Orc Play!

[Yoink]

Someone on staff definitely said the orc tribe would be open come Alpha... I'll have to dig around for a quote.

Edit: Here.

As Nimrod announced already, the Orc sphere for Alpha is a smallish outpost for a single Orc clan (not in Dol Gador) so will naturally minimize internal violence. Conflict will be rising within the clan, not inter-clan.

[Frigga]

As far as orc songs go, while outside of textual canon, the old animated Hobbit and Lord of the Rings films can be amusing fodder for content consideration.

Where There's A Whip There's A Way, indeed.

[Zargen]

Thats exactly what I sang to myself(to completion) when I saw that theres a music skill and hoq orcs would use it. I then started making up orcy songs to myself.

[Icarus]

Epic Orc songs = rpp

Also, planning on having drums that act like the old horns with wide echos so you can announce the coming gobbohorde

[Octavius]

Canon has enough good examples for inspiration.

Now there came a glimmer of a red light before them. The goblins began to sing, or croak, keeping time with the flap of their flat feet on the stone, and shaking their prisoners as well.

Clap! Snap! the black crack!

Grip, grab! Pinch, nab!

And down down to Goblin-town

You go, my lad!

Clash, crash! Crush, smash!

Hammer and tongs! Knocker and gongs!

Pound, pound, far underground!

Ho, ho! my lad!

Swish, smack! Whip crack!

Batter and beat! Yammer and bleat!

Work, work! Nor dare to shirk,

While Goblins quaff, and Goblins laugh,

Round and round far underground

Below, my lad!

It sounded truly terrifying. The walls echoed to the clap, snap! and the crush, smash! and to the ugly laughter of their ho, ho! my lad! The general meaning of the song was only too plain; for now the goblins took out whips and whipped them with a swish, smack!, and set them running as fast as they could in front of them; and more than one of the dwarves were already yammering and bleating like anything, when they stumbled into a big cavern.

[Octavius]

Also, planning on having drums that act like the old horns with wide echos so you can announce the coming gobbohorde

This is the part that brings joy to my soul.

[Matt]

I'm definitely going to spend some IG nights playing drums for laughs outside humanville

[Letters]

Do orcs still have infravision? I can understand why they did, but there's surely a more elegant solution than a binary blind/not blind switch. Perhaps beyond the scope of alpha, of course.

[Brian]

I would really recommend that orcs not have infravision; I wouldn't give any of the races infravision really. I don't think there's a canon basis for it, nor is there a gameplay basis. I think it discourages interaction because humans won't go out at night because they can't see or scan, and orcs won't go out in the day because they had daylight penalties.

If anything, I would make it so that both sides can see just fine in the day and need torches at night. As far as penalties to skills go, I would give orcs a minor penalty in the day, but give humans a minor penalty at night. I want to stress that I think they should be really minor because as soon as people think they have a major disadvantage they won't go out. If minor penalties are still going to discourage people then I would even remove them; I think inspiring interaction is the most important thing that we can do, both in the night and in the day.

[Dero]

I have a hard time seeing an "evil" faction in a game as it worries me on how encounters are handled. I hated the whole ROI shit and how that worked. Death should happen, combat should happen, it should be down right gritty and rotten... not organized.

I personally would love to play an Orc so I could kill a human, but if I have to jump through hoops to just attack one... meh, that would just turn me off from it. Now I worry that there will be enough for a "Clan" to do. Hopefully they will have the capacity to create, lead, expand, etc. Building up their defenses, hunting for food, cooking it, crafting crude weapons and armor, and then raiding for the things they can't do.

Raiding PCs will be difficult, raiding NPCs will have to be proper balanced. I worry that if you allow for raiding of NPCs you will potentially give opportunity for PCs to take advantage of it. At the same time if you control it, make it RPT only, not everyone maybe able to make it. It's balance that will have to be made.

I do agree with some others through to only open Laketown first and then go into adding the Orc Clans. I do also like the idea of playing Worgs or maybe even Spiders. Maybe these "creature" races could be limited time play as in when they are open and available due to the growth of the Clan. If the clan is weak, Worgs will not be with them, but when the Clan is powerful, Worgs will be attracted to be with them.

