| 1 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/knights_of_the_dinner_table_220.jpg]] |
| 2 | [[caption-width-right:350:L to R: Brian, B.A., Sara, Dave, Bob]] |
| 3 | |
| 4 | ''Knights of the Dinner Table'' (often abbreviated ''[=KoDT=]'') is a long-running comic series by Jolly Blackburn about a group of [[TabletopGames Tabletop RPGers]]. It is also the name of the magazine in which the comic currently runs, and has run since departing the pages of ''Shadis'' and later ''Magazine/{{Dragon}}'' magazines. The magazine also features other gaming and fantasy comics, such as ''ComicStrip/SnarfQuest'', reviews, role-playing scenarios, and various other gaming-related content. Blackburn also did a series of shorts for the first thirteen issues of Creator/PalladiumBooks' magazine ''The Rifter.'' |
| 5 | |
| 6 | KODT has a spin-off strip called ''Java Joint'' that runs in the fantasy magazine ''Black Gate''. ''Java Joint'' centers on the (mis)adventures of a book club consisting of Sara, Patty and Tank. |
| 7 | |
| 8 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 9 | |
| 10 | [[folder:Main Cast]] |
| 11 | * '''B.A. Felton''': The disgruntled GameMaster, always attempting to be one step ahead of the group; always winding up one step behind, due to either Brian's scheming or Bob and Dave's bumbling violence. |
| 12 | * '''Bob Herzog''': A seasoned gamer who believes that [[TheRealMan "monsters are there to be killed"]]. Often causes massive [[OffTheRails plot derailments]] by slaying important characters in-game (or even his fellow teammates). His main character in B.A.'s campaign is '''Knuckles''', a dwarven thief who carries a crossbow. |
| 13 | * '''Dave Bozwell''': Something of a starry-eyed newbie, but has become more and more like Bob in his [[TheRealMan love of violence]]. He plays '''El Ravager''', a human fighter who is a thinly veiled excuse to wield a [[InfinityPlusOneSword Hackmaster +12]] magic sword. |
| 14 | * '''Brian Van Hoose''': The textbook definition of a RulesLawyer. Frequently manipulates his less-intelligent allies into doing his bidding, and is able to cite obscure rules to wriggle his way out of just about any situation. When provoked, however, he can become violent, often flipping tables. In the beginning, he alternated between a JerkWithAHeartOfGold and a JerkWithAHeartOfJerk but [[{{Flanderization}} has turned into]] the series' VillainProtagonist with JokerImmunity. His iconic characters are a series of wizards with the word "Lotus" in their names; most famously, '''Black Lotus''', better known as '''Teflon Billy''' for Brian's skills as a KarmaHoudini. He was the original GM of the group until a NoodleIncident drove him into retirement. |
| 15 | * '''Sara Felton''': B.A.'s cousin. The only one at the table who [[TheRoleplayer actually role-plays]], and the [[WomenAreWiser straight]] woman of the group. She tends to play non-{{Stripperiffic}} female barbarian characters, such as '''Zayre''' and '''Thorina.''' |
| 16 | [[/folder]] |
| 17 | |
| 18 | [[folder:Supporting Cast]] |
| 19 | There are several additional gaming groups in the [=KoDT=] universe, including the '''Black Hands''', a group of oddballs and outcasts who game together because no one else will have them. The Black Hands roster includes: |
| 20 | * '''Victor "Nitro" Ferguson''', a black ex-Marine [[DrillSergeantNasty prone to running his game like a boot camp]]. |
| 21 | * '''Newt Forager''', who began as a picked-on newbie but quickly became a sneaky player. Prone to whining and brown-nosing. Plays dark, angsty characters with pages of backstory. |
| 22 | * '''Stevil Van Hostle''', a cubicle drone who uses gaming to get out pent up aggression. Bitter and mean, with a mad-on for Newt. Enjoys playing grel (Grunge Elves, a drow-analogue). |
| 23 | * '''Gordo Sheckberry''', a sensitive, odd sort prone to playing (female) pixie fairies above all other character. Probably the nicest of the Hands. Wheelchair-bound in all his appearances; some years before the comic's beginning, he apparently provided help with a "chemical" experiment that earned Nitro his nickname and almost killed both of them. The incident also granted Gordo near-unlimited free time to game, as he lives primarily off his disability benefits and an apparently generous damage settlement. |
| 24 | * '''"Weird" Pete Ashton''', a grumpy old-time gamer who runs the local gaming shop. Fills in for Nitro when he can't make it -- a fate the other Hands dread, as Pete is a ''brutally'' fair Game Master who demands his players ''earn'' every new turn. Also enjoys playing grel. Keep in mind that grel eat pixies... |
| 25 | [[/folder]] |
| 26 | |
| 27 | In addition, there are many recurring minor characters. |
| 28 | |
| 29 | In 2014, a Website/{{Kickstarter}} fundraiser was successfully completed to produce a live-action adaptation. Footage for three 20-minute episodes was shot, but the project went unfinished amidst allegations of mismanagement against the contracted production company from Blackburn and others. In 2018, Creator/ZombieOrpheusEntertainment was able to recover some of the footage and release a reconstructed version of the three episodes to backers of the Kickstarter campaign. |
| 30 | ---- |
| 31 | !!''Knights of the Dinner Table'' provides examples of the following tropes: |
| 32 | |
| 33 | * AbusiveParents: |
| 34 | ** In a flashback, it's heavily implied that Brian's father was verbally (and probably physically) abusive to him. The scene consists of poor 12-year-old Brian cowering against the wall in his room, surrounded by toys, games, and assorted geek paraphernalia, while his dad shouts at him for his poor grades, and "living in a dream world." All Brian can do is feebly mumble, "Y-yes, sir," to which his father responds, "''ARE YOU '''LOOKING''' FOR THE BACK OF MY HAND?''" No wonder he prefers fantasy to reality. |
| 35 | ** Bob's dad has his relationship with Bob {{Deconstructed}} in #273 when Sheila invites him on a dinner date, expecting him not to be nearly as bad as Bob described. Instead, Bob's dad spends the entire evening ruthlessly mocking his son. Sheila ends up apologizing to Bob as it was a nightmarish evening that puts the father's ToughLove in a new light. |
| 36 | * AccidentalAimingSkills: Bob's dad displays these during his first (and only) game of ''Cattlepunk''. |
| 37 | -->'''Brian:''' Whooooah, dude. Yer dad shot 'im in the face.\ |
| 38 | '''Bob's Dad:''' I wasn't going for the face. He walked into it. That's all. The damn fool. Those were warning shots I was firing. |
| 39 | * AccidentalTruth: After the fifth Golden Ticket is found, Brian spreads a rumor that one of the Golden Tickets was a forgery so he can unload his stash of [=HackerJacks=]. However, it turns out that one the reported Golden Tickets ''is'' actually a forgery. |
| 40 | * AchillesPowerCord: During a ''Hacknoia'' game, B.A. proves to Bob that he is not making things up on the fly by showing him the schematic for the bomb he is trying to defuse. Bob asks what the separate piece to one side is, and B.A. says it is the battery pack for the bomb's timer. Bob immediately unplugs it. |
| 41 | * AcquaintanceDenial: Sara occasionally announces that her character is distancing herself from the Untouchable Trio when the latter are doing something particularly stupid (such as one early story where Bob and Dave decide to have their characters cop an attitude about bowing to the local king). |
| 42 | * ActualPacifist: Reese. An ER nurse, she refuses to condone violence in any way and so plays a cleric of a pacifist god. |
| 43 | * AerosolFlamethrower: Bob claims to have improvised one to drive off a feral dog (or possibly a coyote) in the strip "A Fish Story". |
| 44 | * AffectionateParody: Of ''Dungeons & Dragons'' (2nd Edition in particular) and tabletop gaming culture. (The published {{TabletopGame/Hackmaster}} 4th Edition RPG, though, is a licensed version of '''1st''' Edition AD&D.) |
| 45 | * AfterActionReport: ''Knights of the Dinner Table: Illustrated'', which attempts to make a story loosely based on the Knights' campaigns. Naturally, most of the table banter is repeated in-character. Though it's translated into in game terms with in-game motivations to explain the OOC actions (i.e. you don't have Lotus asking for a Grape Faygo.) |
| 46 | * AfterTheEnd: The "Doomsday Pack" where the player characters constant RulesLawyer-ing results in all of the dogs in the setting being recruited as an apocalyptic force destroying most of the countryside. The player characters utterly botch their attempt at ending the apocalypse and BA has to rewrite the world from scratch. |
| 47 | * AggressiveNegotiations: A standard tactic of the Untouchable Trio. |
| 48 | * AllBikersAreHellsAngels: But the tabletop gaming community of Muncie's come to an understanding with them anyway, especially since the [=GMs=] (and some players) routinely gather for drinks at the local biker bar, Hawg Waller's, and the proprietor is more than willing to tolerate the eccentricities of paying customers (most of the gamers being more reliable about paying their tabs than some of the bikers). |
| 49 | * TheAllegedCar: Dave's (unseen) AMC Pacer, mostly due to his refusal to do any maintenance on it. At one point, it was stuck permanently in second gear. It eventually died, forcing him to cadge lifts on Bob's scooter. |
| 50 | * TheAllegedComputer: B.A. had a Trash 80 nicknamed Molly whose slowness made it the butt of many jokes. |
| 51 | * AnalogyBackfire: In ''Java Joint'', Tank says that he is "as serious as Garrison Keillor", apparently not realizing that Garrison Keillor is a humorist. |
| 52 | * AnalProbing: The ''Black Hands 2011 Special'' ends with the Black Hands characters being anally probed by aliens after Weird Pete decides to combine his ''Cattlepunk'' campaign with ''Scream of Kachoolu''. |
| 53 | * AnimatedAdaptation: Fan Andrew Babb did a series of nicely-produced Flash cartoons, currently preserved [[https://www.youtube.com/user/Kumeelyun on Youtube]]. |
| 54 | * AreYouSureYouWantToDoThat: B.A. and Nitro occasionally attempt to nudge their players away from doing something particularly stupid. It generally doesn't work. |
| 55 | * ArtEvolution: When KODT debuted in ''SHADIS'' magazine, the artwork was, frankly, hideous. Even when it got its own magazine it wasn't much better - the characters were usually just staring out into space, their mouths hanging wide open to disgorge their speech balloons. The positions of the characters were also extremely limited, due to its nature as a CutAndPasteComic. Now, the art has improved enormously. The basic character models are still the same, but the expressions look far more natural and varied, the environments and objects have more depth, and they have a far more flexible range of motion, from standing to driving to table flipping. |
