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

[Voadam]

Peoples. Carnival Row, based on the TV series, using the Cypher system.

I like the feel of that one a lot. Sort of like Tuatha de Danann meaning People of the Dawn.

Folk also works well, from Shanara and the 3e+ versions of [X]men becoming gender neutral folk so lizardfolk and such.

 

[shesheyan]

I'm partial to Kin for fantasy. Trollkin, of troll parents.

 

[BookBarbarian]

I was thinking earlier that stat bonuses should be tied to classes. I mean what are the odds that a player who selects a wizard is NOT looking for an INT boost?

Me too. Powerful Build already does a better job of representing a big and Strong genetic inclination than a +2 to Strength.

I'd love to see more active racial(?) abilities too. A Goliath's Stones Endurance is a great way to represent being naturally tough and is useful to Wizards and Barbarian's alike.

 

[Grazzt]

I think some games don't even use a term. It has been a long time since I had my 2e Gamma World set, but in offering a choice between pure strain human, mutant, and mutated animal, I don't know if there was a set term to describe th choice. And FASERIP Marvel Superheroes just had "origin", which might include things like alien or high tech wonder.

There was. It was called "Character Type" but worked exactly how you described.

 

[Cadence]

There was. It was called "Character Type" but worked exactly how you described.

Gamma World 1e was the same, except the mutated humans were humanoids.

Star Frontiers had Race

 

[Deset Gled]

Star Wars d6 used species.

Science uses domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species.

 

[Bohandas]

It looks possible that D&D is going to move away from using the term 'race'.

It's about time, given that they consistently used the word incorrectly

 

[dragoner]

Other tongues usually use "people".

 

[shesheyan]

Heritage is mentioned in Fantasy AGE. Mixed heritage is also used.

 

[DammitVictor]

Alternity, like many sci-fi games, uses Species. This sounds weird in pre-industrial fantasy settings, and.... is even less accurate than "race" in most of them. Someone already mentioned "metatype" in Shadowrun, which is worth noting because Shadowrun is based on a modern Earth setting and the various metatypes are neither separate races nor separate species; Shadowrun tries to use metatype discrimnation as a clumsy allegory for contemporary racial politics and it just doesn't land because of this.

It's largely irrelevant to my game design because I was a partisan for race-as-class before the movement to replace the word "race" really picked up steam... in my setting design, I usually use "kith" or "clade" or "folk" or "kind", leaning toward the former in more formal (or mechanical) use and the latter in more colloquial use.