Racial Evolution of Races

[ZeroGear]

So, this question is related to my previous thread when it about giants
(https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...5#post24408005).
Going along with creating a timeline, I had this idea that the races of different eras would change as the ages passed. I’m fully aware that evolution in the real world takes millions of years to happen, which is why some of these changes would be influenced by the existence of Magic and partially driven by the influences other planes of existence would have on the material world (I’m kinda fond of Orrery Planar systems and astral orbits in my setting).
Thing is, I’m starting to have a really hard time justifying the continued existence of Orcs in some of the later ages, mainly because it feels as though their interbreeding with humans combined with their described living habits would drive them extinct pretty quickly.
Looking at our own history, fossil records have shown that there were actually multiple species of humans in our past, and DNA testing has revealed that several of them became integrated into our own genetic ancestry.
This makes me wonder if it would be a better idea to just rename Half-Orcs as just “Orcs”, and say that they are the “modern” descendants of the Orc race?
It’s mostly a flavor change, but I’m not really sure if I’d be justified in making a change like that.

[Democratus]

Sounds like you are asking how you should build your world.

That's entirely up to you. In a multiverse with magic, gods, elemental crossovers, and planar beings - you can justify any setup you like.

Heck, half the fun is filling in backstory to explain all the weird stuff you put in your world.

[ZeroGear]

Sounds like you are asking how you should build your world.

That's entirely up to you. In a multiverse with magic, gods, elemental crossovers, and planar beings - you can justify any setup you like.

Heck, half the fun is filling in backstory to explain all the weird stuff you put in your world.

Yes and no.
It’s more of a “do you think players would accept this” kind of question.
I know that Orcs are kinda a staple of most D&D games, and that changing anything isn’t to be done lightly.
This would be a big change from the norm, and changes the key aspect that half-orks are outcasts from both sides of their parentage. I’m just trying to get an opinion on how important this one aspect is to people that enjoy playing Half-Orcs.

[Democratus]

You should present your world to the players before they create their characters, including allowed races.

That's when you will know if there's an issue. You know your players better than us crazy internet strangers.

My group? They are up for massive amounts of weird so long as I give them a heads up before session 1.

[jayem]

So, this question is related to my previous thread when it about giants
Thing is, I’m starting to have a really hard time justifying the continued existence of Orcs in some of the later ages, mainly because it feels as though their interbreeding with humans combined with their described living habits would drive them extinct pretty quickly.
Looking at our own history, fossil records have shown that there were actually multiple species of humans in our past, and DNA testing has revealed that several of them became integrated into our own genetic ancestry.
This makes me wonder if it would be a better idea to just rename Half-Orcs as just “Orcs”, and say that they are the “modern” descendants of the Orc race?
It’s mostly a flavor change, but I’m not really sure if I’d be justified in making a change like that.

At that point possibly humans are themselves modern descendants of a 'human' race.

[Khedrac]

I’m fully aware that evolution in the real world takes millions of years to happen

It can, but it doesn't have to - evolution takes a large number of generations but it doesn't be as large as most people think - thousands of years is enough for short-lived animals (or even hundreds for the very short lived).

Case in point, there are a lot of species in the UK whose entire habitat is man-made - it's not that they have adapted to live there, it's that they have evolved from a different species to live there. The Norfolk Broads are the classic example of an artificial habitat that is home to a lot of unique species but has only been about for a few hundred years!

So, back to orcs. Many people give orcs a much shorter lifespan than humans, this would go with a shorter generation length (humans are usually hald to produce a new generation every 20 years), if you make the orc generation 15 years they will evolve in approx. 3/4 the time it takes humans. As for them breeding out of existence if they can interbreed with humans, all it takes is a large dose of racial predjudice on both sides and the few cross-breeds will be sufficiently unsuccessful in reproducing that they won't affect the overall population. (That or they could be sterile like most crossbreeds.)

