Remove Grey-Orcs, add Grimlocks

[Toad of Toxcity]

I have never been a fan of the Orc-Roleplay, nor the presence of Grey-Orcs on the Sword Coast. Their addition was simply a mistake in my opinion. A mistake that could be rectified.

You can read about and see the images of Grimlocks through this link: https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Grimlock

In short, lore appearance of Grimlocks and the actual Grey Orc models in game are not all that different in all due honesty. Moreover, they would actually have a lore sensible location on the server, as a proper underdark race, and all you really would have to do is rename that Underdark Grey Orc village into Underdark Grimlock village, and as for change to pre-existing role-play... It really would be just a swap from the word ORC to that of GRIMLOCK, and you could just keep the Grey-Orc stats just as they are...

[DaloLorn]

A few obvious negatives:

1. Uruk Lurra is a surface village, so it requires somewhat more effort than a mere rebranding.
2. There are actual orcish PCs in play right now. (Even grey orcs! I think most of the current ones are mountain orcs, though, with Ghost's Obahzk being the only active grey orc I know offhand.) No way we would be taking the race away from them just because we felt like adding grimlocks. (Retconning Uruk Lurra is less of an issue, since we can remove the village from the game without deleting it from the world... or the DMs can just run a plot culminating in its destruction.)
3. You underestimate the number of distinct locations we would need to check for the word "orc" in the first place. I suspect you also underestimate how different the grimlock RP is, just because you think (and are likely wrong even about that!) that the grey orc statblock is equivalent to the grimlock statblock.
4. Grimlocks don't have eyes in 3e lore. They don't even have eye sockets. Our models are not as adequate as you claim.

So, no. This is not a thing that will be happening.

[Tekill]

I am a fan of orc Roleplay and I like the Gray Orcs and the lore behind it. I felt before the grays that orcs were just too savage. They had just one flavour - Gruumsh worshiping Xenophobic conquerors. I think this stereotype may be what limits the potential of orc RP.

The Grays, a more religious affiliated and slightly more civilized orc kind of opens the doors a bit for a notion of an orc that is not just the typical orc stereotype. To me the Grays make it a bit more easy RP followers of the rest of the orc pantheon. And and I think that is why Grays are important. They are a nod to the idea that an orc can have more culture than just being mindless killing/hate machines.

I RP a mountain orc killing/hate machine but he serves Ilneval and even that flies in the face of the typical orc stereotype. I have come to conflict with other orcs a bit because his belief in strategy trumps the typical Gruumsh followers blind hatred. I am glad for the Gray Orcs I meet because they often are also slightly different from the typical orc stereotype.

Sure they are no Gray orc populations on the Coast. But its not hard to RP that the Grays immigrated from other parts to spread the word of the Tribe of He Who Watches. I like the notion that a typical mountain orc tribe is often peppered with Grays, Orogs and HOrcs.

I do have an orc question. Should we consider Mountain Orcs to be Black Orcs? IIRC Black orc was a BGTSCC specific type of orc. But I have sort of adapted calling my mountain orc a black orc as well. Should I be doing this?

[Steve]

Should we consider Mountain Orcs to be Black Orcs? IIRC Black orc was a BGTSCC specific type of orc. But I have sort of adapted calling my mountain orc a black orc as well. Should I be doing this?

And then he opened the can of orcs....

[Deragnost]

Instead of "grimlocks" I read "gremlins". I was about to say, "Remember to not feed them after midnight!" Such a waste for a good joke.

[renshouj]

I do have an orc question. Should we consider Mountain Orcs to be Black Orcs? IIRC Black orc was a BGTSCC specific type of orc. But I have sort of adapted calling my mountain orc a black orc as well. Should I be doing this?

