- The aptly (if unimaginatively) named Cannibal from the Dark Champions sourcebook Murderer's Row.
- In Deadlands, engaging in the act of "humanitarianism" is universally regarded as a sin against, at the very least, one's own humanity. It's one of the quickest ways to have one's Player Character turned into an NPC, and only very extreme extenuating circumstances allow it. But even then... you can still get turned into a Wendigo if you eat human flesh in winter, regardless of circumstances. Spring, summer, and autumn do not carry this problem - but even then, you still only get to chow down on fellow humies when the circumstances are really desperate.
- Dungeons & Dragons has too many "really omnivore" sentient creatures to list, but even there are some oustanding examples.
- Sahuagin ("sea devils") have a peculiar worldview of their own, a key point of which is phrased as "Meat is meat": whatever it was, once it ceased to move, it's food, that's all. Their name for themselves is "we who eat." Normally they won't kill their own to eat, but will eagerly kill for lots of other reasons (like challenge), then eat and share with their kin.
- Flinds are a subspecies of gnoll (hyaena-like humanoids) which are just as mean, but smarter, haughty,
better organized and use sort of nunchaku to disarm opponents. "Flind" is said to mean "cannibal" ("gnoll-eater") in Gnollish. note - Co-narrator of some Planescape accessories Xanxost the slaad intersperses his planar chant with offhanded mentions of eating sentient beings: mephits (he digresses to mention this favourite food at any opportunity), humans, fiends... and turns it into comedy gold.Xanxaost: They are hateful. Vicious. Bad-tasting.
- The halflings of the Dark Sun setting will eat any sentient race with the exception of their own kind, leading to them being called "cannibals."
- Dragonlance features a race of giant goblins called cave lords. They actually heal themselves by eating the flesh of other creatures—and eating other goblins heals them up to three times as many hit points than other creatures.
- Cannibalism isn't as prominent in Ravenloft as other, more classically-Gothic evils, but it's a thematic feature of domains like Vorostokov and (in Fanon) Ghastria. If werebeasts qualify as human, then they're major offenders in this area also.
- Dead cannibals sometimes spontaneously raise as Ghouls, corpse-eating member of The Undead.
- Lizardfolk will kill and eat intruders into their lands. Because they're potentially viable as PC races (at least in later editions), and their comparatively alien mindset that doesn't place much reverence for the dead, they often get memed as being happy to eat their allies the moment said allies die.
- There's also the Book of Vile Darkness, which provides some spells that only work by eating the flesh/organs of a certain individual, such as Absorb Mind, which provides a chance to gain certain information by eating a piece (one ounce to be precise) of the subject's brain. Note that for this spell to work, it doesn't matter how old the brain is, just as long as it's still bloody.
- Among the many colorful faces you will meet in the Feng Shui supplement Blowing Up Hong Kong is Ng Pui, an insane sorcerer and Serial Killer who runs a pushcart that sells steamed dumplings and pork buns. The pork buns in question are made from the people that he kills once a week with his meat cleaver.
- Games Workshop games:
- Warhammer 40,000:
- Some background material plays this for laughs in typically darkly humorous way. A common source of food rations for the Imperial Guard and many Imperial citizens on some drearier worlds is "Soylens Viridians," which is a very blatant shout-out. Also present in the universe is the infamous Corpse Starch, and the even more heavily processed Block (also used as a clandestine delivery method for a variety of suppressive narcotics). It's unclear exactly how close to cannibalism these rations actually are, though; among the fandom, theories range from "Soylens Viridians is people," to "Soylens Viridians is recycled human protein," to "Soylens Viridians is a soy product cultivated on recycled human protein." This is parodied in Ciaphas Cain by relating Soylens Viridians to promethium (gasoline).