Except, as people say, it's your world, you can do what you want. As for the "necessity" of orcs, remind people that to Tolkein orcs and goblins were the same race ('orc' was the elvish term, 'goblin' the human and hobbit term).
There are quite a few fantasy RPG worlds out there without orcs, Glorantha and Archaeus* being two and, iirc., Athas was originally another?

*Archaeus turns out to be the world for the game Talislanta which was originally advertised as having "no elves".

[ZeroGear]

At that point possibly humans are themselves modern descendants of a 'human' race.

Actually... yes. Part of the plan was that the “modern” humans are descended from a more primitive race of humanoids that changed with the ages. The idea was that the “humans” as we know them only really emerged during the twilight years of the Age of Giants, and didn’t fully establish themselves until the end of the Age of Fallen Leaves, after the elves started losing power (quick note: elves and dwarves in this setting are still longer lived than Humans, but don’t live hundreds of years. Everything else about them is intact though).
It’s mostly during the Age of The Waxing Earth that some of the younger races like humans and halflings become much more prominent.

*Snipped due to length*

Yes, you are correct, though breeding is only half of the reason I’m considering here.
Pretty much all the entries on Orcs say they brutalize their children and elderly, that they live in squalor, and that they enjoy tormenting most other races. It also says that Half-Orcs are much more intelligent, so my reasoning is twofold:
1) Half-Orcs are much more adapted to survival than their full-blooded relatives, and would therefore become more plentiful, establishing a more civilized culture in the process.
2) Humans, and by extension I’d wager most other races, are notorious for eliminating threats to themselves, and it’s not a hard leap of logic to imagine wiping out the “savages” to be too low on that list.

[Aliess]

In our current game orcs and elves are basically extinct and half orcs/half elves are their descendants, although there are a few powerful individuals around.
Humans and tieflings didn't originate on this plane so don't have any ancestors (that we know of yet).
We haven't run into any of the other pc races yet.

So if it fits your idea for world history then I'd say go for it.

[False God]

Replace them with Gith. I mean, that's literally what the Gith are, Orcs that were hyper-evolved by aliens (mind flayers).

[ZeroGear]

@False God
Aren’t the Gith races evolved from elves/hobgoblins?

[False God]

@False God
Aren’t the Gith races evolved from elves/hobgoblins?

Last I recall they were from orcs.

*googles* huh, none of the stuff I'm reading says one way or the other.

Either way, I think it'd be a fairly good fit. They're clearly not "big dumb stronk orks" and they come in similar colors, so a little "yadda yadda magical hyper evolution" and it would work.

[LibraryOgre]

Replace them with Gith. I mean, that's literally what the Gith are, Orcs that were hyper-evolved by aliens (mind flayers).

I thought they were humans.

As to the original question, I don't see a problem with the base "orcs" dying out by later time, with half-orcs being their only representatives as time goes on.

[Jay R]

Do it if you want to.

In my world, there is no half-orc society. Half-orcs either live in human areas or orc tribes (and aren't really accepted either place).

[Dervag]

If you emphasize biological evolution, you have to address the question: how did these species ever evolve in the first place?

If orcs are persistently nasty, brutish, and antisocial, even within their own tribes, with their only real biological advantages being "marginally faster reproduction" and "noticeably but still kind of marginally greater strength and endurance," how would they survive in competition with humans?

You'd have to give them some other, really massive Darwinian advantage (e.g. near-total immunity to infectious disease, low-level regenerative ability to heal without scars). A species without such an advantage, and which was significantly inferior to humans in its ability to plan, organize, and socialize, would probably never have emerged at all in an environment where humans could exist.

[Bohandas]

Orcs could have been created multiple times, or they could be r-strategists like Warhammer's orcs.

[Kaptin Keen]

Yes and no.
It’s more of a “do you think players would accept this” kind of question.
I know that Orcs are kinda a staple of most D&D games, and that changing anything isn’t to be done lightly.
This would be a big change from the norm, and changes the key aspect that half-orks are outcasts from both sides of their parentage. I’m just trying to get an opinion on how important this one aspect is to people that enjoy playing Half-Orcs.

