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GADZOOKS! rats— \ CAN IS THAT left my COIN ANYBODY BREAK A BUNDLE OF POUCH tied to TROUBLE PLATINUM my OTHER pair DIBS! PIECE..? VOLUME 68? of scale mail \ CALLED short-shorts. LOSERS! Sample file FOR THE LOVE OF GAWD — TAKE ACTION, NOW¡¡ NINE NEW Bundles of Trouble as Print Books or PDFs. AVAILABLE NOW! www.kenzerco.com DISTRIBUTORS WHO CARRY KODT AND KENZERCO PRODUCT ACD Distribution. • Diamond Comic Distributors Inc. • Asmodee DON’T LET YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONSample RUN file OUT! RENEWAL IS ONE QUICK BROWSER CLICK AWAY WWW.KENZERCO.COM NOT A KODT SUBSCRIBER..? WE CAN FIX THAT — CLICK-CLICK, DUDE SUPPORT SMALL PUBLISHERS Sample file CONTENTS ISSUE 286: MY NEIGHBOR BEHOLDER REGULAR COLUMNS Tales from the Table DEPARTMENTS 46 Actual tales from the gaming table 4 Cries from the Attic 58 Web Scryer Editorial of a madman by Ken Newquist Accessibility and Gaming 5 Table Talk: Letters Page GAMEMASTER’S WORKSHOP Our readers talk back 60 Back Room at the Games Pit 46 Denizens of Tellene An opinion arena where Ghattak, Commander Paravan by Barb Blackburn readers can sound off 50 All Things Magic 62 Weird Pete’s Bulletin Board The Fairy Box by Barb Blackburn Classified ads, personals 51 Bait & Tackle and other strangeness Adventure hooks on the fly 53 Deadly Trappings Jolt and Drop by Barb Blackburn SPECIAL FEATURES REVIEWS 54 Lost Game Safari 31 by Alan Hume The Awful Green Things from Outer Space A Ranger’s Winter II A Solo Adventure 56 Indy Game Scene by Mark Dowson by Egg Embry Deviant: The Renegades 59 Off the Shelf by Noah Chinn 39 Becoming a Writer, Staying a Writer About that Infamous Brian’s Picks “HarLOT” Subtable 61 by Lloyd Brown III Mansions of Madness Vol. 1: Behind Closed Doors, Zyborg Commando, The Klingon Empire Core Rulebook Sample file © Copyright 2021, Kenzer and Company, All Rights Reserved. Knights of the Dinner Table® magazine (ISSN 1526-307X) is published monthly by Kenzer and Company, 808 Endicott Rd., Highwood, IL 60040. LEGAL NOTICE: Knights of the Dinner Table, HackMaster and Kingdoms of Kalamar are registered trademarks of Kenzer and Company, All Things Magic, Back Room at the Games Pit, Bait and Tackle, Board Squawk, Brian’s Small Press Picks, Celebrity Hack, Cries from the Attic, Deadly Trappings, Disks of Wondrous Power, GameMasters’ Workshop, Game Mechanic, Gamer Pulpit, GameVine, Gaming the Movies, Gary Jackson Files, Hacklopedia of Beasts, Hard Eight Enterprises, kenzerco.com, KODT, Lookin’ at Comics, Off the Shelf, One-Two Punches, Parting Shots, Players’ Advantage, Radio Free KODT, Retro-KODT, RFKODT, Rustlers of the Night, SpellJacked, Summon Web Scryer, Table Talk, Tales from the Table, The Gamer’s Rant on the Movies/TV. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The “Indy” Game Scene, the Kenzer and Company Logo, The Quotable Gamer, Weird Pete’s Bulletin Board, W.W.A.G.D. and all prominent char- acters and likenesses thereof are trademarks of Kenzer and Company. If you are actually reading this you may take 250 experience points for being observant. 2 Knights of the Dinner Table® #286 COMIC STRIPS KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE ® 8 Asking Price 10 Island Paradise 12 Long in the Tooth PUBLISHER Kenzer and Company EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 14 Lost in the Weeds Jolly R. Blackburn • [email protected] 16 Party Crashers ASSISTANT EDITOR Barbara Blackburn • [email protected] 19 Close to You KODT DEVELOPMENT TEAM 21 You Grab a Line and I’ll Grab a Pen Jolly R. Blackburn • David S. Kenzer Brian Jelke • Barbara Blackburn 24 The Rabble Nations KODT STRIP ART Jolly R. Blackburn 27 The Hand Off COVER ART Alex Zipse 30 Final Concession CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS 63 One-Two Punches Brendon Fraim • Brian Fraim Bill “Indy” Cavalier • Jolly Blackburn David Seymour • Paul Shiner CONTRIBUTING WRITERS OTHER TOONS Kenneth Newquist • Barbara Blackburn Jolly R. Blackburn • Egg Embry Alan Hume • Mark Dowson 64 Additional Cartoons Lloyd Brown III • Noah Chinn Bill “Indy” Cavalier, David Seymour, Paul Shiner SALES/MARKETING/ADVERTISING Barbara Blackburn • [email protected] 847 508-2317 SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES [email protected] CHARMED PERSONS Kevin Vance • Jack Grayson • Craig Zipse PRINTED IN U.S.A. Postmaster: Send address changes to: ABOUT Knights of the Dinner Table THE COVER 808 Endicott Rd., Highwood, IL 60040 We absolutely fell in love E-Mail: [email protected] • Phone: 847 508-2317 with the cover by Alex Zipse World Wide Web: www.kenzerco.com the moment we saw it. Submissions: We accept submissions for strip ideas, jokes, cartoons, etc. We are interested in running anything that other gamers and fans We hope to see more from would enjoy. Check out our website for writer’s guidelines. her in the future. Subscriptions: A standard 12-issue monthly subscription is only $77.99 (or $65.99 for slower bulk mail shipping). [US $92.99 for Canada or US $117.99 for other foreign locations.] 