- The Kroot, a species of avian humanoids that typically work as mercenaries, cannibalize both members of other species and their own fallen. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, it's implied that the Kroot can't digest vegetables (which the Tau would prefer them to eat) so it's meat or go hungry. Secondly, Kroot can absorb genetic material from their food; this allows different kindreds to quickly evolve various adaptations. While their Tau allies find it barbaric, the pragmatic Kroot see it as just another form of progress, as well as a safeguard from the loss of sentience that may result from eating solely prey animals. Funnily enough, this means that the Kroot are the least xenophobic and hate-filled race in the game - because their philosophy encourages dietary diversity. The Tau that work with Kroot long enough seem to understand why the Kroot do this and, while still finding it disgusting, make no attempts to prevent it, as shown in the first Cain book. Indeed, the Tau on the planet learn of the Genestealer Cult, thanks to the Kroot being able to taste the infection in the dead, and use them to find the nest in the undercity.
- One of the many unpleasant jobs Gretchin are regulated to in the service of the Orks is "Emergency Food Source". Orks will also eat the flesh of humans they've either killed in battle or captured and enslaved - a classic Tankbusta initiation rite involves barbecuing an enemy crew in the burning wreckage of their own vehicle, and snacking on them with a nice steaming mug of engine oil. Orks will also happily eat Squigs, which are their primary foodsource. As all Orkoids (which include Gretchin and Squigs) are technically the same species, this means that Orks pretty much thrive on cannibalism.
- The Dark Eldar feed their slaves with processed corpses of dead slaves. It's also strongly implied the Dark Eldar themselves also feed on the flesh and blood of sentient beings, in addition to deriving sustenance from them in an more abstract matter by feeding on their suffering. Practically everything in Commorragh is made by slaves or from slaves, including the food.
- In the mildly less GRIMDARK treatments of the material, Imperial Guard quartermasters in a warzone are ...sanctioned... for serving people steaks without any more treatment than straight butchering. In the online introductory adventure to Dark Heresy, when the characters encounter the "protein vats" in the Alms House, and the full realization of what was in those vats hits them, the rules suggest having the Player Characters make a Fear test, suggesting that on that world at least cannibalism is considered abhorrent.
- Tyranids are Extreme Omnivores so they are also humanitarians by extension. Ironically, most of the organisms they have won't eat you; they'll just eviscerate you into bite-sized chunks for the smaller gribbles (who's actual job is to eat things) because the big ones weren't born with a digestive tract.
- Chaos rituals frequently indulge in this, if not flat-out torturing the poor soul until a daemon pops out. Suffice to say if anything in this universe looks at you with a salivating mouth, it's time to book it.
- Chaos worshippers will also cannibalize just for fun. Nurgle worshippers consider the potential infection vector a benefit due to the serving the resident Plague Master god and Slaanesh worshippers serving the Sense Freak that Slaanesh is do it for a combination of pleasure and fun. One Slaaneshi Daemon Princess, the Mistress of Spite, ate multiple worlds worth of people and ascended to Daemonhood by impressing Slaanesh at the scale of her Villainous Gluttony.
- The Black Feast, a splinter cult of the World Eaters Legion of Astartes, are infamous for devouring the remains of those they slay during battle. They see this act as the greatest insult they can give to their foe and as a punishment for their weakness.
- One of the many bio-implants all Astartes possess is the Omophagea, which allows them to absorb genetic memory from the flesh they eat. Usually the Astartes will eat the enemy's brain to gain the most memory, however even a drop of blood can provide a little information. Astartes may gain an unnatural craving for blood and flesh in the event that the Omophagea is mutated, and loyalist Astartes who engage in it can expect to be under very close scrutiny from a chapter Chaplain or Apothecary for several days afterwards, so the practice is rare.
- Necromunda:
- Scavvies have no qualms about consuming other sentient creatures if they do not have enough resources to buy food for the entire gang. Capture enemies or those Scavvies too badly injured to be useful anymore are most likely to be the victims of such a fate. While a single model was enough to feed an entire gang in 1st Edition, 2nd Edition introduced a formulanote to work out how many gang members each model could feed.
- Ghouls, from the 2nd Edition version of Scavvy gangs, are individuals driven so mad by their hunger that they began to eat the dead and acquired a taste for it. Ghouls are so driven by their hunger they will even stop and feed in the middle of a battle. Even their Scavvy friends think these guys take it too far; after all a Scavvy only eats resorts to cannibalism until it gets something better.
- Necromunda is a pretty big Crapsack World even compared to an average Imperial hive world, so processed long pork makes up a notable percentage of the average protein intake.
