Half-orc

The half-orcs are a race in Dungeons & Dragons.

Creative origins

Gary Gygax played an evil half-orc cleric-assassin in 1974, in a game run by TSR co-founder Brian Blume. The character reached third level before being killed, and his allies looted the body.

Former TSR employee Tim Kask describes the concept of the half-orc gaining popularity initially through fanzines, mostly published in the west coast of the United States. Kask's group on the east coast initially found the concept of distasteful—"Who has congress with an orc?"—but soon realized that it was primarily played for the purposes of min-maxing.

The half-orc was first mentioned in the Monster Manual (1e) (1977), p.76, under the "orc" monster entry. They subsequently appeared as a playable character race in the Players Handbook (1e) (1978). It may have been inspired by the half-elf, which in turn was a concept which originally appeared in the works of Tolkien.

Reception and influence

In 2022, blogger James Maliszewski argued that the inclusion of half-orcs as playable characters humanized orcs, bringing moral ambiguity to killing humanoid creatures who had previously been classed as monsters. He describes this as part of Gygaxian naturalism, a tendency of Gary Gygax to seek setting simulationist realism rather than than purely gameplay or adhere to genre conventions.

However, in 2007, Gygax described his motive for the inclusion of the half-orc as expanding the available player options, rather than realism:

"Who needs a rational for a race in a fantasy game? Half-elves, half-orcs, what's the difference? Both add choices to the game, and that is why they were included ;)"