| 56 | * ArtifactOfDoom: Flak Jack Monty's infamous twenty-sider, "Fitz". [[CursedWithAwesome Cursed]] with vampiric luck (pretty much useless to a player, but a Doomsday weapon in the hands of a GM), this die goes through [[ChronicBackstabbingDisorder quite the history]] after the Knights swipe it. |
| 57 | * ArtShift: In "Hounded" in #183, Sara has a dream about the Untouchable Trio Plus One. The dream is illustrated using art from ''Knights of the Dinner Table: Illustrated'' by the Fraim Brothers. |
| 58 | * ArtisticLicenseChemistry: During a Sci-Fi game, the Knights find their ship's hydrogen fuel cells in need of a refill while in orbit around an oceanic planet. Brian suggests that they fly down to the surface, use the ship's ram scoops to collect water, and extract the hydrogen from it there -- but B.A. insists that it won't work [[InUniverseFactoidFailure because hydrogen is an exceedingly rare element]]. Even ''Dave'' knew this was dead wrong -- hydrogen is the most common element in the universe. This was poking fun at ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'''s earliest seasons, in which the characters were somehow having trouble finding deuterium (a hydrogen isotope). |
| 59 | * AscendedExtra: This has twice happened to the Knights with their [=NPCs=]: |
| 60 | ** First, they sent Sara's henchman Gilead into a heavily trapped room to try on an item they'd feared cursed. It turned out to be a Helm of Lordship, leading to Gilead being a benevolent monarch for years of storyline. |
| 61 | ** Knobby Foot the Torch Bearer for their ability to get the better of the Knights despite being a lowly henchman. |
| 62 | ** The second instance is the Bag Wars. The Knights stored a massive list of supplies and [=NPCs=] in a BagOfHolding and forgot about them. When they finally checked on the [=NPCs=] again, they'd built a fortress inside the extra dimensional space and were living off the provisions. The Knights had to deal with their leader, Sergeant Barringer, in order to store and retrieve loot from the bag. The fortress he built has become a permanent fixture of the landscape of Bag World for centuries of game time. |
| 63 | * AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence: |
| 64 | ** In Nitro's campaign setting, deceased real life celebrities become deities with the most frequently mentioned being Andy Warhol. |
| 65 | ** Bob managed to successfully argue for the promotion of one of his former characters to deity status to serve as the basis of the religion for his new PlayerCharacter, a priest. |
| 66 | * AssholeVictim: Pretty much Brian those rare but relished times his KarmaHoudini JokerImmunity doesn't kick in. |
| 67 | * AssShove: When Bob is exploring Uzer's pyramid, he finds a valuable-looking medallion. He "keisters" it so he doesn't have to share it with the others. Later, this turns out to be instrumental, when it's revealed to be part of the Scepter of Five Parts. Amusingly, Bob had forgotten he had it - out of character, that is. So apparently it's been...keistered for some time. |
| 68 | -->'''B.A.:''' [[BrainBleach The damn thing is five inches in diameter!]] |
| 69 | * {{Autocannibalism}}: While playing Weird Pete's new game "Fairy Meat", Brian has his character eat its own arm to demonstrate that the rule for recovering hit points via cannibalism is broken. |
| 70 | * BadLiar: Dave has no poker face whatsoever. This actually becomes a plot point when Bob and Dave want to conceal their in-game plans from Brian and Sara - Dave actually has to wear a paper bag on his head so they can't glean anything from his expression. |
| 71 | * BathroomBreakOut: Bob does it to escape from Nitro's game when sitting in for Weird Pete in "A Man Out Standing In His Field". |
| 72 | * BecomingTheMask: Sara tries infiltrating the Vampyre game to extricate Dave and Bob and gets drawn in herself. [[WordOfGod The author notes]] that this is a clue that [[NotSoAboveItAll she's not as completely together as she seems]]. |
| 73 | * BedsheetGhost: This was Dave's halloween costume one year, continuing his tradition of putting almost no thought or effort into his costume. |
| 74 | * BerserkButton: |
| 75 | ** Do not touch Bob's dice! |
| 76 | ** Also, ''never'' question the existence of Brian's "girlfriend" Alexis. |
| 77 | ** And if you happen to think women can't/shouldn't be gamers, keep that opinion under your hat around Sara. |
| 78 | ** Don't mess with Chelsie unless you want to experience the business end of a Hackmaster +12. |
| 79 | * BewareTheNiceOnes: |
| 80 | ** Don't push Sara too far... she'll push back hard. And then there was the time her character became evil... |
| 81 | ** B.A. gets moments like this. |
| 82 | * {{BFS}}: The Hackmaster +12. |
| 83 | * {{Bizarrchitecture}}: Tic Tac Taco and its giant sombrero. |
| 84 | * BlackBeltInOrigami: During a ''Hacknoia'' campaign, Bob maxes out his character's skill in Tai Chi -- thinking that it is a kickass martial art -- because it is cheap. It is only after he gets into a fight that Sara explains that it is a form of moving mediation. |
| 85 | * BlandNameProduct: |
| 86 | ** Lots of real-world gaming references such as [[TabletopGame/{{Pokemon}} "Poker'mon"]], [[TabletopGame/{{Risk}} "Risque"]], and [[TabletopGame/SettlersOfCatan "Kataan"]]. |
| 87 | ** The most popular brand of beer seems to be Gusweiser, or "Gus". |
| 88 | ** Sara's (pre-generated) character in a ''Hacknoia'' adventure has a background as a "Hoodie Girl" (Hooters waitress). |
| 89 | * BookBurning: Tank's parents disapproved of gaming and burned all of his gaming books when he was kid. |
| 90 | * TheBreakfastClubPosterHomage: The cover of the aptly-titled "The Hackfest Club" dresses and poses the cast like the poster. |
| 91 | * BreakTheHaughty: Stevil being forced to dance for 36 hours straight in prison. When he finally gets back to his game, Newt plays [[Music/{{ABBA}} ABBA's]] "Dancing Queen" through a pair of portable speakers attached to his walkman. Newt is promptly wasted and is made to wear [[MedalOfDishonor "the Hubcap of Shame"]]. And considering that Stevil was left in prison for that extra 36 hours because Newt chose to bail out everyone but him, Newt got off easy. And let's be clear about this. It wasn't some game they were playing. Stevil was actually in jail and Newt deliberately chose not to bail him out. Imagine if one of your game buddies did that to you. |
| 92 | * BrownBagMask: B.A. sometimes forces his players to wear paper bag masks if he's worried that their facial expressions will give away information the other players shouldn't know. Brian's head is too big for a bag, so he wears a cardboard box. |
| 93 | * BrutalHonesty: Moe of Patty's Perps never lies or candy-coats her words. Stevil has also been called out on this, but most of the time his "honesty" is just his inner JerkAss speaking. |
| 94 | * BunnyEarsLawyer: Brian is a socially awkward man with a made-up girlfriend, but is incredibly good at being a RulesLawyer and is a skilled tactician having won regional war game tournaments. |
| 95 | * CannotKeepASecret: Patty. Two glasses of red wine, and the girl will sing like a canary. |
| 96 | * CantHoldHisLiquor: Brian. He is the reason why the Knights no longer allow alcohol at the gaming table. Any time this rule is relaxed, his behaviour quickly reminds them why it was instigated in the first place. |
| 97 | * TheCaper: Switch, and a number of other criminals attempt to rob a warehouse. Bob helps them out, [[AndYouThoughtItWasAGame thinking it's an RPG]]. |
| 98 | * CarnivorousHealingFactor: : This is a game mechanic in Weird Pete's work-in-progress game "Fairy Meat", shown to be a GameBreaker when [[RulesLawyer Brian Van Hoose]] has his character [[{{Autocannibalism}} eat its own arm]] to heal. |
| 99 | * CarvedMark: A RunningGag involves the player characters waking up somewhere after their latest ZanyScheme has gone awry to discover that pixie/fairy runes of shame have been carved into their buttocks. |
| 100 | * CasanovaWannabe: Jonny Kizinski hits on every female he encounters from Sarah to Shiela to random [=GaryCon=] goers. This despite the fact that he's married and most of the women he meets are repulsed by him. |
| 101 | * CatchPhrase: "Hoody Hoo!". Also quite often: "I waste him with my crossbow!" or "Foul! I cry foul!" (Bob) and "Prepping a couple of fireballs here, B.A.!"/"Fireball coming online!" (Brian) |
| 102 | * CatsAreMean: B.A.'s cat, Colonel Prowler, has a habit of assaulting players and stealing their dice. He does, however, sleep with B.A. which is sort of cute... |
| 103 | * CavemenVsAstronautsDebate: The group has one of these at one point with Bob and Dave supporting the caveman while Brian supports the astronaut. |
| 104 | * CharacterDevelopment: Bob, of all people, has possibly undergone the most growth over the course of the strip. He began as a simple ButtMonkey / ManChild, but slowly evolved into a…slightly more mature ButtMonkey / ManChild. |
| 105 | * TheChessmaster: Brian. Occasionally, Stevil and Pete will come up with a devious plan, as well. |
| 106 | * ChestOfMedals: In one early story, Brian comes up with the idea of creating medals for gaming achievements. Bob and Dave run with the idea: |
| 107 | -->'''[[GameMaster B.A.]]:''' It looks like a convention for [[TheGeneralissimo Third World dictators]] in here. |
| 108 | * ClapperGag: B.A. installed a Clapper so he could dramatically turn the lights off during a game to create atmosphere. Brain kept clapping his hands so he could turn the lights back on to take notes. A clapping war ensued, eventually breaking the Clapper and leaving them stuck in the dark |
| 109 | * ComedicSociopathy: |
| 110 | ** Very common in the games. Everybody is ''expected'' to be a backstabbing, scheming bastard -- ''including'' the KillerGamemaster -- and there's very little actual hard feelings floating around. |
| 111 | *** The Knights' characters mostly exhibit this towards various [=NPCs=] and hirelings and only occasionally towards each other. |
| 112 | *** The Black Hands, on the other side, are very prone to inter-group backstabbing. |
| 113 | *** Sara has had her objections to it at times, and when Bob's dad tried ''Cattlepunk'', this element of it bothered him immensely and he lectured everyone present. |