Think of the beholder.

If your players accept the existance of the beholder, anything else you throw at them is going to be acceptable.

As for evolution, although it takes a long time - it also happens in bursts (so I've heard). So when there is evolutionary pressure, evolution takes place at an accelerated pace. Basically, whatever it is that makes a tiny difference usually, makes more of a difference when the species it at risk.

For intelligent species, arguably that's more pronounced. As in, orcs may realise that their less violent, more intelligent kin do better. They may be more likely to follow non-violent, intelligent leaders.

Being bred out of existance seems unlikely to me. Orcs have a lot of things (no, not really) going for them, but being attractive isn't one of them.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

This makes me wonder if it would be a better idea to just rename Half-Orcs as just “Orcs”, and say that they are the “modern” descendants of the Orc race?

Sounds fine. If it's too confusing call them "orcin" or something.

Alternatively, if you want to use this concept but would really like to have mechanical base orcs in the later periods, refluff them as the watered down descendants of ogres, and remove orcs from the earlier setting.

Being bred out of existance seems unlikely to me. Orcs have a lot of things (no, not really) going for them, but being attractive isn't one of them.

Well, this is a dangerous, violent world. Dating the big strong warrior race might be all the rage for "die to a house cat" human commoners. Not to mention goblins, kobolds and other races whose ideal of beauty might already be closer to that of orcs.

[Kaptin Keen]

Well, this is a dangerous, violent world. Dating the big strong warrior race might be all the rage for "die to a house cat" human commoners. Not to mention goblins, kobolds and other races whose ideal of beauty might already be closer to that of orcs.

Heh - www.orcz4u.ru, eh?

I don't think greenskins of various sorts interbreeding would consitite being bred out of existance. I consider that to be more akin to accelerated evolution, natural selection helping to weed out the less competitive aspects of orcdom.

[ZeroGear]

@Lvl 2 expert: that is actually a really good name, I’ll be using that from now on!

Ok, so I kinda need to bring this up as a point form our history.
My reasoning for Orcs only really existing in the earlier parts of the timeline stems from how I view them: as an equivalent to the Neanderthal.
While Orcs and Neanderthal are entirely different creatures even in this setting, one could imagine their going out of existence to follow the same logic: they were out-competed by a mode advanced and adapted member of their genus.
That being said, the reason I don’t just want to subsume Orcs into the human race the way other species of humans were in the past is because I’m imagining an element of their race containing magical influence as somewhat of a dominant gene.
More to the point, I’m reasoning that races like Orcs, Elves, Halflings, Gnomes, Goblins, and Dragonborn containing something akin to a magical “code” in their genes that allows you to trace the influence that the shifting of the material planes ambient magic had on the species.
Humans would be unique because their “code” is highly adaptable, allowing for offshoot races such as Assimar, Tieflings, Oreads, Ifrits, Slyph, and Undine to exist.

More to the point, I’m also considering the idea that goblins later evolve into Bugbears to compete with Orcs, but then progress into Hobgoblins when Humans become the dominant competition.
Similarly, I’m thinking that Lizardfolk and Nagas are descended from dragons, but later evolve into Dragonfolk.

I’d appreciate feedback on this.

[Dervag]

@Lvl 2 expert: that is actually a really good name, I’ll be using that from now on!

Ok, so I kinda need to bring this up as a point form our history.
My reasoning for Orcs only really existing in the earlier parts of the timeline stems from how I view them: as an equivalent to the Neanderthal.
While Orcs and Neanderthal are entirely different creatures even in this setting, one could imagine their going out of existence to follow the same logic: they were out-competed by a mode advanced and adapted member of their genus.

I don't think that works out too well because, as I allude to below, it invites the question of how they emerged at all and what "better adapted" even means.

...

I think you should probably just drop the word 'evolve' in your description of how these species* emerged. "A wizard/god did it" is probably applicable in a lot of cases.

