Editing Masque of the Red Death (section)

==Races==
[[Human]]s only, baby! This is a ''real'' Gothic (Novel) Horror RPG; you can't play anything but humans in this game. 

...Well, that's what they '''say''', but both the AD&D and the 3e version offer the option to play [[demihuman]]s if the DM is cool with it, arguing that they could represent hidden enclaves of magical races, just like how all the other magic and monsters is lurking in the shadows, with your PCs disguising themselves as humans the best they can when walking amongst the ignorant denizens of Gothic Earth. Of them all, the 3e version is most useful, actively encouraging players and DMs to tweak racial statblocks to represent the different environs that these races live in compared to their fantastical counterparts. The 5E version says Variant Human should be an option if feats are allowed, though given how bad normal human is and how good variant human is that's essentially meaning everyone is playing Variant Human.

While everyone's ''species'' is human, since it's the Earth of the 1890s a character's race, in the proper use of the word, will actually matter a good deal. The RPGA modules brought this up a decent amount, though kept it in check by making the campaign take place all over the world and often taking place in black majority parts of the US (such as one arc in New Orleans) when it went there.