I think the lack of interest in rehabilitating ogres can be explained due to how they're culturally antisocial and xenophobic so tend not to exist in large groups and are rarely exposed to new ideas. So if you have one ogre who turns out to be a nice person, it can just be "that individual made some choices."
But like the diagetic explanation for the rapid nature of goblins becoming contributing members of society- they live in large groups, with rapid turnover, they enthusiastically follow charismatic leaders, and pursue novelty- works precisely the opposite for Ogres (who have none of those characteristics.)
So I think you can just leave ogres alone until an author has an idea for something they want to do with ogres. Given how Paizo used ogres in the past, that might not happen soon, since obviously "The Hills Have Eyes" stuff is off the table.
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Sigh. Ogres are being retconned too? First goblins, then kobolds, and now ogres? I really dislike Paizo's trend of redesigning the world to conform to political correctness. While steering the real world in a politically correct direction may have its merits, the fantasy realm need not, and should not, follow suit. After all, where's the fun in adventuring in a world devoid of ethical dilemmas? There ought to be monsters, slavers, and criminals who revel in all manner of evil deeds (whether it be murder, cannibalism, raiding, rape, or slavery) for PCs to confront. While I abhor real-world slavery, I have no qualms about its portrayal in the fantasy realm. If goblins and kobolds are now portrayed as allies rather than murderous and deranged creatures who think nothing of enslaving and butchering humans, it begs the question of why they exist at all. Moreover, many esteemed works of fantasy literature feature themes of slavery. Imagine if Tolkien had suddenly decided, 'Oh, I believe orcs are depicted as too malevolent in my book. It's clearly discriminatory and detrimental to readers' mental well-being. I'll revise this aspect. Henceforth, orcs in Middle-earth are a proud warrior race who vehemently oppose slavery and rape.' If he had really done that, I highly doubt his legendarium would have become as famous and masterful as it is.
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After all, where's the fun in adventuring in a world devoid of ethical dilemmas?
I haven't seen anyone at Paizo or in this thread suggest this, so I'm not really sure who you're replying to.
There ought to be monsters, slavers, and criminals who revel in all manner of evil deeds
There are. Not so much slavers and rapists, because Paizo doesn't really want to write about them, but that hasn't really precluded Pathfinder (or D&D in general) from including lots of villains for PCs to fight.
If goblins and kobolds are now portrayed as allies rather than murderous and deranged creatures who think nothing of enslaving and butchering humans, it begs the question of why they exist at all.
Well, presumably because a writer thinks they're interesting and wants to tell stories about them. This feels kind of non-sequitur.
Imagine if Tolkien had suddenly decided, 'Oh, I believe orcs are depicted as too malevolent in my book. It's clearly discriminatory and detrimental to readers' mental well-being. I'll revise this aspect. Henceforth, orcs in Middle-earth are a proud warrior race who vehemently oppose slavery and rape.' If he had really done that, I highly doubt his legendarium would have become as famous and masterful as it is.
So you postulate that Tolkien's success doesn't have to do with his worldbuilding or storytelling ability, but specifically because it had orcs that behaved in a certain way?
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The Paizo take on ogres was so much more interesting and fun than previous D&D incarnations of them as just a sort of boring ogre under a bridge or in a cave.
Whoever decided to turn ogres into the inbred, backwoods Texas Chainsaw Massacre psychotics turned Ogres from a standard mini-giant to kill into an interesting foray into horror.
I did enjoy the Paizo take on ogres. I imagine they'll sanitize some in the new edition for the modern folk. Nature of commerce for them to do so.
I'll probably stick with Paizo's original creative take on ogres. I thought it made ogres more interesting and frightening.
Nice thing about RPGs is you can do whatever you want with the available elements. The game stats make it easier to use mechanically, but the creative parts are all up to you and your group.
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I'm very content without sexual violence in my tabletop games.
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A few notes...
2) No longer using alignment in our games does not change how any of our characters or creatures act. They can still act the same and do so.
3) We no longer tell stories involving sexual violence, and haven't done so for years. Again, this is not something to do with the remaster, but a choice we made years before that.
4) I don't believe we've said much of anything yet about ogres' role in the game, but unlike goblins, kobolds, and kholos, ogres being large and having a much longer tradition of being monsters and not PC options means that they're going to remain in that role in the game.