| 114 | ** Doing this ''outside'' the game or in-game to the point of making people genuinely upset is a very good way to get shunned, as Stevil and Crutch have found out. |
| 115 | ** Brian has some tendencies to this outside of the game as well: he can be quite manipulative and is not above exploiting his friends for monetary gain, but he doesn't intentionally cause any actual harm. Most people tend to forgive him, since he can be quite a good friend as well. The exception is Sheila, who seems to hate his guts. |
| 116 | ** Then there was the time that Newt was in a position to have to bail the Black Hands out of jail and chose to bail out ex-con Crutch instead of Stevil. And this was a real-life jail, not a game. |
| 117 | * ComicTrio (plus One): Bob's the navigator with the half-baked schemes; Dave's the clueless driver; Sara's the Only Sane Woman who's ultimately powerless to do more than avoid ground zero; and Brian's the scheming backseat driver who either makes things worse or [[XanatosSpeedChess turns the disaster to his advantage]]. |
| 118 | * ComplacentGamingSyndrome: |
| 119 | ** [[invoked]] Every character in the strip. When forced to break out of this trope, Dave's mage showed signs of CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass until he was allowed to play his old character again. |
| 120 | ** Averted with Sara, who frequently plays new kinds of characters. Though usually she will hover around the "fighter with benefits" archetype due to party composition, with her iconic character being a NobleSavage ranger. |
| 121 | * CoverIdentityAnomaly: Brian's character gets into trouble attempting to enter a walled city during a ''Grunge Warrior'' game when he presents the guards with forged papers that identify him as an ambassador from a country that ceased to exist 30 years previously. |
| 122 | * CowardiceCallout: In "Coward of the County", Bob (running low on hit points) pushes torchbearer Knobby Foot into the front line to save his own skin. Sara and B.A. (in character as Knobby Foot) call him out for it. Knobby Foot survives the fight and refuses to continue adventuring in the company of a coward. |
| 123 | * CrackIsCheaper: [[invoked]] Part of the reason why B.A. and Bob are perpetually broke is because they use what little money they earn from their minimum wage jobs to support their hobby. |
| 124 | * CrazyPrepared: Brian, ''all the time''. To give one example, in case his character gets his hands on a Wish Spell, Brian has a pages-long carefully written run-on sentence in his briefcase which is designed to grant his character true immortality. He has even had the document reviewed by an actual paralegal. BA and his fellow Gamemasters cannot find a flaw in the wish, but Brian's PC becoming immortal means that a previously restrained god has the right to destroy him. EVEN THEN this only triggers a clause that undoes the effects of the wish and gives Brian 25,000 gp. |
| 125 | * CreditCardPlot: In "Credit Where Credit Is Due", Bob laments that he can't get a credit card. Brian insists that with a bit of finagling, ''anybody'' can get a credit card. Challenged to prove it, he gets [[SillySimian Squirrely]] a credit card, which Weird Pete uses to clear his balance with Hard 8 and get his account unfrozen. |
| 126 | -->'''Weird Pete:''' Oh, now this really chaps my ass! I can't get a credit card to save my life just because of a few bad checks? But some ''stoopid ape'' can? |
| 127 | * CryingWolf: Brian once made up a GirlfriendInCanada. After the Knights confronted him and they all got past that incident, Brian mentions another girlfriend who he insists is real, but the Knights don't believe him. Turns out he met someone online and is dating her through the internet. |
| 128 | * CutAndPasteComic: The comic has a number of stock poses and images that are used to create the comic. |
| 129 | * DarkerAndEdgier: Newt's preference in characters tends towards dark mysterious assassins with tortured souls and troubled pasts. |
| 130 | * DeadpanSnarker: |
| 131 | ** BA is constantly pointing out the Knights are behaving in a manner not particularly consistent with heroes and ruining the campaign with heavy sarcasm as well as put downs. It never works. |
| 132 | ** Sarah can dish it out as verbally as she can physically, often highlighting how stupid the plans of the Knights are. |
| 133 | ** Stevil is the grandmaster of it all with every word out of his mouth being pure sardonicism mixed with insults. |
| 134 | * DeusExMachina: when attacked by Carvin' Marvin, [[spoiler:Gary Jackson turns out to carry an almost-unique item that one-shots the sword with no saving throw. In a single panel, the artifact blade that had been driving the plot for months just winks out.]] |
| 135 | * DifferentInEveryEpisode: The signs (and occasional graffiti) at the front of the Games Pit change between appearances. Some of the messages relate to the current plotline; others are stand-alone jokes. |
| 136 | * DiggingYourselfDeeper: Chad from "Patty's Perps" is a master of this. |
| 137 | -->'''Chad:''' Awwwwh, c'mon Patty! When I said girl gamers were lame I wasn't referring to you! You're just like one of the guys.\ |
| 138 | '''Patty:''' Like one of the guys? Your character suddenly hears a rustling in the underbrush. Roll for initiative.\ |
| 139 | '''Tank:''' Careful, Chad. You're digging that hole deeper and deeper. |
| 140 | * DisneyDeath: [[spoiler:GARY JACKSON?!]] is believed to have died in a plane crash and it affects the strips for multiple years before it's revealed he was FakingTheDead. |
| 141 | * TheDitz: Dave, though he does have occasional flashes of brilliance. One such flash leads him to countering ''every one of Brian's strategies'' during the Doomsday Pack arc. |
| 142 | * TheDogBitesBack: Happens to every NPC that's unfortunate enough to work with the Knights and live. Somehow the Knights [[GenreBlindness are completely blind to this]]. Most often due to AlternativeCharacterInterpretation and InsaneTrollLogic. They tend to treat their [=NPCs=] poorly, then the [=NPCs=] [[MistreatmentInducedBetrayal turn on them]] making them feel justified in doling out the abuse. |
| 143 | * DoubleStandardRapeMaleOnMale: |
| 144 | ** One early strip involves Nitro taking over B.A.’s game for a night. It’s never shown exactly what happened, but Dave later says Nitro ran a game based off Film/{{Deliverance}}, of which Bob’s character appears to have been the victim. While Sara and B.A. are sympathetic to Bob (Sara even calls Nitro a ‘disgusting pig’), the incident is still PlayedForLaughs. |
| 145 | ** Another strip involves Newt’s character being…mated with by a male rutting owlbeast. [[ItMakesSenseInContext He was dressed as a female owlbeast and spritzed with owlbeast urine at the time.]] |
| 146 | * DoubleStandardAbuseFemaleOnMale: |
| 147 | ** Sara and Sheila are the two main offenders as far as this goes. Sara regularly grabs Dave by the shirt collar (once ripping out his chest hair) as retribution for an ill-advised remark. Sheila appears to have punched out just about every man in the strip at some point. They have both drawn a degree of ire from some fans for this reason. This has been evening out somewhat in recent years – in that Sara has been receiving as much abuse as she’s been handing out. |
| 148 | ** In "A Scolding This Way Comes" (Issue 163), Sheila brings Bob to the gaming table and demands that Brian, Dave, and B.A. apologize for abandoning him to Colonel Prowler's lair in the previous issue. This strip reveals that Sheila had gut-punched Brian, wedgied Dave, and given B.A. a swirly in the restroom when she learned what they'd done, before going to rescue Bob from the cat herself. Sara tries to convince the clearly humiliated Bob that he has nothing to be ashamed of, to no avail. What is particularly ironic about this strip is that it is presented as an Aesop ''against'' sexism, in that it criticizes the double standard that a man rescuing a woman from danger is viewed as heroic, while a woman rescuing a man from danger is viewed as embarrassing ... and yet, the comic seems oblivious to the equally sexist double standard that if three women had abandoned a friend in this manner, and were then beaten up by her angry boyfriend, it would ''never'' be considered acceptable, let alone viewed as righteous punishment the way Sheila's actions were. |
| 149 | * DownOnTheFarm: KODT is set in Muncie, Indiana but largely averts this trope as it is portrayed as a typical mid-sized city: albeit one with more than its fair share of quirky inhabitants. However, every so often there are references to bizarre goings-on in the rural areas outside the city. These were more common when Bob was working for Harness & Hoe Insurance. It is worth noting that strip creator Jolly Blackburn attended Ball State University in Muncie. |
| 150 | * DrillSergeantNasty: Nitro is a Marine and may actually have been a drill sergeant. Either way, he often puts on the hat and uses a whistle to whip the Black Hands into shape. |
| 151 | * DrivingStick: Weird Pete discovers that Gordo can't drive stick during a road trip to [=GaryCon=] when he wakes up to to find Gordo is still driving in first gear. By the end of the trip, Gordo has mastered driving stick (with the aid of Squirrely) and is ecstatic. |
| 152 | * DrunkRolling: More than once B.A. has become frustrated by his players ignoring his carefully crafted adventure in favour of roaming the alleys of the city attempting to scam easy XP by rolling drunks. |
| 153 | * DudeWheresMyRespect: The Knights act like this in-character, believing their characters should be treated as epic heroes despite their behavior being horrific BloodKnight and {{Greed}} personified. |
| 154 | * DungeonmastersGirlfriend: |
| 155 | ** Discussed. The male players often accuse B.A. of showing favoritism to Sara who is his cousin, though he actually runs the game fairly for all and cuts Sara no slack. |
| 156 | *** At worst, when B.A. does favor Sara its because he prefers her play style, not because of their relationship. He likes it when one of his players doesn't start a pitched battle during a diplomatic dinner. |
| 157 | ** A straighter example is Chad's girlfriend. She's a pacifist and plays her cleric that way (in fact she can't even heal the party from their injuries because that would enable their violence so she's just an observer.) |
