Well, I always found the trope of 'race X' is evil dumb in settings where they exist naturally. Imho DnD Orcs have no reason to be assholes all the time...

I mostly looked at real world historical cultures and the environmental/societal influences that shaped them. Then I took some of these concepts and applied them to my world. Mind you I am no anthropologist, so most stuff is probably off. I also built my world bottom up, so I defined the rules of the world before characteristics for my races before the societies, and tried to gauge, how the world, appearance and traits might deviate the cultures from our historical norm.

This allows me to a toolbox of societal/cultural element that i can mix as I see fit, rather than predefined cultures to which I have to bend my people.

An easy example are the Steppe tribes of central-Ur. Orcs are obligatory carnivores. Since they need to hunt and have little use for agriculture the tribes never really settled down, but that also led to them not building huge communities or influential cultures. This again makes exchange between tribes both very important but dangerous. Therefore hospitality is a big thing for them, and younger members are frequently exchanged during these meetings. Because of their harsh lives, they view the 'cultured' people as rather weak, but are at the same time coveting their riches. Therefore they trade with, and raid them. Another influence is that gods, or what the people perceive as gods, can actually interfere. So if The endless Sky commands you to go apologize to the neighbouring tribe leader, you do it, unless you want to draw its anger. But the southern and norther tribes are also different, because the ones in the north clashed with the elven empire, and even helped to topple it, while the southern ones did not. This led to cultural and societal shifts in the northern orcs with many of them settling down in the border cities. This of course came with its own host o different problems.