Hate when that happens. Oh. Yes, that didn't exactly get communicated in your post. Ah yes, Arcanum's flawless AI in action. Now, to clarify, you did this by approaching the journalist first and going through all his dialogue options? While under the influence of the potions. (I think his dialogue might be buggy, or just poorly thought out, but when I played through the option was definitely there.) Other than clarifying you've tried all you can, that I can't help you with. I'd like to, but I'd be shocked if you ever met an Arcanum fan who didn't have some complaint about the game's AI.
It's good that the AI aggros when a guard sees you next to a dead body, and that the guard won't aggro if you disintegrate the body when he's not around. Or so I hear.
It's bad that you can charm a bear, let him into a house, lock the door, jump out the window, lock the window, uncharm the bear and watch him kill everything in the house.
It's also bad that you can aggro to death everybody in Tarant.

I remember that I was able to solve this peacefully the first time I played Arcanum (when it came out, no patches), but not the last time (patched) - so I ended up doing stuff the complicated way to satisfy my sense of justice. Which, in this case, meant a fair fight. Basically, I'd steal some weapons from the guards and give them to the Orcs - most notably, Wheeler's mechanized gun went to Throg, and then wait for the outcome. If it wasn't satisfying, I'd redo it. It took me about two hours to get it right (where right==most of the participants are dead, Wheeler most importantly).

As to why I couldn't do it peacefully, I'm not sure. I had a high int, but not persuasion or charisma, so it could be stats or it could be some bug or a trigger not going off, perhaps because I did this in the last quarter of the game. In any case, I think the way I did it proves
it's a rather open-ended game, seeing as how there are even options the developers probably didn't predict.

Two hours? You are more patient than I am.

That sounds like a bug, when I talked the orc into surrendering he was gunned down but that's all that happened. My party didn't attack anyone.

Make sure you talk to the journalist first... I'm not sure if it matters but when I did the quest I talked to the journalist and then told him I was going to try and talk to Throgg. Maybe you need to do that first because you can essentially offer to "trick" Throgg. You might also need to talk to the guard leader and offer to do that.

As for saving the orcs, try MackieStingray's advice of using Int potions before talking to the journalist. That might allow you to pick an option where you tell the journalist you will help Throgg escape, which in turn would unlock that conversation option with Throgg.

hyperagathon suggested that perhaps using the unofficial patch prevents the peaceful resolution of this quest, or at least makes it harder. Can someone confirm that it's possible to solve peacefully with the patch?

I've only played this scene in patched versions, and Throgg's demise didn't trigger a city-wide riot, nor did it stop me from getting the journalist to tell me about his plan to secret the union leader out at night.

On the open-ended bit. It taks a lot of work to get it to work, but I really like your idea of arming the orcs. I was thinking about giving it a go where I just heal the crap out of hte orcs, try to keep them from dying. I haven't went into try in the last two days- busy/frustrated/not interested ATm in teh game (may change).... But I was gonna try keeping him alive. If he killed teh guards in teh meantime...cool beans.

Oh back on point, because you get a fate point straight up for killing the orc, but not for kiling the guards (or slaughtering all of Taurant) its not open-ended. You are rewarded for supressing the orcs. You get nothing for killing the guard. And the paths hwere you do and don7t get XP/fatepoints are really randomly set it seems. Like rock paper scissors or something ,each quest you'd have to randomly see which disposition is determined to be the most rewarded by the developers. To me that is stupid. The reward for siding with tech or magic, siding with orcs or guards or some alternative, if possible should be balanced. When the reward is different then its not open-ended in my mind. Its only possible to fail. A slight improvement over being forced to do it one way.

For others I think I realized my bug-

I have magnus in party. He attacks the orcs when stuff gets nasty. (and maye Dante too)
SOg or whatever his name is attacks me if I attack the orcs, I think that is what is happening.
I have the lizard guy (bedowan? soething like that forget hte spelling) I think my lizard guy is aggroing on the guards when they attack the orcs. And that is actually cool, I don7t think he would sit there and watch technologists gun-down orcs after watching his people get poached. Then again orcs are warmbloods, and factory working techies so he shouldn't care.

So I think if I ditch my party (maybe have them wait around teh corner) I can choose some different options.

If I ever start playing the game again ( last time I quit only lasted 2 weeks) I will probably give healing the orcs a go, and if I can't help them win I'll probably just ignore the quest alltogether....maybe look through the quest book to verify when/where I'll be done with all other relevant Taurant content and then go back and slaugther the entire town to quell my furstration over this particularly shoddily implemented quest/AI.
BTW Not into thieving at all...

I rarely if EVER make a character concept that is a thief. I don7t like pilfering or dupping people as a gaming concept (or in real life) I like playing more straight forward characters. Lots of gamers and developers have a hard-on for kleptomania. I get it but its just not my thing. For me a real test of whether I like a game is if it has an interesting story and alternatives to being a complete goodie two-shoes that don7t involve also being a thief who stabs people in teh back, dupes innocents, steals from honest folk etc. To me there are plenty of conepts for characters who side with the downtrodden without being some kind of robinhood steal from teh rich give to the poor character. I like games that make that possible as a character concept.
It seems to me Arcanum has a very good and elaborate system build in for the thief build, where you can steal, pickpocket etc. (mabye not so much in teh suberfuge for dialogue). So I am missing/not appreciating how much that was built in. So I'll admit there are aspects of the game that make it bigger/fuller than I can not appreciate due to my own pickiness. That is a limitation fo my taste not the game.

