History WhatMeasureIsANonHuman / TabletopGames

** The Eldar are willing to sacrifice millions of human lives to protect their Craftworlds. They ''are'' a DyingRace, but they do go to extremes. It should be noted that the main reason their so desperate to stay alive is that while humans experience CessationOfExistence after death, Eldar are [[DraggedOffToHell eaten by]] [[GodOfEvil Slaanesh]] unless they trap their souls in gems using their {{Magitech}}.
*** Despite {{Flanderization}}, the Craftworld Eldar actually ''[[AvertedTrope avert]]'' this. Canon Black Library novels show that they do consider the moral ramifications of wiping out entire human worlds to save only a few of their own... very briefly. Mostly, [[IDidWhatIHadToDo pragmatism wins out]].

* Early on, the fact that the ''TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}}'' setting is evidently an artificial creation of the Dark Powers caused some gamers to argue that, if the domains weren't "real", then neither are the people who live there: that other than Mist-napped outlanders, everyone in the setting was only a construct and could be killed with impunity. Having ''Feast of Goblyns'', the first published adventure for the setting, involve the creation and ''dissolution'' of a populated domain, due to the [=PCs=]' own actions, did nothing to clear up this MoralDissonance.

** ''Lords Of Madness'' tops the ''[=BoED=]'' in this specific regard. It starts with lumping things into [[ArmedWithCanon never-before-seen]] MetaOrigin and continues with "Aberration Hunter" idea and corresponding magic effects. Given that Aberration is a type where all monsters not fitting into others can be piled at will (though one can squirrel away [[WhatMeasureIsANonCute cute]] ones into Magic Beast) and 3rd edition adds an Mix And Mash Worlds to the old D&D MixAndMatchCritters tradition, the whole picture is rather... funny: TheMultiverse rightfully belongs to the humanoids and knows it. That's after AD&D Monster Manuals where ''everything'' has "Ecology" entry. The concept soon got [[http://nodwick.humor.gamespy.com/gamespyarchive/index.php?date=2005-07-13 mocked]] in ''ComicStrip/{{Nodwick}}''. Subverted in 4e, when it is given a passing mention that one of Kord's Exalted (No not [[TabletopGame/{{Exalted}} that]], it's kind of like a D&D version of a saint) is a Beholder.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Space 1889}}'' Interestingly and perfectly logically averted. First contact in the world of Space 1889 is not something that has given rise to much existential questions about the nature of humanity. The colonial powers have treated Mars as another area to trade with and colonize and Martians as another type of native. Humans consider the human-like Canal and Hill Martians to have value near or just like a human. By trying to convert them to Christianity, for instance, they indirectly admit that Martians have souls and need salvation. This reaction is actually perfectly logical. To the average, fairly racist late Victorian European mind it is a small concession to admit that someone has a soul and a value near human. There are, after all, plenty of next-to-worthless humans (in their racist minds). Recognizing Martians as equal to white Europeans would be a completely different matter.

* The old ''Marvel Super Heroes'' game from the '80s replaced the experience systems with a "Karma" system that rewarded heroes for doing heroic things, and penalized them for being unheroic. Killing a living person reset you to zero. But robots didn't count, so you could kill them all you wanted. Problem was, people like The Vision or Machine Man were also counted as robots. So you could gun down the Vision without penalty, unless you nicked the Scarlet Witch in the process. (This was clarified in a supplement to mean ''non-sentient'' robots, but by then the damage was done.)

%% * Believe it or not, the Phyrexian Sleepers in MTG. In Time Streams.
* In Ex Tempore, most of the inhabitants of Ex consider the lives of the people of the Circle (A.K.A. us) to be merely tools in observational experiments. After all, all time in Orbis can be seen from Ex, as if we were frozen. How real can we be, anyway?
* Oddly Averted with [[MegaCorp ONI]] form ''TabletopGame/AT43'' whose legions of sentient Zombines are still on payroll and still move up the ladder. In fact one of the back story talks about a number of PR stunts (after the nonsentient ones messed things up) included a successful cartoon about a Super Zombine hero and one of Oni's main heroes ''marring one'' it worked so well that a number of still living people wished to be made into Zombines.
* The Fetches from ''TabletopGame/ChangelingTheLost'' are an interesting case. They're magical fae creations made to replace the characters snatched by the Gentry, but depending on how well the Fetch is made it can range from a sociopathic monster to a decent moral creature that has no idea what it really is. Killing a Fetch damages a Changeling's [[KarmaMeter Clarity]], but also provides the changeling with a portion of his/her lost soul. It's really hard to reclaim your old life when your friends and family don't realize you've ever been gone, and can cause all sorts of complications because it might not be immediately obvious if your Fetch is a decent person, a screwed-up person, a sociopath, or a spy for [[TheFairFolk the Gentry]]. The material implies that most Changelings kill their Fetch when they return (or hire other Changelings known as Jack Ketches to do the deed in their place), but reactions range all over the scale.
* Averting this trope -- i.e. treating your own and other characters as if they're real beings whose lives have importance, not imagined proxies in a recreational fantasy -- is a big part of what "deep role-playing" is all about. Conversely, "metagaming" invokes it deliberately, treating characters as mechanisms for scoring points and achieving game-objectives.
* In Palladium's ''TabletopGame/{{RIFTS}}'' setting, the Coalition States have genocidal desires towards D-Bees. This trope gets invoked because many players come to sympathise with this goal due to the fact that, really, it seems like eight or nine out of ten D-Bees ''are'' AlwaysChaoticEvil.
* In ''TabletopGame/GeniusTheTransgression'' all intelligent life is explicitly equal (even though most of the non-human life technically don't exist... reality is complicated). Plenty of characters have different opinions, which is reflected in their declining KarmaMeter.
* Using The Other playbook in ''TabletopGame/InterstitialOurHeartsIntertwined'' raises these questions, as they are a copy of some kind of another character and have as many moves pointing to them as disposable and fake as they do about asserting their own identity.

