This book centers on the races which inhabit Faerûn, the fictional continent where most of the Forgotten Realms setting is set, giving detailed information on the histories of the races in the Realms, their languages, clothing, relations to other races, culture and so on. And also, much to the delight of players, it gave detailed information on how to play the races as characters. Races explored were the major races dwarves, elves, gnomes, half-elves, half-orc, halflings, humans, and planetouched, as well as minor races, aarakocra, centaurs, goblinoids, kir-lanan, lizardfolk, lycanthropes, shades, wemics, and yuan-ti, and the various subraces (in the case of humans, ethnic groups) of each of the races.
