Knights of the Dinner Table

Knights of the Dinner Table (KoDT) is a comic book/strip created by Jolly R. Blackburn and published by Kenzer & Company. It primarily focuses on a group of role playing gamers and their actions at the gaming table, which often result in unfortunate, but humorous consequences in the game. The name is a parody of King Arthur's Round Table reinforced by the truism that roleplaying aficionados often end up sitting round their host's dinner table as it is the only one large enough to accommodate the party (four to eight people typically).
The panels are written by Blackburn, and given that he had no formal art training, the characters are drawn in simple caricatures which are scanned onto a computer and are continuously reused. Many of the stories presented in KoDT are based on actual in-game experiences of the developers or readers, who are encouraged to submit story ideas. Part of the comic's popularity stems from the reader's ability to relate to the characters and their experiences.
KoDT has won the Origins Awards for Best Professional Game Magazine of 1998 and 1999. It also won the Origins Award Gamer's Choice: Best Periodical of 2003. KoDT has also won the Origins Award for Best Game Accessory of 2009.
Shadis editor Jolly Blackburn decided to draw a simple comic strip of his own to put on the last page of Shadis #2 (March/April 1990) which he called Knights of the Dinner Table, focusing on the comedic interactions of a role-playing game group. Blackburn published that initial Knights strip with the intention of just filling an otherwise blank page, but when he instead published more professional comic strips starting with Shadis #6, fans began an outcry that led to Blackburn bringing Knights back. Blackburn also published Knights of the Dinner Table as a comic book, with its first three issues published by his company Alderac Entertainment Group over the next year (1994-1995). Blackburn had other interests that were not shared by his partners, so he left Alderac in 1995 and took the rights to Knights of the Dinner Table with him, and Shadis #21 (December 1995) was his final issue. Blackburn formed his own company called KODT Enteractive Facktory, though which he intended to publish the monthly Knights of the Dinner Table comic book, and he was planning to continue the comic strip in Shadis. While setting up his new company, Blackburn got a call from the editor of Dragon to publish the Knights of the Dinner Table comic strip, which then first appeared in Dragon #226 (February, 1996). The run that lasted through issue #269 (March 2000), when it was replaced by an expanded Nodwick strip.
Blackburn was working on Knights of the Dinner Table #4 (1996) when he realized he did not want to do everything alone, and he was talking to David Kenzer and the staff at Kenzer & Company who wanted him to work for their company. David Kenzer and others were visiting with Blackburn in November 1996 during a local convention, when Blackburn decided that Kenzer had both the business sense and integrity that he wanted in a partner. Beginning with Knights of the Dinner Table #5 (February 1997) the comic book was the work of the "KoTD Development Team" which was made up of Jolly Blackburn, David Kenzer, Brian Jelke and Steve Johansson.
The main group of characters are the members of a gaming group known as "The Knights of the Dinner Table" in a fictionalized version of Muncie, Indiana. The players' best-known and most often-used characters are the HackMaster characters known as the "Untouchable Trio (Plus One)" (abbreviated as "UT+1"). They consist of:
B.A. is the GM and current organizer of the Knights (although the group was founded, and GMed, by Brian). In his 30s, he lives with his mother due to a failed attempt at game design, and works at the local pizza shop known as the Pizza-A-Go-Go, as well as his father's dry cleaning shop. B.A. has a bad reputation among the Knights for being ruthlessly cunning, largely because the players tend to be paranoid and to react poorly to setbacks, and any attempt at normal gameplay usually ends in misery (or complete and utter disaster). He often finds his games thwarted or sabotaged by the antics of the other players, much to his dismay.
He is also a sucker for the local game-shop owner, "Weird Pete" Ashton (see "The Black Hands Gaming Society", below), who constantly finds ways to sell him new or over-stocked product, on the basis that it's just what B.A. needs to spice up his campaigns. B.A. was supposedly based on Jolly Blackburn himself. B.A. from late 2005 to early 2006 took a furlough from GMing, having seen too many of his hard-worked campaigns reduced to rubble, the last such disaster prior to his furlough being a difficult situation revolving around two self-aware swords. His place behind the GM screen was temporarily taken by Brian VanHoose. B.A.'s return to the gamemaster's seat was heralded by his acquisition of a copy of the infamously deadly Temple of Horrendous Doom HackMaster scenario created by "Weird Pete". Now he's taken up a more hardball approach in the hopes of reining in the power gaming that wrecked most of his previous adventures.