- Warhammer:
- Goblins don't have it much better their Gretchin cousins above. In fact, they will often readily kill and eat each other. The Orcs will often occasionally eat Gobbos and other humanoids. One of their more infamous battles is the Blood River Massacre and Barbecue. Orcs and Goblins alike keep the minuscule Snotlings on hand as combination cheap labor/cute widdle pets/light snacks.
- The Skaven readily eat the bodies of the dead after a battle, whether they are friend and foe. They call their own dead 'burrow pork'. Some background material indicates that this is due to them expending so much energy during a battle that they enter a state known as the Black Hunger where they desperately consume as much meat as possible.
- The culture of the Ogres revolves around cannibalism. They worship a deity called the Great Maw who encourages them to devour everything in sight, from slaves to rocks. After a battle, the Ogres gorge themselves on corpses, captives, and fallen allies alike. The most common way for an Ogre to become Tyrant of his tribe is to kill and eat his predecessor. Ogre "Butchers" (warrior-priests) channel the magic of their god by devouring certain ritual objects (examples given in the army book consist of severed limbs, bedrock, troll entrails, bones, bull Rhinox hearts and brains)—they call it "Gut Magic". The only reason they keep Gnoblars (Hill Goblins) as slaves instead of snacks is because they're too bony to make a good meal and even then Ogres will still eat them if there is no other food source available.
- Warhammer: Age of Sigmar:
- The Bloodreaver tribes that make up the bulk of Khorne's Bloodbound forces are cannibals, and consume the flesh of their foes almost exclusively. After a battle they also force their captives to partake in their Dark Feast, damning them to the service of the Blood God.
- Ogors of have a religious obsession with eating and won't let a scrap of meat go to waste, including the bodies of friends and foes alike.
- Warhammer 40,000:
- GURPS Reign of Steel: The Denver Zonemind sometimes renders its dead human slaves into a "high protein soup" to feed the others. (In the slaves' defense, though, the robots don't tell them where it comes from!)
- Hollow Earth Expedition, supplement Mysteries of the Hollow Earth. Cannibals hunt, kill and eat human beings. Molemen will capture and eat humans who intrude into Moletown and those who encounter their hunting parties on the surface.
- Invisible Sun: The cardiophagy spell allows you to restore your stat pools by eating a human heart. Since there are also spells to create lifeless copies of a person, this does not necessarily require you to murder someone beforehand.)
- Kitsune: Of Foxes and Fools: The "Bloodthirst" consequence causes a fox spirit to acquire a craving for human liver and eat the next fool they successfully trick, gaining no tails. The card art shows Sadako swooping down on the lazy minion with a knife and a fork.
- Magic: The Gathering: This is one of the many Horror Tropes present in Innistrad, as seen on Village Cannibals
, a creature card that grows stronger whenever another Human creature card dies while it's in play.Some have endured the horrors of Innistrad by becoming the worst monsters of all. - In Nomine: Mirchenko's, a gourmet restaurant described in You Are Here, hides a dark secret — every now and again, the restaurant becomes reserved for a private dining club, who gather behind locked doors to enjoy exquisitely-prepared meals of human flesh, obtained by the owner through a second identity as a homeless shelter volunteer. It's an entirely human-made and -run affair, although it won't be long before it attracts the interest of demons of Gluttony. The proprietor is a cheerful psychopath who seems himself as having risen above petty human morality; the chef just likes cooking and doesn't care what he puts in his pans.
- Orkworld: The Orks practice necrophagy, eating their dead to absorb their spirits (and keep an Eldritch Abomination from consuming said spirits in the afterworld).
- Paranoia: One series of missions involves Computer-mandated "improvements" to the Food Vats. Eventually, entire sectors plunge into famine, only for a number of citizens to discover that (a) they have the Matter Eater mutation, and (b) real meat tastes much better than vat product...
- The Politics Of Cannibals has the players taking on the roles of candidates for the next chief of a cannibal tribe. If you can't sway a tribe member into voting for you, you can have them thrown into the cooking pot.
- Powers And Perils: Heroes magazine Volume 2 #2 article "The Sea of Tears". Mermen and merwomen love the taste of human flesh. Merwomen will lure humans into their clutches by taking them as lovers and then eating them when they're no longer wanted.
