I will confess to have fucked around with Orcs quite a bit in settings, playing them as savage barbs or something else. My most solidified setting has them as very Italian based due to the name being a nod to Etruscans. They were historically very Rome/Samnite/Greek coded, and were obsessed with documentation due to their shorter lifespans and shit memory retention; slaves for them in olden times often were other races who served as mentats for them; and they to this day often hire a smarter member as a Consigliere. They also were mainly vegetarian, unlike the carnivorous elves they fucking defeated in history.
Much more cultured, but very capable and warlike still. Also strong beliefs in retribution and vendetta, even having a batlike goddess of Oaths they swear to for wrongs. They also fucking love dogs/wolves due to that Rome aspect, as well as one of their chief deities being a primeval wolf deity who cared for their Zeus-expy.
In fairness there's an appeal to having stock evil chars though.
I had orcs in on game where the Orc tribes/warbands would each select a "Slave King" to lead them in battle because they were too dumb and violent to actually do any planning, so usually the first person smart, tough, or lucky enough to avoid being immediately slaughtered by a band of orcs became responsible for directing the attacks, but they were kept under constant watch and couldn't leave and had no say other than telling them where to attack and putting in place such war plans as retarded orcs could manage to put into action, and dividing spoils/running logistics because ORcs were too dumb and greedy to plan - a leader, but also a slave.
If the leader's attacks failed in a way the orcs didn't like (or even succeeded in a why the didn't like), they'd immediate kill the Slave-King and select a new one. And of course if the orcs were annihilated, only those well versed in orc-sociology (not that many) would know their general might be there against his will, so they'd usually get cut down as well.
And of course some slave-kings were enthusiastic volunteers, and if a group of orcs entered into merenary service they couldn't always kill their effective slave-king.
A side bit of lore was Orcs forbade Trolls from being slave-kings due to one Zogbold the Eternal; the orcs tried to kill him after a failed attack, but discovered they could not due to his regenerative abilities so he ran his orc band until one of the orcs accidentally managed to set the elderly and by then demented Zogbold on fire.
Orcs spent most of their time fighting other orcs, but would routinely raid civilized settlements and caravans looking for (perferably) humans, as humans usually have a good mix of "tough" and "smart". Elves being too squishy, dwarves too stubborn, and Hobgoblins usually working to make themselves King and not Slave-king.
The mini-campaign was the party dealing with a band of orcs and discovering their "great orc general" was a trader who was forbidden from suicide by his religion, and had simply been sending the orcs on suicidal assault after suicidal assault that simply managed to pay off, and being a trader managed the Orc's logistics (otherwise the rest of the orc's slaves would die of starvation) such when other Orc raids had run out of supplies and depleted the country side so petering out as food and loot got scarce, the expedition he was leading was able to keep going into previously un-Orced country.
When the party showed up to assassinate him he begged for death, which of course meant the party spared him. They brought him back to the city that was in the Orc's line of attack, held out against orc seiged, defeated the orcs slaughtering them to the last green skin (as is right) and freed all their captives.