6- and 24-issue subscriptions are also available. To subscribe, order by credit card at our online store at Sample file HTTP://WWW.KENZERCO.COM or send a check or money order (made NIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE™ was accidentally created by Jolly R. Blackburn payable to Kenzer and Company) to: Kway back in 1990 as ‘filler’ for his small press magazine, Shadis. It was Kenzer & Company KODT Subscriptions, something of a ‘creative burp’ and Jolly really didn’t give it much thought. 808 Endicott Rd., Highwood, IL 60040 Perhaps that’s why he was just as surprised as anyone that soon KODT was overshadowing everything else he’d ever done and that the created was now Back Issues: Older issues and other KODT merchandise are avail- controlling the creator. The Knights have gone far beyond anything Jolly or the D-Team (David able for direct purchase on our website at HTTP://WWW.KENZERCO.COM Kenzer, Brian Jelke, Steve Johansson and Barbara Blackburn) ever imagined. In 2006, Jolly was ATTENTION RETAILERS: If you are having difficulty getting our inducted into the Hall of Fame. Now, with over 286 issues and over 90 trade paper backs under product (including back issues and RPGs) please call or e-mail us. their belts, it’s been a wild ride and we look forward to seeing where the Knights take us next. Knights of the Dinner Table® #286 3 CHARACTERS BEHAVING BADLY t’s probably obvious, but I love going through reader mail month to month and Because a few issues ago it was revealed she failed to have her kitten “fixed” and Iissue to issue. For me, it’s one of the best ways to gauge how we’re doing. Atta a kennel refused to take the animal in while she attended, Garycon. (The fact is she boy letters are always nice, sure. But it’s often the angry letters or complaints just hadn’t taken care of the matter in a timely — not that she wasn’t planning on that are the most informative. If someone has taken the time to voice an opinion, I doing so). want to read it. Again, it’s okay. Such complaints don’t bother me. Especially since various charac- 20 years ago there were a lot of complaints about the on-going story arcs. Some ters behaving badly are not meant to encourage those very same behaviors. Far from readers wanted the 2 to 3 page stand alone strips (wham, bam, punchline) that it. It simply shows they are human (albeit fictional characters) and flawed. But some harkened back to the comic’s original format. Now it seems most readers are happy complaints, like the one above, do surprise me. Sometimes, I dont’ see it coming. with the on-going stories with an occasional stand alone offering here and there. On the flip side, when I first did a panel over twenty years ago of Johnny Kizinski By far, when it comes to complaints, it’s characters who are behaving badly who blowing smoke in his infant’s face (and flicking cigarette ash on his head), I was sure seem to generate the most feedback. They seem to trickle over the months, occasion- I’d hear about it. There wasn’t much of a response as all as it turned out (not even ally spiking as a result of a particular incident in the strips. when Johnny left the kid hanging on the back of a bathroom stall door). Brian’s penchant of being miserly for example and ‘screwing’ his friends. Charging In issue 285 a player stood up and left an event, without saying a word, when he a buck for a blank character sheet (the price has gone up over thirty years, which all realized the GM was a perceived ‘nobody’. Putting my shocked face on here. I did NOT sorts of justification such as printer ink costs, etc). Readers who despise Brian for both expect those panels to push a button with so many readers. this and his rules-lawyer annoyances are among the most common when it comes to A lot of people wrote in to comment on how rude it was. “If I saw a player do that email and venting. at an event? Well, I’d yadda yadda and such-and-such”. Another complaint, when it comes to bad character behavior has to do with Sara Gotta tell ya, that one surprised me as well. Anyway, just some random thoughts. occasionally grabbing Dave’s shirt by the collar and “roughing” him up with implied threats of violence (when she feels he’s crossed the line. one angry reader even post- Hope you enjoy this issue. As I write this, we are already turning our attention to ed on our forums that he would have “broken” Sara’s jaw if she dared to that to him).