Character race

In tabletop role-playing games, the character race represents the people to which a player character (PC) or a non-player character (NPC) belongs. "People" is to be taken in the broader sense, and may encompass ethnic groups, species, nationality or social groups.

In this fantasy world, the word “race” means the same as and replaces “species”.

It can be a fictitious race from a fictional universe, or a real people, especially in case of a history-based universe (even if it has a given level of fantasy), e.g. Call of Cthulhu (1981),Boot Hill (1975) or Bushido (1979). The term “race” is even broader than the usual meaning, as it also includes extraterrestrial beings; vegetal beings, e.g. the Aldryami in Glorantha (1978), or the Sylvanians in Fantasy Craft (2010); and robots, e.g. Artificials in Fantasy Craft or the Forgeborn/Dwarf-forged optional race in 13th Age (2013).

This notion is also present in most fantasy or science-fiction works: novels, comics, video games (especially role-playing video game), board games, LARP, etc. The transmediality is obvious in case of consistent universes, e.g. the Middle Earth or the Star Wars universe.