The Puppy Roll returns! After last year’s paw-some event, raising over $40,000 for Petco Love, a national nonprofit dedicated to saving pet lives and bringing awareness to animal rescue and welfare partners and initiatives, including Petco Love Lost, Petco Love’s image recognition registry that helps to reunite lost animals with their humans. This one-of-a-kind charity Dungeons & Dragons‘ livestream features celebrity players bringing their pets into the world of Doggo, where the pets are the adventurers.
We got the chance to talk to creator and producer Anjali Bhimani (her third appearance here on The Fandomentals!) about the origins of the event and how fans can help the cause even after the adventure concludes.
Panda: Could you walk me through how Puppy Roll went from idea to a sponsored event that raises funds for Petco Love, or the other way around?
Anjali Bhimani: Yeah, absolutely. So, our dog, Charlie, who, recently passed in August, was the love of my life and was a part of everything that I did. And a few years ago I had played a one shot as part of a Kickstarter that we were running for my book, and he was already all over the book.
And I decided, you know what? I want Charlie to be my character during this Kickstarter. And that was really kind of the first sign of, oh my gosh, I love this so much. What if we all got together and played our dogs and played D&D as our dogs? And I already knew. Even just with that idea that it was something I wanted to do for charity, for animal welfare because it just made perfect sense.
And if you’re gonna be playing a game already, you might as well be doing it for a good cause. So I had thrown the idea around with, with friends and, and companies in the TTRPG community, but I hadn’t quite figured out a way to make it stick. And then I met the folks from Petco Love at an award ceremony where they brought puppies to the red carpet.
That was it. Like my heart cracked open. I joke all the time; I went to the Astras and I almost came home with an Oscar. He just had four legs, not two. So that connection with them and then getting to know them and, and realizing what a wonderful organization they were, I hit them up and said, Hey, can we do this crazy idea that I have had for a while. I’d love to do it with you guys. And God bless them, they didn’t know anything about D&D, they didn’t quite understand it. They trusted me. They let me explain it. They they supported, they put the word out and lo and behold, the Puppy Roll was born.
Panda: What can new viewers expect, and what can returning viewers look forward to?
Anjali: So returning viewers will recognize the gato (a gato in question for those of you who speak Spanish, knowing that gato is the Spanish word for cat) so there will be a character, that was an NPC, that is now coming in to the game that was there at the end of the last Puppy roll. Where it’s a continuation of that story. Many of the dogs that they know and love, most of our, previous players are joining us, which is awesome. Matthew and Aabria and Ashley, but now we are adding Emily Axford and Ginny D to the mix. Which just means there’s gonna be even more delicious chaos than I’m probably prepared for. Returning viewers can see bits of the old experience that they had and then references, obviously, and there will be characters that they remember.
There will be touchstones that they remember, and there’ll be some new surprises. For those viewers who are coming to it for the first time, hopefully, what they can expect, well, they can expect to be introduced to a really delightful world because the land of doggo is precisely what I wanted my dogs fantasy place to be. Everything that could possibly make a dog happy. That’s what the land of Doggo is. Hopefully they will enjoy being introduced to this lovely world and introduced to our beautiful, beautiful characters that are all based on pets of the people that we are playing with. Be prepared for lots and lots and lots and lots of dog puns.
We are definitely re-skinning a lot of things, we will be incorporating things that our sponsors have put out into the world, including this wonderful website and database that Petco Love has called Petco Love Lost. It is a database where you can take a picture of your animal and register them and if you get separated, people, you know, if someone finds your dog or finds your cat, they can take a picture of them, send connected to the database and reunite people with their animals. They’ve done such wonderful work during all of the natural disasters that we’ve had recently, especially here in Los Angeles during the fires.
There will be a lot of things that you recognize from D&D, but that are slightly not D&D and thankfully we also have Wizards of the Coast as one of our sponsors this year.
Panda: Finding lost pets is so near and dear to me ’cause where I live, there are dogs that are dumped here all the time. And I have two little boys that, you know, I found on the streets, and I mean my Jack Russell Terrier (Finnegan) runs away all the time; they are escape artists.
Anjali: One of Charlie’s names was The Great Houdini because he did sneak out when he got the chance. I don’t want to imagine what it would be to have lost him that way and to not be able to find him. And I can’t imagine the kind of heartbreak that causes. So anything that we can do to help people reunite with their lost pets, I’m here for.
Panda: For the world of Doggo, now that we’re introducing more cats, are we gonna see some more other pets involved?
Anjali: Maybe… I don’t like to spoil. I don’t like spoilers because they spoil things.
