Waagh, boyz, shootas, squigs, 'umies ... is anyone else maybe at least also a little bit annoyed with the way Orks are portrayed (and have always been portrayed, also by Games Workshop) in the Dark Heresy universe?

I mean, I can manage a tired grin when confronted by these terms and Ork gods that are called Gork and Mork, but it is so ... slapstick, a bit childish even, and in no way becoming of the terrifying xenos villains the Orks should really be.

Just my opinion.

Quite a large part of the 40k universe is fueled by humour, most of it abyssal dark, some a little more light-hearted. Orks can be as slap-stick-y as you want them to be - it's easily possible to show nothing but the green tide eviscerating and looting all in its path. I quite like the humorous aspect. Even serious campaigns need to unwind now and then for a breather episode.

The Laughing God said:

One thing to think about is perspective. Taken from the perspective of a wargame general - an impervious, omniscient viewpoint - the Orks can be construed as silly, etc. That's one way to look at them.

Taken from the Orks perspective, existence is a glorious adventure - lives of excitement and violence and speed and noise. Everything an Ork could want. They don't burden themselves with philosophy, they don't worry, they don't doubt and they don't hate. They fight for the love of violence, the joy of war. So yeah, that leads to a less-than-serious outlook on life.

To a guardsman on the front lines, the average Ork stands nearly seven feet tall and probably weighs as much as two large men. Clawed fingers, a fanged mouth, bulging muscles and thick, warty green hide all produce the appearance of something savage and dangerous. They don't give up, they're not discouraged, they'll confront any adversary or any challenge, and are difficult to noticeably harm, let alone kill. Their technology is noisy and doesn't look like it should work, yet it causes death no less readily than the technology of the Imperium. They don't know about all the silly little things that might characterise the Orks for us. They only see the monsters. When an Ork horde shouts "WAAAGH!", it is the guttural warcry of an alien species, issued forth from dozens or hundreds of alien throats, a deep and bellowing sound that accompanies the charge. Their 'shootas' are heavy-calibre machine guns. The squigs are ravenous fang-mawed beasts of bizarre nature.

To an Imperial strategist, the Orks are an unending tide, a plague that spreads from world to world, which inexplicably seeks out defended worlds to attack, which despoils and defiles everything in its path. They don't see the clanking ramshakle technology or the absurdity of Ork behaviour... they see an enemy which is numerous, inexorable and unrelenting, and which can only be stopped at great cost.

Whether an Ork is silly or scary depends on who you ask. We see a stylised and translated representation, closer to how the Orks see themselves than to the views the Imperium may have.

All that homework you did on Orks shows, N0-1.

I can see both sides of this argument, really. When I was first introduced to the setting, I found the Orks a little mystifying, myself. They did seem to differ notably in feel from the rest of the milieu, and, though I did not find them exactly annoying, I was unsure as to exactly how to reconcile them with the grimdark.

Over time, though, I came to appreciate them, for the reasons that N0-1 describes, and also as a reminder that, even in the 41st millennium, people are still people. They make jokes, and love, and can be silly, or lighthearted, and that not everybody is a cold-hearted killer. There are cowards, and romantics, and so on and so forth. I, at least, tend to forget about that sometimes, and the Orks remind me of that.

Interesting posts all!

N0-1_H3r3 said:

This is the way I would want Orks to be portrayed, but I find it difficult to get a sense of terror across to my players when they know and laugh about things such as Mekboyz and guns shooting squiggas and Rokkits etc. From a designer stand point I can understand the need for a buffoonish race - and it obviously appeals to a large part of the audience - but IMHO ... sheesh

All I know, for sure, is that my players never laugh when an Ork comes around.

They are far too busy finding a way to kill him first !

The Laughing God said:

Then portray them that way. Rokkits and Squigs and Shootas and Boyz... all just names.