I disagree categorically that the award of a fate point for completing a quest in a given way has anything to do with the game being or not being open ended. You're upset because you didn't get a mulligan on a roll? That just comes off as spoiled. If you saved the girl and got the treasure, what does it matter if that means didn't net you a Fate Point?
Don't get tied to the reward system. Open ended means you can tell them where to shove their reward system.

Now go arm some dang orcs. They deserve a fighting chance, and this way would be hilarious.

I don7t think I can arm the orcs without pickpocketing them, which I wont do. I might try to heal them, which I would do.

In truth I haven't used a single fate point, and don7t plan on using any. Its just a number that is building up, like my coins that really means nothing.

However those fate-points and coins represent endgaming. So the game is EASY enough that I don7t need the extra coins, XP or fatepoints...but they are still there. Its still a reward and the rewards are still an indication of which choices are considered success and failure.

The reward is not balanced because even if you choose to side with the orcs you're not supposed to kill the guards.

That'd only cause more trouble, since you'd make an enemy of everyone in Tarant (how do you think actual people would react if you started shooting the police, no matter how corrupt they were), and even if you managed to kill them all it'd be likely to result in a worse situation for orcs and half-orcs.
How do you think people in other towns would react to an headline that read "Riot by half-orc factory workers leads to massacre in Tarant"? They'd likely decide to kill all the orcs in the town.

The actual, logical, non-psychopathic way to side with the orc is to let Donn Throgg escape.
There is also a neutral way, which is to convince Donn Throgg to surrender, and a siding with the guards way which is to kill Donn Throgg.
All three give fate points. How is that not balanced?

Convincing him to surrender did not earn a fate point.
Saing that agreeing to kill him earns a point but agreeing to slaughter the oppressors doesn't earn a point...is rather morally laden to me.
If you can earn a point for being a contract killer and oppressor than you should, in my mind, be able to earn a point for fighting for freedom, even if it means a lot of heat. Not that I said I ever wanted to attack the guards, like I said 700times or so now, my party autoaggroes on everything, not me. I never got the option to choose how to react to the gunning down. Even the media attacking ME for talking an orc to surrender and him being gunned down by guard who lied to me is just messed up....

Anyway I didn't get a fate point when I talked to him to surrender, maybe that was a bug. Everytime I kil lhim thoug hI get a fate point.

I'm going to stick to my guns that unless the game designers are psychopath's that giving a fatepoint for killing the orc but NOT for killing the guard who gunned him down is flawed in a fundamental way. In any case choosing to be a liberator is obviously not a REWARDED OPTION in this game.

First of all: Fate points in Arcanum are not the reward for doing what the designers felt best. If it was a game about teaching kids to behave, every "naughty" option would have you dying horribly. This is obviously not the case.

Fate points are rewards for significant accomplishments. Some of these involve "doing what's right" (e.g. Gar, Adkin Chambers, etc), some require going off the beaten path and trying new strategies (Tarant underground passage, the Kree idol) some are the games' arbitrary rewards for doing "bad" things (killing GB, betraying the lizardmen).

Talking Donn Throgg to surrendering doesn't give a fate point. Convincing him to escape does, as does actually instigating the riot.

Now, two things about this quest annoy me:

1. If you accept Wheeler's quest it seems that you can no longer accept Babcock's, and vice versa. (That happened to me on every playthrough but might just be a bug for all I know).

2. If you convince the orcs to surrender and they end up winning the fight, you're still blamed for the riots. Ensuring the orcs' victory takes considerably more effort than any other outcome, and every witness to your participation is dead so the reputation doesn't make a lot of sense, and yet it's there and the penalty is really heavy. If I were to make a mod, I'd give a fate point and an "orc friend" rep for this (so the rioters won't attack you).

I always thought of fate points not as a way of signifying you did something "right" but you did something hard--whether right, wrong, good, evil, or whatever.

That is a different way to look at it.
In that case thought aggreeing to kill the orcs and killing them really isn't hard at all. Slayign the guards though, wtih their guns...considerably harder.

I guess some of the fatepoints are just kinda thrown out there, cuz I guess donw the line (haven't played al the way through yet) maybe those fate;points are really handy. So they just made a few places you can get them.

In any case perhaps my take on what fatepoints mean and are fore is off. XP rewards for sure shoudl be something liek what you said, for difficulty. I don7t find them necessarily consistant, but if you do end up in aggro land, atleast hacking everything to death certainly earns you XP.

Maybe this quest was one they should ahve left out and then I would have found it in a add-back-in modpack or mabye that is what it is and it was added by the UAP. In those cases (a bit ironic) I'm much more forgiving of broken/half-made quests and I take personal blame for using the mod's to add in teh half-made content all out of my own curiosity.

So I'll probably jsut ignore this quest and consider it incomplete. A good idea that was just never developed past all the bugs and all that. Having quests which make killing everything in the main city of the entire game a necessity is pretty flawed game-design. If anything should be done to this quest on teh mod-end I think it should make it so that turning all of taurant against you is not such a ready outcome, especially considering how many gamers are NOT going to want to kill the orcs. Perhaps just as simple as making sure in teh surrender scenario that nothing aggroes within or towards the player and his followers.

Maybe change it so the guards will rush inside or at night or something where you can kill the guards and the newspaper guy will agree not to tell anyone WHO did it for people who really want to exact revenge without breaking Taurant for their character.

This is exactly what happened when I played; the guards killed Throgg and that was it, no one got into a fight. I'm not sure if the behavior you're seeing was intended because of the followers you have or if it's a bug.

Also, this may have been dependent on talking to the guard captain first. I think if you tell him that you're going to go in and talk to Throgg, he sort of expects you to send Throgg out to be killed. So since it was "planned", no fights break out. But I'm not sure if that's how it works.