- Rocket Age: The desert dwelling Chanari of Mars are widely rumoured to be cannibals. This seems to mostly be city dweller propaganda, however, the Grey Chanari tribes actually do eat the dead. Admittedly the Grey Chanari's status as Chanari is widely debated; they are closer to being Frazetta Man than anything else.
- Shadowrun
- Metahumans infected with the Human-Metahuman Vampiric Virus turn into Vampires, Ghouls, and other things, all of which require either blood, raw meat or internal organs of other humans/metahumans to survive.
- The Germany sourcebook contains a shadowtalk-post about a cannibal-cuisine restaurant in the lawless enclave of Berlin, although another shadowtalker's post immediately afterwards claims it's a load of hooey.
- The World of Darkness:
- New World of Darkness:
- Mage: The Awakening has cannibals in the Devourers of the Flesh, a Left-Handed Path emerging from the Adamantine Arrows whose members follow the age old maxim that if you eat your enemy, you gain his strength. The Cult of the Red Word, a New England-based cult, also worships an alternate timeline given sentience by the Abyss. They believe that consuming their victims symbolically erases their presence from reality, piece by piece — and it literally does so if they prepare and consume the victim in their sacred temple.
- Vampire: The Requiem: The Noctuku are a Nosferatu bloodline whose members regularly need to consume flesh (any flesh, but they prefer human meat to animal, and vampire most of all), lest they risk going into a hunger frenzy. They don't gain any nourishment from it and have to regurgitate it soon after, but they don't seem to mind this. Similarly, the Macellarius, a Ventrue bloodline of rotund gourmands, gain the ability to digest human flesh the same way they gain nourishment from blood, or later to snack on vampire flesh to grow in physical strength and ability or even to have access to the powers their meal possessed.
- Werewolf: The Forsaken allows the Uratha to regain Essence by consuming the flesh of humans or wolves; this is a humongous sin against the game's Karma Meter. (The only sins higher are betrayal of one's own pack and eating werewolf flesh.) There's even a Lodge of Bale Hounds, the Lodge of the Feast, devoted to sampling strange flesh... and getting others hooked on it. There's also the Lodge of Wendigo, a subset of the Blood Talons. Given their totem and a Rite that allows them to gain knowledge from consumption of flesh, they tend this way... though many of them are trying really, really hard to kick the habit.
- Hunter: The Vigil: One of the sample "cults" in the corebook is a gourmand society whose best-regarded dish is an absolutely heavenly liver pate... which is actually human liver pate, harvested from children kept imprisoned on a farm in boxes and force-fed, in a process reminiscent of that used to produce real pate de foie gras. The membership is entirely unaware of this. The Faithful of Shulpae, from the supplement Mortal Remains, devour the flesh of supernaturals to gain their powers, seeing it as feasting on the gods.
- Old World of Darkness:
- Demon: The Fallen: Demons who are banished from their physical bodies are at risk of being eaten by other demons, who then absorb their powers. Oddly enough, this isn't ranked as a sin.
- Vampire: The Masquerade: The Nagaraja bloodline are unable to get any nourishment from blood; they need to eat raw human flesh.
- Werewolf: The Apocalypse: A number of tribal camps are dedicated to eating humans for one reason or another. The wolf-born Red Talons practise it as a tribe-wide thing, since they see humans as prey animals who've forgotten their place, but keep it on the down-low since they know the other tribes strongly oppose it. The Wendigo do not practise it, in part because thanks to their tribal totem, the titular Wendigo, being a man-eater, they know they'll be first on the suspect list when evidence of werewolves eating humans shows up.
- In both Vampire games, there's a form of Monstrous Cannibalism vampires can commit known as "diablerie", where they devour both the blood and soul of another vampire. This is considered an unforgivable sin and capital crime by most of vampire society, and automatically drops the perpetrator one point on the Karma Meter, but it comes with benefits to balance the drawbacks - if the victim was stronger, the perpetrator steals a portion of that power (reducing their Generation in Masquerade, raising their Blood Potency in Requiem).
- New World of Darkness:
