Fantastic Racism / Tabletop Games

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• BattleTech: While normal racism is far more common; many Trueborns see "Freebirths" as Puny Earthlings and many freeborns consider "Trashborns" to be Not Even Human. Neither charge has much basis in reality.
  • The Free Worlds League, despite being the most tolerant society in the Inner Sphere when it comes to any form of diversity, discriminates against those with cybernetic implants. Paradoxically they are also the most tech savvy of the Great Houses in many areas.
• Crimestrikers, which is set on a World of Funny Animals called Creaturia, has two examples. This trope fuels the ongoing conflict between the Hydrerans (a race of Fish People) and the mammals, birds and reptiles who populate the surface world. In Creaturia's distant past, it was even worse: the dragons were hunted to extinction, although the species returns thanks to genetic engineering.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Players, as opposed to the official game universe, traditionally work out their prejudices by abusing (at least verbally) halflings and half-orcs. Half-orcs are the "Dumb Brute" of the D&D game, strong, stupid, brutish, and usually unbathed. Halflings are an odd combination of every group stereotype of smaller people, including your spoiled creep of a kid brother. In an RPG, everyone can be a bully, and when they are, they generally are bullying a halfling (or a gnome). This is to say nothing of players who hate certain races for statistical or lore reasons (i.e. "Elves are always portrayed as so perfect, but they're such pushovers"; "All halflings are kender", "the rulebook says elves dislike dwarves and vice versa"), and take out those prejudices on people with favorable attitudes towards those races, in or out of game.
  • Somewhat ironically, half-orcs fare significantly better among orc tribes than among humans. The human heritage grants them intelligence superior to most orcs, and they lost virtually none of the orcish natural strength for it, making them easy candidates for leadership positions.
  • Beholders run on a mix of this trope and It's All About Me. Any given beholder sees itself as the pinnacle of all creation, the perfect reflection of the Great Mother that spawned their race. Other beholders of the same breed are tolerable inferiors. Beholders of any other breed are disgusting abominations that must be destroyed on sight. Anything that's not a beholder is barely worth acknowledging — little more than a fly to be swatted when it wanders too close, or a potential servant. Although the difference between beholder breeds is sometimes quite large, other times it can be things so minuscule that nothing that's not a beholder would even notice. The beholder with slightly bumpier skin or a different number of teeth is as much a hated inferior as the one who has flame-based powers instead of the standard beholder suite or a differing number of eyestalks. The Great Mother enables this since she's a shapeshifter who always appears to beholders as a perfect copy of themselves.
  • Red and blue slaadi loathe one another, despite depending on each other to reproduce — red slaadi are created from humanoids infected by the chaos phage that blue slaadi carry, while blue slaadi are born when humanoids are infected by larvae injected through a red slaad's claws.
  • Dracotaurs and centaurs despise each other, and dracotaurs cherish few foods as much as centaur flesh.
  • Rangers get fantastic racism as a class feature in the first three editions. You select a type of monster, which could be a race, like goblins, and get a bonus to hit and damage. Similarly, dwarves receive bonuses when attacking orcs and goblins, while gnomes get an attack bonus against kobolds and goblins; curiously, although this is explained as being due to a long history of conflict, those bonuses are one way only.
  • Always Chaotic Evil does little to help this fact. "Of course they're all scumbags, the Monster Manual says so right here!"
  • A human deity known as Zarus from the 3.5 book Races of Destiny is the hugest, most racist prick for his Humans Are Superior mindset, and he knows it.
  • Dragons tend to view themselves as superior to other species, including other types dragons. Some signs of their arrogance is the unconfirmed claim in 3rd edition that all other languages, except for ones spoken by species from other planes that are likely even older than the dragons, are derived from the dragon language. The reason behind their ego, given in the Draconomicon, is that dragons live for thousands of years growing bigger, stronger and smarter, while virtually every other living thing they see grows old, gets weak, sick, and dies, typically only living for a few decades or, at most, a century of two. Ultimately, even good dragons can't help but feel signs of superiority. How they act, however, depends on if the dragon is good or evil. Chromatic dragons will consider other species to be worthless and existing so that they may use them however they wish, metallic dragons look down on them more akin to viewing them like children who must be helped. Internally, metallic and chromatic dragons also despise each other, and will happily take any opportunity to mock, thwart or kill their counterparts.
  • Sea Serpents are clearly related to true dragons, but neither group is willing to comment on their common heritage and, anytime a sea serpent and coast-dwelling dragon's territories overlap, the result is a vicious and bloody battle.
  • Behirs and dragons hate each other. Even mentioning dragons around a behir can be dangerous.
  • Dracons from Spelljammer look down on all creatures that have fewer than four legs, thinking they look hilariously ridiculous. They also have extreme difficulties in telling different bipedal races apart, often resulting in them insulting races by referring to them as bitter rivals or racial enemies.
  • Dark Sun: Most races are xenophobic to an extent and mistrustful of anyone other than their own kind, slavery is a way of life and cannibalism is not uncommon. The largest prejudice however is against arcane magic users and with good reason; the most common form of arcane magic is defiling. Defiling saps the life out of the user’s surrounds to fuel the magic, killing plants, sterilizing the soil and draining the life-energy of nearby creatures. The reason Athas is such a Crapsack World is because of defiler magic. Another form of arcane magic exists called preserving, which is less potent but doesn't damage to the world itself. However few know the difference between the two and arcane magic users are almost universally abhorred with the exception of the Sorcerer-Kings, who are so powerful no one wants to risk angering them.