| 158 | * EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The Knights had much less distinctive personalities in the early episodes and you'd sometimes see the characters exhibiting traits you'd now associate with other characters. They were whatever was needed for the gag in that particular strip. The self contained format of the early strips is itself a form of early installment weirdness. |
| 159 | * {{Egopolis}}: Newt's campaign world is called "Newtonia". |
| 160 | * ElmuhFuddSyndwome: Hunter. Justified because he's 6. |
| 161 | * EmbarrassingFirstName: |
| 162 | ** Hard man Crutch's real name is Leslie. |
| 163 | ** B.A.’s full name is Boris Alphonzo Felton. No wonder he goes by B.A. |
| 164 | * EmptyRoomPsych: The Knights are very susceptible to this. |
| 165 | * EscalatingWar: What starts as Bob & Dave vs Brian & Sara escalates when Bob & Dave call in outside help, prompting Brian & Sara to do the same, leading to players from six states being involved in BA's game. Then Gary Jackson and co decide to crash the party... |
| 166 | * EscapeCall: Chad's girlfriend arranged one to escape from a roleplaying game. However, when she realised Chad's friends were not as bad as she had feared (and that they would recognise the call for what it was and that it would be incredibly rude of her) she switched her phone off. |
| 167 | * EskimosArentReal: Weird Pete doesn't believe Papua New Guinea is a real country. |
| 168 | * EvenBadMenLoveTheirMamas: Crutch is a hardened criminal who has served time and only recently gone straight. He, however, speaks nothing but fondly of his mother. |
| 169 | * EvenEvilHasStandards : In one issue of ''KODT Illustrated,'' Knuckles captures a member of the cult that tortured Thorina. Knowing that Knuckles intended to kill him, and knowing also the Untouchable Trio's notorious reputation for greed and selfishness, the cultist tries to persuade Knuckles to join his cult instead, offering lavish rewards. Knuckles mentally pictures himself torturing Thorina, and then promptly kills the cultist, saying, ''"Sorry, bud, but even I've got standards."'' |
| 170 | * EvenTheRatsWontTouchIt: The "Limited Edition Haulin" Ass And Ammo "Meals Ready To Eat" Snack Pouches': |
| 171 | -->'''Weird Pete:''' I bought half a pallet of that crap two years ago... Didn't sell a single pack.. Squirrely wouldn't even touch 'em. |
| 172 | * EverythingTryingToKillYou: The Knights assume this about B.A.'s dungeons and his [=NPCs=]. This partly justifies their ComedicSociopathy. More often actually the case when Weird Pete [=GMs=] -- his whole campaign setting is made of this trope. Nobody has made it above 3rd level in that setting. |
| 173 | * EvilRedhead: "Red" Gurdy Pickens |
| 174 | * EvilWeapon: |
| 175 | ** Carvin' Marvin has existed in B.A.'s campaign world for close to ten years. Nobody in the party could control it, and every attempt at trying failed horribly, resulting in the deaths of over forty party members. Eventually, they kicked it into a ditch along with the last NPC to die wielding it, buried it, and called it a day. This became a ChekhovsGun when the party needed to find an intelligent sword to match against ''another'' intelligent sword, Tremble, who had taken control of Dave's character. |
| 176 | ** Dealing with Carvin' Marvin is considered to be terrifying among the party members who've dealt with it. When they retrieved it in order to deal with Tremble and the Doomsday Pack, Sara (the only player not to have seen Marvin before) complained afterwards that the others should have told her what she was in for. Not only was her character inflicted with chronic nightmares and a nervous tic, but she herself said that she wouldn't be able to sleep for a week on account of nerves. |
| 177 | ** Speaking of Tremble, while he doesn't carry the same kind of ominous mystique that Marvin has, the fact that B.A. recruited [[DrillSergeantNasty Nitro]] to guest-play as Tremble's personality more than makes up for it. |
| 178 | * TheFaceless: "Hawg" Waller, who is only ever seen from behind (justified, since he is a bartender and the focus is on the patrons on the other side of the counter). |
| 179 | * FellOffTheBackOfATruck: Anything that Switch tries to sell you. |
| 180 | * FlippingTheTable: Brian does this when upset too much. Bob has done it upon occasion, too. |
| 181 | * FormallyNamedPet: B.A.'s cat is Colonel Prowler. |
| 182 | * FourOneNineScam: One strip deals with the results of the Knights receiving a FourOneNineScam email. |
| 183 | * GameBreaker: [[invoked]] |
| 184 | ** Brian himself counts, not to mention the many characters and schemes he cooks up. |
| 185 | ** Dave's Hackmaster+12. |
| 186 | ** A notable mention goes to when Brian manipulated B.A. into handing out a hammer that could duplicate spells, and then let Brian get ahold of a scroll of Wishes, to which Brian pulled out an ironclad legal document so B.A. couldn't screw up his wish to become a god. |
| 187 | ** Played to the hilt with the legendary [[http://www.kenzerco.com/Operiodicals/kodt/jackson_document.pdf Jackson Document]] which formed the basis for the Bagworld campaign storyline; managing to be a game breaker not once, but ''twice'' in the course of the campaign. |
| 188 | ** B.A. brings it on himself sometimes such as when he invoked obscure mob overbearing rules to rein his players back in over the objections and warnings of Brian himself. After the HumiliationConga, Brian simply had the party hire their own beggar mobs to overbear monsters, including a dragon. |
| 189 | * GameNightFight: Brian sometimes becomes so angry while participating in the role playing game Hackmaster that he will literally flip over the table where his group is playing. He has also been known to tie up the GameMaster B.A. Felton and leave him hanging from the ceiling. |
| 190 | * GargleBlaster: |
| 191 | ** During a ''Hackmaster'' campaign, a particular bar requires first-time patrons to order Gut Busters. They use it to weed out low-level characters; drinking a drink of it does 1d10 damage, which is more than most first-level characters have. Bob's character, after being assaulted by certain patrons, gets a double, forgetting both that he's been injured and that each shot does 1d10 damage. He dies from the drink, to the shame of his party members. |
| 192 | ** And Mojo Dave's "mojo juice". Sipping it causes "Hawg" Waller to pass out. |
| 193 | * GasMaskLongcoat: Newt wears this outfit when playing his character Corporal Punishment in ''Heroes of Hackleague''. |
| 194 | * GenerationXerox: The male Knights continually abuse the offscreen training rules so that when their characters die they can easily introduce [[{{Expy}} identical clones]] of their previous ones with the level adjusted a little bit. |
| 195 | * GeodesicCast: The various gaming groups and the Hard 8 staff provide distinct story casts who occasionally interact with one another. |
| 196 | * TheGhost: ''[=KodT=]'' has several: |
| 197 | ** Bob's sister (who is the mother of Croix and Hunter) |
| 198 | ** B.A.'s mother (although she becomes TheVoice on occasion) |
| 199 | ** Crutch's 'old lady', Casey Mae |
| 200 | ** Crowbar, Switch's partner-in-crime was one for years (although he did become TheVoice for a couple of panels in one strip), until he finally appeared on-panel in Hawg Waller's. |
| 201 | ** Brian's uncle (and former guardian) |
| 202 | ** B.A. and Sara's Aunt Nudra |
| 203 | ** Dave's dad and brother |
| 204 | ** Pete's ex-wife |
| 205 | * GirlfriendInCanada: |
| 206 | ** Brian's imaginary girlfriend Alexis Marie. [[BerserkButton I...Imaginary?!]] [[FlippingTheTable GRAHHHH!]] |
| 207 | ** Bob also claims to have been in a ''Film/FatalAttraction'' style situation with a woman at the Harness & Hoe Insurance Company; a claim which Dave finds hilarious. |
| 208 | * GlobalIgnorance: |
| 209 | ** Dave. He is convinced that Canada is behind the Iron Curtain, and thinks that the language of Israel is Orcish. His grasp of history isn't much better. |
| 210 | ** And Weird Pete doesn't realize that Papua New Guinea is a real country. |
| 211 | * {{GMPC}}: Generally averted or inverted. The rare occasions when B.A.'s [=NPCs=] become this trope they end up getting [[PutOnABus written out]] [[DroppedABridgeOnHim of the story pretty quick]], since they're only there to put the story back on the rails. Most of the time when B.A. plays [=NPCs=] for the party they're a {{Redshirt}}s who only exist to be CannonFodder for the [=PCs=]. |
| 212 | * GodModeSue: [[invoked]] Timmy Jackson [=GMs=] his campaigns this way, throwing damage every which way without even rolling. It doesn't help that his father created ''Hackmaster''. The Knights "defeat" him by playing by his rules. |
| 213 | -->'''Timmy:''' Baalzebul and thurdy devils appear awound you!\ |
| 214 | '''Bob:''' [[CrazyPrepared I don my ring of Baalzebul slaying!]]\ |
| 215 | '''Dave:''' [[ComicallyMissingThePoint What... when did you get that?!]]\ |
| 216 | '''Bob:''' Oh, I think it was in the 'Ayplay Along-way Oo-Yay Idiotway.'\ |
| 217 | '''Dave:''' Where was I for that one? |
| 218 | * GoshDangItToHeck: |
| 219 | ** "Firk-Ding-Blast!" and "What the SAM FRICK?" |
| 220 | ** Also, "god" is usually spelled "gawd". The latter is a reference to ''Dungeons & Dragons'' changing the names of some of their monsters to dodge heat from MoralGuardians. More directly referenced when Hard 8 remembers the time they were pressured into renaming their Demons and Devils as "Ne'er Do Wells." |
| 221 | * {{Goth}}: Newt to a limited extent. |
| 222 | * GoToAlias: "Weird" Pete's go-to alias is John Mephisto; the name of an old ''[=HackNoia=]'' character of his. |
| 223 | * GratuitousFrench: Stevil once played a thief named "La Rogue". When it died after one session of play he showed up with a "new" character called "[[ComplacentGamingSyndrome La Rogue Deux]]" . |
| 224 | * GreasySpoon: There is one of these opposite the Games Pit. The players will occasionally adjourn there for a meal (although it is not as popular as Tic Tac Taco). Apparently the chili is good: anything else is a bit of a gamble. |
| 225 | * GreaterScopeVillain: in the arc where Sara and Brian are controlled by Carvin' Marvin and taking over the world, [[spoiler:Gary Jackson and his team fill this role, and pull a OneHitKill on the uber-artifact sentient sword without even raising a sweat]]. |
| 226 | * GroupieBrigade: Knuckles acquires one in the "Sing For the Moment" storyline. |
| 227 | * AHandfulForAnEye: Bob once defeated Nitro by blinding him with a salt cellar before coldcocking him with a dinner tray (a trick he claimed to have learned from watching B.A's infamous fistfight with Sheila Horowitz). The man ''[[BerserkButton touched his dice!]]'' |