IIRC, nowadays a "black orc" as they were in bgtscc isnt a specific subrace of orc, but rather a specific clan in the region

[Toad of Toxcity]

1. Uruk Lurra is a surface village, so it requires somewhat more effort than a mere rebranding.
2. There are actual orcish PCs in play right now. (Even grey orcs! I think most of the current ones are mountain orcs, though, with Ghost's Obahzk being the only active grey orc I know offhand.) No way we would be taking the race away from them just because we felt like adding grimlocks. (Retconning Uruk Lurra is less of an issue, since we can remove the village from the game without deleting it from the world... or the DMs can just run a plot culminating in its destruction.)
3. You underestimate the number of distinct locations we would need to check for the word "orc" in the first place. I suspect you also underestimate how different the grimlock RP is, just because you think (and are likely wrong even about that!) that the grey orc statblock is equivalent to the grimlock statblock.
4. Grimlocks don't have eyes in 3e lore. They don't even have eye sockets. Our models are not as adequate as you claim.

1. The one village in a cave area with few tents that was always most easily reachable through the Underdark maps? Or is that one just yet another of those forgotten minor "secret" areas for some forgotten player faction without any real player activity for half-a-decade or so?
   
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2. And when it comes to "Orcish" role-play, nothing at all prevents you from rolling out a half-orc that rejects the civilization at large and embraces "Orcish" savagery while banding up with other like-minded fellows to form those tribes/gangs/bandit groups of mostly and largely of Half-Orcs. The server has a long history of just that. I remember if there anyone left here that actually remember the original orc patrol, formed by mainly Dungeon Masters of the time to ultimately to pick silly low level fights with the regular players while promoting a lot less commonly picked up character race, but retained enough sensibility and good spirits to allow players to avoid the fight at their hands with even the most blatant of lies or what not. I think one of my character cast Darkness, and then ran away under the disguise of invisibility. Thus when the Mask of the Betrayer expansion came out, I have to admit of being reluctantly in favour of the addition of the Grey-Orcs as there were genuine role-players who really wanted to play a full-blooded orc and the "Grey-Orcs" were something close enough. However, it doesn't change the fact that for a Grey-Orc to appear in the region of Baldur's Gate, they would have had to travel at least 1,248 miles. Something akin to the length of the Colorado River in Northern America, except that you are not going down the river on a boat, but you have to cross tall mountain ranges, deserts, swamps, deadly forests, before you are anywhere near Baldur's Gate, and the distance discussed here is one where you travel in a straight line. Naturally, you would wish to avoid crossing all those terrible locations as much as it was possible. In a sense it would be far more reasonable to perhaps begin at the Moonsea, sail the Sea of Stars to the Dragonmere, and then take a chain of caravans towards Baldur's Gate. But the problem here is that you are supposed to be an orc in the Forgotten Realms, and how exactly do you plan to acquire passage through several ships outside of being kept in a cage as a circus curiosity? Now, I am not saying that the distance would be impossible to travel, for example you could do Land's End to John o' Groats off-road, and take something like two to three months, but the British Isles is largely without dangerous fauna aside from the big cats that have been released into the wilds as a result of poor legislation, and as long as you avoid the big cities you do not even have to worry about gangs of machete wielding Londoner youths, not to mention how the terrain of the British Isles aside from the almost never ending rain is actually rather pleasant. Oh, and as long as you have a bank card or some cash with you in Britain, you can just purchase supplies as needed: there is no need to forage or hunt game, nor find sources of fresh water. Nevertheless, the point remains that Grey-Orcs on the Sword coast should be incredibly rare and for reasons none other than the sheer difficulty of the mundane methods of travel in a pre-modern world, even if that world does posses means of magical travel.
   
   And this brings us away from the players of Grey-Orc characters and allows us to have focus on the players who will in turn encounter them on the server. As hinted earlier, there is already a long history of just that. Some are greater examples of role-play, others much less so.
   
