Sometime last year I reviewed the Delver’s Guide to Beast World. The initial concept is a D&D world dominated by anthropomorphic races, with a specialized social class of adventurers roaming the lands in customized wagons. Although not a pre-existing IP, it received a lot of attention and was appealing to the furry fandom in particular. What was once a niche and at times vilified subculture in prior decades is now more mainstream and accepted, and as of the 5th Edition anthropomorphic races are increasingly numerous, from dragonborn to tortles.

I figured that I should make a thread showcasing some of the more furry-friendly D&D/OSR/Pathfinder settings by going into detail on what would make them appealing. My two major criteria focus on Lore and Playability, focusing on how much of a place they have in the setting as-is along with how easy it is to play such characters on both a mechanical and roleplay level.

Starting out, we'll cover Dragonlance. With its strong emphasis on character development and plot, it’s no surprise that the Dragonlance setting’s more monstrous races got their fair share of personal expansion beyond dungeon-dwelling enemies. Draconians and minotaurs are perhaps the most iconic anthro races in the setting, but they are not the only ones populating the world of Krynn.

In terms of Lore, Dragonlance has plenty of material fleshing out the anthro and otherwise monstrous races, several with prominent places in the setting and its history in the form of both novels and gaming sourcebooks. Several novels had such beings as the major protagonists, such as the Kang’s Regiment series and Kaz the Minotaur, both well-regarded books within the fandom. Lesser known anthro beings existed, such as the benevolent shadowpeople who resemble winged apes, the thanoi walrus-folk and ursoi bearfolk living in Ansalon’s chilly south, and various non-draconian reptilians such as kobolds and lizardfolk have a common progenitor ancestor known as the Bakali. In fact, Dragonlance introduced several unique reptilian races, such as the jarak-sinn (a subrace of lizardfolk) and the snakelike sligs. Dragons, naturally, played both a huge and varied role in the world, ranging from wicked hoard-lovers laying at the lowest level of dungeons to allies and mentors.

Dragonlance’s 3rd Edition introduced the tayfolk, an isolated civilization of humanoids who are always born in pairs of twin siblings, one of whom looks elvish in features (tayling), the other being a strong humanoid with a diverse possibility of animalistic features from bears to apes (taylang).

Playability flourished during 3rd Edition and later systems, where the core setting book gave rules for minotaur and draconian PCs. Dragon companions, once the province of DMPC guest stars such as Silvara, could become long-term allies of adventuring parties via the Dragon Rider Prestige Class. However, this latter class often restricted said companions to being young adults at most, so fully-grown Huge and larger-sized dragons remained out of reach. The Dragons of Krynn sourcebook would give rules for more powerful breeds of Draconian along with other reptilian races such as troglodytes, albeit the Racial Hit Dice and Level Adjustment rules made such options rather underpowered. Cultural details were also provided for role-play purposes, such as an in-depth look at the draconian city-state of Teyr. Other races mentioned above also have rules for PCs via Level Adjustment, and the Bestiary of Krynn had rules for determining how accepted monstrous PCs would be in various communities and what they could do to win people over with time and dedication.

Dragonlance adventures are no stranger to DMPCs. In the Key of Destiny Adventure Path, a kobold necromancer by the name of Master Yap would join the party during a journey up north, volunteering to join the group. He was popular among the fandom during that time, and would eventually return with an in-character narration in Dragons of Krynn when talking about the setting’s kobolds. Suffice to say, PCs often got the chance to ride on and fight with dragons while wielding Dragonlances in various adventures.

Dragonlance never got an official conversion to 4th Edition, but via 5th Edition the Dragonlance Nexus and other fans on the Dungeon Master’s Guild made plenty of options available that Wizards of the Coast didn’t touch. Tasslehoff’s Pouches of Everything introduced draconian PCs balanced for 1st level play, and the Journals of Kaz the Minotaur greatly expanded on minotaur society along with opening fiction written by Richard Knaak (of Kaz the Minotaur fame) and new rules options along with an adventure.

While the draconians, minotaurs, and some other anthro races have a bad reputation in much of the setting for siding with the forces of evil, quite a few were often more benevolent or sufficiently unknown so as to provoke curiosity rather than fear. Shadowpeople are mostly good-aligned, and the ursoi and tayfolk are good to neutral. Troglodytes were notably non-evil (or rather more varied in alignment) in their details in Dragons of Krynn, unlike most other settings.

All in all, Dragonlance is one of the more furry-friendly settings of official D&D, with a notable bias in favor of reptilian/scalie anthros. Even the more traditionally evil-aligned beings have plenty of lore and places in the world outside the dungeon, and the draconians in particular are noted for trying to find their way in a post-war world with the fall of the empire that created them.

With that being said, Dragonlance was always a setting that was defined just as much by what it excluded as what it included in comparison to traditional D&D. Mainstays such as orcs and werewolves are explicitly noted to not live in Krynn, while the importing of new classes and magical systems were often encouraged to find "lore-friendly" ways of making them fit into the setting. While it's been established that people from other worlds could visit Krynn as extraplanar travelers, for many gaming groups it can be a tougher sell for unconventional choices such as tabaxi.