This video is a brief explanation of the history behind Orcs and what has lead to our Modern Orcs. #orc #tabletopgaming Tolkien Letter: bibliothecaveneficae.com/wp-c...
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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’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.
@@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.
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'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.
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
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.
Thank you all for watching. I look forward to making more videos soon where I help show you how to world build with Orcs in a fresh yet familiar way.
Absolutely loved this !!!! Plssss do the half orc video
How about Elder scrolls
@@Justsomeguywithabeard69 I talk about elder scrolls in the video, they come later after the part about warcraft.
An underrated channel for the amount of research done.
Thank you my friend. I really wanted to learn about these things and since no one was making them I decided to make them myself.
Yes to Ogre history video!
This is a fascinating video, especially as you compare how orcs have evolved over different systems.
I dont know if you saw but I did end up making one a few months ago.
Never thought I'd be interested in knowing the history of orcs, but damn is it extensive
Yes do a video on Half-Orcs
I think that might be the next history of __ in fantasy I do so you are in luck my friend.
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.
This has been quite a good and informative video, I hope you get more subscribers.
Thank you my friend. I appreciate the kind words.
That was actually a great video. Thanks.
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.
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!
I completely agree with everything you said. I think orcs are one of my favorite races. Also 40K orcs are just so much fun.
I love this. I had a similar idea for a paper on this exact subject but never ended up going through with it. Great watch.
Great minds think alike. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
great video I also like the Orcs In Warhammer Old World universe.
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
Quick note...Beowolf is in English, it's just in old English. When people translate Beowulf it's translated from Old English to Modern English.
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.
Thank you for this information!
Your videos are great! Definitely do the half-orc and hobgoblin if you haven't.
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.
Great Video, learned a lot.
I'm glad you enjoyed it my friend!
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"
Yeah, why is it that Japanese Orcs are basically just pig-people while the Japanese Goblins look like ACTUAL Orcs?
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 . Oh. Somehow I missed that part of the video.
keep up the good work my dear friend
Thank you. I appreciate the kind words.
I was expecting to see the picture of the pig faced orcs from the monster manual of 1st edition AD&D
I wanted to use one but the quality I could find for them online was terrible.
I REALLY suggest that you make a video about Half-Orcs.
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.
Great video.
Thank you! I am glad you enjoyed it.
Orcs in summary: They're technically an army of Hulks.
I like that description lol.
@@kid9893 LOL
If Orcs came from Tolkien, how did that fantasy race enter public domain? Or how is it not copyrighted?
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.
@@kid9893 . Ah I see. Thanks.
0:58 You make it sound like reading Beowulf is easy
If you get something translated in to modern English it can be. The olde English version is quite dense though I admit.
Do this for all of the fantasy races.
That's the eventual plan, there's a lot of them to cover and a lot of them require huge amounts of research.
Thanks
You are Welcome my friend.
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
You're welcome to join the Discord. It's a public place that lots of other people come and talk about stuff.
@@kid9893 Wheres the link to join?
I thought it was linked in my profile but here it is in case it's not.
discord.com/invite/T3ggFWmW
Nice south park reference
I played a TTRPG in my youth called Earthdawn where they had orcs as a playable race. It predates WoW as does Elder Scrolls.
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.
Its funny how orcs became bigger but also more complex over time.
very green
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.
@@kid9893 Oh right! Wasn’t having a go at you at all. Just was curious what really happened.
I didn't take it as a dig at me at all my friend. I was just lamenting the lack of nuisance in my own video.
@@kid9893 please no more lamenting 💜
Shadowrun and Earthdawn did sympathetic orcs
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.
They had pig faces in D&D! Not dog faces.
Their faces were more feral than simply pig. If you wanted to describe themjke that I would agree.
@@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.
@@joshuaosiris you are wrong.
@@rickroll9705 I am right because I have the book and I'm looking at the picture.
@@joshuaosiris which of the 8 books?
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
The warcraft orcs definitely have a more Germanic flavor to them than the mongolic one Tolkien has.
I think Orcs are Nephilims they sounds like those Ferosians giant from Ireland folklore.
Those are interesting thoughts. I don't see evidence of that based on Tolkiens words but that would be a super cool story idea for sure.
It’s Tolkien. There is an I in there in addition to the L.
Great video, thank you! Ended a bit abruptly! (and too soon for me)
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.
Perf
Half-Orc please!
I will be working on them soon. 🤠
where's the ogre vid bro?
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.
Half Orcs please
Lucky for you I covered them in a video a month ago.
th-cam.com/video/FwXxYhChQXc/w-d-xo.htmlsi=xPNtTKzu65Mf3W9E
Tolkien didnt describe them to be green...
i preffer 40k orks
I do really like 40k orcs. The fungus stuff and their psychic magic stuff is cool.
Orcs won't die.
I hope not. They are my favorite fantasy race.
Orcs are my favorite of the fantasy races, and i like to utilize them in ways that aren't just the bad guys
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
I agree, Orcs as bad guys are super fun. I think the Warhammer Orcs which are just evil fungus is my favorite though.