Why do Delicious in Dungeon’s kobolds look like sexy dog people? You’re not the only one wondering.
If you’ve played Dungeons & Dragons you’re probably familiar with kobolds. Introduced all the way back in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in the 1970s, the creatures look like small, bipedal dragons in the 5th edition of the tabletop RPG.
But in Delicious in Dungeon, kobolds look… like dogs! So is mangaka Ryoko Kui just messing with us? Not at all.
Kobolds come from German mythology, where they’re usually depicted as kind of typical goblin-y critters. They’re mischievous spirits that help or hinder around the house, depending on how annoyed they are with you.
When Dungeons & Dragons creator Gary Gygax wrote his rulebooks in the 1970s, he described kobolds as distantly related to goblins, but with “doglike voices.” Accordingly, the kobold in the original monster manual is depicted as a dog-like humanoid.
Over the next nearly 50-odd years, Dungeons & Dragons’ kobolds became more and more reptilian with each edition of the game. But in Japan, a different game hit: the computer RPG series Wizardry. Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord came out in 1981, and it was heavily inspired by D&D. But its kobolds kept the dog-like features of the original D&D monster manual!
As the years went by and more Wizardry games came out, kobolds continued to resemble humanoid wolves, while the Western tabletop counterpart grew into something more reptilian.
Ryoko Kui has talked about how she grew up watching her dad play the Wizardry games, and how inspired she was by the monster design. Her kobold design has a long legacy in Japan.
That being said, she is perhaps the first person brave enough to make kobolds hot.