Bob lives for gaming. He's a member of the "Old School" style of playing which revolves around killing people and breaking things. His short temper has led him into trouble on many occasions. He reacts to most encounters with "I waste him/her/it with my crossbow!". Bob is extremely protective of his large dice collection. At one point, Bob came into conflict with his father over gaming, given the option to straighten up and give up gaming, or move out. Being the true gamer, Bob did indeed move out, and is currently attempting to live on his own, but tends to spend his rent money on gaming paraphernalia. Bob's favourite character in fantasy campaigns is a dwarf named Knuckles (ranging from Knuckles, King of the Wall-climbers to Knuckles the Eighth), who rides a mule named "Little Mike" which he believes to be a "Dwarven Warhorse."
Bob is in a relationship with Sheila Horowitz, a member of another Muncie gaming group, the Dorm Troopers; recent issues have shown the two apparently living together. Bob currently works for Weird Pete at the till, getting paid in gaming stock each week, because Weird Pete cannot afford to pay him in actual money. Bob has little qualms with this arrangement, and has even made Sara compliment him on how enthusiastic he is.
The youngest of the Knights, Dave is a student at Ball State University, where he studies Cultural Anthropology and Dance Theory (the latter of the two for the purpose of meeting girls). He originally used to show up for the food, but really got into the game despite a bad first encounter with Johnny (a former Knight who gouged Dave out of a priceless gem). Dave is the typical "Hack-N-Slash" player, who becomes bored easily in non-action situations. When faced with talking things through (at which he is poor), or fighting, Dave chooses the latter. Dave, until recently, played a character by the name of El Ravager, wielding a coveted Hackmaster +12 sword named "Tremble". He lusts to own a god-level Magic Sword, but dreads the possibility of such a blade having its own ideas of what it is to be used for.
More recently (late 2006) in B.A.'s newest campaign, Dave has changed tactics (in part thanks to B.A.'s new hardball rules) and is playing a magic-user named El Mardico with, it must be said, some margin of success. Brian has therefore provided Dave with tutelage on how to properly run a mage – for a small fee. Dave was once involved with local Game Master Patty Gauzweiller; he later broke it off but she still had feelings for him, leaving him a target for her flirtatious tactics. This, however, seems to have disappeared with time.
B.A.'s cousin Sara, the only female member of the group, prefers games with a focus on role playing rather than the pure action. Often, she tries to solve issues in-game through negotiation, while the others prefer violence. Exactly how she, playing a 'good' character, came to unleash upon the game-world a blood-thirsty pack of pit bulls to attack and devour anything alive they come across (and quite a few not-alive things as well) is an entirely different story, and one Sara would like the world to forget about (even if she never will). Usually the voice of reason, Sara has reflexes that would scare a striking cobra and has been known to have a hair-trigger temper on certain subjects (sexist remarks being perhaps the foremost); Bob, Dave and Brian have all had their shirt collars wrenched by a fuming Sara at least once.
Unlike the guys who all have their favorite characters, whose descendants they want to return to, Sara has played different characters, including barbarians like Zayre and Thorina and clerics like Justinia. She also has the distinction of being the person that broke Brian's undefeated streak at Risque (a parody of Risk). Brian is not fond of being reminded of this. Sara was supposedly based on Jolly Blackburn's wife, Barbara Blackburn.
Brian is the rules lawyer and powergamer of the group. A web designer and miniature painter, he lives alone in a house inherited from his parents. He can quote rules and supplements down to page and paragraph/footnote numbers, and bend and abuse this knowledge to his advantage, at times at the expense of other players. He meticulously hands down notes of earlier adventures to his characters' descendants, thereby giving them in-game access to knowledge they otherwise would not possess, and has been known to tattoo his character's spells on fellow party-members backs as a contingency plan, making them into walking grimoires. Brian is another person said to keep a grudge so long he has a regular account at the taxidermists' shop. In addition, when he does get pushed too far (either by a carefully constructed plot falling apart or a bout of in-game backstabbing), he has been known to flip the table in a moment of rage.
His weaknesses include a miserly streak that makes him charge other players 15 cents apiece for character sheets (and non-KoDT affiliated gamers 25 cents), and a love for dogs that can lead to B.A. leading him by the nose towards traps and misfortunes. Brian's trademark characters are wizards, all bearing the name Lotus. His most well-known character is known as Teflon Billy, but this was a nickname given by the group to a character originally named Black Lotus (Black Lotus gives BL which gives Billy, and "Teflon" refers to the uncanny skill of the character at avoiding damage). Formerly a renowned Game-Master, he abandoned the GM's Screen after an unspecified incident at a convention, but has recently taken it up again (after B.A. was burned out by repeated trashings of his best efforts in GMing), to run a complex Cattlepunk campaign. This campaign terminated with the sudden reversal of Brian's meticulous plans, at the hands of an alliance between B.A. and Sara, and an unexpected role-reversal, (from cringing dupe to back-shooting plotter) on the part of Bob's character; Brian threw the reins back to B.A., returning to the role of player, saying that he had only GM'd in order to keep his HMPA-GM credentials fully valid.
