The tag implication #63936 japanese_kobold -> canid is pending approval.

Reason: From the wiki:

Japanese kobolds are a species of small, canine-faced creatures featured in Japanese media like the Suikoden series. The two most prominent examples are Polt from Monster Musume and Illfang from Sword Art Online. The name is borrowed from the German word “kobold”, which was a mischievous goblin-like sprite in Germanic folklore. The Japanese qualifier is used here to distinguish them from the unrelated reptilian kobolds popularized by Dungeons & Dragons.

Looking through the tag I don't see any examples of anything that would't qualify as a canid, they are all doggish.

the wiki page saying that they're "unrelated reptilian kobolds popularized by Dungeons & Dragons" is a bit odd when they're literally derived from the more dog-like kobolds in 1st ed.

dba_afish said:
the wiki page saying that they're "unrelated reptilian kobolds popularized by Dungeons & Dragons" is a bit odd when they're literally derived from the more dog-like kobolds in 1st ed.

The kobolds popularized by D&D are the reptilian version. The earlier D&D kobolds were closer to their germanic/european roots of being goblin-esque hairless humanoids. It is a bit clumsily worded though... "popularized by later editions of Dungeons & Dragons" may be more accurate.

dba_afish said:
the wiki page saying that they're "unrelated reptilian kobolds popularized by Dungeons & Dragons" is a bit odd when they're literally derived from the more dog-like kobolds in 1st ed.

Yeah theyre literally based on this, which were not popularized by suikoden at all, but rather the Wizardry series.

The ones in dunmeshi are like that bc of wizardry

It was a mistranslation that stuck. Japanese translators had no idea what a 'kobold' was supposed to look like.

At no point in history of D&D or the original Wizardry were kobolds ever described as dog-like. The original edition was skimpy on descriptions, describing kobolds simply as 'hairless with dark hide', while the the art showed a scaly rat-tailed humanoid thing with a snout. They were also egg-layers, so most groups ran with 'reptile' even back in first gen days.
The closest you can get to a canine in official D&D is the nose, which was dog-like (though never described as such.)

genjar said:
To be precise, it was a mistranslation that stuck.
At no point in history of D&D or the original Wizardry were kobolds ever described as dog-like. First edition was very skimpy on descriptions, describing kobolds simply as 'hairless with dark hide', while the the art showed a scaled, rat-tailed humanoid thing with a snout. They were also egg-layers, so most groups ran with 'reptile' even back in first gen days. The closest you can get to a canine from that was the nose, which was dog-like (though never actually described as such.)

I'm finding a few users online saying that there was something in 1st or 2nd edition describing them having "yappy/dog-like voices", but I'm not actually finding that in any text. also someone said something about them having some sort of "canine" attribute somewhere before 3rd e.

This is the DnD depiction of a kobold that I normally see attributed to being the point of divergent evolution. The manual this image comes from has a larger image of a pack on page 58 that imo is likely even more influential than the single image alone. It isn't really that hard to see how this could come up as an interpretation/evolution of them.

dba_afish said:
I'm finding a few users online saying that there was something in 1st or 2nd edition describing them having "yappy/dog-like voices", but I'm not actually finding that in any text. also someone said something about them having some sort of "canine" attribute somewhere before 3rd e.

Right. It seems to be the kind of thing that people read online and repeat, but when I did research on it I couldn't find any instance of kobolds being described as canine in any official D&D content. Might've missed some sources, but considering that 1st edition depicted their deity as this I don't think they were ever canine.

(The 2nd ed. D&D veered heavily into humanoid for a while, with art that looked more or less like a stocky tailless goblin. That one wasn't exactly popular, from what I remember. 3rd edition popularized the fully reptilian version.)

genjar said:
Right. It seems to be the kind of thing that people read online and repeat, but when I did research on it I couldn't find any instance of kobolds being described as canine in any official D&D content. Might've missed some sources, though.

yeah, I guess I'd done the same. an old NewGrounds animated series that was based on D&D drew the kobolds more doglike (or maybe even more wookie-like), and that's the first place I'd ever seen anything called a kobold. I'd definitely heard the creator parrot this story in a livestream or something at some point as an explanation as to why his kobolds were furry.