I've been scratching my head over how to translate Spirit Queen's Torment into a questbook that would make sense in the old HQ setting.
Maybe the 'good orcs' were elves cursed to
look like orcs?
I'm also tempted to make Silvana snooty and arrogant, to distinguish her from Mentor, and to pay tribute to the satirical Warhammer portrayal of elves. But classic HQ didn't include much of the Warhammer satire, so that wouldn't really fit either.
As Maalicia points out, the reuse of the base game's Quest treasures (artifacts) is a major problem.
But I can't resist picking up on some earlier discussion about whether orcs are evil...
Markus Darwath wrote:Maalicia_Ironhoof wrote:It was actually Morgoth, that created the orc race... which was a core inspiration (along with a lot of Tolkien creatures - in the initial stages of development) for the orcs in the Warhammer Old World (which is the setting for the 1989 game canon), I never said Morcar/Zargon had anything to do with the creation of orcs, I was merely pointing out that somethings (places, races and creatures alike) can quite simply be considered "Evil".
As evidenced in humans, some people without influence or trauma simply enjoy cruelty and by some peoples standards are "evil".
I stand corrected on the Tolkien. It's been a very long time since I read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, and I just wasn't able to slog my way past the prologue of the Silmarillion (sp?) in spite of several attempts.
But you kind of make my point here. -Some- humans are just born evil, but not all, nor even all members of any readily identifiable sub-group. And you also allude to cultural differences as to how evil is defined. If orcs (and goblins) are natural intelligent creatures, as opposed to being created or summoned, then it makes no sense for them to all be inherently evil without exception. Fimir/Abominations and the 0MP undead, there's no problem with recognizing those as evil simply by existing.
I don't know, I think in a fantasy world you can imagine creatures who
are all inherently evil without exception, by human standards. Or in more scientific terms, they're all psychopaths.
In the real world it seems doubtful that evolution would favour that, but in fantasy you can have all sorts of other explanations for why creatures exist.
The Skaven (rat-men) in Warhammer are a good example. They're an entire society of utterly selfish, scheming, vicious backstabbers. The only thing that holds their society together (more or less) is fear of the stronger Skaven above them, who are cowed into submission by the even stronger Skaven above
them, who are scared of
their leaders, and so on, all the way up to their god the Horned Rat, who once terrified the entire Skaven race into cooperating a bit more. They can work together out of shared greed and desire for power, for a while... but inevitably their grand plans collapse into anarchy because each and every one of them has a secret cunning plan to kill or enslave all the others and take over.
All of which makes them simultaneously horrifying and hilarious. Nobody cares if you kill a Skaven. Certainly not other Skaven. On the contrary, it means one fewer rival to worry about.
The Skaven aren't natural creatures--they were created by Chaos magic warping ordinary rats long ago. Being nasty little #$@%ers is baked into their being.
Anyway, what have you got against Fimir? How come it's okay for
them to be all inherently evil? The Fimir are deeply offended by this slander! And they would like you to know that anything you may have read on the internet about their alleged nasty habits is pure propaganda!
Markus Darwath wrote:Maalicia_Ironhoof wrote:The main point I am making is that AH have for the most part taken a grim fantasy setting and made it extremely tame with only a simple central archetype villain as the cause for all the evil in the world...
I disagree. I see plenty of people/creatures that are evil just by their own choice. Most of them ally with Zargon, but that has much more to do with the theme of the heroes as participants specifically in the fight against Zargon. There's plenty of room for evil that doesn't come from Zargon. In fact, I could be mistaken but I don't believe the civil strife in Elethorn for MotM and RotDM are specifically Zargon's doing. It arose from sinister ambition in a member of the elven royal family.
I guess I'm kind of saying that having all orcs be inherently evil is what actually makes the setting more tame and less grim and gritty, because there's never any moral quandary about butchering them on sight. Brutality is just offhandedly justified and sanitized "because they're evil."
This is a minor point, but one thing about Warhammer (which strictly speaking isn't HeroQuest, I know) is that it tended to refrain from saying "orcs are evil" or whatever. At least in the editions I'm familiar with. It might have been different in 3rd edition, from which HQ drew its inspiration, but by 4th edition it was reticent.
Occasionally Warhammer would use the word 'evil' for orcs in a paragraph of descriptive text, but it was a bit half-hearted. It didn't slap a big Evil alignment on them, the way old-school D&D tended to do.
Warhammer just said, "Orcs are violent, destructive, and love fighting. Do you have moral quandaries about butchering them on sight? That's nice. They don't have any moral quandaries about butchering
you on sight. They think it's fun. And they want your stuff. They're pretty cheerful in their own way, they don't seem permanently sullen and bad-tempered like Tolkein's orcs, but they don't make good neighbours. That boss orc is getting yet another army together so he can burn down your city. What are you going to do about it?"
Similarly, the Skaven were shown to be selfish little psychopaths very clearly, without having to use the word 'evil' all that much.
I think the Dark Elves were the only ones blatantly and repeatedly labelled 'evil' for their sheer cruelty. Even more so than Chaos, because at least Chaos-worshippers were trying to please their dark gods, whereas Dark Elves just pleased themselves. And even that was qualified by the fact that, deep down, they hate what they've turned into. They're not naturally that way--they've made a choice. And at the back of their minds they know they've made the wrong one. But they refuse to admit it, and they double down on it, like a kid who knows he's doing the wrong thing and when he's told off he does it EVEN MORE JUST TO SHOW YOU!!!
Being a Dark Elf was more a state of mind than anything else. There were no good Dark Elves... because if a Dark Elf stopped acting like a Dark Elf he wouldn't be a Dark Elf any more. He'd be a 'good' elf again and would get the heck out of Dark Elfland, unless he was killed first for saying "hey, maybe all this murdering we're doing is a bit excessive".
Of course HeroQuest was its own beast, so all of the above is a tangent.
HQ's classic orcs are probably closer to Tolkein's in general vibe, if not looks, being apparently loyal servants of Morcar and Chaos instead of doing their own thing.
I don't get exercised about the changes to orcs that Hasbro has made
if you're using the new Hasbro setting, which is more modern D&D-flavoured than old-school Warhammer flavoured. There's a tradition going back a few decades--maybe it shows up more in American fantasy rather than European fantasy--to say, "what if orcs were just another intelligent species?" in the same way as, say, elves and dwarves. Creatures you could imagine evolution shaping just as it shaped humans. More aggressive, maybe, but not automatically evil. In that case you would have a range of good/bad/whatever individuals. You see it in Warcraft, the Elder Scrolls video games and more recent D&D.
It derives from Tolkien in a way, but it's a
reaction to Tolkien. It's about questioning Tolkien, saying "Do we have to think about it your way?"
But it may also be a direct response to older D&D (which of course is American) dismissing all orcs as evil so it's fine to kill them, without necessarily
showing what they did that was so evil. If you read
Lord of the Rings you come away with a sense of how and why orcs are nasty pieces of work--something the Jackson movies captured well in my opinion. But if you're playing a game you may just get a note saying "These guys are the bad guys" and that's it. "What, I'm just supposed to take that as a given? Where's the evidence?"
There are also political reasons why some people prefer the "just another bunch of guys" style of orc, and are uncomfortable with the "all orcs are baddies" alternative. But let's not get into that...
