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every time someone hires an artist and says "hey, you! draw me an orc" the artist makes whatever they think an orc looks like?
i dont think theres really a "master conspiracy" behind it.
just a matter of artistic preference
(Pssssst. We still aren't supposed to have signatures at the end of our posts)
hi orcfinders,
Orcs from what I can tell have gone through at least 3 different nose styles in its existence.
1rst edition: Pig noses
3rd edition: Very flat noses
Pathfinder: Humanish nosesI have no idea why they were pig men in 1rst. Were there cool pig monsters that dnd was copying at the time? Incidentally do we need a good pig headed humanoid? I've always liked the pig head.
3rd, I'm clueless as well.
Pathfinder, tada... I'm guessing that they wanted the Orcs to look more like Urak-Hai from Lord of The Rings. Its the only thing that makes sense to me. Kidos fresh from LOTR would love to fight bad guys from a nifty movie.
Any other ideas?
booger=boy
Though the in-world explaination would likely be that the slow changes are the result of the slow dilution of the primordial "Orc" bloodline with non-orc genes over several of generations.
I have no idea why they were pig men in 1rst. Were there cool pig monsters that dnd was copying at the time?
If you actually read the LotR and Hobbit books, you would see that many of the orcs were described as 'brutish creatures' and some had 'snouts rather than noses' or 'piglike noses'.
Hence why the older depictions of them were very similar to pigmen.
Frankly, in the end, it is all pure flavor anyways. Arguing over what a non existant race 'actually' looks like is, IMO, somewhat funny.
Genetics, my good man, genetics!
Orcs have been mixing up with humans for about 40 years now, and some are bound to pass as pure orcs rather than half-orcs, which with they accelerated growth rate and shorter life spans might mean two or three generations have gone through.
Clearly, the transition from pig nose to humanesque nose is a sign that they have a greater amount of human genetic material in their systems.
Hear my words, before we know it, they'll be getting a +1 skill point per level and an extra feat at character creation!
Kobolds went from being little mammalian dog-men into lizards, and you're worried about Orcs getting bigger noses? Really? :)
A pig nose very simply convey's "ugliness" and is something that translates across different artists with different artistic styles. And most of the art of the 1st Edition (core, anyway) wasn't nearly as sophisticated as what followed.
I'd guess that the flat nose thing was to make them look like a gorilla.
As for the more human noses - we now have collective ideas about what orcs look like thanks to Warcraft and Peter Jackson movies.