Publisher: Osprey Publishing
Release Date: June 23, 2015
MSRP: $14.95
Creator(s): Chris Pramas (writer); Hauke Kock (artwork); Darren Tan (cover)
Format: 64 pgs., Full-Color, Trade Paperback
UPC: 978-1-4728-1050-2
Age Rating: N/A
ICv2 Rating: 3.5 Stars out of 5
With Osprey's reputation for producing military history books for miniatures gamers, and Chris Pramas' reputation for producing RPG rules and texts, this book had great potential, and it mostly lives up to it. The artwork is absolutely gorgeous, and as a beginning overview of a fictional culture, this book will be of great use to first-time gamesmasters in almost any fantasy RPG setting. The flaws are almost entirely due to the brevity of the book.
While Tolkien first introduced us to Orcs as big, warlike goblinoid creatures, Gary Gygax and those following him in games and modern fantasy fiction made use of them in a wide variety of fictional settings. The difficulty was that there were no "rules" for just what Orcs were, and so different authors and game designers went wild. Unfortunately, Pramas tried to cover as many as possible of these versions of Orcs, and some of them were ill-considered. It's much easier to believe in some Orcs than others, based on the quality of world-building used. By trying to incorporate all Orcs, from all sources, Pramas apparently felt compelled to include ideas which simply don't work, and ended up with an average Orcish culture of fully carnivorous, cannibalistic creatures that somehow live in places with no apparent sources of food. They apparently survive on the march by eating the weak members of their own horde, which means you're eating your own army at the rate of about one percent per day. That may simplify logistics, but it just might create morale problems…
With more room to flesh them out, the "historical examples" of Orcish warfare might have been better developed, but as they are, they came across as examples of miniatures games in which the Orcs won, but with too little context. Apparently, Orcs are stupid unless the scenario requires them to have a brilliant tactical war leader and his team of alchemists, in which case they always win, through the brutal stupidity of their opponents. I see no hope for civilization in the world of this book, unless everyone moves far enough away from the Orcs so that they eat each other on the way to get to the battlefield.
As a sourcebook for role-playing games, and as a starting point for developing the Orcish culture in your own game or fictional world, this book is a great resource. Even the brief snippets of an Orcish religion are a good foundation for a mythos, and a foundation for an entire Orcish folk culture. A longer version of this same work would have gotten a higher rating.
--Nick Smith: Library Technician, Community Services, for the Pasadena Public Library in California.
