Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D has let us be so many people different from ourselves. 

When we imagine the tropes of Dungeons & Dragons, it’s easy to default to images of medieval Europe. While the game’s creators were undoubtedly influenced by European folklore, they were also influenced by pulp stories, cosmic horror, and television series. D&D has always had influences from beyond Europe and cultures that intentionally avoid being based on real-world equivalents, but it hasn’t always done all of that well. We will look at the cultures reflected in the game, what D&D and other fantasy games have gotten wrong, and how it’s changed over time.

At the intersection of D&D’s introduction of anthropomorphic animals and its attempt to model fantasy cultures on real-world influences, the Known World, the Mystara setting, had dog people, the lupin, and cat people, the Rakasta—not to be confused with Rakshasha, which the game also had. Mystara’s cat people had cultures based on imperfect implementations of tropes from India and Japan, while lupins were French. One of the Rakasta cultures lived on the moon. While this predates the dogs and cats of the Realms of Pugmire, the post-apocalyptic setting of Pugmire, where humanity has disappeared, probably makes a little more sense, especially in the direction we’re heading.