Lord of the Rings Orcs and Uruk-hai's

Some of the orc species issues are confused by the facts that Tolkien didn't do much to try and clear them up, and that later authors, in order to clear this up make some differing claims.

But I'll give you the straight party line from the people who do lots of scholarly reading of Tolkien. First, Uruk-Hai refers to larger orcs bred for war. As such, Saruman's Half-orc Half-Dunlending troops would have been considered Uruk-Hai and are refered to as such at least once. That's not to say that they comprise the Uruk-Hai solely, just that they are a subset. So you have Half-Orc Uruk-Hai, and Full Orc Uruk-Hai.

There's a lot of confustion about the term Goblin, because Tolkien uses it to refer to the orcs of the misty mountains (Globlingate, etc), and Moria earlier, and then starts using the term orc later. But this doesn't really seem to neccessarily be meant to indicate that these species are orcs. Instead it would seem that Tolkien shifted more to Elvish terms the further things got from the Westron speaking Shire, and as such later uses what is probably the Elvish term for goblins, orc. Or, rather, as orcs predate men likely, it's men who have their own term goblin for what the elves originally labeled as orcs (and, indeed it was Melkor who created the orcs from elves to spite them - the movie got this part right).

In any case, these terms were likely meant to refer to all of them as one big group. Indeed, sometimes he refers to the Half-orcs as goblin-men. So here's a place where they seem to be interchangeable. Much of the goblin/orc confusion actually comes from D&D making them two different things.

Now, that's not to say that there weren't a lot of breeds - that's established well on Frodo's crossing of Gorgoroth. It's just that most of them are probably unnammed, and I'm fairly sure that there wasn't much of a pedigree to any of the breeds anyhow. Essentially, you're probably free to make up whatever you want in terms of breeds in general, leaving the term Uruk-Hai for the largest orcs meant for battle. These I think basically are determinable by being in actual units and having the best armor and weapons more than anything else.

As for appearance, the books are vague enough that I think that Jackson's portrayals are "close enough for government work". That orc breeds are probably diverse enough that the range shown probably doesn't go too far outside Tokien that you couldn't use them as canon.

Now, the thing is, this is all Middle Earth related. If you're not playing in Middle Earth, I would wonder why any of it would matter. Heck I'm not sure any of it matters all that much if you're playing in Middle Earth (and I did a lot of that). If you're playing outside ME, the orcs are all yours to do what you want with.

Interestingly, the term orc is an old term in a lot of real world cultures that means something like "monster" or "meat eater" or "demon" or the like. As such, this is why TSR could use it, but had to use halfling instead of hobbit. Hobbit is copywrited, orc is a "previous use" term. The point being that even if Tolkien had never written his stuff, we could still use orc sensibly - he just gave the monster in question a face and a place, and made them into the ultimate cannon fodder.

So, I'm just wondering why all the fact finding? What does it matter "how big" orcs are in Middle Earth? In your world make them as large or small, tough or weak as you like.

Mike