Like, bugbears have at least twice a goblin's body mass. Probably more. There is no obvious reason why goblins, and not some other sapient species that's already closer to that physical size and stature, would naturally "evolve" to fill whatever hypothetical niche exists that bugbears might fill.

The origin of bugbears as an offshoot of goblins makes much more sense if you imagine "there was an amazingly powerful goblin wizard 5000 years ago, and she wanted to create supersoldiers out of her existing goblin followers, so she magically enhanced them into a breed of giant ninjas, and that's the story of where bugbears come from." Evolution may explain why they didn't go extinct in the centuries since the goblin wizard who made them disappeared, but it doesn't really explain how they emerged.

Many other sentient D&D species are like that; there's no good way to explain how natural processes of speciation gave rise to them.

_______________________________________

*(I'm not calling them 'races' because of the ease with which this gets conflated with racial groupings in real life, which in the context of the thread discussion gets kind of yikes)...

Orcs could have been created multiple times, or they could be r-strategists like Warhammer's orcs.

r-strategies aren't viable for anything with a vaguely human lifestyle. They're pretty likely not compatible with sapience.

Human infants are born physically helpless and defenseless, and have to be explicitly taught the behaviors they need in order to get food* and avoid the natural hazards of their environment.** They require some kind of direct maternal care for at least a short time, and someone to 'raise' them and teach them the tool use, wilderness survival, or other skills they will need to be a functioning adult member of their species.

This immediately makes "r-strategizing" impossible. Any human infant necessarily represents a large investment of time and labor, and the death of any human child represents a major loss of resources on the part of the parent. These losses may be unavoidable but they are still losses.

Orcs are (at least in modern fantasy) generally imagined to have a human-ish lifecycle of being helpless infants who have to learn the secrets of tool use and survival in their natural environment over a period of years. They might mature a little faster or something, but it's not going to be a huge difference. With that being the case, they simply cannot function without social systems, language use, interaction with members of the species outside the immediate nuclear family unit, and so on.

They're not r-strategists to anything like the point that would let them function without a social order for which mental skills at planning, negotiation, and so on become relevant. And if they were like that, they wouldn't need sapience in the normal sense, because (like the children of r-strategizing species) they would need to be born knowing instinctively how to survive and thrive in their environment assuming nothing eats them first.
_______________________________

*(Baby must learn "these root vegetables are good to eat," "here is how to take care of a pig," or "this is how to sit still and follow directions so your employer will like you later on.")
**(Baby must learn "don't eat the orange berries," "don't go climbing in dead trees," "don't stick a fork in an electrical socket.")

[ZeroGear]

@Dervag
I could have sworn I’ve mentioned this before, but changed to the creatures in the setting are influenced by changed to the “composition” of the world’s magic.
Even if creatures can’t actually use magic inherently, the ambience still influences their development.
That being said, if you think the word “evolve” is ill suited, I’m open to suggestions as to how better to describe these changes.

On a separate but related note:
The world I’m building has two very distinct traits that I feel are worth mentioning:

1) It has an oratory planar system where the seasons are influenced by the orbits of the elemental planes. Such orbits also play a role in the changes to the ambient magic of the world.

2) Gods only exist because beings believe they do. While divine spells are formed and cast via prayer and channeling, the gods that are prayed to are dependent on followers to actually exist.
Yes, these beings have powers that are unrivaled in the world and can grant spells to their clerics, however they only have those powers as long as there is enough belief in them.
As such, while the primal powers of divine magic will always exist, no god can outlive their adherents.

[Anonymouswizard]

Well, this is a dangerous, violent world. Dating the big strong warrior race might be all the rage for "die to a house cat" human commoners. Not to mention goblins, kobolds and other races whose ideal of beauty might already be closer to that of orcs.

This.

