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Concept
Character race
Summary
Character race is a descriptor used to describe the various sapient species and beings that make up the setting in modern fantasy and science fiction. In many tabletop role-playing games and video games, players may choose to be one of these creatures when creating their player character (PC) or encounter them as a non-player character (NPC). "People" is to be taken in the broader sense, and may encompass ethnic groups, species, nationality or social groups.
Fantasy race
In this fantasy world, the word "race" means the same as and replaces "species".
Many fantasy stories and worlds refer to their main sapient humanoid creatures as races, rather than species in order to distinguish them from non-sapient creatures. J. R. R. Tolkien popularized the usage of the term in this context, in his legendarium (and particularly in The Lord of the Rings), and the use of races in the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing games further spread the label. Character race can refer to a fictitious species 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). The term "race" is even broader than the usual meaning, as it also includes creatures such as extraterrestrial beings, vegetal beings, and robots.
This notion began in 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.
Not all works use the term "race": in Tunnels and Trolls 7th ed. (2005), Ken St. Andre uses the term "kinship"; the term Spezies (species) is used in Das Schwarze Auge, and éthnie (ethnicity) is used in EW-System 2.0.
In the heroic fantasy games, in addition to humans, races are often humanoid and fey creatures of myth; such as elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, immaterial being (spirits, ghosts), etc. Some fantasy or steampunk games also involve "artificial creatures" (alchemical homunculus, golems and mechanical creatures).
Official source
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