Massive Race Selection

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Essentially, the game version of Loads and Loads of Races. Sometimes, a Tabletop Game or Video Game setting just has a metric boatload of playable races -- even more than the standard Five Races.

Happens in three ways:

  1. You're designing an RPG (either a Video Game or Tabletop). You want more customization options. Your classes are pretty much the standard bunch, so you allow a bunch of races to be selected too. Now player options for creating a character aren't just limited to Human, Elf, Dwarf, Hobbit, and Orc. You can also play a Werewolf, a Cat Person, a Giant Monkey, a Robot, a Giant Robot Monkey, a Dwarf Giant Robot Were-Monkey, etc. These races may be further subdivided into every possible variation.
  2. You're designing a Strategy Game, and you want to give your player tons of faction and customization options. Throw in a bunch of sub-factions, and you have a real menagerie.
  3. You have a set of factions in your Strategy Game or MMORPG, and you're now doing a sequel (or, in a Tabletop Game, a new edition). What's a simple way to bring something new to the sequel or new edition? Add in more races! Alternately, you wish to have a subfaction which specializes in one aspect of your Planet of Hats; this leads to speciation of a main faction into two or more subfactions. Editing Lore is always easier than editing Canon.

This is a medium-specific subtrope of Loads and Loads of Races.

Examples of Massive Race Selection include:

Tabletop Games

Board Games

  • Cosmic Encounter is all about this, with each alien race breaking the rules in a different way. The original game had 15 races, and nine(!) expansion sets bringing the total eventually up to a whopping 75(!). One of the later publishers was planning an expansion with yet another 35(!) but went out of business before the release. The Fantasy Flight edition released two expansions, bringing the grand total to a staggering 90 alien races.
  • Small World started with an already-respectable 14 races in the core set, and the first three official expansions have added another 10 in total. Some of the 'races' would normally count as humans, however; for example, Amazons, Barbarians, Gypsies and Sorcerers are all separate races. In addition, there are special abilities which are independent of races, so during a game you'll actually be looking at things like Merchant Halflings or Cursed Goblins. Or Peace-Loving Orcs, for that matter. There are 20 abilities in the core game, with 12 more from expansions, meaning you're looking at 24 * 32 = 768 race/ability combinations just from official sources. Fans have added more, obviously.