5) I do know that the art we're using for ogres in Monster Core is more on-brand for the art style we established for them back in "Hook Mountain Massacre", with a less "muscle human" look and more of a monstrous look (the images we published in the 1st edition bestiary were off model, and were updated, I believe, with the Bestiary monster cards and/or pawns, and now in Monster Core).
6) Once Monster Core is out soon, we can all talk about this with more information at hand and avoid rumor-mongering and assuming things that aren't true.
ALSO: I'm not on the rules & lore team and didn't work on Monster Core and haven't put any ogres into adventures since I've been using Monster Core to develop adventures, so none of what I say in the spoiler text above is meant to be "official Paizo talk" but just my take on things from a Saturday afternoon while I'm waiting for my Pathfinder game to start on roll 20, and is my attempt to calm people down from making unfounded predictions and to remind folks that "no alignment" doesn't mean "all monsters essentially become neutral."
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After all, where's the fun in adventuring in a world devoid of ethical dilemmas?I haven't seen anyone at Paizo or in this thread suggest this, so I'm not really sure who you're replying to.
My intention was to express concern about the trend of toning down certain elements of fantasy worlds in the pursuit of political correctness. I worry that removing certain themes entirely may detract from the richness and complexity of those worlds.
There ought to be monsters, slavers, and criminals who revel in all manner of evil deedsThere are. Not so much slavers and rapists, because Paizo doesn't really want to write about them, but that hasn't really precluded Pathfinder (or D&D in general) from including lots of villains for PCs to fight.
Yeah, I get that there are still evil races to fight, but I think my point still stands. Like, if they're suddenly our friends, what's the deal with all those old stories about them being evil and enemies of humanity?
If goblins and kobolds are now portrayed as allies rather than murderous and deranged creatures who think nothing of enslaving and butchering humans, it begs the question of why they exist at all.Well, presumably because a writer thinks they're interesting and wants to tell stories about them. This feels kind of non-sequitur.
Some writers might find these new takes on goblins and kobolds interesting, but what I'm saying is, if they're suddenly the good guys, what's the point of having them around? We've already got plenty of friendly races like elves, dwarves, and gnomes. I think goblins and kobolds are more interesting when they are murderous monsters. Having a few rogue goblins and kobolds who break the mold and refuse to be murderous monsters? Totally cool. But flipping the whole script and making the entire race the good guys? That's a whole different story. It's like they're erasing all the history and lore that made those creatures unique in the first place. I still remember reading The Armageddon Echo. In that book Paizo straight-up said that drow are by their nature cruel, calculating, and evil. I was really fascinated by this particular statement, since it was a nice break from the whole "humans are the real monsters" vibe.
Imagine if Tolkien had suddenly decided, 'Oh, I believe orcs are depicted as too malevolent in my book. It's clearly discriminatory and detrimental to readers' mental well-being. I'll revise this aspect. Henceforth, orcs in Middle-earth are a proud warrior race who vehemently oppose slavery and rape.' If he had really done that, I highly doubt his legendarium would have become as famous and masterful as it is.So you postulate that Tolkien's success doesn't have to do with his worldbuilding or storytelling ability, but specifically because it had orcs that behaved in a certain way?
My analogy to Tolkien was perhaps not the best example, but I really like the portrayal of orcs in Middle-earth as inherently evil and antagonistic. My concern is that by drastically altering the portrayal of certain creatures in fantasy games, we risk diluting the unique identities and dynamics of those worlds.
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Hook Mountain Massacre was such a fun module. My players loved that crazy module. That module made ogres into an interesting enemy. That was one of those modules that made you go, "Paizo is really doing something different with all this D&D material we've become accustomed to."
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What you're seeing in Pathfinder, Aenigma, is a reflection of how society has grown and matured and become more open-minded and welcoming to their fellow person in the past 20 years, largely as a side effect I believe of the internet making the world smaller. While the internet also makes it easier to spread lies and manipulate information, it's also something that's helped push us toward a global society, I hope, that is more accepting and understanding of another person's life experiences.
I feel that the move away from certain story tropes, like sexual violence or the concept of "racial evil" is an improvement for the game.