  • Dungeons Of Drakkenheim: Humans regard mageborn and the Half-Human Hybrids relating to them with distrust and fear, largely due to the tyranny of the Arcane Empire and its Sorcerous Overlords, despite the Arcane Empire having fallen over a thousand years ago. The intolerance is maintained and often enflamed by the machinations of the Church of the Sacred Flame. In the present day, mageborn are controlled by a series of political documents known collectively as the Edicts of Lumen, which grant them various legal protections, but also prohibit them from inheriting political titles or owning their own land. Mageborn who don't agree to join the Amethyst Academy risk constant discrimination and potentially even lynch mobs without the Academy as a safety net.
  • Eberron both plays this trope straight and subverts it. People of various nations are racist towards other races they've been at war with (There is also non-fantastic racism as they can be hostile to people of the same races coming from former enemy nations). Generally Goblinoids and the Warforged get the worst end of the racism. The subversion occurs in the Goblinoid Nation of Darguun. A war-torn land where the Goblinoid clans are at each other's throat, the central government barely holds everything together and slavery is both legal and regularly practiced. Despite their flaws, Goblinoids are surprisingly opened minded on the race issue, being willing to accept members of other races into their clans, should they prove worthy. Meanwhile, unlike other settings, Orcs get little racism directed at them (they don't travel abroad too much) and are also quite willing to welcome other races into their tribes (in fact, most Orc tribes often have a lot of human and half-orc members).
    • Warforged, Shifters, and Changelings all suffer from racism in Eberron as well. The Warforged are an artificial race of sentient constructs built as soldiers for The Last War. When the war ended, Khorvaire found itself with a sizeable population of Warforged left over — machines that think, and feel as richly as their creators, but are now without purpose. Some regard them as freaks that should never have been built, others hate them for stealing jobs (they have no need to eat or sleep), and still others would happily enslave them all again. Shifters are the diluted descendants of Eberron's lycanthropes, and many still fear them for their bestial appearance and often savage nature, as well as memories of their predecessors (who were all nearly genocided into oblivion by the local Lawful Good Crystal Dragon Jesus religion, even the non-evil ones). Changelings can alter their appearance and gender at will, leading many to be paranoid of anyone they suspect to be a changeling-especially if they happen to actually know a changeling is in the area. Even one area of work changelings naturally excel at if they must, prostitution, has become a subject of racism and paranoia on suspicions that any given prostitute is actually a changeling-and quite possibly male in "her" "native" form.
    • Eberron also plays the non-fantastic racism. For many of its residents, race is less important than nationality is. He's an elf, whatever, so long as he's an Aundarian elf, etc...
  • Forgotten Realms has organizations of elves who blame their decline on either drow, humans or even all other elven subraces ("when Gold Elves ruled it was the golden age!). Humans in the heartlands are generally indifferent to most creatures with whom they aren't at war, though still wary of thieving halflings. Demihumans are banned from some places, such as Hillsfar — but then, the ruler who did it and his loyal troops aren't very popular even among humans, both inside and outside the city.
    • Inhabitants of Zakhara view them all as "northern barbarians". Most locals give a damn only about couples: it's okay as long as a pair of humanoids can have children; otherwise they think only in terms of natural advantages/disadvantages that matter in some professions and are irrelevant in others. For their part, the theocracy of Pantheon is mildly human-centric, but for everyone else it's just one more proof that the League deserved its bad reputation.
    • Many deities of differing races will often have it in their dogma to hunt, kill, capture, or just dislike other races, the elven pantheon has this in spades. The elven god Shevarash whose portfolio is revenge and hatred of the drow is this trope 100%, although somewhat justified given that drow are supposed to be predominantly evil.
  • Greyhawk has the familiar Fantastic Racism as well as some very real-world flavored racism between the various human ethnicities. There's been a lot of intermixing in the time since the ancient wars between the Suel and Baklunish empires followed by subsequent migrations east, but of particular note are the white supremacist Scarlet Brotherhood, who consider themselves the heirs to the purity and power of the ancient Suloise peoples.
  • Grim Hollow: Played With. In the past, the continent of Etharis was ruled by various fantastic races before the arrival of humanity, whose many warlords ruthlessly conquered and carved up the land, destroying the Elf, Dwarf, and Gnome kingdoms, and enslaving the Halfling population, setting up the modern nations of Etharis, and driving the previous inhabitants into hiding. Subverted in that this was centuries ago, and most modern humans have little to no animosity towards the re-emerging races. However, those races have much longer memories, and aren't particularly keen to forgive and forget.
  • Planescape features some level of fantastic racism towards the player character races, but given how many leadership positions are filled by tieflings and other such folks, it tends to feel like an Informed Flaw at times. The genocidal, religious hatred between githyanki and githzerai plays it straight. However, this setting also features a genocidal, impossibly large-scale war between the Nine Hells of Baator and the Abyss, with one representing evil as tyranny and the other evil as passionate barbarism. It's Evil Romanticism Vs Evil Enlightenment acted out through genocide by races full of hate. The other immortal races also have tons of fantastic racism. Even the good ones have trouble understanding or liking each other, but at least they're "live and let live."
  • Ravenloft:
    • Demihumans are rare enough, and human superstition prevalent enough, that demihumans who would be tolerated in other campaign settings are objects of fear in many domains. Some domains extend this to spellcasters as well, forcing wizards to hide their powers or risk being burned alive. Even domains that don't lynch demihumans on sight usually treat them as second-class citizens. Do note that being leery of demihumans may be a rational reaction as there are an abundance of predatory monsters that look almost human in the Land of Mists.
