Read on Twitter
Tolkien& #39;s orcs had racist elements built in-he compares them to an actual real world group of people. That said, Tolkien& #39;s racism is largely a "I& #39;m trying to be open minded, but I view everything from the perspective of my society and religion" racism.
Taking Tolkien& #39;s orcs out of the context of Tolkien& #39;s Middle-earth, with their specific ties to the corrupting power of Melkor/Sauron, and plunking them into a framework more akin to the Hyborean Age, which has all kinds of other reductive issues, made orcs even more problematic.
It shifted "orcs are corrupted beings cursed to do what the primary force of evil directs them to do," towards, "some people& #39;s culture is bad, and yours is better, so teach them about your superiority!"
D&D 5e tries to frame Grummsh as the same kind of force as Sauron, and with the diverse set of gods in D&D, and the lack of primacy of any of them, makes this comparison ring false. Tolkien& #39;s orcs just flat out can& #39;t escape their supernatural ties to Sauron.
5e& #39;s descriptions of orcs and half-orcs weren& #39;t great in the Player& #39;s Handbook and Monster Manual, but for some reason, Volo& #39;s Guide to Monster reintroduced some very ugly elements to orcs that weren& #39;t there at the relaunch.
Half-orcs as the product of sexual violence wasn& #39;t played up in the Player& #39;s Handbook, but it& #39;s right there in Volo& #39;s. The half-orc entry at least allows for the framing of orcs being another group of people humans may interact with, but that gets shot down.
Volo& #39;s Guide also reintroduces the idea that orcs, of ALL player character options, are hit with an intelligence penalty. Virtually nobody gets a penalty in 5e, and the only other official penalty is the small sized kobold& #39;s strength penalty.
In Forgotten Realms lore, we know there is a whole prime material plane ruled by orcs, where many of Toril& #39;s orcs came from when the Imaskari opened a portal there. While that plays into them being warlike, it also undermines their inability to sustain empires.
There was also the Kingdom of Many Arrows, originally framed as a threat, but eventually emerging as a non-hostile power in the North . . . Until things got back to "normal," and a bad orc took over, and we erased the kingdom.
It may still exist in reduced form, but no one has thought to explore it& #39;s current state in D&D 5e material. It& #39;s also noteworthy that orcs only get evil gods as native to their pantheon, so if they want to worship someone good or neutral, they have to abandon their own gods.
I bring up this FR lore because I want to point out that there have been motions towards greater depth to orcs in a D&D setting before, but it often gets cast aside, often because of backlash that we& #39;re seeing from fans right now, protecting their right to kill things guilt free.
I& #39;d argue these are the same arguments I& #39;ve heard for decades about fictional terrorist groups that are okay for American protagonists to kill, because they aren& #39;t real, but are definitely coded to correspond to real world groups of people.
We have to fight the knee jerk reaction to think that because we love something, it can& #39;t be challenged. It can and does need to change, especially as the face of roleplaying to the world.
Just as important, many, many fans have been fighting for change, and assuming that everyone that is a fan of D&D is a fan of all elements of the game just makes it harder for fans to push for a better direction.