   Therefore, we could perhaps have a look at the more likely and the rather odd 'Grey-Orc' to arrive on the Sword Coast. These are the Grey-Orcs that wish to flee the 'Orcish' savagery and to find 'acceptance' among the more civilized peoples of the Forgotten Realms. But the problem here is that you are playing a monster race, you are playing an Orc, and considering all the server areas with Orcs to be slain, why indeed would any experienced adventurer stay their hand from slaying a lone orc? I do not believe an Orc of the most peculiar skin tone is a sufficient excuse, for could it not be a product of some disease or malnutrition? Not to mention how usually any one lone Orc would most likely be either some advance scout for some orc raiding party, or then a banished, exiled tribe member, who then has to do the raiding and pillaging on its own? The server rules about the treatment of monster races has gone this and that way, and I have to say that the players of these non-savage Grey-Orcs have been most unhappy about getting killed on sight time and time again trying to find player interaction on a role-playing server, and when they are not killed on sight out of Out of Character courtesy or to be in accordance of the PvP rules, these Grey-Orc players are allowed to impose themselves onto other players in ways that frankly amounts to god-modding other characters and violating the setting lore itself. And when some players just give up trying to uphold setting accuracy, or stand up for their own character background and motivations, it just results in disruptive and poor quality role-play. Some people would rather just turn away from it entirely.
   
   And when it comes to players who wish to role-play a 'Grey-Orc' character as a proper Orc, it will naturally result in hostile player interactions. Unfortunately it is no longer customary to turn the whole server hostile when playing a monster race in order to ensure the correct operation of in game mechanics should any encounter transpire, because that particular action used to cause a great myriad headaches from players who wished to avoid all manner of player conflicts in general. Therefore, if you play a monster race, you have to offer a role-play out. On paper it is all fine and dandy, at least in theory, but it is a slightly different story when you have different players with different desires and expectations. I would be rather surprised to hear that there is a player who wouldn't have encountered "Flee or Die!" type of role-play in one form or another, and while that one line is enough for players who are simply after the PvP aspect of 'Orcish' role-play, it nevertheless leaves much to be desired from players that desire greater quality of role-play. And I have to admit, when it comes to quality of role-play, I can be infuriatingly autistic about it all. Such as considering if it were actually even possible for my character to flee the encounter without provoking attacks of opportunity, as but one example, and that is even when I know those would not happen mechanically in game. Moreover, one cannot help but to notice how the server PvP rules can be easily taken advantage of in order to gain mechanical PvP advantage.
   
   Therefore, when it comes to replacing or retconning the 'Grey-Orcs' with 'Grimlocks' -- you do not actually have to have some DM to destroy the village. Instead, you could have a look at various locations of the region itself and perhaps recall that there is place called Candlekeep not too far South from Baldur's Gate. A place of scholars and learning, and with the appearance of these 'Grey-Orcs' literally out of the blue on the Sword Coast, well, if anything it presents a great academic question of how and where these 'Grey-Orcs' came from. Therefore, you could just say a scholar traveled to the Moonsea and what not regions nearby in search of the origin point of these 'Grey-Orcs' and upon discovery, discovered that what were believed to be 'Grey-Orcs' on the Sword Coast, were in fact not 'Grey-Orcs', which then prompts the question of: if not, then what? Thus following further study, this scholar could conclude that these 'Grey-Orcs' were in fact rarely seen 'Grimlocks' from the Underdark, a mutated species of humans, which in turn could in part explain why their default NWN2 in game appearance is literally more human than that of the Half-Orcs. This scholar could further speculate that it may be possible that some orcs had managed to conquer and enslave a tribe of Grimlocks, but for reasons unknown these orcs were unable to produce more of Mountain Orcs and largely died out over time, and hence these 'Grimlocks' in question as the predominantly surviving population inherited the 'Orcish' tribal practices and worship with occasional appearances of more concentrated orc-blood within their own ranks: half-orcs.
   