    • The Vistani are Ravenloft's equivalent of Universal-movie "gypsies", and the targets of human-on-human racism within the game, dealing mostly with the same accusations as against Real Life Romani. Rudolph Van Richten became a Hunter of Monsters because of a run-in with a particularly unsavory tribe and thus held a low opinion of the whole people for most of his life — until in Van Richten's Guide to the Vistani he finally had to inspect the matter in detail.
    • The 3E Ravenloft products introduced the race of calibans: deformed offspring of humans afflicted by evil magical influences. They're treated like menial grunt-laborers at best, and usually like Freaks In The Attic.
  • Spelljammer:
    • There's a semi-secret society of humans devoted to xenophobia. Among other major groups, elves are infamous for haughtiness at best and outright racism at worst. They tend to attack goblinoids on sight, and once blew up a planet full of them. The ones aboard the eponymous ship have formed an organization dedicated to the complete genocide of all goblinoids — with no regard to whether the goblinoid in question is a child, crippled, one of the few non-evil ones, or anything else. Yes, that's right; Nazi Elves IN SPACE!. It's kind of a weird setting.
    • Regular gnomes often hold this against the tinker gnomes, or "Minoi", of the Dragonlance setting, because they feel their Bungling Inventor hat embarrasses all "true" gnomes. Non-minoi gnomes have even been known to form hunting parties that seek out minoi spelljammers and kill them, or at least wreck their ships so they can't spread any further through The Multiverse. Given that the minoi "spelljammers" are often ramshackle pieces of junk that are likely to fall out of the heavens and slam with devastating force into a city, and many of their other "inventions" aren't much safer, many people don't really consider this an evil act.
• d20 Modern: In the Urban Arcana setting, you have the Fraternal Order of Vigilance, a hate group bend on purging every Shadow creature (i.e. new arrivals from the D&D world) from the face of the Earth. They see no difference between an elf, a troll, and a patch of green slime; as far as the F.O.V. are concerned, they're all invaders from another world and must all be eradicated.
• Eclipse Phase's Fantastic Racism is mostly (with the exception of bioconservative enclaves) directed at artificial intelligences, the Artificial Human "pods" and the "clanking masses", human refugees from The Singularity who were mass-uploaded rather than being lifted into orbit, and later given cheap robot bodies so they didn't have to live in virtual reality. The nature of the setting means that many of these prejudices are just a re-sleeve away. Notably, it also explicitly mentions the Uncanny Valley as one of the issues with using a robot (or heavily modified human) body, a problem that doesn't crop up with more radical bodyplans.
• The setting of Electric Bastionland has humans giving scorn to the constant presence of "Mockeries", a race of sentient artificial beings that look and act like puppets. The book describes their place in the city as, "known, but largely despised".
• Exalted :
  • Solars and Lunars are considered Anathema in the Realm, the political and military superpower of the setting, which regularly sends out groups of hunters to kill them whenever possible, and the Immaculate Philosophy. As a result, most societies teach that they're evil spirits that permanently and irrecoverably possess the unrighteous.
  • Sidereals are almost universally distrusted by the gods, which wouldn't be too much of a problem except all the Sidereal jobs are in heaven, and people on the ground will almost always forget any interaction with the Sidereal after a day or two. This may be as subtle as distrust or needless and unwarranted audits, or can be as direct as sending a Sidereal on suicide missions.
  • Terrestrials are hated by the gods, too, but they're mostly on the Fantastic Racist side of things; the entire society of the Realm is built as a voluntary eugenics program to keep the blood-line carried trait of Terrestrial Exaltation 'pure'. Mortals, especially those of weak breeding, are treated as highly expendable cannon fodder by the heads of the Realm's major houses, while Terrestrials of stronger breeding live lives of luxury on the largess of house income and a lot of slavery. On the other hand, some areas outside of the Realm, like the Varangian City-States or An-Teng, sell any child who Exalts as a Terrestrial to the Realm.
  • People of the Air and People of the Water are either kept as exotic shows, feared and distrusted, or slaughtered on sight. The People of the Earth have largely retreated to join the Mountain Folk, who at least let them survive, but are ultimately patronizing and controlling. The green-skinned Tree People were turned into slaves by First Age Solars, and hate pretty much everyone now. All these groups were engineered from normal human stock, under conditions where "voluntary" is very difficult to define.
  • Those Mountain Folk? They used to be oh-so-perfect elves, who the Solars were worried might someday act up or refuse to provide cheap labor. The Solars thus forced the Mountain Folk's creator to metaphysically enslave and castrate the entire species, almost leading to genocide. Internally, they have a massive Fantastic Caste System set up, where the beautiful Artisan class treats even enlightened members of the shorter Worker class like grunts and the Soldier class like cannon fodder.
  • Gods universally despise the Terrestrials, and consider humans little more than prayer sources. Celestial Gods (those of concepts) treat Terrestial Gods (those of concrete things) as backwater yokels and seldom give them their pay, and the Celestial Bureaucracy often underfunds or completely ignores them. Most gods and Exalts consider Elementals as pathetic and expendable, and the godly legal protections against summoning abuse or violation of rights are codified to not cover Elementals.
  • Numbers of the black-and-white spotted djala pygmies were transported in force to become pseudo-voluntary workers for the First Age Solars, bioengineered and culturally engineered them into the even smaller Minikin. When the First Age ended, almost all the minikin and djala were enslaved by Terrestrials for hundreds of years, with only small bands escaping until the Contagion let a larger group reestablish society in their ancestral homeland. In many places, like Varangia, the local society cannot hold the concept of free djala, and outside of a handful in Lookshy, the rest are slaves by sheer stubborn habit.