The Laughing God said:

]but I find it difficult to get a sense of terror across to my players when they know and laugh about things such as Mekboyz and guns shooting squiggas and Rokkits etc. From a designer stand point I can understand the need for a buffoonish race - and it obviously appeals to a large part of the audience - but IMHO ... sheesh

Remember, as the GM, it's up to you how you convey information and depict adversaries. While there is the noteworthy problem of 'tabletop familiarity syndrome' (whereby players of the wargames are already extremely familiar with the big name enemies in considerable detail), it isn't insurmountable.

Orks may see the world in a light-hearted manner... but that doesn't mean that what they do isn't terrifying. Put a bullet into an Ork, and it'll keep coming, laughing and bellowing and grunting in an incomprehensible alien language (the traditional 'Ork speech' is primarily a stylised translation, remember; few Orks know Low Gothic). It's carrying a meat cleaver, axe or bulky chainsaw significantly bigger than the equivalent human version, in one hand, and is clutching a massive pistol that may as well be firing heavy stubber rounds for all the damage they do to a man. Ragged patches of blood-caked armour and crude xeno-leathers clad its massive form, but only just, and its hide is scarred from constant warfare. It wants to fight, and won't be denied that by something smaller and softer than it. It'll close into melee range, shooting wildly as it does so, and use its blade, its fists, its claws, its head and its teeth, its feet and any other part of its body it can bring to bear until you're ripped apart or stomped into the ground. And then, it might well eat you, if it feels like doing so. It'll burn down your home, it'll shell your city into dust, and it will kill everything in its path... they're monsters, not cartoon characters.

Some of the things they do, and some of the naming conventions used for them may convey humour when looked at objectively... but if you're in single combat with one, none of that matters. In such a situation, survival against one of mankind's oldest and most numerous adversaries (a foe which has waged war against mankind since humans first started exploring the stars) takes precedence over comedy - its hard to laugh at an Ork when its ripping your arms off or eating you.

The trick is to make them wary of the Orks. Show them that, while a Mekboy's antics may be amusing when you're reading about them or watching them on the table, it's less of a laughing matter when that high-powered unstable energy weapon has just blown the side off a Chimera less than 10m away. See if they laugh at 'Shootas' when they're pinned down by heavy machine gun fire while Ork assault troops stampede towards them. It might be funny to watch it happen to an army of nameless soldiers in a wargame... but it's less funny when it happens to you.

DarkLoic said:

And quickly. With fire. Lots of fire. Or cold, hard vacuum.

We've encountered orks all of once in the game I've been playing in. We didn't laugh. As a matter of fact, I think several of the players made points about their characters possibly needing a change of drawers after the encounter... And we barely fought with them before we managed to lock them in a hanger and vent it into the void. Even what little battle we did commit to was dangerous and scary for the characters. It was one of the few times my character went from perfectly healthy into criticals in one shot, though I admit, I play a somewhat squishy Adept. The Guardsman did get to do some "hedge-trimming" with his mono-edged great axe to the player's enjoyment. My character comes from Kulth, a world that has been under siege for nearly ninety years by a Waagh, and he absolutely loathes the green tide. They are in no way funny to him.

But then, there is a difference in player and character perception that some people just do not seem to grasp well.

-=Brother Praetus=-

If your players aren't scared of a big mob of orks, you're not hitting them hard enough... failing that, use a bigger mob of orks that was looking for the first mob of orks to fight and in the process of running away from the even bigger mob of orks that where chasing them sometime after breakfast. After that, they should be impressed how much a bunch of ignorant cretins with nothing of any redeemable worth, has managed to really hurt them, expended all their ammo, probably killed a couple of them and probably attracted... yes, inevitably, more orks attracted by the noise.

The green tide never stops coming

Orkyness can be irritating at times, it is a black-humour about football hooliganism given a new spin, remembering its been given a PG-category so they can sell stuff to the 12-16yr old crowd, omitting the other "funny facts" about orks that they are murderous little bastards that break stuff, ruin peoples lives, destroy entire civilisations, steal things and eat people.

Could be worse, you could have had a 40K Ork army list there for a while which was all joke equipment, joke abilities and where fairly much a joke army list that suffered when everything was focused on spess-muhreens.

The Laughing God said:

Let me make a guess, you mention that they're going to be fighting orks and the players who've read the ork codex go into an out of character discussion cracking jokes and generally carrying on about how funny and clownish orks are. Rather than filling them with a sense of dread, the idea of going against orks just makes them laugh and that annoys you. I suggest, instead, that you use it. Let them think orks are funny... until they actually fight the orks.

Having read the Imperial Infantrymans Uplifting Primer, I can see a bunch of untried guardsmen carrying on like your players are. Orks are funny, clownish, comic and not to be feared. That's a fine attitude for them to have. I might even encourage it... but tell them to have the conversation in character and have some NPCs join them in the jokes. Maybe toss in the grizzled old veteran who chides them with gloomy warnings about how tough orks are, only to be laughed off by the other NPCs. Then have the come face to face with orks and describe them like N0-1_H3r3 has. Don't play your orks as comic, clownish and silly. Play them as vicious, brutal, violent aliens. Even the 'funny' ork weapons, like shokk attack guns (which shoot snotlings) are actually terrifying... reality buckles, a hole opens letting in the unholy glow the Warp and a horde of gibbering, insane creatures come howling out, clawing and ripping at everything in sight... not so funny. It's all in how you present things.

Also, check out the Black Library book Fifteen Hours. It's got the only description I've ever read that succeeds in making gretchen sound strange, alien and even a little scary. Think about that.

In the last session I played of RT, we were up against almost twice our number of Orks. Four hits with a boltgun *injured* one. We lost most of our Kroot mercenaries and several PCs were badly wounded before we managed to put them down. My explorator doesn't regard Orks as a joke in the slightest. It helps that the GM went with the suggestion that Orks didn't speak low gothic but their own brutal language.

Also to add a bit to what N0-1 said, when you introduce orks in your story, don't name them, describe them. Don't call Shootas "shootas", just describe them as nightmarishly large thundering contraptions of ballistic death. Don't say "a horde of squigs poor out of the tear in reality that was opened up by the shokk gun", say "a hungry horde, all all tearing and rending claws and teeth, poor out of the rip in reality that was torn open by the gleefully murderous green-skin and it's massive energy spewing cannon-like contraption that looks like it was pulled from Tesla's strangest nightmares."

Alsop, don't forget that comedy isn't a bad thing in 40k, the universe is practically founded on it... just with the orks, make sure that the punch-line of any joke results in the creation of even more dead and mutilated bodies.

"All of the Above" pretty much sums up how I'd handle them. Mostly, I'd change the names. Your not fighting Orks, your fighting the Orkoid species. Grots, Squigs and Snotling become orkoid subspecies that would be lucky to have a numerical classification, much less a name, and even then only if someone happens to be an accomplished specialist in greenskins. Set up the terror long before they ever see an ork; have them meet Guard vets who have survived 'em, and let the players see the scars from claws as big as most peoples arms, or a tech-adept who has lost his mind trying to unravel the mystery of just how the orks ever manage to get off-world. And if you ever have any dialogue, don't play them like as they come across in their codex. As someone pointed out, that's a stylised interpretation of their own language, and one played for kicks. It shouldn't be difficult to have one speaking Low Gothic in a a brutal way that doesn't translate as 'Right yoose zoggers, lets be avin' it!!!"

While I like everything is saying in terms of describing the ravening horde in more visceral terms, I look at it a bit differently. This is the nightmare of a million NASCAR fans descending on your local game store, intent on not letting you game properly. They're only silly at a distance. Up close, they're missing teeth and rope belts. Just one river away from 'Deliverance' en masse. If you're not scared of that, then you I don't know what kind of tool I could use.

I think that It was a mistake in the CA to actually use the Orky name for their stuff. They should probably have used a standard Imperial re-name scheme or what the troops know them as, although they didn't actually give that much.

Standard Ork Firarm, Green xeno mellee weapon, Greenskin power armour,

Face Eater said:

Actually, I disagree. Let the puny pink-skins laugh at the Orky stuff. I promise you it will make the horror that much greater when the green tide comes storming over the berm, murder in their beady eyes, ready to slaughter all of them.

You can make Orks pretty **** frightening if you just make it right, here is a few tips:

- Never use names like Boyz, Mekboyz, Waagh! and whatnot. They are orkspeak, which is an alien language no acolyte would understand without a very interesting background story

- Never have orks speak in low gothic. For no reason. They may yell, grunt and bellow but it is in nasty sounding language no-one around understands.

- When describing orks concentrate on their size, sickly green color, mould and fungus growing on their skin and the grissly trophies of past victims (skulls, cut-off ears etc.) hanging from their gear. Describe their markings and symbols as "incomprehensible", "primal" or "feral".

- When describing orks equipment add grime, blood and gore. Describe their weapons loud, unsophisticated, strange but still something you would not want to be hit with.

Little example:

"Okay, a 'ardboy leaps at you from the bushes, brandishing his big-choppa and yelling 'pink 'uman die! What do you do?'"

or

"Something huge and green charges right at you crashing through the undergrowth. You smell a damp, mouldy smell and see two small, beady eyes fixing at your face while the hulking creature yells something. Then you see the weapon... a huge two-handed axe-like contraption with huge chainsaw blades whirring and spraying a mix of oil, dirt and old blood as the creature brandishes it above its head. What do you do?"

I'm sure you get the idea.

Brother Praetus said:

If I remember correctly, there were 10 orks and we RAN away after one or two rounds of fire. Some of us did need to change pants after that fight. If they had closed to combat range with all of us it would have been over quickly.

I prefer them silly. Gives me something to laugh at while I use my rifle to explode their skulls.

LeBlanc13 said:

Something like that. Either way, the point was that Orks are a scary bunch. Good role-playing is kind of like being a gambler in some ways.

You've got to know when to hold 'em.
Know when to fold 'em.
Know when to walk away,
And know when to run.

-=Brother Praetus=-

I concur that orks should be portrayed, to humans, as terrifying. However, I am a little confused by people's seemingly unanimous experiences at fighting them being terrible. When they showed up in my RT game, my group of 5 dispatched 8-10 of them with little trouble. My missionary held off two in close combat and the captain took on another while the rest of the group blazed away. Though there were a few wounds, none of us went to critical from the fight.

Am I alone in my experiences?

Rogue Traders tend to have a lot more expensive gear than Acolytes as well as higher stats.

The Boy Named Crow said:

It does depend on a few factors - if they're just going to charge mindlessly forward, they'll be killed in short order by a sufficiently skilled and well-equipped group. Orks are tough, but bolters and plasma guns, etc, will cut them down quickly enough.

Orks wearing armour, using heavy weapons, driving forward mobs of squigs or gretchin ahead of them, using vehicles and so forth all become harder. Orks are much the same as any enemy - if played intelligently (or, to use the vernacular, "sneaky an' kunnin'"), they'll be far more effective than if used as a witless mob.

Cifer said:

This. Try to stop a small mob without "fancy" gear ( RT Hellguns, flamers, heavy weapons, plasma etc. ) and you see what people mean. Emptying a lasgun pack at a mob coming you way and realizing that they are still coming can be a little demoralizing.

Orks are by no means witless. They are cunning opponents and able combatants.The more experienced they become, the larger and more dangerous they get. Additionally, they have no fear of injury and fling themselves into combat with reckless abandon and in overwhelming numbers.

While the slapstick is in the 40k codex, there is no denying they are frightening opponents.