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Hook Mountain Massacre was such a fun module. My players loved that crazy module. That module made ogres into an interesting enemy. That was one of those modules that made you go, "Paizo is really doing something different with all this D&D material we've become accustomed to."
It's a story that we wouldn't do today, when Paizo has a more mass-market presence, in an era that's more open-minded and concerned with the life experiences of others, and now that we have our own reputation to rely upon and don't have to resort to doing things that are unexpected or "shock value" to help set us apart from D&D.
Personally, I still quite like what we've done with all the adventures for Rise of the Runelords, and I believe those adventures and their R-rated adult content are a major reason why Paizo not only survived but thrived in those early days, but times change.
I still very much enjoy horror movies and fiction and my games tend to be pretty extreme and R-rated but I also always make sure that my players are comfortable with the content and do not include elements that any player in the group objects to. My games as I run them would not be appropriate to publish in print, but that's fine.
For our content, we publish for as wide a group of people as we can, and as Pathfinder and Starfinder grow more popular, and thus more profitable, and that means we want to present a game that's safe and welcoming for as many of those folks as we can. Individual tables can then take that baseline and adjust as they wish... in EITHER direction.
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I'm fine with kobolds and goblins having moralities as diverse as humans. A kobold village inside a mountain that trades with the party and a kobold band of cutthroats don't have to be mutually exclusive, especially considering they are pc options. More narrative opportunities for stories are better than less. On the subject of Hills have Eyes type monsters......yea, no, that's not something I have any interest in narrating as a dm
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Choosing to focus on something that appeal to more people is perfectly understandable, and it's obvious that dropping something like the hook mountain massacre in a "normal" AP these days would put off a lot of groups, but I can't help but long for a bit of edge sometime.
Have you ever considered doing some R-rated standalone adventure or even 3 parter AP that are outwardly marked as such, that could bring back some of that old edge? For exemple, having an adventure about velstrac where the fact that it countain copious amount of body horror and torture and would not work with every group is announced right from the store page?
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Choosing to focus on something that appeal to more people is perfectly understandable, and it's obvious that dropping something like the hook mountain massacre in a "normal" AP these days would put off a lot of groups, but I can't help but long for a bit of edge sometime.
Have you ever considered doing some R-rated standalone adventure or even 3 parter AP that are outwardly marked as such, that could bring back some of that old edge? For exemple, having an adventure about velstrac where the fact that it countain copious amount of body horror and torture and would not work with every group is announced right from the store page?
We do some R-rated content; when we do we include content warnings, but there's some pretty hard content in, say, "Malevolence." And in Agents of Edgewatch. There's some intense stuff in Season of Ghosts. There's some grisly content in Seven Dooms for Sandpoint. In most cases, we don't wallow in the descriptions and present it in a way for the GM to be able to adjust thigns in either direction.
I'd love to work on more mature content RPG stuff like what Call of Cthulhu is doing, but that sort of content isn't something Paizo is interested in pursuing at this time. AKA: Yes, I (as in James Jacobs) has considered doing that, but it's not something we (as in Paizo) will be doing. At least in the immediate future. Who can say where we'll all be in the future?
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Hook Mountain Massacre was such a fun module. My players loved that crazy module. That module made ogres into an interesting enemy. That was one of those modules that made you go, "Paizo is really doing something different with all this D&D material we've become accustomed to."It's a story that we wouldn't do today, when Paizo has a more mass-market presence, in an era that's more open-minded and concerned with the life experiences of others, and now that we have our own reputation to rely upon and don't have to resort to doing things that are unexpected or "shock value" to help set us apart from D&D.
Personally, I still quite like what we've done with all the adventures for Rise of the Runelords, and I believe those adventures and their R-rated adult content are a major reason why Paizo not only survived but thrived in those early days, but times change.
I still very much enjoy horror movies and fiction and my games tend to be pretty extreme and R-rated but I also always make sure that my players are comfortable with the content and do not include elements that any player in the group objects to. My games as I run them would not be appropriate to publish in print, but that's fine.
For our content, we publish for as wide a group of people as we can, and as Pathfinder and Starfinder grow more popular, and thus more profitable, and that means we want to present a game that's safe and welcoming for as many of those folks as we can. Individual tables can then take that baseline and adjust as they wish... in EITHER direction.