| 228 | * HandInTheHole: One of these traps results in Knuckles and El Ravager losing three arms between the two of them. |
| 229 | * HangingJudge: Weird Pete when he is presiding over "Gamer's Court". |
| 230 | * HatOfAuthority: In the Hackbeard campaign, a pirate's hat size is directly linked to their level of authority. Sara gets in trouble when she turns up wearing a larger hat than the captain. |
| 231 | * HeartIsAnAwesomePower: Brian once scammed Bob into selling him a rare, expensive mini dirt cheap. To settle the score, Brian gave Bob an IOU for in-game gold... and a thimble that [[WhatKindOfLamePowerIsHeartAnyway fixes sails and nets.]] B.A. counters by steering the party into a seaside town, making Bob the leader of a massive economical empire. |
| 232 | * HighClassCallGirl: Trish |
| 233 | * HitMeDammit: In one strip Newt Forager insists on giving only an in-universe description of his character, refusing to provide any game-mechanics stats. Stevil decides to scope out this information by getting Newt's character to attack his. It ends with Stevil's character getting knocked out with one blow. |
| 234 | * HoistByHerOwnPetard: In "Snatch and Grab" (Issue 181), Sara grabs the lucky die, Emerald Fitz, and refuses to let the boys have it, insisting that it must be destroyed. In the ensuing argument, Sara challenges Brian, Johnny, Bob, and Dave, each in turn, to ''take'' the die from her. She was anticipating that the boys would back down rather than fight her, and at first, it seemed like they would. Sara's strategy ultimately backfired, though, when Bob said, "Dude, there's like '''four''' of us ... If we bum rush her, we could take her!" and the other boys quickly fall in line to agree with him. Sara realizes that she's in trouble, because she can't fight all four of the boys at once, and she has to think of something else quickly. She does, but a fight breaks out, anyway, although Sara manages to hold her own long enough to escape, with the boys in pursuit. |
| 235 | * HollywoodScience: Averted in one of the few moments where the players ''weren't'' trying to pull a fast one on B.A., ironically during a SpaceHack (sci-fi) game. When the players' characters were desperate for hydrogen to fuel their starship, they clashed with B.A., who was somehow convinced that hydrogen was a ''rare element'' (in truth, it's the most abundant Periodic element known to man), over whether or not they could acquire it in abundance by taking on '''water''' (that's H₂O, as in hydrogen and oxygen) from an ocean planet and cracking it into its constituent elements. |
| 236 | * HolodeckMalfunction: Weird Pete's 'Virtual Dungeon' turns into this, when a malfunction of the VR headsets results in the players attacking each other and one player jumping out of the window in an attempt to get away from giant spiders. |
| 237 | * HonestJohnsDealership: |
| 238 | ** Weird Pete's Games Pit, where B.A. is frequently fast-talked into buying whatever Weird Pete is trying to unload. |
| 239 | ** Hard 8 Enterprises is not above using sleazy tactics to profit at the expense of game store owners and customers. |
| 240 | ** Brian also shows these tendencies, charging for character sheets and miniatures painting (for an extra charge, he'll use an actual paintbrush instead of a Q-tip). |
| 241 | %%* HookerWithAHeartOfGold: Trish |
| 242 | * HumanMail: 'Operation: Pig in a Poke' involves shipping Bob inside a crate to Hard 8 Enterprises so he can download command words from Tulley's computer. The plan starts to unravel when Brian balks at the cost of sending the crate overnight express, so he opts to send it freight instead. |
| 243 | * HumanNotepad: Brian has his character's spells tattooed onto the backs of Bob and Dave's characters so he could always have access to spells. |
| 244 | * HumiliationConga: |
| 245 | ** Rather than RocksFallEveryoneDies, this is B.A.'s preferred method of dealing out punishment. Of course, his players are usually the ones [[TooDumbToLive to hand him the knife]]. |
| 246 | ** Pixie runes of shame being tattooed on the party's buttocks are a common occurrence (along with the [[CherryTapping one point of damage]] that comes along with it). |
| 247 | ** People on the wrong end of Bob's or Stevil's wrath will often end up going through one of these, as well. |
| 248 | ** Don't forget "Dancing Queen" Newt. He & Stevil keep trying to one-up each other as revenge for the last one. |
| 249 | ** The Knights did this to a rival group after Sara found out [[spoiler:her boyfriend dated her just to get her into his gaming group for extra points in a tournament]]. The humiliation conga the gang put them through on her behalf (complete with pictures) [[TrueCompanions proves they've accepted her as a Knight]]. |
| 250 | * {{Hypocrite}}: |
| 251 | ** In "The Dining Room of Horrendous Doom" (Issue 132), the Knights are horrified to realize that they are trapped in B.A.'s living room, with the lights out, and Colonel Prowler on the loose. When B.A., Bob, Dave, and Brian all resolutely refuse to try to get to the fuse box to restore the lights, or otherwise do anything that risks being attacked by the cat, Sara sarcastically says, "Lucky me, trapped in a room filled with ''heroic men types.''" Sara was berating the boys for their cowardice ... even though Sara wasn't budging from ''her'' chair, either. |
| 252 | ** This is particularly hypocritical for Sara, because her character has always represented female gamers who don't want to be discriminated against, but don't want preferential treatment, either. Supposedly, Sara just wants to be treated the same as the male players at the table. And yet, when a dangerous situation developed, Sara had no problem expecting the boys to take the risk of injury and exempting herself from it, for no discernible reason other than that she's a girl. She doesn't even deny doing this. When Bob calls her on it, saying ''"Way to play the 'I'm just a girl' card, Sara,"'' she makes no attempt to refute the point, and instead says that they can't just sit in the dark and do nothing. |
| 253 | * IHaveBoobsYouMustObey: |
| 254 | ** Bridgette Keating, though subverted once by a bouncer at [=GaryCon=]. She'd previously turned him down for a date and he wasn't going for her charms twice. |
| 255 | ** Inverted by Sara Felton, the strip's foremost female character. Although she has a certain level of attractiveness (InformedAttractiveness thanks to the quality of the art), she reacts [[BerserkButton very poorly]] to efforts to objectify her. Even most of her characters don't play those games. |
| 256 | ** On the very rare occasions where the male Knights play female characters, they tend to exploit this trope. |
| 257 | * IKnowMortalKombat: |
| 258 | ** The storyline in which Bob unwittingly helps plan a successful warehouse burglary based on his gaming experience. |
| 259 | ** They've done this on several occasions, especially Bob, employing his in game roleplaying experience in the real world, dealing with his dad by hiding and bluffing. |
| 260 | ** In Issue 162: |
| 261 | --->'''Brian:''' We have to find [B.A.'s cat's] hoard [of dice] and we know from past history that this can be a challenge. So, for that I need your eyes and know how. ''I need a'' '''thief.''' |
| 262 | * ImprovisedGolem: One strip had the players complaining about to the GM (Jonnny Kizinski) about the villain being able to assemble a golem out of components he found in a broom closet. |
| 263 | * InfinityPlusOneSword: Dave's Hackmaster +12. Subverted in that he had this weapon since almost the beginning, becoming a mild Game Breaker. |
| 264 | * IResembleThatRemark: Bob ranting about how he'd like to kill all those media pundits who claim gaming promotes violent behaviour. |
| 265 | * {{Jerkass}}: |
| 266 | ** Every character has held the "Jerkass ball" at some point or another, with Bob, Stevil, and Pete being the most common. |
| 267 | ** Brian often falls in and out of this trope on a regular basis, reaching new heights in 2015-2016 storylines where mistreatments of Bob for, ultimately, Brian's own personal gain include: |
| 268 | *** Convincing Bob to allow himself to be mailed as a first class package to infiltrate Gary Jackson Games' warehouse. Brian then balks at the cost of first class (''after'' Bob has been sealed in) and pays the cheapest rate instead, leaving "the package" to be lost in the mail long enough for Bob's food supplies to run out and lose contact with Brian when his cell phone battery dies. |
| 269 | *** Almost immediately after the resolution of the above, convincing Bob to hand over his and Sheila's rent payment for a questionable-at-best "investment opportunity"--an act which has seemingly ended Bob and Sheila's relationship. |
| 270 | * JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Every character, when not holding "Jerkass balls". |
| 271 | * JumpTheShark: [[invoked]] The title of issue #151, which features [[spoiler:Gary Jackson coming BackFromTheDead.]] What's funny is, they included this as an example of when you know they're jumping the shark in an earlier "Parting Shots" feature (a humor section on the back page.) The explanation they put forth actually makes a lot of sense given the character [[spoiler:He was in deep to the mob due to his compulsive gambling which had long since been an established character trait, so he turned states evidence and they faked his death with old airplane wreckage and forged reports to protect him. The evidence of the writers setting up Gary's return pretty much goes back to his "death." The only thing they haven't explained yet was how Gary faked his open casket funeral though they hung a lampshade on that in issue #152.]] |
| 272 | * KangarooCourt: |
| 273 | ** Most of the trials the Untouchable Trio faces (although they usually bring these on themselves). |
| 274 | ** And are not above staging one themselves when they find themselves in a position of authority. |
| 275 | * KarmaHoudini: Whether or not [[RulesLawyer Brian]] is one of these is one of the more contentious points among the fans. Some feel that the fact that many of his schemes end up backfiring and blowing up in his face is punishment enough for his dickish behavior. Others feel that the mere fact that the other players continue to tolerate his presence ''at all'' solidifies his position as one of these. |