  • Beastmen are considered soulless monsters in the Realm, fit to either be hunted down or made exotic slaves. Most other countries consider them bestial freaks, insane unnatural abominations, minions of The Fair Folk, or at best an often-criminal non-citizen underclass. The few countries, like Halta, that consider them citizens do so only after a thousand years of delicate meddling by Lunars, and humans will still all leave a bar or building if a beastmen enters. They're also made the the old-fashioned way, often trained by their Lunar sires, and some tribes don't consider eating human flesh cannibalism.
    • The Parrot Beastmen (don't ask) add an additional layer, only very recently giving up the intertribal wars, based on color of feathers, that resulted in genocide on at least three color-tribes. Now they'll just kill — often through blood sacrifice — any non-parrot they meet.
    • Ata-beasts and similar Talking Animals are, likewise, only considered citizens in rare places like Halta, and either enslaved or considered pets in the Realm.
  • Mortals with Enlightened Essence in the Realm are either made monks by the Realm or considered tainted criminals. Most places outside the Realm treat them better than normal humans, instead; in Paragon, immigrants with enlightened essence get a personal interview with the Perfect and a chance at being raised to nobility. Closer to the Wyld, though, such people are increasingly likely to be shaman that treat normal humans poorly.
  • Wyld Exposure can cause mutations that can be purely cosmetic, or even helpful. Because other mutations make people crazy murderers, even the least severe Wyld Mutation can result in social expulsion or death.
  • The masculine third gender/ Transgender Tya and Transgender Dereth face unpleasant jokes even in their respective native culture, and Tya risk their lives if they're too visible in Coral. Outside of the West and the Delzahn respectively, or when dealing with foreigners, the cultural clashes can be dangerous or even deadly.
  • And, least we forget good, old-fashioned racism, there's examples like Linowan, which in addition to killing you for being a beastman or having too well-trained of an animal, will also kill or enslave you for having entirely green hair and reddish-brown skin (a common occurrence in the ''Exalted'' setting). The nearest society with entirely green hair and reddish-brown skin spy on or respond in kind to anyone that looks like they're a Linowan — or even feed them to The Fair Folk. Some racism is more subtle; the xenophobic Varangians consider foreigners simple-minded for not understanding the ridiculously complex caste system.
• F.A.T.A.L. has a table for this. Odds are strong that you will "randomly" roll that your character agrees with the rest of his race (since making your own decisions about how your character thinks, looks and acts is anathema to FATAL). Most races hate most of the other races. Race in FATAL is determined randomly. It's like the average adventuring party is a powder keg of race hate just waiting to be set off.
• Gamma World has several Cryptic Alliances that enforce this trope, like the Knights of Genetic Purity (who hate anyone who is a mutant), the Iron Society (Who hates anyone who isn't a mutant), the Zoopremacists (Who hate anyone who isn't an anthropomorphic animal) amognst others.
• Magic: The Gathering:
  • The elves of Lorwyn apparently have no problem whatsoever with the concept of casually hunting down and killing intelligent beings that offend their sensibilities by diverging too far from their ideal of beauty... which is, of course, an elf.
  • In Lorwyn's Mirror Universe, Shadowmoor, the kithkin (formerly superstitious but generally decent) become hugely xenophobic and highly aggressive towards any perceived outsider, while most everybody else is Always Chaotic Evil — except the elves, who are about the only good people around.
  • Most of the races of Kaldheim are divided into two factions along color lines, and many of these — most notably the Hagi and Turga trolls, the wood and shadow elves, and the fire and frost giants — deeply detest their counterparts and often battle with one another.
• New Horizon: While not a prominent feature, there is an underlying current of racism that can be picked up on. The rulebook gives multiple "slang" and "degratory" titles to every race, Xanadu is explicitly stated to like Oylimpians (read: pure humans) but not other races, Medeans are sometimes referred to as the next evolution, and there is a strange insistence that Wafans are not robots, but people. Still, given that Everything Is Trying to Kill You, most of this tends to fall by the wayside.
• Nobilis: The philosophy of the Light likes humanity a lot, to the point where human survival is its primary axiom, but while it doesn't specifically hate Sidhe, the clothes-people of Dionyl and so on, it doesn't really care about them — it won't go out of its way to hurt elves or balloon-people or the like, but if it came down to the survival of merrow vs. the survival of humanity, the merrow would be in serious trouble. The reverse position is held by the Dark, which mostly wants humanity to disappear, ideally by each individual human following their own self-destructive impulses to their doom.
• Old World of Darkness:
  • Racism between vampires and werewolves is built into the setting. Racism also exists between the various Garou tribes, as well as between the Garou and Fera. Justified to a degree: werewolves aren't so much a race as the created servants of a specific supernatural entity (Gaia) with a very active and intolerant political agenda, and the only way not to be under the direct command of this entity is to defect to another deity that's significantly more tolerant and egalitarian, but also an Omnicidal Maniac. The political agenda involves the supremacy of life and the destruction of the unnatural, especially anything unnatural that can corrupt or destroy natural life. Essentially, werewolves are explicitly ordered by their divine head of state to commit genocide on the vampires if possible, even if they personally disagree.
  • Several Mage factions consider themselves superior to the "Sleepers" (a.k.a. normal humans).
