Rich Morris' Comics - YAFGC and The ComixBlog

A non-combatant may become combatant really fast (there are lots of examples in real life, including prisoners of war and even little children). For a human, it could be a difficult decision, whether to kill a person that is harmless now, but may (or may not) kill you tomorrow, usually having a good reason to do this. (Yes, war is bad.) For a typical orc, is it a very big issue to resolve?

The situation with Goria and Jone was quite different. As I remember, there was peace between humans and orcs at that time. Glon launched a raid on that village to raise his reputation among orcs, not knowing anything of Goria and Jone yet. Although he did not destroy the village completely, the orcs still looted it and set it on fire, so it was actually humans' turn to take revenge.

And, well, there is war between orcs and drow now; each side hates other bitterly and is ready to fight till the last man (or woman). I assume that for an orc (or anyone other in his place) a friend drow should be an exception, not an enemy drow.

Whose "typical orc?" Yours? Or BK's?

I have to admit that I have a difficult time understanding why we keep winding up in a place where the basic argument seems to be "the characters in YAFGC are mis-characterized, because some rulebook or my personal opinion says they should act differently."

As many times as event in this strip flagrantly flout gaming conventions is it REALLY so hard to believe that this or that character will act in a way that defies stereotypes? Especially stereotypes from outside sources?

Look. I get the fact that in most roleplaying games, and Dungeons and Dragons is a prime offender, Orcs are nothing more than two (that that many) dimensional crossbow fodder. They aren't designed to present a challenge to the PCs, or give the players something to think about - they're designed to be killed, so that they can be harvested for treasure and experience points. And making them unambiguously evil (and commonly, remarkably stupid) is a means to that end. It's been more than 30 years since I started playing. I've done my share and perhaps more of that. But "Cardboard Stereotype Theater" makes for a boring webcomic (unless it's done really, REALLY well), and that's not what I tune in for. If the current storyline calls for an Orc to portray the better angels of our nature - I'm down with that.

(Although it wouldn't surprise me to find that there's another reason for that sword hitting the floor...)

Well, as I understand it, Tolkien's orcs were like badly-treated pit bulls: vicious and nasty and programmed from the beginning to be so. I seem to recall reading that, in-universe, they were specifically created to be evil: a good or sympathetic orc would therefore be an aberration or a failure in the orc-creation process, or even a non-orc. Furthermore, they were created from elves. They were therefore not even a separate race or culture, but a corruption of something already existing. I rather wonder whether those orcs could breed on their own or whether they needed to kidnap elves whenever they needed more manpower. Or whether there have ever been any new orcs brought into their ranks since they first came into being.

Orcs elsewhere have been treated as their own race, with their own culture. And that is where we come up with these questions about the applicability of the "all orcs are evil" view. We're no longer dealing with a case in which "it became evil, and was therefore an orc" but a case where "it was an orc, and therefore, um, evil?". One could think of it as redefining the word "criminal" to be a nationality.

All this is, of course, dependent on whether I'm remembering the orc backstory from Tolkien correctly.

As can be deduced from this comic, it's natural for orcs to be evil. (In fact, even the "good" races aren't as good.) Therefore an orc that, given a war with drow, either does not consider drow as enemies in general (and I don't believe that the specific teacher supported orcs and not drow in this conflict), or shows compassion to an enemy, and in both cases does not wish to kill somebody for fun, is, of course, not impossible (because orcs indeed aren't cardboard stereotypes), especially given Ain's background, but very strange.

Of course, my understanding of orcs may differ from that of BK. But it is based largely on this comic (also influenced by Tolkien, Warcraft III and Nethack), as I have never played DnD.

Actuyally, even Tolkein decided that not all of his orcs were evil since he didn't like the implications of an entirtely evil race.

If "that urge to rend small animals in two, and feast on their warm, bloody carcasses" is indicative of being naturally Evil, we'd better start warning everyone who has a cat!

>chuckle<

P.S.: And when in the wild - it's hawks - definitely watch out for hawks!

Besides, this strip is a MUCH better indication of Glon's inherent "evil."

Cats and hawks kill animals to eat them, Glon wished to kill without visible reasons, except of sadistic pleasure (notice that he fights this urge when he believes he's a half-elf).

Yes, you highlighted my point better than I did. But wait... There is a possibility of the spell saying not "repel all evil creatures" but "repel all creatures that the spell author considers evil, i. e. orcs, undead and so on".

Don't know cats well, do you? The rampant destruction of songbirds by the sociopathic little thrill killers is one of the more depressing bits of ecological devastation going on in America right now.

Come on guys. Evil is not such a great definition by itself, is it? What does it mean, in the end? That you are vicious? That you are selfish? That you are ruthless? That you are a sadist? In the end we are all made of three dimensions and nobody is as predictable as big words (Good, Evil) suggest.
Save Fellgrin's cats of course. These are a different matter .

But for some reason in the monster school it is taught to be evil, and being good is bad.

P.S. It's amazing how some characters changed during the years long of strips.

Static characters that never grow drive me nuts!

Charlie Brown was 6 years old for over 60 years!! It depressed me that he and his friends would never grow up, never have their own kids, never get jobs or have any kind of life fulfillment.

I vowed that when I created a world of cartoon characters, they would grow and live and change as organically and as naturally as I could manage.

Well there is comfort in familiarity, but comfort is not the aim of every artist.
As for what the school taught Ain, i doubt if any of us listens to everything school has to tell us .

As an educator, allow me to issue a rebuttal. I doubt anybody listens to most of what school is trying to teach.

As someone who's been marking freshman (uni) papers this week, I concur.

As far as I know, Charlie Brown is more of a concept or stereotype, than an individual. In contrast, your comic has a vast and complicated storyline with detailed and individual characters. Therefore, it's cool that your characters change with time, but it's okay that Charlie Brown does not change.