* In ''TabletopGame/GeniusTheTransgression'' all intelligent life is explicitly equal (even though most of the non-human life technically don't exist... reality is complicated). Plenty of characters have different opinions, which is reflected in their declining KarmaMeter.

** Debates of this sort eventually quieted down after the ''Domains of Dread'' hardback and 3E products from Arthaus made playing natives of the Land of Mists more common. Guess nobody wants their ''player character'' to be branded "only a construct".
*** coughWarforgedcough

** The Eldar are willing to sacrifice millions of human lives to protect their Craftworlds. They ''are'' a DyingRace, but they do go to extremes.

** The Tau are the only race to value the lives of other races beyond their own, and even accept other alien races into their burgeoning empire. Unfortunately, given [[CrapsackWorld the state of the universe]] and [[AlwaysChaoticEvil the nature of the alien beings in it]], this works against them shockingly often. Literature/CiaphasCain [[note]]'''''[[MemeticMutation HERO OF THE IMPERIUM]]'''''[[/note]] notes that if the Tau are this accepting of the horrors of the galaxy, imagine how easy it would be for [[ReligionOfEvil Chaos]] to come and sink it's claws in. {{Absolute Xenophob|e}}ia: [[FridgeHorror Horrifically Justified]].

*** With that said, there are many races out there that don't look human at all and are in fact quite good in alignment. Killing ''them'' is generally viewed as a bad thing for player characters to do.

* The value of nonhuman life is often very low in HeroicFantasy, particularly so in ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'', in which "savage" humanoids such as orcs or goblins get slaughtered en masse. In [[TheLordOfTheRings Tolkien]], orcs were practically [[AlwaysChaoticEvil evil-shaped-like-a-man]], so it can be excused, but in ''D&D'' they're just another species whose culture happens to be at odds with humans'. The game's 3rd Edition had downplayed this, going to greater lengths to give humanoids distinctive cultures and making them fully playable races. (Most campaigns still mow them down by the hundreds, though.) The 4th edition, while adding new exotic races like living constructs and dragonkin, had temporarily removed half-orcs, among other things, from the playable races. See AlwaysChaoticEvil. Human life has little to no value as well.

%%** According to ''MagicTheGathering''[='=]s FanDumb, it's often either "What Measure Is A Non White Character" or "What Measure Is A Black Character". Nevermind that both colours are technically neutral and can be capable of great benevolence or malevolence then.

** ''Lords Of Madness'' tops the ''[=BoED=]'' in this specific regard. It starts with lumping things into [[ArmedWithCanon never-before-seen]] MetaOrigin and continues with "Aberration Hunter" idea and corresponding magic effects. Given that Aberration is a type where all monsters not fitting into others can be piled at will (though one can squirrel away [[WhatMeasureIsANonCute cute]] ones into Magic Beast) and 3rd edition adds an Mix And Mash Worlds to the old D&D MixAndMatchCritters tradition, the whole picture is rather... funny: TheMultiverse rightfully belongs to the humanoids and knows it. That's after AD&D Monster Manuals where ''everything'' has "Ecology" entry. The concept soon got [[http://nodwick.humor.gamespy.com/gamespyarchive/index.php?date=2005-07-13 mocked]] in ''{{Nodwick}}''. Subverted in 4e, when it is given a passing mention that one of Kord's Exalted (No not [[{{Exalted}} that]], it's kind of like a D&D version of a saint) is a Beholder.

* In TabletopGame/GeniusTheTransgression all intelligent life is explicitly equal (even though most of the non-human life technically don't exist... reality is complicated). Plenty of characters have different opinions, which is reflected in their declining KarmaMeter

* TabletopGame/{{Mortasheen}} has a twisted [[InvertedTrope inversion]] of this. Humans are used by the many monsters and mutants of the titular city as, to paraphrase the creator, lab rats; pets and occasionally food. This is the reason why the game's antagonistic human faction, Wreathe, is so very, very genocidally angry at Mortasheen.
** And Wreathe itself is this trope played straight, as they want to wipe out everything that isn't human to reclaim the planet for the human race. Given that Mortasheen consists almost entirely of mutants and monsters, this is troubling

** Most of the more specific settings are better about this. In ''{{Eberron}}'', for example, (nearly) all aberrations are creations of the daelkyr, and most of them are corruptions of normal species (though not necessarily species from the titular planet; the daelkyr have been at this for a while).