A Thought on Half-Orcs

I'm not a fan of half- races in general. However, I can see a certain amount of value in allowing half-orcs in particular - if you don't want to allow the use of orcs themselves as PCs (because they're a monster race), but do want to include a race that fills a similar niche but without that tag, then allowing half-orcs makes for a reasonable compromise.

However, WotC were not entirely wrong when they noted that the default origin of half-orcs (that is: rape) was rather problematic. I can readily understand both why they wanted to move away from that aspect of the race, and also why they found it extremely hard to do so. The current default origin, that human and orcish communities often exist in close proximity to one another and that this leads to a lot of inter-marriage, doesn't really ring true.

But how about this:

For one reason or another, humans may spend significant amounts of time in orcish communities. Or, conversely and equally, orcs may spend significant time in human communities. (The reasons for this are left undefined. I'm sure you can see at least a few possible reasons!) If they do indeed spend several years in the 'other' community, and especially if they undergo puberty while in that environment, they frequently find themselves permanently altered by the experience. They are no longer humans, or orcs, but instead are half-orcs. (Also, half-orcs breed true - that is, the children of two half-orcs are themselves half-orcs in turn.)

This has the advantage that it eliminates that problematic default origin story. Indeed, it actually means that "half-orcs" aren't actually half orcish at all. Plus, it's probably likely to give rise to a wider population group than either of the published origin stories.

(There's an argument for doing exactly the same with half-elves. If for no other reason than that this whole post was actually inspired by a story about elves. Though, ideally, I'd rather just drop half-elves entirely as being unnecessary for the game. All that said, though, I'm inclined instead to leave half-elves as-is, with the caveat that it's more that they're "elf blooded" - that is, being a half-elf implies you had both humans and elves somewhere in your ancestry, and it happens to have thrown you up. This means that a half-elf's parents may in fact be any combination of elf, half-elf, and human.)