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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 9437592" data-attributes="member: 6750502">Mystara <img src="https://i.imgur.com/HLT0hgA.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="width: 671px" /><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/characterdrawing/comments/7ld2iz/commissionraces_of_mystara_lineup/" target="_blank">Commission: Races of Mystara Lineup by Mischa Cel Frumos</a>Mystara, also referred to as the Known World, is best known as the unofficial supporting setting for the Basic edition of Dungeons & Dragons. In spite of its name, Basic D&D grew to be its own well-supported line, with unique and distinct features that set it apart from other Editions. Without a single sourcebook to outlay the world, much of Mystara’s canon material is scattered among various adventures, gazetteers, and tie-in products. Beyond its strong association with the Basic line, Mystara is known for several other things: many of its regions borrowing from real-world cultures to various extents of respectability, where instead of gods ascended people known as Immortals held sway over reality,* and having a more whimsical high fantasy feel in comparison to grittier sword and sorcery realms like Greyhawk.*And there were rules for playing as them after PCs hit maximum level!But one of Mystara’s lesser-known qualities is the sheer amount of playable races introduced to its world over time, including many anthropomorphic animal people.In terms of Lore, Mystara is still a human-dominant world, but demihumans and humanoids have significant regions in which they hold sway. The <a href="https://pandius.com/rksthist.html" target="_blank">rakasta (feline)</a> and <a href="http://www.pandius.com/lupnhist.html" target="_blank">lupin (canine)</a> are the most well-known anthropomorphic races, getting writeups in multiple publications which further fleshed out subgroups and breeds to the point that they can be found in just about every region of note. The largest Rakasta civilization is Myoshima, a pseudo-Japanese kingdom on the moon sharing space with two other nations. The Lupins tend to integrate into larger societies, but they have a realm of their own known as the Kingdom of Renardy.For more traditional monstrous humanoids, orcs have porcine features and tusks, and along with kobolds and gnolls make up a significant population of the Broken Lands which serves as the typical monster kingdom for the setting. While such beings occupy an antagonistic role, there are non-evil exceptions to be found in the Known World. A group of orcs living in Alfheim’s capital city had some of them choose to stay there after being temporarily enslaved by the elves after they lost a war. The elves freed them after soon finding out that enslaving the orcs is too inefficient. A group of elves and gnolls known as the Sheyallia and Grugraakh, respectively, peacefully live alongside each other in a vast wasteland in the setting’s far west.Players of more modern D&D may recognize the Tortle, who first debuted in the Savage Coast sourcebook, a sub-setting detailing a new region for Mystara. While being located outside the “main” setting, they gained popularity above and beyond the Known World during the era of 5th Edition. Phanatons, who look like a cross between a raccoon and monkey, are another race popular within the fandom, first referenced in the Isle of Dread and have a reclusive kingdom of their own in the Savage Coast.Beyond these examples, there are so many sentient and monstrous races in Mystara that even the fanbase has trouble keeping track of them all. The Vaults of Pandius fansite does a great job compiling sources and articles for all manner of subjects, such as <a href="https://pandius.com/sentrace.html" target="_blank">a list of sentient races</a> which has been indispensable for writing up this post.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/MRo2hla.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="width: 644px" /> Artwork from Champions of Mystara: Voyage of the Princess ArkIn regards to Playability, <a href="https://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?t=8330" target="_blank">Mystara is full of unique classes,</a> several of which are designed for playable versions of anthopomorphic creatures. Being Basic D&D, nonhuman races were classes of their own, so demihumans and humanoids were strongly reinforced into certain roles. However, the lupine and rakasta were exceptions in that throughout various books and two issues of Dragon magazine, they more or less were built like humans but with additional features such as claws as natural weapons for the rakasta or the ability to detect werewolves for the lupin. This meant that these two races could belong to a variety of classes and thus roles in an adventuring party, and generally didn’t have to worry about level caps or negative experience points that the other races mentioned here had to contend with in the ruleset. That being said, the Rakasta did have their own racial class going up to 5th level in Rel Partha and Rage of the Rakasta.Grugraakh Gnolls had a writeup in Champions of Mystara where they used the Elf class but with modifications, such as thick fur that gave them the equivalent of natural armor. There was also a separate class for gnolls as well as ones for kobolds (who look like dog-people instead of lizard-people of modern D&D) and orcs in the Orcs of Thar, part of the Gazetteer series detailing the Broken Lands.Various issues of Dragon Magazine gave rules and cultural details for playing various anthro creatures. Dragon 179 covered the Lupin, 181 the Rakasta, 182 the Aranea (giant spiders with humanoid hands that can shapechange into a human form), 185 had various reptilians such as the Shazak (lizardfolk), the Gurrash (alligatorfolk), and Cayma (smaller lizardpeople), 186 had the Chamelon Men and Phanaton, and 200 had Enduk (winged minotaurs).The Creature Crucible is a four-part series of sourcebooks dedicated to playable monsters. Tall Tales of the Wee Folk had the Hsiao, philosophical owls with divine magic, pooka who are fairies who can look like various kinds of anthropomorphic animal and whose magic focused on time manipulation, and Wooddrakes who are not actually dragons but fairies who can take such a form as well as that of humans and demihumans. The second book, Top Ballista, had the Faenare, who are vaguely described as elf-like bird people but otherwise have no art, leaving their “furriness” ambiguous. Nagpa are wicked vulture people with a talent for magic, and tabi are winged monkey-like creatures. Rounding out the book are sphinxes. The third book, the Sea People, had the Kna who are nomadic goldfish merchants, the Shark-kin who I believe are renamed Sahuagin, and the Kopru who are eel-like amphibians. The fourth and final book, the Night Howlers, is all about lycanthropes and provided ten different kinds of werecreatures.Generally speaking, there’s a broad variety of anthropomorphic creatures in Mystara, but given the lack of a central sourcebook and oftentimes conflicting canon one needs to dig a bit deeper in order to find exactly what they want. Even with that being said, Mystara is perhaps one of the best official pre-5e D&D settings for finding playable furries. The fact that Basic D&D is highly compatible with most modern OSR retroclones on the market means that it shouldn’t be too difficult in converting them for play in more modern books such as Old-School Essentials.</blockquote>

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