I also remember one GURPS game where we took all the PC races, worked out their average default Sex Appeal skill, and put it in a list to work out the 'sexiest' race. Dwarfs topped the list, elves came at the bottom, but we never got the GM to give us the template for orcs (instead he started adding cross-species modifiers to the skill). I suspect they would have been a bit above humans though, the skill is based on Health.

Even in modern society perceptions of what's attractive differ based on life experience and just random chance. It's possible to be considered ugly by most of the population but drop dead gorgeous to a certain subset, or the other way around, and if you crunch through the data any attempt to add an 'attractiveness' stat to RPGs runs into problems relating to the fact that people's preferences just vary, with sometimes relatively equal camps considering the opposite sides of a spectrum attractive. I once managed to get it to work, but it was much more about your ability to present yourself than your looks (it was used for skills like Disguise and Acting, I eventually rolled it into the Presence stat as it just wasn't worth taking).

On the other hand in the right group and the right game Attractiveness stats can be fun, especially if buying them up or down doesn't impact your resources. But nine times out of ten they're useless.


Okay, tangent over.

For orcs not being integrated into the human population we have to ask ourselves, how much do orcish and human territories overlap, how much interbreeding is happening, what's each species evolutionary advantages, and what's the environment like.

Yes I am hideously oversimplifying here.

So, assuming both human and orc tribes have a similar amount of intra-tribe conflict going on, that both orcs and humans are willing to breed with each other, and that we're using standard 5e racial mechanics then in an environment that favours a mixture of the six stats the orcs will be outcompeted by the humans in shared or adjacent territories, while orcs will dominate in territories where Strength and Constituion are more important and Intelligence less so. Where orcs really got left behind is their negative Intelligence modifier in previous editions (do they still have that?) limited their ability to come up with ways to alter their environment to their advantage. Orcs will develop tools and agriculture slower than the other 'common' races, simply because they're not as good at thinking outside the box, although they likely aren't technologically static, just slower to advance.

Another problem orcs might encounter is their stat bonuses. Orcs are bigger and stronger than humans, and will tend to find it easier to hunt and kill(/capture) their quarry, even if they have minor difficulties in tracking it. This gives them less incentive to advance than humans again, and at a certain poimt humans begin to outcompete orcs.

Now comes the interesting part, in that orcs change even without interreeding with humans. Tribes of orcs with more intelligent and creative members start doing better as their technology begins to progress, and the genetic traits for intelligence and curiosity begin to spread.

The interesting thing is that if you keep it at such a basic level you can justify the 'humans but X' approach to intelligent races, to avoid getting outcompeted or integrated they all moved towards traits that helped them shape their environment.


One of the things I've been doing with a Fantasy AGE setting I want to run is playing with how the races developed. Elves didn't develop beyond stone age technology on their own, their high speed and good senses combined with their development of magic made it so they never needed to, but they did eventually adopt it by trading the secrets of magic for the secrets of technology. Humans were the first species to domesticate instead of tame animals, and their domesticated animals react much better to them than they do to other races. Dwarves as they are in most fantasy settings went practically extinct after the development of agriculture lead to most of them to move above ground to farm, their descendants are the gnomes who are consideredto be especially good at raising plants. Halfings wander in tribes with varying amounts of technical knowledge and skills. Orcs are (literally) what you get if you cross a human with a goblin, a bit shorter and stockier than a human but possibly the most technically-adept race on the continent, havng developed muskets, pistols, and the printing press (done not by giving them an INT boost but by changing their bonus skills and making them incredibly curious).

A side note is that the only crossbreeds to be reliably fertile are human/goblin (orc) and human/orc (as well as theoretically orc/goblin).

[LibraryOgre]

r-strategies aren't viable for anything with a vaguely human lifestyle. They're pretty likely not compatible with sapience.

They're not r-strategists to anything like the point that would let them function without a social order for which mental skills at planning, negotiation, and so on become relevant. And if they were like that, they wouldn't need sapience in the normal sense, because (like the children of r-strategizing species) they would need to be born knowing instinctively how to survive and thrive in their environment assuming nothing eats them first.