  • Changeling: The Dreaming offers players ready-made prejudices and feuds between the various fairy races, under the heading "What [insert name here] group thinks of the others". There's a deep rift between ancient immortal Sidhe, who only recently returned from Arcadia when the doors between Fairy and Earth opened again after several centuries, and common fey, who like them even less than they do the brutal Redcaps or the creepy Sluagh as they see the sidhe as having abandoned them. When banality started overtaking the world almost all the sidhe fled to Arcadia, and when the gates reopened they returned and expected to pick up where they left off.
  • In the New World of Darkness, things are roughly similar. Every subgroup of each of the supernaturals has a column marked "Stereotypes", giving a quick rundown of what they generally think of the others of their kind and the Main Quadology (vampire, werewolf, mage, human). The books do note, however, that it's suicide to think the others conform to that. This is doubly true for, ironically, Changeling — the new setting has "hang together or hang separately" as its theme, so whatever you think of the other seemings, you had best be willing to at least pretend to get along with them or say hello to Arcadia once again.
    • While schools of magic differ, a lot of the schools of magic (Mastigos particularly) consider the entirety of Werewolves to be too dumb to even use as proper slaves. Most of them treat mortals, especially those with a chance at becoming mages, as pawns at best, if they're even viewed as being worthy of attention. And a lot of potentially misguided players consider these the good guys of the new World of Darkness.
    • Mages in general tend to look down on the other supernatural races, but one Mage organisation, the Jnanamukti, are so extreme they freak out other mages. See, the Jnanamukti have decided that if they destroy three "corrupting elements", the Fall will be undone and Mages will reclaim the power of their glory days. Those elements? Sleeper civilisation, sleeper technology, and all supernatural races who aren't the Awakened.
    • Some of the Legacies classified as "Left Handed" are also more a result of this trope than any actual specific offense necessarily committed by practitioners, with nothing in them involving a hit to the karma meter that usually makes morality a pretty well-defined problem.
  • Werewolves for the most part don't put much value in humans, seeing them as prey, mostly for biological reasons (their enhanced senses as well as the fact they tend to perceive the world like a wolf means they notice all the little weaknesses in humans, making it really difficult to not realize how easily they could hunt them). But the Werewolves known as the Pure in particular have nothing but disdain and hatred for both humans and Forsaken Werewolves (the ones who actually do want to help protect humanity somewhat). The Ivory Claws are especially notable for this, being obsessed with racial purity to the point they have a Super Breeding Program specifically designed to make sure no normal human or Forsaken werewolf makes it into their bloodlines.
• The One Ring: This is a game mechanic for social encounters — if an NPC is prejudiced against an adventurer's home culture, they'll accept fewer failed social skill checks before cutting off conversation entirely. In particular, elves and dwarves dislike each other, and Beornings have a one-sided prejudice for dwarves.
• Pathfinder:
  • Dwarves and humans hate orcs, orcs hate dwarves and humans, elves and hobgoblins despise each other and will kill one another whenever possible, drow hate all surface-dwelling elves, and kobolds hate everything that isn't a kobold or a dragon.
  • Bulabars, insect-like fey who live to fix and improve machines, hate gremlins, especially vexgits, due to the latter' drive to break every machine they find, and exterminate them whenever they can.
• Ponyfinder: Donkeys receive abysmal treatment in pony society. They're seen as half-formed, ill-favored prototypes to ponykind and as carriers of disease and spiritual taint, and typically find themselves the designated scapegoats to be blamed whenever anything goes wrong — anything from a bad harvest to a monster attack is likely to be blamed on any donkey living in the area. During the collapse of the empire of Everglow, this attitude escalated into open mob violence and attacks, forcing many donkeys to flee the empire's lands altogether. This is most prominently reflected in the name given to them in Everglow — the impure.
• Between the playable animal species in Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau, there are plenty of divisions.
  • Dogs and cats get along as well as one would expect. There was a war a few decades ago known as the War of Cats and Dogs, between the dog-dominated kingdom of Pugmire, and the cat-dominated monarchies of Mau, which has led to tension that strays into the current perceptions of the other species. Dogs often see cats as disrespectful, untrustworthy, and overly prideful, while cats see dogs as naive, brutish and overly religious. Cats living in Pugmire and dogs living in the monarchies tend to struggle, having difficulties finding work and being forced to live and work in worse-off areas. Both dogs and cats, however, are interested in each other’s research and technology, and may be somewhat diplomatic towards each other for the sake of defeating the Unseen.
  • Neither species tend to be kind to rodents, with rats being treated worse than mice. Rodents as a result are close with each other, but distrustful towards non-rodents, as rodents have no assurance of security and ability to go up the social ladder like other species have. This causes many rodents, especially rats, to embrace the "shifty, lowlife criminal" image around other species, since it gets rid of suspicion regarding the Underneath or the "shinies" they collect, if they just seem pathetic and greedy.
  • Birds and cats aren’t fans of each other, either. With birds finding cats to be distrustful and overly secretive while cats find birds to be obnoxiously loud and lacking in caution, the two are often at odds whenever they cross. Port Matthew is a cat-dominated port in Pirates of Pugmire that otherwise treats dogs, lizards and rodents better than some other areas of the monarchies (with a mouse serving as their Secretary for Diversity), but birds are effectively considered "unwelcome" there.
