The most far-reaching bad descisions in RPG design?

[VincentTakeda]

Within palladium, dead reign, revised recon, and ninjas and superspies pretty much assume you're a human...

So 'race' is negligible... Then you pick an occ... which might be called a 'class' but is more tacitly a 'job'

And heroes unlimited for the most part presumes you're 'a human' with the only alternatives being mutants, mutant animals, robots, cyborgs, and aliens... Aliens being the only opportunity really to create other 'races'... but in doing so you're kind of choosing your characters capabilities as a function of 'what they are' more than 'what they do'... less 'my class is about my training/job/class' and more about 'my skillset is training in my powers.'

I'd call that 3 and a half systems worth of not usign the Race Class Level design... Most of palladiums systems put you in the situation where you're either choosing a job, or you're choosing a race that chooses your job for you... By and large, even in Rifts, for the most part you're either choosing 'human' with the occasional dog boy as long as the campaign is on earth itself... You only dip into aliens a bit when you start dealing more directly with atlantis or the 3 galaxies or the naruni and such... At the end of the day an 'atlantean' is, for the most part, still a human.

I also don't see much diversity in terms of racial options when you look at games like 'cyberpunk 2020' or shadowrun... By and large wall to wall humans all around...