   Moreover, I would like to point out that the city of S'shamath should have a slave population of Grimlocks of about 19%, which is almost 10% of the total population of S'shamath. Hence, you would actually have a corner of the server where it would make sense to encounter these 'Grey-Orcs' or should I say: Grimlocks. Not to mention that in accordance of laws of S'shamath, were a Grimlock slave somehow able to master Wizardry, said Grimlock would acquire its freedom. Not to mention how you could just stand next to the slave traders of S'shamath waiting for someone to hire your services, using the otherwise static NPCs as a prop for setting appropriate role-play. Or perhaps be a slave under the schools of magic, etc, etc, etc. Hence, there just would be far more sensible avenues for role-play.
   
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3. And I have to apologize for what I have clearly underestimated is the burden of simply running around while hasted and under invisibility effects to find out every in game area that is somehow related to 'Grey-Orcs' as regular orcs could remain as such.
   
   And I must state that perhaps you have not considered how similar in actual practice 'Grimlock' role-play would be with the 'Grey-Orc' role-play already present on the server.
   
   And when it comes keeping the "Stat Block" of 'Grimlocks' the exact same as the "Stat Block" of 'Grey-Orcs': it is merely a suggestion of convenience, as none would have to do a RCR to keep their builds in operation. The only change would be that character sheet spells out: 'Grimlock' instead of 'Grey-Orc', and that there would have to be a change where the race is found under character creation, and some table changes so that correct Favored Enemy Bonuses get applied. If you wish to customize 'Grimlocks' further, then they should acquire immunity to visual illusions as they are blind, but can hear and smell so acutely they are able to 'see' clearly within 20 feet. But anyhow, if you wish to see the "stat-block" for 'Grimlock' character in 3rd edition D&D, look no further than the page 141 of the 3.5 Monster Manual, where 'Grimlocks' are a +2 ECL race that start with +4 Strength, +2 Dexterity, +2 Constitution, –2 Wisdom, and –4
   Charisma. Compare those with the 'Grey-Orcs' of NWN2: +2 Strength, -2 Intelligence, +2 Wisdom, -2 Charisma and +1 ECL. Oh and suffice to say, if one considers how Tanurrukks have +2 Strength, +1 Dexterity, -1 Intelligence, -1 Wisdom, -2 Charisma and +1 ECL on the server, I think they have something like +4 Strength, +2 Dexterity, -2 Wisdom, -4 Charisma and +3 ECL in source material, in addition to a whole lot of other things that were just not added into the server. Thus, were Grimlocks added as entirely new race, in essence they would not differ all that greatly from the 'Grey-Orcs' that already exist.
   
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4. The current server year is 1359, so that is one year after the start of the Time of Troubles, and were you to align the passage of time with the changes of D&D rule editions, you would actually be looking at the setting lore and even novels written and published during the printing of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons setting. Something you actually kind of have to do in order to list the events of the realms for this server, or when seeking inspiration for events to hold in game. Hence, I would point towards the page 30 of Drizzt Do'Urden's Guide the to the Underdark, and page 88 of the Illithiad, both of which present a short paragraph to describe the race with eyes.
   
   And were you to insist on solely relying on the 3rd edition source books, on page 140 you can read: "This muscular humanoid is about as tall as a human. It has thick, gray, scaly skin and blank, eyeless eye sockets" which refers to the image of a Grimlock on the page 141. It is not really a negation of eyes beyond that one particular example. And yes, they do seem to have eye sockets at least. Which leads me to conclude that the current in game models are in fact, more than adequate. After all, it is not like you get automatically zoomed down to look at character faces directly when interacting with other players.

[DaloLorn]

I'm not even going to bother picking apart at that mountain of text (except to note that you have a surprisingly deep familiarity with the server's history for someone with a year-old account... ). Without unanimous consent of every player who still has an orc in their vault (whether or not they are still playing that orc, or even on BG at all!), or very explicit instructions from all the admins combined, this is not a notion I am entertaining. No amount of argumentation can change that: Orcs are here to stay.