• Rifts uses this quite a bit. It appears chiefly with the Coalition States, who have a xenocidal policy toward D-Bees (dimensional beings) and creatures of magic, and monstrous societies such as the Splugorth of Atlantis, where humans are at best slaves, and at worst a snack. That said, there's still racial tension among humans — at least, in areas outside of Coalition control. In the New West, Native Americans and white settlers are, for the most part, at best leery of and at worst openly hostile towards one another. The Australian Outback has a similar situation.
• Rocket Age: Naturally to be expected, given the attitudes of the time. Add to that other racial and special tensions and things can get tense.
• RuneQuest: Dwarves hate all other races, for various reasons. They hate elves because the elves killed their god, and treacherously attacked them and slaughtered many dwarves during the Gods Time; this hatred is so deep that it's purely instinctive and not learned. They fear and loathe trolls because trolls compete with them for living space and also consider dwarves to be a great delicacy. They despise humans because they see humans as inconstant, treacherous, short-sighted pests who steal from them, have no vision or self-respect, and get in the way of the dwarves' attempt to fix the world's broken state.
• Savage Worlds: The Winterweir setting mentions this is a constant problem in the continent of Alacarn. Humans are not prejudiced against each other by skin but they loathe people from other nations and anyone who isn't a member of their own race.
• Sentinels of the Multiverse: The hero Tempest has a troubling streak of prejudice in his nature when associating with Sky-Scraper; although the regime controlling Sky-Scraper's planet also destroyed Tempest's, Sky-Scraper not only wasn't involved, she was part of the resistance against that regime. It's a big moment of Character Development in the lore when, after a blistering rant about how awful Thorathians are and how he'll never forgive them, he tells the Celestial Tribunal that Sky-Scraper is one of the most heroic people he's ever met.
• Shadowrun: An important background element, as racist tensions between humans and "metahumans" such as orks, dwarves, trolls and elves (not to mention the ghouls) are present, complete with extreme right-wing party humans advocating their persecution. Even though Shadowrun takes place 20 Minutes into the Future of our world, normal racism has fallen by the wayside, having been mostly subsumed by the fantastic variety (as the rulebook puts it, "Why worry about the guy with dark skin when that horned thing has fists the size of your head?")
  • Early editions of Shadowrun have the other races refer to humans as "breeders", implying an analogy to gays (this being an actual slur used by gays towards straights).
  • The creators of Shadowrun have stated that the racism toward orks, trolls and ghouls in the game was specifically so that typically dystopian racism could be in the game as an Aesop toward real racism.
  • That said, both the Japanese and Native American Nations have a degree of racism directed towards them; in both cases, this is due to the power that they've gained. In addition, with the shattering of the USA and Canada by Native American shamans, the rise to power of nations such as Aztlan (in Middle and South-America) and a revival of long-persecuted ethnic minorities in general, there is a backlash against "white" people in parts of the world, especially against former colonial masters.
  • It does go the the other way. The Japanese are arguably the most heavily bigoted group in the setting, actively persecuting any and all metahumans to a degree disturbingly similar to that of Nazi Germany (stopping just shy of actual extermination camps by "merely" sticking them all in a concentration camp on Yomi Island), and being prejudiced against non-Japanese humans as Japan of that same time period; this goes a long way towards explaining why everybody else dislikes them. Japanese racism was slightly improved from 3rd edition onwards, with a new Emperor that reversed some of the worst treatments. He's also fond of oni, the Japanese metavariant of orks, and has hired a lot of them to be guards around his palace and other imperial buildings, much to the displeasure of the rest of the imperial residents, who do not look as favoribly upon the oni.
  • In the elvish principalities of Tír Tairngire (former Oregon) and Tir na nOg (Ireland), elves look down on anyone not an elf, and non-elves are officially second-class citizens (if they have citizen rights at all). Similarly, in the dwarven enclaves and the troll kingdom Schwarzwald in the ADL (Allianz Deutscher Länder, former Germany) there is subtle racism against non-metatypes.
  • It's actually a rule. There is a "negative" quality you can take that gives you bonus points for being prejudiced. Ironically if one is good enough at roleplaying lies to such people being racist basically becomes "free extra BP".
  • In general, orks tend to get this worst. Many people are worried that their fast breeding means that they'll own replace humanity as the planet's dominant race, and their intellectual and aesthetic deficiencies don't help either. Elves and trolls get this the least: elves because they're pretty, trolls because openly antagonizing a 300-pound giant with super-strength and bone plating is absolutely stupid.
  • As for dwarves, they are still discriminated against, but they're better integrated into society than the other metatypes due to their reputation as hard workers and the fact they resemble humans with medical dwarfism. Gameplay-wise, dwarves and trolls have to pay 20% more for their lifestyle and to get items specifically designed and produced for them due to needing dwarf- and troll-sized clothing, living space, furniture and cars.
• Most Great Dragons tend to be bigoted towards metahumanity, seeing non-dragons as short-lived, impulsive and annoying. Some of them, including but not limited to Alamaïs, Lofwyr and Sirrurg, take it a step further and see absolutely nothing wrong with using metahumans as a food source.
• The Splinter:
  • Beings that can't shapeshift are seen as non-sapient, despite any evidence to the contrary.
  • The Voormis induce an instinctive, seemingly elemental feeling of revulsion from other sentient beings.
  • Everybody hates the Ophidians, but that's because they're generally pretty vile. Turning into a black, tentacle-like serpent doesn't help matters.
• In Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game, Animal Hybrids face this from everyone, and Cyborgs face this from non-Cyborg fighters.
  • Animal Hybrids are feared and distrusted because they have a propensity to fly into bestial berserk frenzies, in which state they blindly attack and try to kill whatever has evoked their rage. To represent this mechanically, they suffer limitations to their Social ability scores and increased expense to the Interrogation, Arena and Investigation skills.