You don't have to worry about someone like me. I grew up in the 70s and 80s. Even back then as TSR grew bigger, it had to make its products as palatable as possible to the audience. They were already attracting massive attention from religious groups attacking D&D for Satanism and corrupting the youth.
Then you would have periods where D&D was sold or its sales fell off, so some third party people would come in and make some wild stuff that certain parts of the community loved. Sort of like comics when a Dark Horse started off making some real insane comics that were popular for a while like Faust. Then that kind of stuff falls out of sorts, then comes back in.
But this is a different time. Paizo is a much bigger company. Like all corporations with a large customer base and responsibilities to employees and ownership, you have to make your products as palatable to as wide an audience as possible.
This is a period when society is working through a lot of issues with paradigm changes. I imagine before I die I might see another conservative period followed by another nothing is off the table period. These sorts of movements ebb and flow with times.
Paizo carved out a big niche in the gaming market to be a big enough player in the market to have to manage your corporate image. That was not easy to do as I haven't seen anyone carve out a serious piece of the pie from D&D since its inception and I have played a ton of RPGs dating back from the late 70s into the 90s. Paizo may have been the first to have done it.
Pathfinder is the first real challenger to D&D I've seen in my life. Kudos to Paizo for doing a good enough job to stick around this long. You must doing something right to have accomplished what no other D&D challenger has ever done. I still think Paizo produces best version of a D&D type of game truer to the original than Hasbro, which has gone full on corporate without any of the subversive creativity they had in the beginning.
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Imagine if Tolkien had suddenly decided, 'Oh, I believe orcs are depicted as too malevolent in my book. It's clearly discriminatory and detrimental to readers' mental well-being. I'll revise this aspect. Henceforth, orcs in Middle-earth are a proud warrior race who vehemently oppose slavery and rape.' If he had really done that, I highly doubt his legendarium would have become as famous and masterful as it is.
That is a shallow and extremely simplistic take on Tolkien's orcs.
The Uruk-hai are a "proud warrior race," for instance, but orcs are presented as a deliberately corrupted society more than "inherently" evil. Look at real world history, with its many atrocities, and the orcs are simply wearing makeup over what many, many groups of people have done and continue to do in this world. Gandalf, who probably comes closest to being Tolkien's mouthpiece, has two statements that bear on this: "Nothing is evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so." and "And for me, I pity even his slaves."
The removal of alignment is less a Pollyanna-ish "sanitization" (or bowdlerization) of Pathfinder than a removing a crutch or straightjacket. Alignment has been a contentious topic for decades; moving to an anethema/edicts structure allows for more nuance as well as giving more specifics (less difference in interpretation) as to what is prohibited/required.
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Count me among the many who are baffled by the idea that the game is meaningfully improved by reducing goblins and kobolds to black-and-white born omnicidal maniacs. It does nothing for me to imagine that some (humanoid) creatures are born so evil that their whole society is like a cautionary moral tale about what things are acceptable to kill on sight.
I saw the sentiment, "what is the point of goblins and kobolds (if not...)" but to that I wonder, what's the point of elves and dwarves? Some people like non humans in their games and many of those like it when those non-humans actually look a little nonhuman. The fact that they are playable and have three dimensional morality doesn't detract from their ability to be villains--if anything it only adds to it.
I applaud James' well-put response, and appreciate the insight into the probable future of ogres in the game.
... And PS, I may be misremembering but didn't Tolkien himself regret portraying the orcs as universally evil within the LotR? Like, no published retractions but I seem to recall in his letters something if the sentiment.
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Count me among the many who are baffled by the idea that the game is meaningfully improved by reducing goblins and kobolds to black-and-white born omnicidal maniacs. It does nothing for me to imagine that some (humanoid) creatures are born so evil that their whole society is like a cautionary moral tale about what things are acceptable to kill on sight.
I saw the sentiment, "what is the point of goblins and kobolds (if not...)" but to that I wonder, what's the point of elves and dwarves? Some people like non humans in their games and many of those like it when those non-humans actually look a little nonhuman. The fact that they are playable and have three dimensional morality doesn't detract from their ability to be villains--if anything it only adds to it.
I applaud James' well-put response, and appreciate the insight into the probable future of ogres in the game.