You will definitely hear references and things in this game this time. You know, here’s the thing, like I’m a huge dog person. Dogs are my heart place but also all animals. The same way I wanted Charlie to have a place that made him incredibly happy, that he could always go to whether he was awake or he was sleeping or was not with us anymore. I know that connection happens between humans and animals across the board. Just because I have the light of my life as a dog. Someone else has it as a bird. Someone else has it as a cat. Someone else has it as a horse. Everybody’s got something or someone.
Panda: Do you see yourself doing this, I mean, this is the second year, so do you see yourself continuing this legacy on and on?
Anjali: I mean, with Petco especially, I absolutely could see us continuing this, this on and on. Petco Love has been doing this now for 25 years. So they already have this incredible legacy of doing this. But for me, this legacy is really about Charlie’s legacy more than mine.
We weren’t really sure if I was gonna be able to handle doing it this year because of the, the emotional state I was in when he left. But the final decision came from, well, this is the best way to honor him, and the love that he brought and the love that all animals bring into our lives, and the special relationships that we get to have with them. They are only here for a short period of time. So, I absolutely want to carry this on because frankly, selfishly, it’s a way to keep him closer and a way to keep him with us. And on the grander scale, I was so thrilled to see the response the first time and the excitement and the awareness that it brought to so many important initiatives: Petco Love Lost, adoption, shelters, all sorts of things. It just feels like something that I wanna make sure we do over and over and over again. Also, because it’s just joyful, and we definitely need some of that in the world right now.
Panda: You almost made it to $50,000, right? I’m gunning for you to break that.
Anjali: I mean, look, we, we are too. We are, we are gunning to blow past that. Last year, we had some very lovely matching donors. Hit Point Press had come in as a matching donor. So this year, anybody who wants to come in as a matching donor, we are welcoming you in.
Also, there is a benefit that we don’t see specifically or can’t tally the result of which is more people having awareness about not just shelters and adoption, but about different ways to help animals in your community. One of our shelter partners mentioned in one of the videos that we showed last year that one of the greatest things you can do for animal welfare is know the pets in your area. Get to know the dogs because a lot of times when a lost animal gets lost, the people who bring it back are our neighbors or someone down the street or someone who recognized, oh no, that’s, that’s so, and so, that’s, you know, all of that. These simple things that more, more and more people can be made aware of, I think, really spread out in an exponential way when they can share that as well.
Panda: Community right now is just so important. It is really sweet to know that you’re using what you have for good. I really love that this is becoming an annual thing ’cause I missed it last year, so I’m not missing it this year for sure.
Anjali: You can still watch it, so you can catch up on the lore if you feel like it. It’s still there. It’s really loads of fun in the stream because we throw a lot of surprises in and surprises for the community, and surprises for the people in chat. And surprises for the players, obviously, because really this is a giant excuse to hang out with my friends and make dog puns.
As far as using what I have for good. We all can do it. You don’t have to have a big platform. There are so many ways in the world to make every dollar worth more than that in value to the world. There are so many incredible organizations doing so many wonderful things, and a huge part of what people can do to help is just signal boosting because no one person can support every cause.
So we need everybody out there. It’s incumbent upon us as, as citizens of the world to keep an eye out for ways that we can be of service because no one of us can do it alone. But if we’re all looking for that, if we’re all looking for ways we can take care of each other, the world’s a lot better of a place.
Panda: Is there any questions that you wish I had asked?
Anjali: Well, that’s a good question. You know, one of the things that I really do love, about this, just artistically, when I made Charlie a D&D character and I decided what class he was. I guess he’s a Bard of the College of Glamor because, duh, look at him. I loved getting to see people jump in, not just our players whose animals I already loved, and now I just love them even more ever since they now have become adventuring characters and their classes make such perfect sense.
Omar, the Paladin Barbarian, is just, could not be more perfect, or Suvi as a wizard, or Cricket as a cleric, like all of it. Milton is a warlock with Jonathan’s late dog Noodle as his patron. All these things make so much sense, but I love seeing people online start thinking about, oh, what would my cat be? What would my dog be? I don’t know. Like, I loved seeing that kind of fun and creativity be sparked.
And look, I’m the DM, so nothing bad is happening to these animals. There are challenges, but trust me, nothing bad is happening. They’re just gonna get themselves into a little bit of hijinks.
The live stream will be hosted on Anjali Bhimani’s YouTube channel on October 20, 2025, starting at 6 PM PT. Fans can impact the game itself and support Petco Love by donating here.
Images via Bad Auntie Entertainment.
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