  • Cyborgs are loathed by purely organic Street Fighters because they are seen as the truest form of sell-outs, disgraces who mock the very principles of strength and mastery that Street Fighters hold dear. Because of this, they suffer a penalty to their Honor stat and increased expense to their Streetwise and Investigation skills.
• Transhuman Space has various forms. Biochauvinism (the belief that A.I.s and Ghosts aren't real people) is common, and bioroids are second-class citizens in the United States. Various combinations exist, such as the Born Human Movement, which is prejudiced against bioroids and A.I.s, but not Ghosts.
• Traveller: The races that invented Jump drive actually call themselves Major Races. Meaning, of course, that other races are minor races. Racism is theoretically a "not done by gentlemen" sort of thing, especially as the Imperium is based on a multicultural loyalty to The Emperor(who always ends up being human, even though adoption is a recognized means of succession). Despite that, racism is as common in Traveller as it is in Real Life.
• Warhammer 40,000: One of the setting's more illustrative quotes is "Fear the alien, the mutant, the heretic". While attributed to the human Imperium, virtually every race looks down upon the others. Considering the Imperium of Man is rabidly anthropocentric, and even regularly views genetic and dogmatic deviance as punishable by death. The Eldar view every other species as lesser species to by used to their own ends, and Dark Eldar and Craftworld Eldar look down upon one another^NoteThe Craftworld Eldar think the Dark Eldar are savage and parasitic hedonists, while the Dark Eldar think the Craftworlders are monkish, too self restraining, and too boring to thrive. The Orks tend to "crump any o' 'dose gits what ain't Orky enuff!", and the most you can get is an odd respect for being fun to fight, which only ensures they will try to kill you even more. And Necrons hate the Eldar on principle due to historical racial enmity, and think everybody else is too disorderly and primitive, not to mention alive to begin with.
  • Played with the T'au. The Tau think that just about anybody can join their empire, though humans tend to be annexed as second-class citizens (depending on the world, or the source), though no Eldar or Space Marine has "lowered" themselves to join them, and the Tyranids and Orks have been deemed too aggressive and immune to negotiation to join the T'au. Within the empire it is strongly suggested the blueskins are very much first among equals, and some stories suggest they treat other races as relatively disposable; in one story they openly used an alien population center as bait for Drukhari raiders, only joining in when the psychotic ravagers were fully committed to slaughtering the luckless aliens.
  • "Averted" with the Tyranids, as they view all other species with too much mindless hunger to view any non-Tyranid with any considered racial prejudice. They are an equal-opportunity eater, and a planetary invasion often ends with them sacrificing all species on a planet, ending with themselves, into digestive pools to be used in the next generation of Tyranids.
  • During the Great Crusade, the Imperium discovered one of the long-separated sects of mankind who called themselves the Quietude. They decided to combine human biology with technology to a degree even greater than the Adeptus Mechanicus. The Imperial fleet sent human soldiers to make contact with the Quietude and request the terms of their re-integration into the Imperium, but contact with them was lost. The Quietude responded to the main fleet by asserting that the Imperial humans were clearly genetically-engineered creatures of alien origin sent to trick them, and cited the vivisection of the missing guardsmen as evidence of this claim. As a result of this misinformation and hostility, the Imperium sent in the Space Wolves.
    • "Men have been denounced as mad for simply putting into practice what the Saints have preached." In principle, the Imperium would love to do this on every world it has, but most recognize that would be disastrous while they still have a wars to fight. As the Rallying cry goes...
      KILL THE MUTANT!
      BURN THE HERETIC!
      PURGE THE UNCLEAN!
    • One of the more ostracised groups of humans are the mutants, or "Twists", humans born with horrible deformities. While they are often killed on sight on many worlds, many others are more tolerant, happy to keep them as expendable labor and second-class citizens (or third- or fourth-class, such as life is for the average citizen of the Imperium) so long as their population remains controlled tightly enough. Humans idealize the standard human form to the point that many stable human subspecies that developed after millennia in isolation are looked down upon, and many are exterminated outright.
    • Also, psykers (or psychics in any other setting) possess a mutation that's subtle and consistent enough to be put into their own classification aside from physical mutants. They are feared and controlled by the rest of humanity, and looked down upon as mutants and "Witches" by the orthodox humans. Unlike mutants, they do present some of the threat to humanity the Imperium propagndizes, since unchecked psykers can cause havoc by sheer power or subtle manipulations, and that's not counting the negative side effects their powers can cause...
  • Gaunt's Ghosts: Necropolis is rife with interhuman racism, particularly by the higher ups in Vervunhive, who regard the imperial guard regiments saving their asses as inferior even after displaying complete incompetence at defending themselves, they even go as far as to try and have a tank commander put on trial, in the middle of the war because he knocked down a couple of buildings due to a traffic jam the vVrvunhivers created, this quote by VPHC Tarrian towards Gaunt seconds before he gets shot really seals the deal.
    Tarrian: Gak you wretched offworld scum!
  • On the other side, all Aliens view humans with a mixture of hatred, fear and contempt. The Imperium has destroyed thousands of Xeno civilizations over the millennia, and still strives to eliminate the survivors, with varying degrees of success.