One the topic of infravision, I think Orcs should have low light vision, it is cannon, but don't give them full blown ability to see in the dark. I also believe that the game should have a light system where anyone has the ability to potentially make things out in the dark based on ambient light and so forth. Going out at night should be dangerous to humans, they can't see in the dark. Dwarves and Elves (and I'm not sure on hobbits) should have some sort of low light vision, dwarves especially. Orcs live in the dark... it is cannon to them.

[Matt]

I honestly think that the 'evil' side has a better history with the rules of engagement. We would take prisoners a large amount of the time and not purposely try and kill knocked out PCs in battles. It's better to let those people get dragged off by their buds while continuing to fight. Unless is Sir Badass the Orc Slayer, that dude gets got. Towards the end of the game we captured so so many PCs and would usually give them multiple options on where they wanted their PCs to go from there. Usually... it can't always work out where everyone's happy IG. That's when Haradrim were pretty much running the show though. But I'd expect, as a human, to get captured before just being murdered while unconcious. That's the type of roleplay we evil players really love. Nothings more evil then dragging a human back to the caves and tormenting them for a few hours and reminding them of their impending doom before throwing them in a stew pot to boil to death.

Human players really never did that(often), we usually got killed outright. Especially if you were an orc. But you know what that makes sense 95% of the time and that's probably what I'd do as well.

As the evil side we have a lot more options when it comes to roleplaying with the enemy. Capture them, torture them for their 'secrets', torment them until we kill them for funsies, cut some stuff off and send them back as a message. The list goes on and on and it's pretty fun to just roll with it and see what happens. When it comes to PvP the 'evil' side has a lot more room for player consideration after the battles over. Cause screw it we do what we want. There's no stigma to bringing a human back to the cave like there is marching an orc through town.

[Throttle]

That's wildly revisionist. There were long periods of time where the Battalions considered pulling out of PvP entirely (or actually did so) because the Mordor side broke RoE on literally every single encounter in Ithilien, and routinely went far out of their way to wring every conceivable code advantage out of the game, including such things as knowingly using bugged armor and equipping everyone with bludgeoning weapons because a code imbalance made them overpowered against the scalemail at 80% of the Gondorian soldiers were forced to wear whether they wanted to or not. I'm sure there was bullshit coming from both sides - and keep in mind that the Batts had to care for almost all of the game's newbie combatants - but please don't try to insinuate that Team Mordor had some kind of moral high ground because that's not even close to accurate, and it's just unsightly self-flattery.

[Holmes]

Horse guards, ho!

[Zargen]

Hey Holmes. Totally made a comment about Shield Horses, Ho! In the Power thread. SoI inside humor at its finest.

Instead of arguing who shot who. Or who buggered who with a rusty iron sword while they where uncon. We can all agree that we're all human and we can't control how other players feel like they should play the game. A lot of the time when -Ive- made poor decisions or otherwise did something to piss off other people its because PvP makes us all nervous as players. I know when I'm squaring off with another player(and im not the screamingly obvious choice for victor) I can feel my adrenaline pumping. And what runs through my head(and I assume everyone elses) Is how I can avoid getting dropped and ganked. This is even more apparent as Matt said when playing an Orc. Nobody thinks twice about stabbing the uncon orc to death. And most of us can agree that we will do -anything- to avoid losing a PC we've had for so-and-so many days worth of play. Occasionally that includes poor sportsmanship to make sure I dont have to reroll and start over. We're all human.

[Matt]

I stand by what I said, though I can't speak for other clans in Mordor. We had a strict capture policy at least in my clan. It started to get out of hand how many Gondorian slaves we had. I'm just saying that just because one side is the 'evil' side doesn't mean it's the go crazy and PK team. The orcs will actually have the chance to at least drag people back and give them a proper death.

[Letters]

Octavius mentioned a fix for that in the other thread, too.

[Brian]

I think the main take away from the conversation going in this direction is that when it comes to fair play between the sides, we need to rely on codedly implemented solutions. Anything else is not going to work, whether it's from adrenaline, not understanding them, or just being a d**k. Don't even try going down that road. Find out what you want out of your combat code in alpha and do everything you can to get it there, and don't even go into voluntary rules of engagement type stuff. I'll probably always be on the side of letting unconscious characters survive or letting enemies flee if they elect to, but not everyone feels the same and that's never going to change and we shouldn't try to artificially impose it.

