What do other games use in place of 'race'?

[Morrus]

It looks possible that D&D is going to move away from using the term 'race'. It's not the first, though. What terms do other games use?

• Pathfinder currently uses Ancestry.
• Of my games, OLD uses 'race', NEW uses 'species', NOW uses 'heritage', and the upcoming Awfully Cheerful Engine uses 'role' (it has a general 'movie' feel to it).

What about other games? What are they using when not using 'race'?

 

[Nytmare]

Torchbearer refers to it as a character's "stock."
It's been a really long time since I looked at any of the books, but Palladium and Rifts at least used to refer to it as your RCC or Racial Character Class.

 

[Fenris-77]

All the ones that sprang immediately to mind have been mentioned. Origin maybe, IDK. I like Species too, but it has a pretty modern/scifi feel.

 

[CubicsRube]

Shadow of the Demon Lord also uses Ancestry

 

[Fenris-77]

Xenotype is cool too. Maybe not for D&D though. Bloodline perhaps. Or even just Blood. I am of Dwarven blood! It even rolls off the tongue in character pretty well for fantasy-adjacent genres.

Edit - although any idea of 'mixed blood' gets icky again.

 

[Bawylie]

I haven’t done it yet but I’m going to use “appearance” and it won’t have any mechanical adjustments.

 

[Umbran]

White Wolf has Clan (Vampires), Tribes (Werewolf), Traditions (Mage), Kith (Changeling), Creeds (Hunter), and some others.

 

[Blackrat]

Planet Mercenary, (I think that was the game’s name) uses Sophont, if my memory serves...

 

[BookBarbarian]

Adventure's in Middle-Earth has Cultures

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Paranoia has clones.

Um, probably not that helpful in the D&D context.