  • Dark Heresy features the character talent Hatred, which gives a bonus to hit in melee combat. It can be taken for specific groups including alien races, psychic individuals, heretics, and mutants. Of note is that Hatred is available almost exclusively to the Cleric class, making it one of the biggest plusses to being religious in 40K (although it is of course required for everyone to act religious in order to stay alive). At high level, Clerics get to take the talent Litany of Hate, which lets you share your hatred bonus with your friends. In other words, hatred in Dark Heresy is a good thing (as it should be, from the perspective of the Imperium).
  • As mentioned, the Eldar generally have the whole Superior Species complex thing going on, but the Dark Eldar take this to a whole new level. Not only are non-Eldar species inferior to them, but other Eldar as well; they see themselves as the true scions of the Eldar race, and Craftworlders and Exodites are just weak, unworthy fools. Not only that, but Dark Eldar Trueborn (as in, members of their society who are born through the natural process rather than People Jars) also view their "Half-Born" brethren as inferior Cannon Fodder and not true Eldar. It really highlights what pretentious, elitist scum they are.
• Warhammer has its share of speciesism and prejudice. People from the Empire are horrifically prejudiced about Dwarfs, Halflings and Elves as well as humans not from the Empire, humans from different provinces in the Empire... and of course these are the ones they'll actually talk to (maybe). Anything else will pretty much get attacked on sight. On the other hand Dwarfs consider humans to be soft and elves to be even softer as well as arrogant magic-using bastards. Elves have racism within the three different factions - each hating each other to various degrees (though the worst is between the Dark and High elves) in addition to considering any other race to be little more than backwards pawns for them to use or exterminate at will.
  • On the human-to-human side, Imperials and other southern humans fear and despise the Norscans due to them being frothing Chaos-worshipping barbarians intent on slaughter and conquest. The Norscans, conversely, see all non-Norscans as weaklings and sissies who worship impotent gods barely worth thinking about. Indeed, Sigmar and Myrmidia are not even things to be hated in the unholy north, rather they are just as openly heckled and ridiculed as their worshippers. It's in fact so bad in Norsca that 'southling' is actually a fairly serious insult there. Then there's the Kurgan living right up next to the Chaos wastes directly, whom even the Norscans consider to be bastards. And then there is the Hung, whom Kurgan consider backstabbing uncouth barbarians. And don't get the Hung started on the Tong, who are so hated and feared as to be considered mutants first and human second.
  • Brettonnia is a nation of French Jerk nobles who consider non-Bretonnians only somewhat better than beastmen mutants, while their own peasants are worth somewhere between tools and farm animals. The Empire in turn sees Bretonnia as backwards hicks who couldn't hold real alcohol in to save their lives, guzzling fancy wine all day.
  • Kislev is Grim Up North next to Norsca, and consider themselves above the Emprie and Bretonnia for being able to live there as opposed to the soft south. The Empire and Bretonnia think that Kislev is some sort of half barbarian nation that serves as an excellent meat shield.
  • Even within the Empire there's a lot of prejudice. Reiklanders are all puffed-up, effete snobs. Nordlanders are all more-or-less half-Norscan, wolf-worshipping savages. Marienburgers are treacherous and greedy, penny-pinching bastards. Averlanders are... very fond of their sheep, and Hochlanders are the same way about their prized heirloom rifles. Stirlanders are inbred country bumpkins who drown cats for entertainment and drink their ale hot. Talabeclanders are even more backwards tree huggers who drink cheap moonshine Thunder Water because they can't afford good old ale. Ostermarkers are half Kislevite half peasant grumps. Middenlanders are barely this side of barbarians and belligerent drunks. Ostlanders could also be seen as belligerent drunks, if they weren't just drunk all the time period. The Halflings of Mootland, when people actually acknowledge they exist, treat them as natural thieves or argue the Mad God Ranald made them as a bizarre joke.
  • Despite their name, Dragon Ogres have had historically very poor relations with both true Dragons and Ogres. The fought open wars with Dragons in the times before the Old Ones, when they contested for rulership of what became the Old World. In later times, they developed an almost instant enmity with Ogres, resulting in further violence that drove them out of the mountains that the Ogres claimed as their homelands.
• Warhammer: Age of Sigmar has this between "Azyrite" humans and "Reclaimed" humans as a major source of drama. When it became clear that Sigmar was losing the war against Chaos, he announced he was sealing his realm of Azyr off from the rest of the Mortal Realms, and anyone who didn't make it through the gates before they were shut was on their own. Five centuries later, he launched the Realmgate Wars, re-opening the gates and sending thousands of his people out to rebuild their civiliations. These "Azyrite" settlers worked with the descendants of those people who were left out of Azyr, reffered to as "the Reclaimed" by them. The culture shock between the two groups, however, has been a massive barrier to Sigmar's efforts, with the Azyrites looking down on the Reclaimed as savages and barely better than Chaos-cultists. The Reclaimed, while grateful to Sigmar for freeing them from the hordes of Chaos, view the Azyrites as stuck-up and self-righteous. What form this takes varies from city to city; in some cases, the Azyrites turn the Reclaimed into a lower class, while in others, the two just build seperate-but-nearby sister settlements and try to ignore each other.
• World Tree (RPG): Prime society is fantastically racist. Sleeth and Khytsoyis can expect to be routinely denied entrance into guilds and high society, and for that matter much in the way of respect — a Khytsoy archbishop and duke was expected to feel honored for being allowed to sit among the day laborers at her own retirement banquet. Non-primes get it even worse, and are lucky when they're treated as second-class citizens and allowed to enter cities without being lynched — more commonly, they're considered monsters or non-entities whom the primes can conquer, displace, rob and kill with little consequence.

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