Knights of the Dinner Table

Knights of the Dinner Table
Logo of the series
Author(s)	Jolly Blackburn
Website	www.kenzerco.com
Current status / schedule	Active
Launch date	March/April 1990
Genre(s)	Humor, role-playing, fantasy
Followed by	Knights of the Dinner Table Illustrated

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 (4 to 8 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. KoDT has also won the Origins Award for Best Game Accessory of 2010.

In Shadis #2 (March/April 1990), Jolly Blackburn began to run a comic that he had written called Knights of the Dinner Table, which depicted the humorous interactions of a gaming group. When Blackburn published that first Knights strip, he thought that he was just filling a blank page but when he tried to replace it with more professional strips beginning with Shadis #6, there was an outcry; because of that outcry Knights soon returned. Blackburn also published Knights of the Dinner Table as a comic book, the first three issues of which appeared from his company Alderac Entertainment Games over the next year (1994-1995). As a result of diverging interests with his partners, Blackburn left Alderac in 1995, with Shadis #21 (December 1995) being his final issue; he kept the rights to Knights of the Dinner Table. Blackburn formed a new company called KODT Enteractive Facktory, which was to publish the Knights of the Dinner Table comic monthly. While he was working on getting that new company together, Blackburn received a call from the editor of TSR's Dragon magazine, asking if the Knights of the Dinner Table strip was now available; although Blackburn originally planned to continue the strip in Shadis, he accepted the offer and Knights of the Dinner Table thus began appearing beginning in Dragon #226 (February, 1996). While working on Knights of the Dinner Table #4 (1996), Blackburn concluded that he really did not want to go it alone, and David Kenzer and the staff of Kenzer & Company wanted to get Blackburn to join their company. In November 1996 when David Kenzer and others were visiting Blackburn over the course of a local con, and Blackburn decided that Kenzer had the sort of business sense and integrity that he was looking for in a partner. Starting with issue #5 (February 1997) Knights of the Dinner Table was the work of the "KoTD Development Team" which consisted of Jolly Blackburn, David Kenzer, Brian Jelke and Steve Johansson.