... And PS, I may be misremembering but didn't Tolkien himself regret portraying the orcs as universally evil within the LotR? Like, no published retractions but I seem to recall in his letters something if the sentiment.
No.
Tolkien designed his world around various European mythologies and some Catholic mythology.
Orcs were corrupted elves created by the devil for the purposes of destroying humanity. Some of his discussion of this has been back and forth. Goblins were a creation from mythology of the classical mythical gremlin/goblin tossed in the dark places that would sneak out and steal children and cause issues he formed into a sentient race.
Tolkien used goblins in The Hobbit. Then he used orcs in The Lord of the Rings. He was taking various ideas he had read about in Norse/Anglo-Saxon/Gaelic mythology and telling his own kind of story.
It was all fabrication at the end of the day. A writer taking a bunch of stuff he found interesting and forming it into the most comprehensive fantasy world ever made.
When he was in full writing mode, I'm sure he was like most writers letting the creativity flow. Then he would do a polish job and maybe write a bunch of history for something he wanted more history on. He was a huge history buff, so he loved to fully detail the background of his creations.
The idea behind Tolkien orcs was they were corrupted members of another race that could still reproduce and were built by and continually used by what was in essence The Devil or his servants type of figure. Dark Lord was a servant of Morgoth who was in essence the Devil who first corrupted elves or humans turning them into orcs.
The idea that Morgoth could not create himself, but only corrupt the works of Illuvatar the One God of Middle Earth. He nurtured these corruptions as his soldiers and means to destroy men and elves.
Same way as he sent people Saruman with his power to inflame and twist minds to get the Mountain human tribes to attack the Rohirrim. Saruman used twisted magic to make even better orcs to serve as his warriors bred for war.
Everyone has their own take on many of these things. D&D orcs are sort of like Tolkien, but not quite. Same as the elves and dwarves. All these fantasy games are a huge mish mash of ideas blended into a huge buffet of fantasy from which players and DMs can pick and choose what pieces they want to use and adjust or change them as they desire.
I watched drow go from a tossed on strange evil creature in Against the Giants that surprised us all to what they did in Forgotten Realms with Menzo B to Neriak in the online game Everyquest. People loved that creation so ran with it adding on mythology and powers as time went on.
It's the kind of creativity these types of games encourage as old ideas are refreshed or modified to make them more interesting.
That's one thing that is nice about being older. You've seen so much change in a lifetime that you don't get caught up in a lot of this minutia like it's new. Drow have had so many iterations that you have plenty to choose from that aren't the evil spider goddess worshippers that originated the drow way back when.
Same with orcs, goblins, ogres, or whatever exists in these games.
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Generally, I think basically everybody else's take on "Orcs" is more interesting than Tolkien's. Like just from a practical perspective, having the mindset of something be anything other than "inherently evil, wants bad stuff for its own sake" makes it easier for the GM to inhabit that sort of thing in a roleplaying context.
But yeah, I'll take the Warhammer Orks or the Warcraft Orcs or the Pathfinder Orcs before I'll take Tolkien's Orcs.
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Tolkien did have some eventual regrets about his portrayal of orcs - the same he did about Dwarves, in that they leaned upon some pretty harmful anti-Semitic tropes (Tolkien himself would later correct this in places - namely how he almost entirely got rid of the "Dragon-sickness" trope in LotR, but he could never fully correct it before he died.)
So, yeah, anything that makes peoples more nuanced and not just comprised of harmful themes and stereotypes is good with me.
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If you know the limits of your players, it is pretty easy to dial up the edge lord factor of an adventure yourself. (And I reckon it is easier than trying to walk it back from what is written.) For example, I made of the spur of the moment decision to imply the antagonists of Quest for the Frozen Flame were cannibals, and I wouldn't call that adventure even PG-13.
I don't have much sympathy for people who need goblins or kobolds to always be evil because it is truly trivial to create justification for PCs to murder any type of creature. It all really just amounts to banditry in the end.
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James how much time has passed in world between the first Sandpoint 1E and the current Seven Dooms of Sandpoint 2E?
Seven Dooms for Sandpoint takes place 17 years after Burnt Offerings.
Playing the children of your Rise of the Runelords characters is a fun potential option.