Card Games


Miniatures Wargaming


Tabletop Roleplaying Games

  • Dungeons & Dragons - both some settings and if you add enough of "generic" splatbooks. Or your DM allows the use of intelligent races found in the Monster Manuals. In 3.5 alone, there were 135 official races - but many of them were repeats or overlapping each other (probably a third of those were elves).
    • The Basic/Expert/etc D&D system practically lived off of this trope, offering supplements and gazetteers for PC savage humanoids, fairy creatures, undersea races, aerial beings, lycanthrope strains... And that's before you crack open the Immortals boxed set.
    • AD&D2 mostly relied on settings, but The Complete Book of Humanoids alone listed almost 30 now-playable races and subraces.
    • D&D3.5 had "Races of X" thematic sourcebooks.
    • In D&D 4th Edition, with the release of the Second Player Handbook, plus other official material (in Dragon magazine and other sourcebooks) there are nearly 20 playable player-character races! And more coming! This doesn't include the 'monsters as PCs' option, which adds even more. Most of the races are revisions of races from 3.5. As of summer 2010, the list of published (in an actual book that can be bought) and supported (race specific options are provided for character customization) PC races is: Human, Dragonborn, Dwarf, Eladrin, Elf, Half-Elf, Halfling, Tiefling, Deva, Gnome, Goliath, Half-Orc, Shifter (which come in Longtooth and Razorclaw varieties), Githzerai, Minotaur, Shardmind, Wilden, Changeling, Drow, Genasi, Kalashtar, Warforged, Mul, and Thri-Kreen. Shadar-Kai, Revenants, and Gnolls have received support in online publications. Bladelings have appeared in a published book but received no support. Several monster races have published stats, but aren't supported or intended for PC use.
    • Mystara, as the default setting of pre-AD&D2 era collected lots of sentient creatures, most of whom were designed useable as PC races, mostly more or less common-animal-like species (especially widespread in Red Steel sub-setting, and with their own subraces, thanks to Dragon magazine), ancient species in the Hollow World, and more exotic critters from the Princess Ark saga.
    • Planescape and Spelljammer, which by their very nature as bridges between settings allow for practically any race or subrace to be played and then some (Planescape had such options as intelligent squirrels native to Yggdrasil), more to emphasize the dazzling effect. Planescape also has Planetouched, which are hybrids between any playable regular species and nearly any kind of planar creature (elementals, demons, devils, angels, slaadi, etc.), allowing near-infinite variety.
    • For sheer diversity, Forgotten Realms stands out, with dozens of races and subraces scattered across the continent, even not counting the sub-settings. People in any place with a road or port are somewhat desensitized to anatomical weirdness, though more due to the existence of shapeshifting spells, curses and failed magical experiments being common knowledge, if not quite common occurence. Even sages not studying related fields show only mild interest when one more race of which they didn't hear pops up, as happened in Azure Bonds novel.
    • Council of Wyrms introduced, among the other things, an option to compose a party entirely of various dragon subraces.
    • Eberron, too, has a lot of races. Plus the setting literally says that everything that has a place in Dungeons and Dragons has a place in Eberron, which at least theoretically means every splatbook is valid.
  • GURPS: Dungeon Fantasy has... Cat-folk, Coleopterans, Corpse-Eaters, Dark Ones, Dwarves, Seven Kinds of Elf, Fauns, Leprechauns, Nymphs, Pixies, Gargoyles, Gnomes, Goblins, Half-Orcs, Hobgoblins, Orcs, Seven Half-Spirit Races, Halflings, Humans, Minotaurs, Ogres, Half Ogres, Dragon-Blooded, Lizard Men, Trolls and Wildmen. A total of 40 racial templates introduced in one supplement. However, none of them are fleshed out races due to the "blank slate" nature of GURPS in general.
  • Rifts can't even bother to count them all. A good half-dozen or so are released per Sourcebook (on average), which range from Standard Fantasy Races (Elves, Dwarves, Dragons etc...), to a good score of Beast Man-types, living robots, aliens, and more. The game even allows you to play as a Humpback Whale, if you desire. And that's the ones the game deigns to point out. Nearly every book will also note that many other races exist in such tiny numbers (usually less than a percent of any given state) that they don't necessarily count as a demographic, and lumped under the general term "D-Bees" (from "Dimensional Beings").
    • Just as an example, the book D-Bees of North America is specifically designed to be nothing but playable alien races. Out of the 86 races in this book, 50 of them are expanded versions of popular races from other books. Yeah, 50 races from various books are considered a random sampling for this game.
  • Every role-playing game set in the Star Wars universe has ended up allowing players access to dozens if not hundreds (literally) of races.
  • In Old World of Darkness, we have playable vampires, werewolves (plus 11 other shapeshifter races), mages, changelings (faeries trapped in human bodies), wraiths, demons, mummies, kuei-jin (vampire-zombie-ghosts), sorcerers (weaker than mages), mediums, ghouls, kinfolk, hsien (small gods trapped in human bodies), fomori (and drones, gorgons, and kami) (people possessed by spirits), zombies, Imbued hunters, shih hunters... oh, and regular humans, if you're feeling squishy.
    • Within just Vampire: The Masquerade, there are 13 playable "races" of vampires (they're called clans, but they play the same role): Brujah, Gangrel, Malkavian, Noesferatu, Toreador, Tremere, Ventrue, Tzimisce, Lasombra, Setite, Ravnos, Giovanni, and Assamite. Even if you're restricted to playing just the "lawful" Camarilla races/clans, there are still 7 playable races.
    • Werewolf: The Apocalypse lets you play not just werewolves, but also werehyenas, werespiders, wereravens, werebears, werefoxes, werecrocodiles, weresnakes, werecoyotes, wererats, weresharks, and nine tribes of werecats (tigers, lions, leopards, cheetahs, cougars, lynxes, jaguars, fae cats, and shadowcats). And the werewolves come in nearly any combination of 13 tribes and 3 breeds. The other shapeshifters also have their own breeds, and sometimes tribes.
    • All the other "splats" have their own subdivisions into playable types: mage and sorcerer traditions, conventions, and crafts; demon houses and factions; kuei-jin dharmas; fomori breeds; hsien kwannon-jin; wraith legions and guilds; medium laments; changeling and merfolk kiths and houses; hunter creeds; and so on.
  • The New World of Darkness has, thus far, humans, vampires, werewolves, mages, Prometheans (Frankenstein's monsters), changelings, Sin-Eaters and their associated Giests, Immortals, Psychics, Thaumaturges (essentially weak mages), various Changing-Breeds, and (if you take fan-line games) Geniuses, Princesses and Leviathans.
  • Shadowrun has 5 metatypes: Human, Orks, Trolls, Elves and Dwarves. But each race has around 6 meta-variants, who can look nothing like the base race. Then there's the Synthetic Intelligences, the Drakes, the Changelings, the Ghouls, Vampires and other infected critters... There's the Non-human sentients too like Nagas, Centaurs, wendigos....
  • Talislanta has several dozen bizarre species to choose from, and even its "human"-analogs aren't necessarily what you'd call normal. Plus, no elves.