[Octavius]

Brian speaks wisdom.

Lets go back to talking about what you want to see in your Orc Culture.

People mentioned orcish engineering. What would you be building?

[MrDvAnt]

Siege engines...I want to see people transfixed with ballista bolts and crushed by rocks. :p

[Zargen]

A random jumble of my thoughts while im on break at work:

For now I want to focus on traditional above ground construction.

Orcish structures(above ground at least) i imagine to be spartan and practical affairs using as little resources as they can manage. Rickety watch towers in the woods and perimeter of their territory to watch for humans or potential raid material come to mind.

I also imagine orcs would be real big fans of camoflauge if not for the sake of hiding from men, then for the sake of hiding from the hated sun. As well as going to lengths to armor up their rickety structures against attacks from rival orc tribes and men. Leather padding and wooden stakes probably being the most convient.

Armoring structures and adding camo could be a higher-tier construction crafts augmenting already built structures if thats possible.

Sturdier, bigger towers(probably a mix of stone and wood but no less crude and orcy) would be seen closer to home. Along with earthen bulwarks around their tunnel(s) appropiately lined with menacing pointy things.

Id also like to see asthetic constructions available. Totemesque warnings against encroaching on their turf. Bone and skull fetishes. Cages on poles. You know. Orcy stuff that doesernt serve much more beyond a single purpose and looking cool.

Next post when I get home. Covering underground structures. Which should be very interesting. Though probably admin intensive since I dont think theres a means for players to codedly dig in a direction and spawn a new cave extension. Which would be sweet.

[Brian]

My question here is how large is this orcish settlement planned to be? Are we looking at a small camp, or are we talking about something that will be built up into a fortress? I ask because if I think the key to orc survival in this region is primarily upon going unnoticed -- being there, but not being a big enough presence or big enough problem to rouse the Elvenking. If we are looking at major geopolitical powers in Middle-Earth, the Woodland Realm is one of them. Sauron wasn't able to defeat them even in the War of the Ring, when he had huge, prepared armies to launch at them. I can see no reason why they would allow anything that began to resemble a permanent settlement of orcs to spring up right in their backyard. However, if those orcs were in a small camp that was easily dispersed, easy to pack up when they melt away and easy to set up again elsewhere, maybe it wouldn't be worth the effort of sending out a detachment to clean up the riff-raff.

[Matt]

Yea I think any construction needs to be mostly underground with the purpose of moving and hiding the tribe.

[Zargen]

Agreed. Thats why my suggestions for above ground construction is pretty sparse. Quick to throw up camo towers(preferrably if it was manageable to not show up via scan and only if you search the room) and semi-permenant easy to throw up defences around the camp. The kind you can make and then abandon if the area gets too dicey.

Underground I was thinking construction for your mushroom fields. Digging warrens and nests for orcs and wargs. Digging out boltholes in the forest to hide from humans or the sun. Any sort of smithing would also be done underground. which would require digging out enough room for a smithy with appropiate ventilation. Digging out tanning vats. Really most things orcs would need for containers could just as easily be dug into the ground.

[Zargen]

It'd be an interesting addition (imo) and somewhat of a controllable scheme by restricting it to cave terrain only. Construction crafts that 'shape' the room into a particular kind of area. Like say, "shape orc-den" in a cave that's probably been worked with uh, "carve orc-warren" to produce an inhabitable orc lair. The benefit of this being somehow able to drop a safequit down in an orc bolthole dug into the ground. Following along with this working the caves idea. Construction could be used to make permanent additions to a room. Like aforementioned "shape mushroom-troughs" and just dig some ditches in the rock to fill with rotting whatevers. And then "ready warg-pit" or something along those lines. Get the general area seat up and ready to receive the warg breeders to do their...thing.

[Hawkwind]

Perhaps something similar to the 'blight' of Starcraft and such? A visible effect on the environment despite the lack of extensive buildings. Cracks in the earth, dead vegetation, all that stuff. Intentional or not, there is a visible theme of industry vs nature in Tolkiens works. Could be something to build off of.