As would be playing Burnt Offerings, then having your 4th level PCs take 17 years off to just live in town and then pick up adventuring again once AN EVENT kicks off Seven Dooms for Sandpoint.
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The Paizo take on ogres was so much more interesting and fun than previous D&D incarnations of them as just a sort of boring ogre under a bridge or in a cave.
Whoever decided to turn ogres into the inbred, backwoods Texas Chainsaw Massacre psychotics turned Ogres from a standard mini-giant to kill into an interesting foray into horror.
I did enjoy the Paizo take on ogres. I imagine they'll sanitize some in the new edition for the modern folk. Nature of commerce for them to do so.
I'll probably stick with Paizo's original creative take on ogres. I thought it made ogres more interesting and frightening.
Nice thing about RPGs is you can do whatever you want with the available elements. The game stats make it easier to use mechanically, but the creative parts are all up to you and your group.
I wholeheartedly agree, and feel much the same.
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What you're seeing in Pathfinder, Aenigma, is a reflection of how society has grown and matured and become more open-minded and welcoming to their fellow person in the past 20 years...I just don't see it. People in the last 20 years seem to have become FAR more closed-minded and defensive then they've ever been in my lifetime. So, so many people today are just too terrified of even talking to others for fear that they will say the wrong thing and end up with a mob putting a target on their back.
Depends where you look, I guess, but if that's the case then it's more important than ever to create more welcoming spaces for people to game.
Note that setting up games and spaces that are safe and welcoming are not, in my mind, the same as the social media scene, which I do agree is an awful toxic mess and is one best avoided.
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Generally, I think basically everybody else's take on "Orcs" is more interesting than Tolkien's. Like just from a practical perspective, having the mindset of something be anything other than "inherently evil, wants bad stuff for its own sake" makes it easier for the GM to inhabit that sort of thing in a roleplaying context.
But yeah, I'll take the Warhammer Orks or the Warcraft Orcs or the Pathfinder Orcs before I'll take Tolkien's Orcs.
The orcs were never inherently evil. The orcs were corrupted over long periods of time. Created by The Enemy Morgoth. The stories he told simply were not made to explore the redemption of orcs or goblins. Same as The Witchking of Angmar or The Ring Wraiths were not built to be redeemed in that particular story.
Boromir and Gollum had redemption arcs in Lord of the Rings as Gollum was a corrupted halfling.
The idea of evil corrupting the living was a very big part of Tolkien's mythology. The goal of Sauron was the corruption and destruction of man and all the works of Illuvatar. The One Ring was working on corrupting anyone that used it and Frodo resisting the corruption as long as he did is why Frodo is Frodo.
I'm still surprised people discuss Tolkien without spending the time to know what he wrote. Its' like they read an article and he said something, so they extrapolate that as his overall opinion. He wrote an immense work of fiction. There is a lot in it.
As far as I know the only thing Tolkien felt even remotely regretful of was others interpreting his work in a way he never intended. I've read quite a bit of Tolkien including some of his letters. His responses are often nuanced for a particular reader as even back in Tolkien's day there were plenty of readers imposing upon his work ideas he never intended and he often found that very irritating. He was not a fan of readers putting ideas into his work that never inspired him or crossed his mind.
Tolkien was especially against allegory. He pretty clearly spells that out. He is not foolish enough to believe his work was not influenced by his surroundings, while at the same time made it clear he did not intentionally do much of what some folk seem to want to see in his works.
It's one tale he chose to write at that time. It took him much of his life. He wrote it to first please himself, then hopefully readers.
The Lord of the Rings is Tolkien's life work, an extraordinary work of fiction. It is still very much fiction. It is one work, one trilogy based on his personal interests, education, and tastes. It certainly wasn't a work with inherent evil.
Evil was born in Tolkien's world. If you read The Simarillion, it explains how it was born and the corruption took hold spawning the great war of good versus evil in Middle Earth. Evil was not inherent. It was a very orchestrated act of corruption by one of the original creations of Illuvatar. The casting down of Sauron was a tale of three ages and a major change in the nature of the world.
There is a lot in Tolkien. His work always seems to be discussed by people that haven't spent much time reading his works and just going off something they may have heard or read without really seeing if it is true.