Brian has also appeared as a tragic character more than once; in his youth, his parents were killed in a car crash, and his uncle managed his inheritance until he turned eighteen. Living on his own, he concocts elaborate fantasies which he narrates to the other players about being taken globetrotting by his uncle for Christmas, or having a girlfriend (see Alexis Marie below), sometimes even making bogus phone calls or actually booking hotel rooms to strengthen the illusion. In one extreme case, Brian has been portrayed as role-playing a date with a doll, which he referred to as "Sara"; in another, when the Knights had met for pizza and were drawing from a prop Deck of Many Things that Brian made and imagining what would happen if the deck was real and affected their real lives, Brian drew the card "the Void" ("Body functions, but soul is trapped elsewhere"), and responded with "That pretty much describes my life already." It has also been suggested Brian's state may be linked to the fact that Brian previously ran six separate campaigns every week, and was paid for GMing, and further that there may be links between this and "the incident" which caused Brian to give up GMing. Recent issues have not mentioned this aspect of the plot, and it may have been dropped, as a number of reader's letters suggested that readers found these developments too disturbing. On a number of occasions (such as the doll incident mentioned above), Brian has displayed evidence of a severe crush on Sara; he has not, however, ever openly acknowledged this to her.
Usually represented as the "evil" counterpart to the Knights, as most of their games revolve around the PCs finding reasons to kill each other before completing the intended adventure. Their membership consists of players who have been rejected from all other local groups, and hence they remain together simply because none of them has anywhere else to go. They are far more results-oriented than the Knights, enforcing demerit policies when Weird Pete is behind the GM screen (often worked off by unpaid labor behind Weird Pete's counter), and holding extensive post-mortems on their game sessions, to see where things could have been done better (usually by the members of the group not slaughtering one another's characters for minor infractions of local "rules", to vent a real-life grudge, or to gain experience points needed to advance their own character a level or two). They are especially prone to do this to "new" characters—most all of them have a psychological "button" which triggers a desire to execute a character based solely on race, attitude or type of clothing (e.g. looking like the character might be an assassin).
In the KODT world, Hard Eight Enterprises are the creators of the Hackmaster, Cattlepunk, Space Hack, and Scream of Kachooloo gaming systems. Well respected by all of Muncie's gaming groups (USUALLY anyway), they call the shots. Hard Eight Enterprises run the tournament-level Hackmaster games in the semi-finals, which one year resulted in the disqualification of the Black Hands, and the Untouchable Trio (Plus One) causing Timmy Jackson to cry. Hard Eight runs the annual Garycon game convention; there is now a real-world convention with this name, held in memory of Gary Gygax in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.
Patty's Perpetrators (Patty's Perps for short) are one of the newest sanctioned groups in Muncie recognized by the HMPA . Patty's Perps have the stigma of being the very bottom of the barrel (i.e. they take in those who no one else will accept, like Crutch).
The Dorm Troopers, Logan's Heroes and Slacker's Hackers are part of some of the other local gaming groups across whom the Knights come at intervals, most notably in the incident of the Player Exchange Program (and resulting intergroup grudge match). In this, certain Game Masters conspired to arrange for the annihilation of competing groups' characters (so that their bodies could be looted for plunder) by switching players into other groups' games where, separated from their regular comrades, they could be killed off. The ultimate plan was to eliminate competition in an upcoming local HackMaster tournament, as well as use any magic items and other enhancements looted from other characters to win the tourney.
Two fictional groups that are frequently referenced in stories are the Hackmaster Association for gamemasters (HMA) and Hackmaster Players' Association for players (HMPA). They act as networking organizations for the two types of participant, perform lobbying activities on behalf of their groups to Hard Eight Enterprises (e.g., to advocate for rule changes that benefit their members), arbitrate disputes, and issue rulings that are binding on their members. The HMA also serves as an accreditation body for gamemasters. The HMA and HMPA are examples of the exaggerated level of organization of the RPG hobby in the comic; another is the fictional Gamer Temps company that provides, for a fee, drop-in temporary players for campaigns when a regular player is absent (minor character Ty Ferfel was introduced as a Gamer Temps employee).
Characters who are not part of a gaming group.
The Knights themselves have encountered several recurring non-player characters in their (various) roleplaying campaigns. Among these are:
Since the comic centers around a community of role-playing gamers, the characters are seen playing many games that are analogues of real-world games (some of which were then published as real-world games). They include:
An event held at the Origins Game Fair, and possibly other Gaming conventions, is the Knights Of The Dinner Table live reading. People in attendance will put their name into a random drawing. The "winners" go up on stage, sit around a table, and act out the comic book, with hilarious results.
Several games based on the comic have been published: