[Rq-rules] *** JUNK MAIL ***Re: Orc Campaign/Utuma

[Simon Phipp]

Robert Hoffman:
   
  > Stepping away from the midgets for a moment I thought I'd seek some
> suggestions for a new campaign. To give my players a break from the norm
> they have all created orc characters. Their previous adventure actually had
> them in the role as representatives of a trade house sent to explore a newly
> discovered (actually rediscovered) island that the Lunars only recently
> opened to the public. On this island they discovered a large population of
> orcs who were trying to deal with the new arrivals; a task made more
> difficult by deceptive Lunar diplomacy. Anyway the tables are turned now,
> and the party is starting off in the heart of the orc territory at a safe
> distance from the bordering humans and the politics involved (for the
> moment). 

Sounds like an interesting campaign.

> All that said, I'm looking for suggestions on how to make the orc experience
> feel distinctly different to the players. Any flavor elements, from
> cultural / ritual to changes in play mechanics that would reinforce the
> non-human element. The easy temptation is the stereotypical World of
> Warcraft type orc but anything I can add above and beyond would be
> worthwhile.

  What I would do first is to decide what Orc society is like, or particularly what the Orc society where the PCs come from is like. It's handy to deal with stereotypes for this.
   
  Is it tribal based? Most orc writeups I have seen have clans and tribes of orcs.
  Are orcs evil in your world? By evil, I mean are they nasty and cruel, do they kill people for no reason, do they enslave and befoul innocent human women?
  How do orcs relate to other people? Are there groups of half-orcs, half-goblins etc?
  How are orcs different to other people/species?
   
  So, the standard setup is something like this: orcs are brutal and nasty; they live in tribes where the strongest rule; they take captives and keep slaves; they breed with humans, goblins etc; they are good warriors in groups but are cowardly at heart.
   
  How far you move away from this is up to you, of course.
   
  What I would do is to quickly write up the main orc gods and work out how much of an influence they have on orcish society. Is the main god a god of war? Are there different gods worshipped in the tribe and in adventuring bands?
   
  How is orcish society organised beyond the tribal level? Is there a Great Dark Lord who nominally controls the orcs? How are orcs perceived by orcs from a different tribe? Are they captured and tortured?
   
  If you want orcish farmers, do they farm themselves or do they keep slaves to do the farming for them? Are orcs hunter/gatherers or hunter/raiders rather than farmers? Are there different types of orcs, roughty-toughty mountain orcs and namby-pamby farmer orcs in the lowlands? What kind of orcs are the PCs? Are they a mixture?
   
  Where did the orcs come from? Are they corrupted elves? Are they super-goblins? Are they both and something else as well? What if some of your orcs come from corrupted elves and some come from super-goblin stock, how would they interact? How would they deal with elves and goblins?
   
  How do orcish tribes work? Is leadership hereditary, are they ruled by the strongest where anyone can challenge for leadership positions, is there a clan council that rules them? Are there defined roles for women and men? Are women leaders and men shamans, or men leaders and women shamans, or both or neither? If you have leadership by the strongest, does that apply to adventuring bands? Can one of the PCs bully the rest to make himself leader? What if one clan has female leaders and one of the female PCs is from this clan, but a male is the leader, what would she think/do?
   
  Once you have worked these kind of things out, then you can say how it impacts on the PCs. Obviously, you don't need to go into great detail, perhaps a line for each. That should be enough to sketch out how orcs work.
   
  Then you can relate them to game play. Give the PCs orcish skills - Hunting, Tracking, Track by Smell, Torture, Endure Torture. Give them orcish spells. Give them orcish magic items - Tattoos, Shrunken Heads, Bone Piercings. Give them tribal taboos - Never Speak to an Elf, Never/Only Eat the Meat of an (Animal), Enemy of (Species) and so on. Give them orcish language and customs. Give every PC a random Custom from their tribe/clan. 
   
  Introduce things in play that would perhaps shock the PCs. Get them to interact with another tribe of orcs and see how they react. Have some kind of sacrifice or random/casual act of cruelty to highlight that orcs are not human. See how orcs behave with other species. Do they treat goblins as slaves? If so, make that obvious and graphic. Have them bring in human slaves. Maybe have them eat other species after a hunting trip. 
   
  But, don't fall into the trap of making them like Gloranthan Trolls - they are very different. Some of the troll gods might suit orcish society - Zorak Zoran and Black Sun are the obvious ones - but orcish society should be different from trollish ones. OK, so they have goblins not trollkin and often live in caves, but there the similarities end. Unless they don't in your campaign. of course.
   
  Also, don't make all orcs alike. Have mountain and valley orcs. Have civilised orcs who live in human cities and look down on the savage orcs. Have orcish towns and cities in the mountain valleys, but orcish tribes in the mountains and forests. Have female dominated and male dominated tribes. Have tribal warfare and raiding. Have a Dark Lord who wants to unite the tribes and tribes who don't want to be united. Have common enemies and common foes. Make some orcs shamanic, some divine and some sorcerous, or better still mix the formats but keep some tribes focussed on one type of magic. Have different orcish kingdoms, orcish tribes, orcish families and have them interact. 
   
  Anyway, that's probably far too many ideas. Why don't you write the society up and post it somewhere? It would be an interesting read, I'm sure.
   
  Robert Hoffman:

> Does that imply that dragonewts are absolved of all past dishonor in their
  > next life cycle?
   
  Yep. Utuma allows the dragonewt to die without dishonour. This prevents him backsliding or being reborn into an earlier or deviant stage. I would say that it also clears any past experience, so the dragonewt cannot progress to the next stage either.
  
 
  See Ya
   
  Simon
   

 		
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