Ok, first of all, take a look at Warhammer Orcs... they are r-strategists, because they're essentially fungi. They don't have traditional childhoods, since much of their knowledge is genetically encoded by insane deities.

As for r-strategists not being compatible with sapience... I think that's a bit limited. Consider, for example, the krogan. While we don't get a clear idea of how they function, they have thousands of eggs that are non-viable after the genophage, and were considered a possible Malthusian threat before the genophage. They were r-strategists on Tchunka, then they leveraged their sapience to remove their reproductive stresses... and r-strategy combined with reduced predation resulted in them having a population explosion.

[Jay R]

It seems to me that people are bringing in unnecessary considerations that are causing difficulties. The solution is not to bring them in, in the first place.

Modern ideas of evolution assume modern biology and physics without exceptions. But magic provides innumerable exceptions, which means we don’t have to assume evolution works the same way it does here on earth — especially given that we know it doesn’t. Owlbears show us that birds and mammals aren’t separate. Fairies and giants show that the cube-square law doesn’t apply. Dragons that breathe fire or cold violate conservation of energy. And many creatures just don’t fit into modern taxonomy. So evolution (if it exists at all) doesn’t have to follow our scientific laws.

I assume that evolution is much faster, that some species are created by gods, that different species can interbreed, and that nobody in my world has developed a working theory of evolution anyway.

Orcs could have developed underground, or in a land that didn’t interact with humans until recently. In my world, orcs are primarily parasites, and can only thrive on the outskirts of a larger civilization. The basic unit of orc society is the raiding party.

But mainly, don’t ask questions about the origins of the species that cannot help your game, and can hurt it.

The orcs are attacking. Don’t theorize; fight back!

[Dervag]

@Dervag
I could have sworn I’ve mentioned this before, but changed to the creatures in the setting are influenced by changed to the “composition” of the world’s magic.

OK, but I'm not clear on how or why that works, but it's clearly a relevant factor that may impact which intelligent species survive and thrive- though not necessarily in the obvious ways.

Especially if the planes aren't just oscillating between polar extremes of fire and water, or earth and air. What if they're also oscillating between, say, love and war, brains and brawn, or nature and 'cityfication?'

Note that it COULD cut both ways. For example, if 3000 years ago the world was more influenced by 'love' and less by 'war,' then that might favor species that get along together well and have high social skills.

On the other hand, I could see it having the exact opposite effect- maybe the orcs, with high natural combativeness, were well adapted to that environment and had the right balance of 'love' and 'war' within themselves. But when 'war' is more prevalent, they become so warlike that it actually impairs their ability to cope with their environment.

That being said, if you think the word “evolve” is ill suited, I’m open to suggestions as to how better to describe these changes.

Words like "emerge," "develop," and "appear" are probably better suited to describe the origin of species in this setting, because that setting may well have been catalyzed by artificial selection in a lot of cases.

2) Gods only exist because beings believe they do. While divine spells are formed and cast via prayer and channeling, the gods that are prayed to are dependent on followers to actually exist.

Yes, these beings have powers that are unrivaled in the world and can grant spells to their clerics, however they only have those powers as long as there is enough belief in them.
As such, while the primal powers of divine magic will always exist, no god can outlive their adherents.

So, like, there will always be a fire god, or a bunch of fire gods revered in different places, but no one fire god is guaranteed to outlive the civilization that revered them at its hearth-altars.

Cool. I like that, and it contributes to the idea of a 'churning' world that has existed for a long time in a more or less cyclic state.

Ok, first of all, take a look at Warhammer Orcs... they are r-strategists, because they're essentially fungi. They don't have traditional childhoods, since much of their knowledge is genetically encoded by insane deities.

Warhammer 40k orks are indeed like that- but they're not D&D orcs.

