In Tome your "race" isn't just what sort of ethnicity you have within your species, but actually what species you are at all. Clearly the word "race" is being used improperly compared to normal English, but for historical reasons that's just how it goes sometimes. Unlike our world full of just humans, the many worlds and planes of Tome are filled with all manner of intelligent creature.
Not all intelligent creatures are suitable to be played as player characters. A player needs to be able to talk with the rest of the group, and they need to be able to get along in a world designed for humanoids. A Hippogriff understands Common, but can't speak. A Unicorn can speak, but can't really open doors. Additionally, some creatures natural abilities make them unsuitable to be played below a minimum level. A bugbear is mostly just a badass ninja guy that's really furry. Usually they're like 3rd level guys, but that could be first level too. A frost giant is 15ft tall, has skin tougher than plate mail, and is immune to cold. You can't really make a level 1 version of that and still say that it's really a frost giant in any meaningful way.
Desite these seeming restrictions, we're still left with a wide variety of humanoid and humanoid-ish creatures that are all about as powerful as a human, and (with training) suitable to be a hero of any power level.
All the race entries have a number of elements in common. In addition to a description of their general physical appearance and common cultural elements, each race has mechanical effects as well.
- Size: This is the creature's size category. All the races here are either Medium or Small.
- Medium creatures are about human sized. The whole game uses Medium as the default size for things, so there's no special modifiers for being Medium.
- Small creatures are about half as big as a human. Small creatures get a +1 size modifier to attack and armor class, and a +4 size modifier to Hide checks. Small characters must use small-sized (which are like normal weapons but they deal 1 die size less damage), and they can only carry 3/4ths as much as as normal for their Strength, but their equipment is half the weight of medium sized equipment.
- Type: Every creature has a type, which is one of several categories (such as Humanoid, Elemental, Magical Beast, and so on). A creature's type can have one or more subtypes as well, given in parenthesis, and all Humanoids have at least one subtype. There are a few player character races that aren't humanoid, even though they've still got the humanoid-ish shape. Your type usually only matters with magical effects, such as spells.
- Movement: This is the distance that you can cover in a single move action, usually 30ft for Medium creatures and 20ft for Small. Factors such as terrain, encumberance, and magic can all have an affect your move speed, as described in their own chapters.
- Vision: This is what sort of vision you have, either Standard, Low-light Vision, or Darkvision.
- Standard vision is what humans and a few others have. It's exactly what you'd expect.
- Low-light Vision is what elves and a few others have. Creatures with Low-light Vision can see twice as far as a human can in conditions of poor illumination, and they retain the ability to see colors in such conditions.
- Darkvision is what dwarves and a few others have. Creatures with Darkvision can see in absolute darkness out to a particular range (If it's ever unspecified, assume 60ft). Creatures relying on Darkvision can only see things in greyscale, which means that many races with darkvision still frequently keep areas well lit.
- Ability Adjustments: These are adjustments to your ability scores that you apply for being a member of your race. Because of their ability adjustments, different races are more naturally inclined to play different sorts of classes.
- Special Traits: After the ability adjustments any special traits of the race are given. These usually serve to help reinforce the theme of the race a bit. People can be diverse, but to an extend Tome is still a "planet of hats" type of game.
- Languages: Player characters can always speak their race's native language, as well as Common. Non-player chracters of a given race might not speak Common, but for sake of gameplay, Player Characters always do. For each point of intelligence bonus that you start the game with your character can speak an additional language. Each race has a list of suggested bonus languages, but this is suggestion only, and you should feel free to pick what you want.
- Tome is a very multi-lingual sort of place, but most creatures speak at least a little Common, or perhaps understand some Common even if they can't speak it. Much more information is given in the Speak Language skill entry.