Anthropomorphs as Base Race

[Plane Sailing]

If you wanted to have anthropomorphic animals with a different spin on them in D&D, I would heartily recommend trying to get hold of the old Traveller information. They did the best job I've ever seen in making animal races 'different'. In particular the Aslan (cat people, high sexual differentiation, males are combative but don't understand money at all), Vargr (dog people, don't like crowds, like their privacy), and the K'Kree (militant, aggressive, reactionary herbivores, often genocidal towards meat eaters).

Cheers

 

[Nyaricus]

In an alternate Prime Material plane in my campaign, the basic humanoids are all replaced with anthropomorphic animals:

Humans = dogs
Elves = cats
Dwarves = badgers
Goblins = ferrets
Bugbears = bears
Orcs = boars
etc.

Man, the dwarves are SO not badgers. They're moles! Mole-dwarves 4 life! MOLES MOLES MOLES!!!!11!!



cheers,
--N

 

[Kaodi]

If you want to do something a little different, I was thinking that you might purposefully exclude anthropomorphic version of commonly domesticated animals, like dogs and cats, if you want to give the a little more primal, wild feel as a whole. That is not to say that they are not all quite civilized, but to further dissociate them from humans.