Character race
In tabletop role-playing games, the character race represents the people to which a player character (PC) or a non-player character (NPC) belongs. "People" is to be taken in the broader sense, and may encompass ethnic groups, species, nationality or social groups.
It can be a fictitious race from a fictional universe, or a real people, especially in case of a history-based universe (even if it has a given level of fantasy), e.g. Call of Cthulhu (1981),Boot Hill (1975) or Bushido (1979). The term “race” is even broader than the usual meaning, as it also includes extraterrestrial beings; vegetal beings, e.g. the Aldryami in Glorantha (1978), or the Sylvanians in Fantasy Craft (2010); and robots, e.g. Artificials in Fantasy Craft or the Forgeborn/Dwarf-forged optional race in 13th Age (2013).
This notion is also present in most fantasy or science-fiction works: novels, comics, video games (especially role-playing video game), board games, LARP, etc. The transmediality is obvious in case of consistent universes, e.g. the Middle Earth or the Star Wars universe.