| 276 | * KickTheDog: After buying the rights to ''Dawg : The RPG'' from B.A. for a mere $75, Gary Jackson turns the game into the surprise hit of [=GaryCon=]. B.A. is forced to watch as other people make a fortune on the game he created, while poor B.A. gets no royalties, no recognition, nothing. In "The Rumor Mill" (Issue 158), Weird Pete rubs salt in the wound by handing B.A. a copy of ''Dawg : The RPG'' and mentioning how well it was selling for him. B.A. sadly says, "Oh, that's cold, Pete. That's cold." At the end of the strip, he decides to buy the game, highlighting the irony of B.A. having to pay to get a copy of the game he invented. |
| 277 | * KillerGameMaster: B.A., Nitro and Weird Pete all share the philosophy that the GM is the enemy of the players. |
| 278 | ** B.A. only exemplifies this trope partway. While he does not believe in giving the smallest amount of mercy to players, his weakness is that he plays ridiculously straight; if the players find a way to [[OffTheRails derail the plot]] or come up [[GameBreaker with a cheese loop of power]], B.A. lets them get away with it without invoking Rule Zero. Oftentimes because he has a BatmanGambit or a HumiliationConga prepared. |
| 279 | ** Even when B.A. is ''not'' out to get the player characters (that is, most of the time), his players are convinced that every dice roll that goes against them is part of an evil [=GM=] plot. |
| 280 | ** Subverted once with Weird Pete's Temple of Horrendous Doom which no-one has ever survived and which the Black Hands have to sign a waiver just to play. [[spoiler:Turns out dying is the first thing you do in this dungeon. The point is to navigate your spirit through the dungeon to reclaim your body. Also, Stevil learns at the end that his party is not the first to beat the dungeon -- but the waiver they all signed at the beginning has a non disclosure clause forbidding bragging, in order to maintain the mystique.]] |
| 281 | ** {{Subverted}} in the Yaderwald arc. After exploring a dungeon, the party sets off a trap that will cause them to face three random encounters back-to-back. B.A. had intended this to be just a fun extra, but the dice had other plans: B.A. rolls up three absurdly powerful and improbable monsters. To make matters worse, the first of the three is a blithering rust monster, which promptly destroys most of the party's armor and weapons. The second is a swarm of pixie grells, which drain everyone to near-zero health. Only Sara escapes the third encounter, a pair of Yaderwalds, and even she only escapes by accidentally turning herself into a bilge rat, which the Yaderwalds are uninterested in killing. ''Everyone'' except Sara and B.A. think that B.A. picked those three on purpose as a plot for revenge. |
| 282 | ** Crutch's Crime Nation game has an incredibly high mortality rate, yet is very popular with players. |
| 283 | * KillerRabbit: |
| 284 | ** The squirrel as fifth level monster from "The Most Dangerous (Small) Game". |
| 285 | ** Also B.A. seems to believe that llamas have antlers and gore people and his campaign reflects this. The magazine has occasionally published reprints of newspaper articles about people being injured in llama attacks further confusing matters. |
| 286 | * LaserGuidedKarma: The Untouchable Trio frequently gets into trouble as a direct result of impulsive violence, [[MistreatmentInducedBetrayal abuse of NPC hirelings]], etc. |
| 287 | * LavaIsBoilingKoolAid: Played with. When the GM tells Bob, "You've been skewered by a spear, you've fallen off a cliff, and you're swimming in lava," Bob asks, "Do I get a saving throw? I've got +1 with swimming." |
| 288 | * LavaPit: Patty Gauzweiler cements her KillerGM status (and greatly impresses her fellow [=GMs=]) by creating a DeathTrap in which the players willingly have their characters jump into a lava pit. |
| 289 | * LazilyGenderFlippedName: When Bob is forced to play a female character, he names her 'Bobarella'. |
| 290 | * LeeroyJenkins: |
| 291 | ** The Knights are frickin' MADE of this trope. |
| 292 | ** In a typical encounter, Bob and/or Dave start hacking immediately, Brian is a bit more analytical about it but readily joins in, and Sara tries in vain to get them to think things through first. |
| 293 | * LiterallyShatteredLives: After a long, ''long'' rules debate over who got turned to stone by a gorgon, B.A. decides it's Brian. The gorgon has a morning star. Piece it together. Also, it got worse when all of the flesh-to-stone transformations were reversed. |
| 294 | -->'''Sara:''' Eew. I think we need a wet-vac. |
| 295 | * LoadsAndLoadsOfRules: |
| 296 | ** The Hackmaster rules are complex enough to allow plenty of scope for Brian's RulesLawyer shenanigans and B.A.'s attempts to counteract them. |
| 297 | ** One story features a UsefulNotes/WorldWarI game with a ''huge'' amount of maps and pieces packed into a military surplus footlocker, covering the entire war in fine tactical detail. A group of gamers pooled their funds for the $400 price tag, with the winner of the first game getting to keep it. After four years (i.e. about the time the actual WWI took), Weird Pete and Brian and ''still'' playing out that first game. |
| 298 | * LocalHangout: Weird Pete's game store; the "Hawg Wallers" bar. |
| 299 | * LockedInARoom: Brian, Dave, and Bob once locked themselves in Brian's basement. This gave some insight into Brian's previously nebulous back-story. |
| 300 | * LongList: Happens twice in the Bag Wars saga when someone reads off the list of things in the BagOfHolding. Dave makes note of a perfectly ordinary sausage grinder both times ("Mmm, fresh sausage!"). |
| 301 | * LoserHasYourBack: Happens to Sheila Horowitz during the "Grudge Match" arc. Following the elimination games, one member of each of the gaming groups is supposed to belly up to the table for the final showdown. Sheila expects to be backed up by the power players from the other 'evil' groups: the other players being supposed to take the fall to allow them to progress. Instead she finds herself SurroundedByIdiots. |
| 302 | * MacGuffin: The Lyre of Hound Slaying, the Conch of Aarnd, the Feather of Victory...The list goes on. It is an RPG comic book, after all. |
| 303 | * MailOrderBride: The fake "Russian gamer brides" ads. |
| 304 | * MassivelyMultiplayerOnlineRolePlayingGame: "World of Hackcraft" |
| 305 | * MedalOfDishonor: Black Hands who sully the honor of either the group, or the hobby as a whole are forced to wear the "Hubcap of Shame". |
| 306 | * {{Medusa}}: In "The Stone Menagerie" arc, The Untouchable Trio (Plus One) encounter a medusa at the cenre of a labyrinth. Much arguing and [[RulesLawyer rules-lawyering]] ensues as the players try to justify why their character should not be the one who winds up being TakenForGranite. |
| 307 | * MenAreChildish: the female characters generally have a much more mature attitude than most (but not all) of the males. |
| 308 | * MercyKill: Subverted in one strip. After Windel the hireling is wounded by a dragon, Bob thinks he's begging him for this, and kills him. |
| 309 | -->'''Sara:''' “Actually, I think Windel was pleading for you not to kill him, Bob. His wounds weren’t really that serious.” |
| 310 | * MisplacedKindergartenTeacher: One of the [=GMs=] ''is'' a kindergarten teacher and has difficulties turning the attitude off. She treats her gaming group like a bunch of preschoolers, including a "Time Out Corner" with "5 points to ponder". Sadly, sometimes these steps are necessary. |
| 311 | * MistakenForBadass: A series of misunderstandings has Switch convinced that Tank is a cold-blooded killer you would not want to mess with. |
| 312 | * MistakenForPregnant: Tank misconstrues a conversation he overhears between Patty and B.A. about her cat being pregnant and soon the entire gaming community of Muncie is convinced that Patty is pregnant and that B.A. is the father. |
| 313 | * MistakenForRacist: While attending Garycon, B.A. gets covered in dye from an exploding dyepack when dave attempts to open Brian's briefcase (ItMakesSenseInContext). He attempts to remove it with lighter fluid and only succeeds in smearing it all over his face and hands, making it look like he is in BlackFace. After several people make comments about how offensive his costume is, Sheila is able to explain it away as a (very poor) Drow cosplay. |
| 314 | * MistakenForTerrorist: |
| 315 | ** Happens in the November 2011 issue when the group plays a real-life based ZombieApocalypse game of [[TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu Screams of Kachuloo]]. Brian's frequent Internet searches for bomb-making and the layout for the local mall (for the game) throws up red flags with Homeland Security. A more experienced member of the department sees that the address is in gamer-heavy Muncie, Indiana and calls off the team. They've been burned there before many times... |
| 316 | ** Possibly a ShoutOut to the incident in 1990 where the Secret Service actually raided the offices of [[Creator/SteveJacksonGames Steve Jackson Games]], under the mistaken belief that the ''GURPS Cyberpunk'' roleplaying game handbook in development was in fact a manual for real-life cyber-criminals. |
| 317 | * MistreatmentInducedBetrayal: [=NPCs=] often end up doing this to the Knights. The Knights typically respond by accusing B.A. of [[NeverMyFault arbitrarily]] [[KillerGameMaster persecuting them]]. |
| 318 | * MoeCouplet: Just about everything that B.A. and Patty do as a couple is adorable to the extreme. |
| 319 | * MoralMyopia: All [=NPCs=] are just there to be killed or to suck up to them. But the Untouchable Trio (plus one) are brave and noble heroes, never forget that. The players themselves seem to have this problem with the underhanded methods they use to win at all costs in either tournament play or getting one over BA. |
| 320 | * {{Munchkin}}: |
| 321 | ** Newt (constantly) with others showing traits of this from time to time. |
| 322 | ** In the original magazine strips, Bob and Dave were both Munchkins of the Psychopath or Murderhobo sort, whilst Brian was a Rules Lawyer who sometimes dipped into Psychopath. |
| 323 | * MyRuleFuIsStrongerThanYours: The ongoing battle between Brian and B.A. |
| 324 | * NameMcAdjective: After Bob's character Knuckles has his leg chopped off, Dave starts referring to him as 'Stumpy [=McTwitcherson=]'. |
| 325 | * NerdGlasses: Bob and 4/5 of the Black Hands (and Newt may have specs under that hair). Then again, since one of them is DrillSergeantNasty Nitro... |
| 326 | * NeutralFemale: Chad's Girlfriend's character. She plays a pacifist cleric that merely accompanies and observes the party without healing or fighting. |
