I was wondering about this while putting the text/story into the engine. Should the orc's have accents/a different way of speaking or just normal English? What do you people prefer?
I think it is socially acceptable to be racist against Orcs, Goblins, Hobgoblins, Kobolds and possibly Hobbits.
That's actually racist. Why did you single out the marginalized races, huh!?
You leave out humans and their ever greedy and imperialistic expansion. You leave out those snooby fucking elves. And those damn Irish- I mean Dwarves. But of course~~ it's fine to be racist against the ones that are always getting shit on and killed by guard brutality and vigilante fuckhead adventurers using their concealed carry weapons.
- Nov 11, 2017
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accents aren't race specific, they're geographic. it just so happens that a lot of a singular race are in close proximity. the same would be in fantasy settings as long as the races have the same physiology (i.e. oral-throat setup). however, if the orc and goblin tribes live in isolation from other races they'd likely have their own accent moreso an entire dialect (accent is a subset of dialect)
- Jun 10, 2017
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And it's even worse when you're a none native speaker who try to understand what is said.
I have orcs and goblins in my game. Rather than accents, I give races and nations their own slang or lingo so orcs will say "Big truth" when they wish to express agreement or another nation tend to end sentences with "ey?". This gives them unique flavor and helps differentiate them from each other.
Additionally, you might consider trying to avoid fantasy cliches like orcs=dumb+evil, and give them their own perspective of the world and their place in it. My own orcs are the best fighters in the world but are plagued with endless internal strife and never ending historic feuds, practically preventing them from taking over the world. They also feel superior to other races, hence they are reluctant to attack non-orcs, as this is considered beneath a warrior's honor, i.e. by attacking someone you give them respect and non-orcs don't deserve this respect. This allows me to portray them as the brutes that people expect them to be but also give them a little more depth.
Hope this helps!
Additionally, you might consider trying to avoid fantasy cliches like orcs=dumb+evil, and give them their own perspective of the world and their place in it. My own orcs are the best fighters in the world but are plagued with endless internal strife and never ending historic feuds, practically preventing them from taking over the world. They also feel superior to other races, hence they are reluctant to attack non-orcs, as this is considered beneath a warrior's honor, i.e. by attacking someone you give them respect and non-orcs don't deserve this respect. This allows me to portray them as the brutes that people expect them to be but also give them a little more depth.
Hope this helps!
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- Mar 27, 2023
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no accent should be better. Broken english like a barbarian, where they skip some words ("you like potato?" rather than "do you like potato?") also works.
Sometimes your preference is more important, but generally keeping it normal works ^^ no need to overcomplicate it
Sometimes your preference is more important, but generally keeping it normal works ^^ no need to overcomplicate it
- Jan 3, 2021
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It all depends on your players perspective. Do they all share the same language, but with different local dialects? Is there a common language and a racial language? Does a system translate everything? Does it show up as random symbol spam except for a few shared words?
different species should speak different languages, there are imaginative ways to implement a linguistic barrier and play around it; having an interpret or translated goblin text in asterisk for the reader to understand but keep the protagonist oblivious.
- Sep 22, 2023
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Orcs should have a Yorkshire accent and Goblins should have a Scouse accent.
Orcs: Sean Bean
Goblins:
Orcs: Sean Bean
Goblins:
In general I would say be careful when assigning a specific group in your work accents or regional/ethnic/racial coding. Even if you don't consciously do it, its a very easy trap to fall into. Its something that's been with modern fantasy ever since it was really codified with the works of Tolkien and while it isn't always bad, it can end up bad in execution.
Some specific examples:
-the most famous of all, Tolkien Orcs. Who in private writings are explicitly described with racist language of having
-Warcraft Orcs certainly follow in a lot of the groundwork laid by Tolkien though both the games and spin-off material are certainly more aware of the implications of having a race of intelligent beings who exist only to be fodder for the heroes to kill. In fact in certain books the way characters react to the treatment of Orcs in internment camps (which is also a very loaded concept to play with) is often used to demonstrate if the reader is supposed to sympathize with them or not. Here Orcs are less modeled off of one particular race or group and become more a proxy for displaced peoples/diaspora in general.
-Warhammer 40k Orkz are very interesting to me. Kind of a subversion of the typical Ork and Goblin formula where by all appearances they look like mindless, bloodthirsty, never ending swarms of violent murderers and to Imperium/other Xeno eyes, this isn't incorrect. However from The Orkz perspective, they're doing what they were literally created to do and the only thing that gives them fulfillment, purpose, and pleasure. To them attacking a massive fortress world isn't part of some strategy or grand plan, its because it'll be the most fun thing to have "a propa scrap" over. You'll also quickly notice that these orcs are the most 1:1 coded but as English Football hooligans. Again kind of a subversion of the typical "Orc as Other" we usually see.
Coding is not always bad, sometimes its a useful tool to get information across without bogging the audience down. In shows like Chernobyl and Game of Thrones, accents are used to illustrate things like social class and regional influence all without having to stop the story and explain things. Like in both shows the people of The North for GoT and people in Ukraine in Chenrobyl tend to speak with a more northern English Yorkshire accent, as a way to illustrate their more working class sensibilities.
TLDR: Coding isn't bad, but when used lazily it can turn your characters into stereotypes, so be aware of that.
Some specific examples:
-the most famous of all, Tolkien Orcs. Who in private writings are explicitly described with racist language of having
, and when writing them he often used a lot of contractives as if to simulate rough and uneducated ways of speaking. Of course there's also a lot of stuff that Tolkien later changed as he grew more uncomfortable with the idea of a race that was irredeemable from birth, but that coding is something that still follows the orcs to this day.
-Warcraft Orcs certainly follow in a lot of the groundwork laid by Tolkien though both the games and spin-off material are certainly more aware of the implications of having a race of intelligent beings who exist only to be fodder for the heroes to kill. In fact in certain books the way characters react to the treatment of Orcs in internment camps (which is also a very loaded concept to play with) is often used to demonstrate if the reader is supposed to sympathize with them or not. Here Orcs are less modeled off of one particular race or group and become more a proxy for displaced peoples/diaspora in general.
-Warhammer 40k Orkz are very interesting to me. Kind of a subversion of the typical Ork and Goblin formula where by all appearances they look like mindless, bloodthirsty, never ending swarms of violent murderers and to Imperium/other Xeno eyes, this isn't incorrect. However from The Orkz perspective, they're doing what they were literally created to do and the only thing that gives them fulfillment, purpose, and pleasure. To them attacking a massive fortress world isn't part of some strategy or grand plan, its because it'll be the most fun thing to have "a propa scrap" over. You'll also quickly notice that these orcs are the most 1:1 coded but as English Football hooligans. Again kind of a subversion of the typical "Orc as Other" we usually see.
Coding is not always bad, sometimes its a useful tool to get information across without bogging the audience down. In shows like Chernobyl and Game of Thrones, accents are used to illustrate things like social class and regional influence all without having to stop the story and explain things. Like in both shows the people of The North for GoT and people in Ukraine in Chenrobyl tend to speak with a more northern English Yorkshire accent, as a way to illustrate their more working class sensibilities.
TLDR: Coding isn't bad, but when used lazily it can turn your characters into stereotypes, so be aware of that.