Tabletop Strategy Games

  • Star Fleet Battles features a bunch of distinct fleets, including, in the basic edition, ships for The Federation, the Klingons, the Romulans [1], the Kzinti, the Tolians, and Orion Pirates; expansions include Andorians, Lyrans, Hydrans, WYNs, and the ISC. And all that is for the "Alpha Sector" setting. There are also "Omega Sector" (20 new factions), "Magellanic Cloud" (5 new factions) and "the Early Years" (5 new factions) settings.
  • Twilight Imperium started out with six "great races" (including humans) scrambling to rebuild the long extinct Lazax Imperium they were once part of; expansions for the game's 1st edition added four more races that had risen to a similar level of power in the interim. The current 3rd edition included all ten races from the get-go, then a new expansion was published which introduced four brand-new races, for a total of fourteen; probably the largest number of playable races in a tabletop strategy game, with the possible exception of Star Fleet Battles.

Video Games

RPGs

  • Wizardry's later SirTech-developed installments. Not as bad as some examples on this page, though: Ten playable races (of which you only meet two as NPCs), and about eight NPC races in the second and third games. Justified in that the player characters are from a different planet from the locations of the second and third games (which themselves are on different planets, and the only NPC races they share are the ones with interstellar travel).
  • The Elder Scrolls. Justified, since Tamriel is an ethnically diverse empire, which means you have High Elves, the Dunmer (Dark Elves), Wood Elves, Argonians (Lizardmen), Khajiit (Catmen), Nords (Vikings), Bretons (French and British), Redguards (Arabs and Africans), Orcs, and Imperial Men (Greeks, Romans and sometimes Asians).
    • And that's just the playable races. Factor in NPC races and those mentioned in the backstory, and you also have Dwemer (Mesopotamians), Imga (Intelligent Apes), Daedra (Demigods), Almderi (Precursors), Sloads (Slugmen), Nedes (Barbarians), Alpine Elves, Akaviri (Chinese and Japanese), Hist (Ancient Sentient Trees)...
    • Some of the NPC races have been turned into playable races by intrepid modders.
  • Final Fantasy IX features loads and loads of one-off NPCs with animal or other demihuman features, along with a few named (or not-quite-named) major races. It almost gives Animal Crossing a run for its money. Only two major PCs are unequivocally normal humans.
  • Final Fantasy XI has the Five Races as playable characters, but NPCs? Hoo, boy. There are at least a dozen NPC and enemy races, most of them added in the original game, Rise of The Zilart, and Treasures of Aht Urghan.
  • The newer Ivalice games (Final Fantasy XII, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Final Fantasy Tactics A2 seem to be going in having a race for each of the 12 zodiac signs. Final Fantasy XII alone has Humes, Viera, Bangaa, Moogles, Seeqs, Nu Mou, Baknamy, Garif, Helgas, Rebe, Urutan-Yensa and the god-like Occuria. Revenant Wings adds the Aegyl and Feol Viera offshoot, while Tactics A2 includes the winged Gria.
  • Knights of the Old Republic carries on the Star Wars tradition by featuring pretty much every notable race that appeared in the films including humans, Wookiees, Twileks, Hutts, Jawas, Rodarians, Tusken Raiders, etc. as well as introducing several new ones such as the Cathar (feline bipeds) and the Selkath (an aquatic race of bipeds with long, fish-like faces).
  • Star Ocean is a solid example here, owing to its influence from Star Trek -- most admittedly human-looking enough, but: Humans, Fellpool, Featherfolk, Expelian, Tetrageniot, Nedian, Klausian, Velbaysian, Elicoorian, and Menodix (though some are simply Human Aliens, others have differences that are noted either in the story, in gameplay, or in the plot). And that's just sampling from the PC rosters of the first three--there's far more of them represented among the NPCs and discussed in the Encyclopedia in later games. (to name a few, Felinefolk, Ur-Felinefolk, Vanguardian, Rezerbian, Vendeeni, and so on...)

