story without a lot of deep discussion of politics/ethics/and philosophy, then having a species of "this thing is bad" removes a lot of complication. Sometimes *I* want that story the same way I sometimes want junk food, but sometimes I want the dramatic, sweeping plots and the Orc lands are their own tribe of people and the fight is a massive cultural misunderstanding between sides.

In the end I think Tolkien’s orcs are just Nazis right? The weirdness that a political/military movement got turned into a species somewhat explains the weird monoculture feel, all the orcs that weren’t fascist presumably ran away to neutral countries to avoid being conscripted or something.

I really think people blow this crying about Orcs out of proportion, there was NEVER an actually interesting villain in this game whose reasons of being a villain boil down only to "I'm an Orc, Goblin, Drow or other evil race". And saying a whole species is inherently evil effectively diminishes all evil they do because you are saying they never could choose not to do it, which reduces them to children who don't know better. People should move on and stop flooding my yt feed with identical videos repeating the same points.

I have a character I'd like to play in a one-shot someday. He's a brutish, cruel and irredeemable orc bandit on a quest to enlighten the world about the virtues of orc culture, because he's sick of humans thinking he's only evil because he's an orc. He is a monster, but not because he's an orc. "Orcish poetry is so beautiful that many front-line orc soldiers comfort themselves by thinking about their memorial poem. Personally, I think poetry is for sissies, but most orcs disagree with me!"

"Grug brings dishonor on family! Grug's parents no want grug speak like this. Grug supposed go be cleric or wizard like brother or philosopher like sister!"

I really think people blow this crying about Orcs out of proportion, there was NEVER an actually interesting villain in this game whose reasons of being a villain boil down only to "I'm an Orc, Goblin, Drow or other evil race". And saying a whole species is inherently evil effectively diminishes all evil they do because you are saying they never could choose not to do it, which reduces them to children who don't know better. People should move on and stop flooding my yt feed with identical videos repeating the same points.

Oh man, now there's a take on Orks. They're just a population that happens to suffer from higher-than-average rates of speech pathologies. They're not evil. They just need speech therapy.

I really think people blow this crying about Orcs out of proportion, there was NEVER an actually interesting villain in this game whose reasons of being a villain boil down only to "I'm an Orc, Goblin, Drow or other evil race". And saying a whole species is inherently evil effectively diminishes all evil they do because you are saying they never could choose not to do it, which reduces them to children who don't know better. People should move on and stop flooding my yt feed with identical videos repeating the same points.

One of my players is that. His parents were an orc and a bard so he's trying to atone for what they've done

Oh man, now there's a take on Orks. They're just a population that happens to suffer from higher-than-average rates of speech pathologies. They're not evil. They just need speech therapy.

Aren't Tolkien's orks corrupted elves, or is that just the uruk'hai (or how ever it's spelled)? Either way, aren't they basically cannonically self-selecting to be shitty? Even if there's some lesser ork that's just there, the fancy fallen elves have long since taken power for themselves and basically forced them to be shitheads. Or at least that explanation makes sense to me! Not to excuse the behavior. After all, shitty rulers come about all the time. It behooves any populace to dethrone nonrepresentative shitlords.

Yes, that’s the in-universe story. I more meant he based the idea of evil industrialist orks on the Nazis, so I jokingly suggested the orks were self selecting the same way the Nazis did, but in-universe they are of course just born evil.

They should have just axed the alignment system as a whole. It's been wildly misunderstood for decades (cf. every alignment chart meme ever) while being overly simplistic at the same time. And it implies a universal morality system that doesn't really work outside of dungeon crawls. It also has almost (?) no mechanical impact in 5e as is. Might as well just assign star signs at this point, that's probably a better descriptor at this point.