This video is a brief explanation of the history behind Orcs and what has lead to our Modern Orcs. #orc #tabletopgaming Tolkien Letter: bibliothecaven...
I think you might be the only person on the internet to truly breakdown the HISTORY of orcs rather than just breaking down the lore from a specific peice of media. Thanks for the in depth look.
Thank you for the comment. This is actually why I started this channel, I was also interested in the way the media has developed. I plan to break down more races and monsters so stay tuned!
Technically Half-Orcs also came from Tolkien. In the Peter Jackson movies the Man-Orc hybrid were born from mud & magic. In the books it is heavily implied that the missing Dunlending (Those tribal hill people that sided with Saruman) women, that Saruman said were stolen by the Riders of Rohan, were actually kidnapped by Saruman's Orcs. For years they were giving birth to half-orcs to make Saruman's army. That is how dark & evil Saruman fell to be. His "Uruk-Hai" were cheats in that they were half men while Mordor's Uruk-Hai were a better breed of orc. The more human looking ones Saruman used as spies like in Bree. This is from the various notes & letters Tolkien wrote.
If you have a source I would love it. Like a specific letter because I didn't see that when reading. I will make the correction during a future half orc video if I'm wrong
@@kid9893 I will have to concede to argument. This comes from talking with a friend years ago who had books with reprints of Tolkien's letters & notes compiled by Christopher Tolkien. Unfortunately I do not have those same books, which makes my comments anecdotal.
@@juancholo7502 that is okay. I will look into it more. I know this was a theory from a long time ago but wasn't sure if it was directly stated by Tolkien.
The King of Candor from "The Complete Guide to Middle Earth" (c 1978, p 235): Half-orcs: Servants of Saruman, used as spies and soldiers. They were seemingly a cross between Men and Orcs. Although tall as Men, they were sallow-faced and squint-eyed. The Chief's Men were half-orcs. The half-orcs (the term is not used in LotR) were definitely not Uruk-Hai. (II 96, 218, '93 ed. 90, 201; '01 ed. 76, 187. III 350, 364; '93 ed. 317, 329; '01 ed. 307, 321.) I copied their definition and citations verbatim. I'm not sure why the copyright was 1978 when it refers to printings from 93 and 01; perhaps the Guide was printed without updates other than citing the most recent editions of the books.
I've been doing some digging and research. I cant find the 78 version of the book but I have found out the Author was not Tolkien. It was a fan and scholar compiling a list of stuff for future reference. It seems like half orcs were removed from later versions since they are not actually in the Legendarium as some of the book is speculation that has been proven wrong by Christopher's writings.
I role an orc on D&D roles. The my character is gross, big, but it doesn't represent the stereotypical orc. Or better he likes to fight, and tend to be rude in some occasions or tends to be involountary destructive, some time intimidation, but it's not "evil". He comes from a multiracial country, the Republic of Tripatze, neptehw of the rebel general of the breakup of southern provices of the tyrannical orchish empire, and after the war the seceded provinces joined the Republic of Düpatze, becoming the Republic of Tripatze. Now after 50 years, the considerable part of military of Tripatze is composed by orcs, but you can find orcs also in other sectors of the Tripatze society. The orcs fit sometimes in some of stereotypes, but not at all. In any case orcs in the Republic of tripatze are know to be proud, free, maintain everytime his word and every-time themselves in all occasions independently by the others say. So the my orcs are not the Tolkiens orc, they are not corrupted, by a population with their culture and their differences within, and sometime "victims" of stereotypes, and kept away indiscriminately (this makes the culture of Orcs of Tripatze resilient of the opinion of the others especially who comes outside of Tripatze where comes all the "critics", and act without considering the others opinion on them), only in few places Orcs can live in peace, or can have a "free" life, the most known is Tripatze, to lesser extent also to the Orchish tribes federation (the remnant of the old Orchish empire), but the old totalitarian/authoritarian tendencies often returns, so there is a huge problem on lack of freedoms . Tripatze, is an anormal country, the lone that is multi-species or multi-racial, communities of Humans, Elves and Orcs, lives at par gerarcically, in the repubblic lives minorities of other speiceis like goblins, dwarfes, also. The relations can be conflictual especially from between some members of these communities, but despite all, all Tripatzean feel to belong to something above all the differncies, the thing is being a Tripatzean.