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Well, there's no definitive explanation for the orcs origin in the Legendarium - Tolkien never decided on one prior to his death, and nothing published after his death in HoME or UT goes into it either.
He was doubtful of a lot of things regarding a purely evil race because of the implications of fëa and hröa in Arda's cosmology - that's true. As is they are connected somehow to Melkor - 'created' is a poor term to use I think specifically for him because Melkor could never create life - a power he was robbed of, 'corrupted' would be a better term. (Well, for some - in some explanations he did 'create' against the will of Eru, but then it gets murky with the later explanations. There's even one where they were soulless animals pre-existing and not original controlled by either Dark Lord.)
Anyway, Tolkien's orcs are more complicated than most think - and we have only speculation on their true origin.
And, yes, Tolkien did attempt to change things later in his life, some of them borne from missteps - the one with the Dwarves is notable only because it was readily apparent to certain readers, and since he was a philologist first, a lot of his cultures took inspiration from the inspiration of their languages. With fantastical embellishments, of course.
Either way, Tolkien edited and changed things over time - sometimes to lessen harmful things, either in real life (that he otherwise thought was done in homage) or things that would be harmful given his cosmological and theological conceits in Arda. Paizo doing such things is no different, and welcomed.
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For me, in a world where there is an evil torture god in the top 20 deities list and his direct minions (velstracs) seemingly pop up everywhere in AP's and adventures doing their thing, having banjo-playing cannibal rapist ogres around still seems appropiate. Them, together with people eating trolls, are a great reason to not go into those woods at the horizon.
I appreciate Paizo making humanoid races more playable, but I hope ogres (and other large creature races for mechanical reasons) never become player character material. I don't think I'd like to handle that RP aspect on how to make a town accept having an ogre walking around them.
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What you're seeing in Pathfinder, Aenigma, is a reflection of how society has grown and matured and become more open-minded and welcoming to their fellow person in the past 20 years...I just don't see it. People in the last 20 years seem to have become FAR more closed-minded and defensive then they've ever been in my lifetime. So, so many people today are just too terrified of even talking to others for fear that they will say the wrong thing and end up with a mob putting a target on their back.
Thing that I think is different is that 20 years ago people seemed to care less about people hurting other people :P
Back to ogres, as far as I can see, Ogres were never retconned to be nicer in pathfinder, it just become one of those topics that aren't discussed on screen in published material. Like discrimination, people enslaving individuals(they removed slavery as institution, but that would't mean that group of bandits wouldn't kidnap people to force them work as labor or etc), etc, exists in Pathfinder setting, but they are considered uncouth topics to explore in published adventures and left to home gms.
I don't really see why they would be retconned in future, I think people are kinda overly afraid of setting becoming sanitized when we have velstracs, eldritc horrors and plenty amount of body horror still around.
Well, there's no definitive explanation for the orcs origin in the Legendarium - Tolkien never decided on one prior to his death, and nothing published after his death in HoME or UT goes into it either.
He was doubtful of a lot of things regarding a purely evil race because of the implications of fëa and hröa in Arda's cosmology - that's true. As is they are connected somehow to Melkor - 'created' is a poor term to use I think specifically for him because Melkor could never create life - a power he was robbed of, 'corrupted' would be a better term. (Well, for some - in some explanations he did 'create' against the will of Eru, but then it gets murky with the later explanations. There's even one where they were soulless animals pre-existing and not original controlled by either Dark Lord.)
Anyway, Tolkien's orcs are more complicated than most think - and we have only speculation on their true origin.
And, yes, Tolkien did attempt to change things later in his life, some of them borne from missteps - the one with the Dwarves is notable only because it was readily apparent to certain readers, and since he was a philologist first, a lot of his cultures took inspiration from the inspiration of their languages. With fantastical embellishments, of course.
Either way, Tolkien edited and changed things over time - sometimes to lessen harmful things, either in real life (that he otherwise thought was done in homage) or things that would be harmful given his cosmological and theological conceits in Arda. Paizo doing such things is no different, and welcomed.
That is true. He never did land on one reason for the orcs. In The Simarillon it is mentioned that they were perhaps corrupted elves or men, but never definitive.
There are also no female orcs as far as I can tell seen. So their method of reproduction was never mentioned.
