The Orcs of Kara'Kar
Scope
The motivation behind building The Orcs of Kara'Kar
The Orcs of Kara'Kar is a campaign expansion for Phaeselis. The campaign expansion details the lands of the Orcish Horde and it's allies. My motive was to have something like the orcs from World of Warcraft, as those orcs are considered to be true orcs in my eyes.
Although I do admit that there was some inspiration from J.R.R. Tolkien's the Lord of Rings (after all, that's where the name "orc" comes from) my major inspiration was World of Warcraft. At the time, the inspiration for the game system was Pathfinder. As I knew which way the wind was blowing.
I wrote everything up in a wiki at first, and then ran some games. This expansion was my best expansion for Phaeselis. The idea was to play the orcs not as white hatted good guys, but with some sympathy. I wanted them to be represented in a culture that was at first look savage, but have some complexity along with it. The main inspiration for the Orcs of Kara'Kar was the Complete Book of Humanoids and World of Warcraft. I didn't, like in HARP or D&D, wanted my orcs to be intrinsically evil. I wanted them to be like humans in our world, with complex desires and different motives.
Other inspirations were the Lamanites (Native Americans) and Ancient Gothic culture. In fact, I'll be getting the Gothic Primer by Joseph Wright so that I can create a language for my orcs. One that is different from Tolkien's Black Speech or WoW's Orcish. World building takes time, and it takes the telling of stories.
The goal of the project
I wanted the players to play different, play an orc. Since World of Warcraft is my inspiration, I was taking inspiration from the Warcraft Wiki. I would search the wiki for any inspiration points, although my world was slowly diverging from WoW. I wanted my audience to have the experience of roleplaying an orc, gnoll, or troll and not have them being intrinsically evil, like Tolkien did.
I wanted the players to expect to play orcs of good instead of evil. Admittedly, the first inspiration for non-evil orcs came from the Complete Book of Humanoids for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, 2nd edition. That book helped me think outside the box as far as Orcs went. Also, the Shadowrun Roleplaying Game is a big inspiration for roleplaying orcs.
I am hoping to get out of this a good roleplaying experience. For my players as well as myself as the Storyteller.
The Orcs of Kara'Kar's Unique Selling point
The players are expected to play orcs instead of humans.
Theme
Genre
The genre of the campaign is high fantasy. Like Tolkien's the Lord of the Rings. The general technology of the orcs is iron age technology, like the Greeks to the south of them. Magic level for the orcs isn't generally high, but high enough to facilitate the fantasy genre. The setting isn't overly powerful.
Reader Experience
The world should feel mystical. My audience should feel a sense of wonder as they play through the setting.
Reader Tone
The world system's tone is somewhere in the middle (like that of Stargate SG-1). It's not that pleasant to level there, difficulty is like our Earth. It's a world of opposition.
Character Agency
The character agency level is generally medium. Although there are NPCS, the actions of the Characters to affect the overall world scheme.