Roguelike

  • Dungeon Crawl has 24 races at the moment, with great variation. In addition to the common humans, elves and dwarves, Crawl has a few quite exotic ones, such as spriggans, centaurs, mummies, merfolk, demonspawn and demigods.
  • Many Angband variants, including Z Angband.

Multi-type Game Franchises

  • Warcraft II had humans, orcs, elves (later high elves), dwarves, gnomes, goblins, trolls, ogres and dragons. Warcraft III added tauren, undead, dryads, night elves, keepers of the grove and treeants. World of Warcraft has 12 playable races as of the Cataclysm expansion, which including races already mentioned, adds draenei, blood elves (successors to high elves) and worgen.

MMORPGs

  • Honorable mention goes to Earth Eternal, which started beta with 22 races, and half dozen or so mentioned in the lore but not given form yet. Though it should be noted that the differences are cosmetic only; all 22 races play identically with nary a stat or ability difference. Sadly, the actual game only has 12 races.
  • EverQuest had 12, and Everquest II had 16, both before expansions.

MUs

  • In Lusternia there are twenty playable races, ranging from tiny, airborne fair folk to hulking, nine foot tall yeti-men. There are many more mortal races that are unplayable due to logistical issues, such as the centaur (Dummied Out due to the challenge of handling a six-limbed race) and gnomes (scrapped for being too similar to dwarves).


Turn-Based Strategy

  • Ascendancy boasts an impressive 21 races, each with its own special ability, and with cosmetic differences in ship styles.
  • Master of Orion series started with ten races with their own associated AI Player Personalities - Psilons, Klackons, Humans, Silicoids, Meklar, Sakkra, Alkari, Darlok, Bulrathi, Mrrshan, and in the second game added Elerians, Gnolams and Trilarians, plus non-playable Antarans. In the third game, a boatload more were added (Evon, Imsaeis, Eoladi, Cynoid, Nommo, Ithkul, Tachidi, Raas, Grendarl) and several existing races were downgraded to non-playable.
  • Master of Magic has 14 races available (though some of them are relatives), split between two worlds - Barbarians, Gnolls, Halflings, High Elves, High Men, Klackons, Lizardmen, Nomads and Orcs live on Arcanus, while Beastmen, Dark Elves, Draconians, Dwarves and Trolls live on Myrran. There also was a rumour that if you life-drain the settler, making it undead, it allows to build undead cities, but it doesn't.
  • Age of Wonders. 15 as of the last expansion, not counting a race that was present in the first game and didn't return for the sequel.
  • The Galactic Civilizations series. In the original version of Galactic Civilizations 2, the races were pretty similar, only differentiated by hardcoded reactions (the Drengin and the Torians hate each other, for example) and racial bonuses. However, in the newer expansions, races got Super Abilities and, in the Twilight of the Arnor expansion, unique tech trees. Yes, a game with ~14 separate races which includes unique tech trees.
  • Battle for Wesnoth has humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, trolls, drakes (dragon people), saurians, merfolk, and naga, in addition to things which aren't really a "race" as such, like undead. User-made content adds dozens more factions, and various subdivisions in "eras" (rulesets).
  • Space Empires offers around a dozen (or more) races as standard options, each with their hat. It's fairly simple to create and fine-tune your own, particularly to anything prior to the fifth game.