Within The Lord of the Rings it was the Third Age. That story focused on The Final Battle and the Destruction of the One Ring in the Third Age.
The reason it is so influential is because it was so good. No one up to that time had ever seen a fantasy world with that level of detail. So it really as time went on swept people into that world. Pretty amazing work of fiction.
Just like I imagine James Jacobs put an enormous amount of work into Golarion. I know his work was been interpreted in ways he did not intend. I imagine it's just what happens if you write some popular work that people enjoy with a large and diverse enough audience.
Tolkien did love to tinker with his world. The creation of dwarves is another thing discussed in The Simarillon. It was one of the few times Illuvatar allowed another creation from one of his first children to live because of how much their creator loved his children. He did it not out of a desire to greater than Illuvatar, but out of a love of creation itself. An interesting take on dwarves. I love Tolkien dwarves. Dain Ironfoot made me want to play a dwarf. That was one tough dwarf that went out like a dwarf king should after a long life of heroics.
I'll stop with the Tolkien discussion. I love Tolkien's work. Inspired me to write and play these types of games. It made me love fantasy and world and character creation. To tell such an epic tale in such a beautiful and inspiring fashion is the dream of any writer.
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Well, it's almost 11:00 a.m. in Germany right now. :p What are you doing up at this hour in Seattle, James? Get some sleep. ^^
Having read all the opinions (for and against) and respecting all of them for what they are-
Personally: I don't like the idea that, as we try to make our own world more accepting and koom-baya, that means our fantasy adventure world also becomes accepting and koom-baya.
Our group has been playing mostly PF1 APs that we convert to PF2. PF2 is extremely easy to convert to. And earlier PF1 APs are way more gritty and grisly in certain areas.
I'm convinced that we won't get to play all the ones we want before we get wheeled to an old-folks' home. So we should still have plenty of content.
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Dark elves
Orcs
One thing I have noticed is how these groups have been drawn over time.
The oldest drawings of dark elves are drawn to be terrifying and ugly. They were a monster race meant to be fought and not desired or empathized with.
As time passed and famous ones were written and drawn more attractive dark elves started to make it into the monster books with playable options and the player books with playable options.
As Orcs make the player core we can start to see them drawn more like us and less like monsters. That is what I think we do. Although there are some that will play the monstrous creature as unrelatable as they start, they dont become more playable for more people until they resemble less a monstrous race and more our selves.
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Still weirded out by that nonsequitor from earlier, but yeah not sure what there is left to discuss in this thread.
Like I'm that person in corner who among other things would want to play tieflings with character description of "oval shaped head covered in welts and three eyes in almost zig zag pattern, thin neck connecting to lanky almost insectile body, spindly limbs with multiple joints"
That isn't particularly related to anything besides that I don't think MY niche tastes has ever gotten catered to, but its not like I expected people to understand my desire to play such beings xD
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The thing about RPGs that is different than fiction is that the stories that take the center stage (and not happen off screen) need to be stories that can be fun for a group of 4 to 7 people to tell together. A lot of edgier content isn't really stories that lots of groups of that size can all even participate in, much less do so comfortably and with a focus on fun.
Maybe Paizo has had some success in the past doing some things that no one else in the industry was doing, but hook mountain massacre happened. Writing another Ogres as the villains of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre adventure would be boring and derivative at this point. Just like telling tales about evil orcs or goblins would be too. The creativity of positioning ogres as a people existing in space between one ancient civilization (the giants) and one newer civilization (the new, non-thassalonian humans), being used as a violent shock trooper whom none actually values, and how that made them capable of horrific violence was far more nuanced than just "ogres are gross scary evil" in the first place, and asking for more "ogres are gross scary evil" really just serves to cheapen the deeper character development of Rise of the Runelords.
James Jacobs more recent creative writing and direction really does manage to work with many excellent horror tropes without forcing some of the more difficult subject matter to the center stage of the AP. But it is still all siting there as very easy material for GMs to use with their tables that are looking for it. I have run much of Abomination Vaults with a group of young teens and played up the comedic elements and tuned the horror elements, and I have run Abomination Vaults the opposite way for a group of old friends who like grittier games. Good APs can leave the truly gruesome stuff off screen without erasing the possibility of such horrors from their game worlds. I think Paizo continues to be really good at threading that needle over all.