As for r-strategists not being compatible with sapience... I think that's a bit limited. Consider, for example, the krogan. While we don't get a clear idea of how they function, they have thousands of eggs that are non-viable after the genophage, and were considered a possible Malthusian threat before the genophage. They were r-strategists on Tchunka, then they leveraged their sapience to remove their reproductive stresses... and r-strategy combined with reduced predation resulted in them having a population explosion.

The thing is, the krogan don't seem to be r-strategists, they just kept breeding at what would probably be normal rates for (say) Iron Age humans... while being biologically nigh-immortal.

Each individual krogan baby still apparently needs years to grow to maturity and is presumably effectively helpless until they learn a bunch of stuff from their parents or community. Or am I wrong about that?

But with that being the case... In the biology sense of the term, they're not r-strategists. Krogan!Mom is still investing great resources in each individual child.

[GreatWyrmGold]

My advice: Don't make different races different species. Make different races just...different races, if that. The biological and cultural differences between native Americans and European colonists were historically more than enough for the latter to justify treating the former worse than orcs and humans treat each other in most settings.

I'd say that cultural differences, e.g. worshiping Grummsh instead of Pelor (or whoever the default orc/human gods are in Faerun), would be enough to justify the hostility (and, over the short term*, maintain culturally-enforced reproductive barriers), and point to the Crusades as an example...
...except that neither side of the Crusades was actually a unified army representing their culture, because it turns out you don't really need cultural differences to justify the kind of raiding and periodic warfare that typifies orc-human relations in most settings. In fact, even a unified cause isn't always enough to justify not fighting your nominal allies! (The Crusades were a mess, guys. The Crusaders picked fights with the Byzantines when they weren't crossing a river fast enough.)

There's also the fact that emphasizing the biological differences between different D&D races...well...it's not racist, per se, but it makes your setting sound more like how racists describe the world. I don't want to get into an argument about how fiction representing a given worldview (intentionally or not) affects the audience's worldview, so I'll leave it at "Doesn't that make you feel kinda icky?"

When defining the differences between different races, I'd focus more on resources and history. For instance, maybe the orcish homeland has crappy farmland, forcing them to adopt a nomadic lifestyle akin to the Mongols, and encouraging them to raid human lands for goods you can't produce from horseback. The orcs see this as a righteous way to exchange goods (think of the Ironborn's "iron price" from A Song of Ice and Fire, or maybe just generic "might makes right"), but humans see it as vanilla banditry.
You might also see the odd orcish warlord who detests the hypocrisy of human nobles calling orcs thieves for claiming what is theirs by right of conquest, before turning around and stealing from those same peasants without so much as an open challenge. This fuels the warlord's passion, which attracts orcs (who love fighting for a righteous cause almost as much as they love not starving) for proper invasions. These invasions keep humanity paranoid about the "orcish threat," which leads to them pre-emptively attacking any orcish clan which gathers "too much" power...which is seen as more hypocrisy, which fuels more warlords, and so on.

*Centuries, or more if orcs and humans have geographical barriers assisting, but not any meaningful amount of time in an evolutionary sense.

[Draconi Redfir]

Perhaps there is at least one small environment that is mostly isolated from the rest of the world, and is habitable to Orcs, but humans and other races find it too hostile? Like a mountain valley where Humans find it too cold and too difficult to grow food, while Orcs primarily focus on hunting or growing crops in small, indoors enclosures.

Or perhaps Orcs primarily live on one or more islands that are for the most part cut off. and since their populations are so small and their environment so consistent, they don't need to change too much.

i myself was planning on having Orcs act out a raider / viking-type role in the world. they live on an island but can't or won't produce everything they need. so they go off, raid some settlements, then come back with the goods, leaving the settlements alone for a few decades to recover.

Half-Orcs could even be intentionally created for their intelligence and wit, allowing more advanced inventions and ideas to pop into existence that the Purebloods then adopt. Perhaps half-orcs are treated as second-class citizens, are sterilized at a young age, or don't pass on their intelligence to any quarter-human offspring they have. these combined with the idea that there are only ever three or fewer half-orcs in any Orc settlement at a time could prevent the Orcs from being utterly replaced.