| 327 | * NeverLendToAFriend: |
| 328 | ** A RunningGag is for one of the characters, usually Dave or Bob, to show up to the game with some expensive extravagance, like a $75 electronic [[strike: GM screen]] "player advantage screen", or drop everything to spend a week at [=GaryCon=], with long-suffering B.A. or [[TheStraightMan Sara]] pointing out that he still owes money or that his car has urgent repair needs he's been putting off. |
| 329 | ** One strip deals with all five characters dealing with an tangled web of World War I alliance-proportions' worth of owed money between them. The equally complex solution ''("Take the money you owe me, pay it back to him", etc.)'' clears up everyone's accounts except for [[ButtMonkey Bob]], who now owes money to everybody. |
| 330 | * NeverMyFault: Anything bad that happens to Bob, Dave, and Brian is ''always'' somebody else's fault. No exceptions. |
| 331 | ** In their ''Hackmaster'' campaign, the boys' characters, called "The Untouchable Trio," have burned villages to the ground, started wars, committed mass murder, devastated entire nations ... Yet, whenever the Untouchable Trio encountered trouble from people knowing them by reputation and hating them, the boys would immediately start whining about how they were always getting "screwed over." When the Untouchable Trio was arrested and taken under imperial guard to stand trial for their crimes, Bob accused B.A. (the group's GM) of having a vendetta against their characters. It never seemed to occur to Bob that being put in prison just ''might'' be a logical consequence of killing thousands of innocent people. |
| 332 | ** When Sara tried to run the group through an adventure she had designed (and won an award for), the boys kept wasting time hunting small animals for easy experience, and doing other trivial activities that had nothing to do with the adventure. When the game went sour as a result, Bob blamed Sara, asking her, "You claim this piece of *** took top honors?" |
| 333 | ** In one storyline, B.A. ran the group through the module "The Biggest Damn Dungeon Ever," which was rated as being an extremely dangerous adventure. The group kept sending their 1st-level characters into the deadliest part of the dungeon, and when their characters always died, the boys blamed B.A., and insinuated that he was cheating. |
| 334 | * TheNewRockAndRoll: Many times, in reference to the roleplaying game genre's long history of being accused of corrupting and/or mentally unbalancing its players. Characters have been arrested being mistaken for criminals (dicebags look like drug paraphernalia, plotting an in game robbery in public gets taken out of context etc). A long running subplot is Bob's dad's disapproval of the game first requiring Bob to hide his gaming, then get a job, then get kicked out of the house. |
| 335 | * NiceJobFixingItVillain: Sheila's unwitting purchase of "Doomsday" dice to use against the Knights in the grudge match tournament. She didn't realise that the Knights dice were actually cursed and, by using the same dice, she exposed her own team to the curse and leveled the playing field. |
| 336 | * NoodleIncident: |
| 337 | ** The unspecified incident that caused Brian to swear off ever [=GMing=] ''Hackmaster'' again. |
| 338 | ** When Bob is complaining bitterly about the miserable stats of his new character, Dave tries to console him by reminding him about “Lenny the Brave.” Bob freaks out and tells him Lenny has nothing to do with this. When Sara asks who Lenny the Brave is, Brian tells her he was one of Bob’s characters from before her time – and that “we don’t talk about him.” |
| 339 | * TheNotableNumeral: The Untouchable Trio (plus one) is the name of the players' group in-universe. |
| 340 | * NotaryNonsense: Brian keeps his preparations in a sealed envelope on a signed, dated, and notarized sheet, all so the GM can't accuse him of making his actions up on the fly. |
| 341 | * NotCheatingUnlessYouGetCaught: |
| 342 | ** Official Hard 8 policy is that any rule in one of their games stands as written unless an official erratum regarding it has been issued. Playtesters sometimes insert deliberate errors into games to create broken rules for players to take advantage of, until Hard 8 catches on and issues an erratum. One storyline centers on Bob acquiring a marked copy of ''Cattlepunk'' that identifies all these "special rules", and then badly overplaying his hand. |
| 343 | ** Bob really should have known better than to pull this stunt when the guy behind the GM Screen was the champion RulesLawyer himself, Brian. But Bob can't help it. |
| 344 | ** Brian has pulled this despite his reputation as a "fair" (if twisty) RulesLawyer. In one case in particular, his character takes hit after hit in a duel, and whenever B.A. asks how many hit points Brian has left, Brian instead deflects, eventually moving into outright insults about the quality of B.A.'s [=GMing=] to get B.A. to RageQuit the table. When Sara questions him about it, Brian admits to her that he was one-shotted straight away but declares that he's obeying a higher "Law of Survival" - in other words, cheating to keep himself alive. |
| 345 | * OffTheRails: The Knights do this to B.A. constantly. |
| 346 | ** Particularly harsh example when Sara takes the screen for a couple of strips, running a campaign she created as her masterpiece work at a [=GMing=] camp. Naturally, the players completely ignore the plot, running off into the woods to chase squirrels (literally), before she can even give them the quest hook. |
| 347 | * OneSteveLimit: {{Averted| Trope}}. |
| 348 | ** There are two characters named Bob: Bob Herzhog, one of the main characters, and Bob "Waco" Forzey, who works at Hard Eight Enterprises. It's easy to miss, though, since the latter Bob usually goes by his nickname. |
| 349 | ** The owner of the local gaming store is "Weird" Pete Ashton, who shares a name with Pete Skipowsky, another Hard Eight employee. And, like Waco, he's usually known by his nickname of "Skip." |
| 350 | * OnlySaneMan: Sara. B.A. takes over this role when she takes the role as DM. |
| 351 | * OutGambitted: B.A. and Brian are in a life-and-death struggle with this trope. While Brian usually gets the better of B.A., when the campaign is on the line the gamemaster does pull through. |
| 352 | * PaintballEpisode: "Last Man Standing" |
| 353 | * ParkingPayback: Dave claims that Sheila once kidney punched him for parking in the disabled spot next to the Games Pit. |
| 354 | * PerfectlyCromulentWord: The strip "Lair of the Gazebo" has the Knights mistaking a gazebo for a savage beast. Which is based on a true story originating from the exact same misunderstanding, that had been on the internet for years. Jolly Blackburn printed an updated account in the first Bundle of Trouble. |
| 355 | * PersonaNonGrata: Nitro Ferguson got banned from [=GaryCon=] after his D-Day game ran amok even more spectacularly than games in ''[=KoDT=]'' usually do. |
| 356 | * ThePianoPlayer: A run-in with the piano player in the saloon in Brian's ''Cattlepunk'' game ends with B.A.'s character having [[AssShove his gun placed in a very uncomfortable location]]. |
| 357 | * PickUpBabesWithBabes: Johnny Kizinski comments on how his infant son is a chick magnet. Of course, the effect is somewhat mitigated by him smoking like a chimney around the kid, which usually provokes rebukes from the women the child attracts. |
| 358 | * PigLatin: In the issue #170 segment "Channeling Gary". |
| 359 | * PlanningWithProps: ''The Bag Wars Saga'' demonstrates why you shouldn't use snack foods in place of proper miniatures. |
| 360 | * PlatonicProstitution: Chad initially hires Trish to pose as his fiancée. Tank later hires her to play Battleship with him. |
| 361 | * PlayingSick: Bob habitually claimed to be sick to avoid going to work when it would interfere with his gaming. After getting caught at it once too often, he was fired and thrown out by his angry and disappointed father. |
| 362 | * PowderTrail: The cover of ''Knights of the Dinner Table Special Edition'' #1 shows the Knights' ''Cattlepunk'' characters using one to blow open a bank vault. |
| 363 | * PromotionalPowerlessPieceOfGarbage: |
| 364 | ** All of the players pay out the wazoo for special dice in an attempt to appease the RandomNumberGod, with varying results (still erring on uselessness). |
| 365 | ** The trope then ''literally'' happened in an zany attempt by gamers to bless their dice by rubbing it on Gary Jackson's dead body. Any such die not only become ridiculously cursed but also infected other dice in the batch, too. Mainly because [[spoiler:that wasn't Gary Jackson's body they rubbed the dice on...]] Before [[spoiler:the reveal that Gary faked his own death]], Sara pointed out another fallacy in that plan: how lucky could a guy who died in a plane crash be? |
| 366 | * ProtagonistCenteredMorality: In-universe. The Untouchable Trio will not suffer even the slightest offense against their own characters but treat everyone else like garbage. This is reflected in the players themselves having absolutely no idea that their characters are not viewed "heroes" in-universe. |
| 367 | * ProudToBeAGeek: Bob, Dave, Brian, Weird Pete, and the Hard 8 staff (if they can be considered geeks). |
| 368 | * RageQuit: |
| 369 | ** When the "Loan Contract" story-arc comes to its climax and Stevil realizes that he has been thoroughly outwitted by Newt, he promptly uses a powerful magic item to off himself as well as the entire party. Nobody is pleased. |
| 370 | ** The Knights' "Hacknoia" game ended in a fiasco that drove ''Sara'' to rage quit after B.A. carelessly gave away the fact that her character was an InternalAffairs agent and then allowed the rest of the players to take revenge based on out-of-character knowledge. |
| 371 | ** Brian will occasionally [[FlippingTheTable flip the table]] when somebody [[BerserkButton pushes him too far]]. |
| 372 | * RandomNumberGod: |
| 373 | ** Acts more like the Shinto spirits of individual dice. At the same time, occasionally combated, like when Bob rolled one unlucky d10 and one lucky d10 to get a 01-05. |
| 374 | ** The Yaderwald arc presents an epic example of the RandomNumberGod pouring out its wrath. The party accidentally trigger a spell-trap, causing three random encounters back to back. B.A. had intended this to basically be a bit of extra xp for the Knights, but when he rolls to see what they face, the dice produce three ridiculously lethal monsters which seem to have been specifically chosen to have the biggest chance of a TPK. Indeed, the first two encounters leave the party with no chance against the third other than to play dead and hope the monsters leave one of the alive to resurrect the rest. |
