"Are Orcs Animalistic?" Topic

Well, I thought these orcs had some animal charm …

Some backgrounds they are and others they are not.

In the Ralph Bakshi films they appeared to be Picasso. Watching the orc battle scenes actually made my head hurt with that strobing effect.

Yeah, the Bakshi film went for a fully alien look for the orcs, and as an art work I think it works, though I would have preferred they stick to one major design type over the profusion of styles shown.

Like these guys up there, browns do lend a certain animalistic quality to the orcs painted in those colors. One of the reasons I liked the Uruk-hai of the Fellowship film over their Two Towers brethren was the more visible red-brown coloration and clothing. This was also exemplified by the Berserkers, a cool if underused idea.

On a more metsphysical bent, describing orcs with terms like animals is fun. I always felt they had all the virtue of the wolf pack: stealth, speed, and strength in numbers, and a dictatorially strong leader. Their weaknesses are also a wolf pack's weakness, savagery, lack of imagination, and sometimes a lack of patience.

Other times I've used cornered rat, or ferocity of a wolverine to describe an individual orc fighting boldly.

I focus more on the twisted creature aspect. More demon than man. There isn't an orc culture so to speak. They are more akin to reavers from firefly in my games.

Are humans?

Wild elf?

Drow?

Derro?

Not just Orcs…

Fungalistic. Not animalistic.

In the setting of a fantasy game I fiddle about with periodically, the orcs were the bred shock troops of some warlord sorcerer. When that warlord bit the big one, the orcish forces dispersed into wandering tribes which, in the game's "modern" setting, have similar desires and issues as humans: territory, ideology, internal division, etc.

Ah Harry, you and your mushroom fetish. Orcs are like the 3 stooges mixed with Freddy Krueger.