Orcs, next to Lizardfolk/Dragonborn are one of my favorite fantasy races. It's nice to see how they've evolved over the years from just being big dumb brute villains to developing deep and personal stories. That being said however, Warhammer Orks will always be my favorite iteration of the race, nothin' like a good Krumpin' with da Boyz during a WAAAGH!
Great video! I love orcs as a tribal society race, I use them as fallen Sumerian/Mayan receding into Jungle type civilization before wider rise of Human kingdoms in my homebrew. I experienced WC3 before DnD or almost any non-Tolkien orc, so that just cant ever shake my Orcs as chieftain ruled, shamanistic parallels of organized "barbarian" tribes like Goths, Huns, Mongols, Turks
Thank you my friend. I haven't done them yet, but they are on the way. I have a document with my research and I just need to formulate a video with them.
You're welcome my friend. I've been trying to make videos covering all of the fantasy creatures because I think that they have great stories that deserve to be told.
Right but have you tried to read Old English? It is literally a different language lol. It's absolutely unintelligible at times, I believe modern Dutch is more mutually understandable than old English is with modern English.
I remember some Capcom beat em ups arcade, the Orcs look like a big muscle "Humanoid green pig Person" might have seen that depiction in other games "Heroes of Might and Magic"
Yes, so the Japanese did not get Orcs from Tolkien like we did in the west. Orcs came to Japan much later, in D&D and other table top games. As i mentioned in the video, the pig like features are exaggerated in these older editions so that stuck. To answer Zombie as well, Goblins look like Orcs because Goblins were introduced by Tolkien's work. In there, Goblin and Orc are interchangeable, with Tolkien once saying he perhaps wished he had changed the creatures Bilbo fought to Orcs for consistency. He also removed the word Goblin from future printings of The Lord of The Rings and reduced the amount it shows up in The Hobbit. Japan was given these versions of Goblin, who also mixed with Hobgoblins from table top and gave us the Japanese Goblins.
@@kid9893 You should try actually knowing the lore first. In first Ed D&D that were Pig-man there were even pictures. Now I understand making a mistake but to snarky about being wrong is fu(king hilarious.
Yeah half orcs are pretty crazy on their own. They have been more sneaky than their full orc or full human counterparts in some editions whereas in others they basically are just orcs but less evil.
Im making a game as the main race being Orcs. Im using this video as aprt of my research for orcs. Would be nice to chat maybe to talk over the main ideas I have brought together
This is a good question. So Tolkien didnt invent the word Orc, he simply described them in these ways. This is also why he cant own the world Elves, even though modern elves are all basically his creation. His estate does own the word Hobbit, so thats why they are called halflings.
Yes, Earthdawn is part of the Shadowrun system and Playable Orcs predate all three games, I was saying the cultural aspects were changed and games copying these made Orcs playable.
I'm glad you liked it! It was my first video and I'm going to be honest I was nervous and had no idea how to end it lol. I have added an outro to my later videos don't worry.
The orcs from Warcraft sometimes resemble Germanic warrior cultures in late antiquity like Vandals, Visigoths, Ostrogoths or Franks(I Swear to god if you gonna paralel them to some group you hate, id go medieval on your ass!) Migrating Tribes following Might makes right culture, easily adaptable to the enemy they faced and occassionally helping the enemy, and the main motivation for migrating is because the country they came from is horrible(Germanics faced horrible winter, Outland is the closest thing we have to Breathable Mars without Demons i shot on my way home.) That and WARCRAFT 3 IS THE 3RD BEST GAME OF ALL TIME! Id rank it 1 Gold mine out of 5 Acolytes
I’ve always heard Warcraft was first meant to be a Warhammer game but the licensing deal fell through or something. But lately I see a lot of people saying it’s not actually true. Even on the Wikipedia page it says that they were heavily inspired by warhammer. Dunno what is true thiugh
It was a technically a tech demo they made that they wanted to have Warhammer pickup. After they were rejected they made it their own game. However it technically is a deal. I would explain this better if i made the video recently.
Did they do that for their first editions? I was told Shadowrun Orks were basically gangsters and rouges still. Also Shadowruns races are strange because they all used to be human before the Genetic Expression so they will naturally be coded more human like.
It's actually in 2 videos. My next one will be something a little different, then I shall make the Ogre video. It has some overlap with the Orc video so I wanted to spread it out a little bit.
Honestly? Orcs with a complex culture and a "good" side are straight up cringe. I prefer when they are just irredeemable assholes like in lord of the rings or warhammer