More to the point, I’m also considering the idea that goblins later evolve into Bugbears to compete with Orcs, but then progress into Hobgoblins when Humans become the dominant competition.

I feel like Goblin-to-bugbear might be a bit of a drastic change all things considered. Perhaps Goblins evolved first into Hobgoblins, who then intentionally or not, branched themselves off into a Bugbear subspecies / brute caste?

Perhaps Bugbears Goblins and Hobgbolins are all the same race, with Hobgoblins being the norm, Goblins being a pigmy worker caste, and Bugbears being a brutish warrior caste?

[GreatWyrmGold]

Half-Orcs could even be intentionally created for their intelligence and wit...

Hoo boy. Remember what I said earlier about writing the way racists think? This is really bad on that front. You've got your eugenics, your dominant-race supremacy, and given how orcs generally "create" half-orcs, you've got some lovely black brute imagery in there, too.

Guys. Racial coding is part of fantasy. It's been there from the start—deliberately for Tolkien and many other authors, unconsciously or plagiaristically for others, but present nonetheless. Ph yeah, and we call them races. Please, think about the implications of this sort of idea before using them in your world.

[Draconi Redfir]

Maybe for you. Personally i intentionally seek out things that are radically different from reality because that's the point of Fantasy fiction, it's different, it's strange, it's not real.

For me at least, saying some race, species, breed, or what have you has a second-class caste isn't an attempt to push some nonexistent agenda, it's just an attempt to explore a different world and culture without needing to actually be in a situation where such a thing would exist.

For most people, referring to orcs elves and humans as different Races is just an easier way to say "They are not the same" then "Species". it's not some eugenics scheme or whatever it is you're thinking of, it's just better wordplay. exact same reason why Pokemon are referred to as having there Gender be male or female rather then their Sex, which would be more technically accurate. Gender is just the more comfortable way of saying the information in that context.

you're the one making things about Dominant-race superiority and other icky stuff. not us.

[Anonymouswizard]

It seems to me that people are bringing in unnecessary considerations that are causing difficulties. The solution is not to bring them in, in the first place.

Modern ideas of evolution assume modern biology and physics without exceptions. But magic provides innumerable exceptions, which means we don’t have to assume evolution works the same way it does here on earth — especially given that we know it doesn’t. Owlbears show us that birds and mammals aren’t separate. Fairies and giants show that the cube-square law doesn’t apply. Dragons that breathe fire or cold violate conservation of energy. And many creatures just don’t fit into modern taxonomy. So evolution (if it exists at all) doesn’t have to follow our scientific laws.

Blargh, *because magic* is the worst excuse ever for dropping an idea.

Evolution is a set of rules that boil down to 'random mutations happen, the least fit for the environment tend to die out'. I really don't see how the presence of magic changes that unless it changes:

1. How traits are passed from parents to their offspring.
2. How new traits enter a population (random mutation or breeding with other populations that produce viable fertile offspring).
3. The environmental pressures on a population.
4. A creature's fertility.
5. Some other things I'm not sure about because I'm not actually a biologist.

Although note that unlike the others 3 probably won't stop evolution entirely, just change what traits are seen as 'least fit'. Although I also want to point out that this isn't survival of the fittest, environmental factors (and I believe population size to an extent) remove those who can't avoid or mitigate them. Bunnies aren't fast because the fastest escaped from foxes, they're fast because the slowest didn't escape from foxes.

Now there's a lot magic can do to change the specifics of evolution, but beyond a point you have to resort to 'wizards create a lot of weird animals' to work out how an owlbear exists. Although come to think of it, they probably don't in a setting where the creator is trying to use a vaguely-realistic version of evolution.

Now there's nothing wrong with throwing out evolution entirely, especially if you're going for an explicitly deity-constructed world, but if you want to include it then there's nothing wrong with actually putting in some effort to make it work.