Merl,
You’re arguing in bad faith again. The original comment said, “What bothers me with most orc depictions is not the look but that the orcs supposedly have advanced metallurgy, can build huge war machines, but still they are so stupid and mindlessly aggressive that they kill each other over all kinds of stuff, etc.”
The only place that version of the orc exists in tabletop RPGs is D&D and some of it’s derivatives (and, of course, elsewhere in the homebrew sphere). As such, the “official sources” are the ones literally published by the makers of D&D. That version of the orc doesn’t exist in the Warcraft universe, nor is the Warcraft universe and official, original setting for the D&D game in any edition (despite one such setting being created).
The official sources are the material written by authors at the company that owns D&D (TSR, WOTC, take your pick depending on the era). If you want to open it up to any other written material in the history of literature, I’m sure you can find something to fit your narrative. You keep falling back on trying to dismantle my argument by claiming I’m appealing to authority. Unfortunately Merl, when referring to a primary source, not just an expert, it is not an appeal to authority. If John wrote a book, he is the ultimate authority on his book, and referring to what he actually wrote in direct quotes, as evidence for what is actually written in the book, is not an appeal to authority. It’s called citation.
There is zero colonial baggage in the official D&D material Merl. It doesn’t exist. Please provide direct quotations from the actual text of the books we’re talking about, and I’ll consider your point further.
If you won’t provide those, I return to my original argument. “Any association with orcs and the victims of history is purely within the readers’ minds.” With that, I’m done. Orcs aren’t racist, and they aren’t officially depicted, as an entry in the game material, in the fashion described by the above commenter.
AC