unsorted

  • Star Control, given that each race was allowed only one ship, had to fall into this to have more than a small number of ships.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics Advance had Five Races, but Final Fantasy Tactics A2 added two more. One of the new ones replaced one of the old ones, and Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings added in more, with some Underground Monkey on the side.
  • The Warlords series, and its spinoff Warlords Battlecry. WBC1 had nine races (Human, Dwarf, Undead, Barbarian, Minotaur, Orc, High Elf, Wood Elf, Dark Elf), arranged on a chart whose columns were "civilized", "barbaric", and "magical" and whose rows were "good", "neutral", and "evil". WBC2 added three new races, which can be unofficially sorted into a new "chaotic" column: Fey, Dark Dwarves, and Daemons. WBC3 almost completely abandoned the theme, splitting Humans into Empire and Knights and adding Ssrathi (Mayincatec Snake People), Swarm, and Plaguelords. By the end of the series, that's a grand total of 16 almost completely unique factions drawn from 11 races (of which there are three kinds of human, three kinds of elf, and two kinds of dwarf), with hardly a shared unit or building to be found.
  • Depending on which "era" a game of Dominions 3 takes place in, it can come with up to 24 nations almost all of which represent different races ranging from stereotypical merfolk to Lovecraftian fish-men to Rakshasa or Naga rulers of intelligent primates. Factions that are alliances of multiple races, such as Pangea's medley of Greek mythology expand the actual count even further. A great number of patches were made after its release that added even more material.
  • Suikoden does this (usually using some kind of animal as a basis) on account of having 108 characters in EVERY game. To ensure variety, the series has Kobolds (dog people), Nei-Kobolds (cat people), Lizard people, duck people, wingers, a race of beavers, mermaids, purpoises. Some argue if the Cyndar/Sindar people are a separate race or a lost civilization. Other characters such as Jeane, Zerase etc have also been argued if they are entirely human. Every game seems to add at least one more race to the count.
  • Mass Effect has around a dozen, and more depending on what you count as a race. Besides humans, there are asari, turians, salarians, quarians, krogans, hanar, volus, elcor, drell, geth, rachni, vorcha, the Yahg, the Reapers, and the Collectors (arguably) for sentient species. And there's even more mentioned in the Cerberus Daily News, such as a recently discovered race of alien bees, the lone survivor of his planet, a race of AI's living in what is basically The Matrix, A new race that was subsequently offended by the Krogans, and more.
  • Touhou not only has Loads and Loads of Characters but Loads And Loads Of Races as well, with at least one representative from any Youkai ZUN wants to add. The first Windows era game alone contains humans, vampires, fairies, a Witch Species, and what is heavily suspected to be a Chinese dragon. Other games introduce animals-turned-youkai, humans-turned-youkai, ghosts, demons, celestials, gods, Lunarians, a Shinigami, kappa, tengu, whatever the hell Yukari is, and the list goes on.
  • OtherSpace features two dozen playable races, ranging from different Human Subspecies all the way to Starfish Aliens.
  • Legend of Mana boasts sprites, humans, the jewel-hearted Jumi, dragoons, faeries, flowerlings, dudbears, sirens, mermaids, sproutlings, elves, succubi, chobin hoods, tomato men, sahagin, goblins, narcissos, mad mallards, the enchanted golems, several sapient animals including rabbits, cats, penguins, monkeys, as well as a sprawling assortment of bizarre anthropomorphic objects and mythic beings such as a vampire, basilisk, and a centaur.
  1. ↑ Who have the distinction of having three completely distinct Tournament ships, whereas almost all the other races have just one, to reflect the fact that there they had/have three completely different fleets
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