| 375 | * RealisticDictionIsUnrealistic: Played with: the series constantly has people talking over each other or conducting two conversations at once. |
| 376 | * RealMenWearPink: Gordo likes fairies and unicorns. He also knows how to make nitroglycerin and may have done so for use in Nitro's steamtunnel capers. In fact that's hinted to be the reason he is on disability. |
| 377 | * [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech "The Reason You Suck" Speech]]: KODT #234: In the fallout of Brian's [=HackerJacks=] scheme, Brian finds himself at the receiving end of a series of these- first from Bob, then from Pete, and finally Sara and B.A.. The end result is Brian actually doing some soul searching and trying to make amends. |
| 378 | * ReassignedToAntarctica: When Hard 8 reinstates Nitro's GM credentials, it is with the provisio that he is only allowed to GM the Pee Wee Hackleague. This leads to a... |
| 379 | * ReassignmentBackfire: ... as Nitro takes his Pee Wee team 'The Forge of Heroes' all the way to the Garycon finals. |
| 380 | * RedBaron: Nitro (named for a gaming session involving C4), Crutch (named for... well... the crutches he wore when he broke his legs). |
| 381 | * TheRemnant: Colonel Quantrill (a.k.a. Juan Trail) and his men in B.A.'s ''Cattlepunk'' campaign. |
| 382 | * RightBehindMe: A common gag is one of the characters, usually Bob or Dave, talking smack about another, usually BA or Sarah, while they're right behind them. |
| 383 | * RobbingTheDead: Bob Herzog senior is aghast when the rest of the party proceeds to do this, leading to a famous WhatTheHellHero strip. |
| 384 | * RoadsideWave: In #200, Bob tries to persuade Sheila to give Brian a ride to Crutch's game. Sheila instead drives through a puddle, soaking Brian and leaving him standing on the side of the road. |
| 385 | * RoadTripPlot: KODT has featured multiple arcs where the main characters (and many supporting characters) make the annual pilgrimage to [=GaryCon=]. Adventures on the road (before they even get to the con) have included being locked in a basement before they leave; losing all of their luggage; getting stranded in a biker bar; and driving hundreds of miles in the wrong direction. |
| 386 | * RoaringRampageOfRevenge: |
| 387 | ** Sara once defected and played with a group of college students named Troy's Boys for a while. After her character's forced to metaphorically StayInTheKitchen while the other (male) characters live it up, under the pretense of a festival that bans the presence of women, she quits in a huff. She goes back to the Knights, who begin to play in the same area. The festival in question? It actually banned ''farm animals'', not women. |
| 388 | --->'''Sara:''' I WASTE HIM WITH MY LONGBOW!! |
| 389 | ** Immediately topped by the HumiliationConga the Knights put Troy's Boys through for treating Sara like that. It was bloodless, but after [[spoiler:being kidnapped, having one of their heads badly shaved, and dumped in the labyrinthine steam tunnels with a map that led them to an exit outside a bikers' bar, where the bartender had been paid to take pictures of them after they emerged]], they might've preferred death. |
| 390 | * RocksFallEveryoneDies: Once played literally when Bob kept wasting B.A.'s carefully planned adventures in favor of "a cave". |
| 391 | * TheRoleplayer: Sara at the Knights' table is a positive example of this trope. Cody, a local community theater actor, is a more over-the-top negative example. |
| 392 | * RulesLawyer: Brian, for whom it works ''both'' ways. He will use the rules to ''legally'' worm his way through any loophole and to break the game any way he can, but if the rules speak against him, or a higher gaming authority judges against him, he will abide by them, and if he sees someone ELSE breaking the rules or cheating, he WILL call them on it. |
| 393 | * RuleZero: Hackmaster ''explicitly'' does not have a Rule Zero (see SeriousBusiness, below). This is one reason the players can get away with so much, though in the early strips B.A. being a doormat didn't help matters. B.A. has started developing more of a backbone, though. |
| 394 | * TheScrooge: Brian. It's how he stays afloat, but its also leads to him shamelessly pumping cash out of his friends when he can get away with it. |
| 395 | * SecondFaceSmoke: Gary Jackson, being a {{Jerkass}}, smokes at the gaming table and sometimes blows smoke into the faces of his players; usually to emphasise some point. |
| 396 | * SelfImmolation: PlayedForLaughs when Brian is repeatedly suiciding his own characters in an attempt to get to a ''good'' one. |
| 397 | -->'''Brian:''' “Then Kreed the Second had an –ahem- unfortunate mishap after entering that fire walking contest down at Blind Man’s Pavilion…” |
| 398 | -->'''Sara:''' “I’m not sure dousing yourself with lamp oil beforehand is really considered a ‘mishap.’” |
| 399 | -->'''Brian:''' “Hey, they were giving points for ‘Most Entertaining.’” |
| 400 | * SelfStitching: Characters sewing up their own wounds (and whether you get XP for it) is a running gag. |
| 401 | * SeriousBusiness: |
| 402 | ** Gaming in Muncie is very serious business. There are codes of honor. Their gaming association, the HPMA, issues binding judgments. The playtesting is done in "gulags" with the Hard 8 staff occasionally having to put down rebellions. The players take extensive pains to document their games to keep their groups official with the HPMA. |
| 403 | ** Weird Pete is the Muncie representative for the [=HackMaster=] Gamer's Court, which handles player and [=GM=] infractions that extend beyond the bounds of a regular campaign. He comes to these sessions dressed in a judge's robe and wig. He can impose penalties (experience loss, treasure suspension, etc.) on the characters of players who violate [=HMPA=] guidelines. He can ''legally arbitrate payment of money'' for a character between one player and another [[hottip:note:Selling off said character has been a running scam for years. He is a very high-level ranger with a load of good equipment and has a very reasonable price tag for his market value. The scam is that his soul is trapped in Hell and he can't legally be played by anyone anywhere until he's rescued.]]. He also has first say in judging [=GM=] qualifications and other serious cases; those brought before his court are at perfect liberty to bring along their local [=HMPA=] representative and/or legal counsel as they see fit. |
| 404 | ** Brian once hired an attorney to review a pages long and carefully worded (using no punctuation, so as to keep it within the "one sentence" limit) Wish. When a panicked B.A. calls an emergency council of gamemasters to review the document, one of them consults a ''Hackmaster legal dictionary.'' |
| 405 | ** Hard 8's service hotline offers an "ancient riddle service" for [=GMs=] who need a suitably hard riddle for their campaign on the fly for sphinx, [[SpeakFriendAndEnter cleverly-opened doors]], and so forth. Conversely, they can also offer the solutions to such riddles to desperate players. After being stumped by one, Brian tries to find out the answer to one of B.A.'s riddles, only to find out that he paid extra for the "No Easy Answers" premium deluxe package. |
| 406 | ** When we get to peek behind the curtain during Nitro's epic World War [=II=] wargame, there are at least two other [=GaryCon=] sister games in Europe being coordinated with his, together across at least eleven time zones and with the kind of dedication and attention to detail one would expect in a real world command center. |
| 407 | ** To run a game, you need a Game Master license, for which you must take numerous tests demonstrating your mastery of the rules, ability to provide fair challenges, etc. Speaking of the rules, the rules as written are ''absolute'' and house-ruling is considered a shocking perversion that no decent person would indulge in. |
| 408 | ** The HPMA is a very over-the-top parody of a real organization, the Role Playing Gamers' Association, run by Creator/{{TSR}} and then Creator/WizardsOfTheCoast to manage games at events for their product lines. A GameMaster can be certified to run official adventures at these events, particularly for the "Living" campaigns - ongoing campaigns whose progress is informed by the aggregate results of the events. Players can take the same character from event to event with GM-signed log sheets to prove the character's gear and experience were officially awarded. For the RPGA it's to help keep things orderly and fair between official events and increase player investment (using one's own character instead of pre-generated ones), while the HPMA treats ''every'' game of ''Hackmaster'' as under their auspices. |
| 409 | * ShmuckBait: |
| 410 | ** See HandInTheHole above. Also common in general at any game table as the [=GMs=] tend to exploit player's desires for loot and experience to screw with their characters. |
| 411 | ** In B.A.'s case, it happened more than once unintentionally. He stuck a sphere of annihilation at the bottom of a waste disposal chute and, knowing his players, put up grates, plenty of warnings of danger and made the chute long enough so that they couldn't get a rope to the bottom, in order to protect them. They took it as a sign that he was hoarding the really good treasure down there and B.A. got a TotalPartyKill out of the deal. |
| 412 | *** Another appeared during Blackburn's shorts in ''The Rifter'', with the infamous "Portal of Death" Both incidents even had the same setup: B.A.'s attempts to keep the party away from a dangerous place only convinces Brian, Dave, and Bob that the warnings are there to screw them out of a pile of treasure. |
| 413 | ** In the "I Believe" arc, Patty's Perps stumble across a magical symbol. When Eddie touches it, he is telepathically contacted by a "magical princess" who informs him that she has been kidnapped by a demon and they must rescue her before he comes back and sacrifices her. She also explains that the entrance to his lair is protected by an illusion that makes it look like a pool of molten lava, but if they "believe", it can't hurt them. One by one, every member of the party jumps...and then we cut to Patty at a bar with the other [=GMs=], explaining how she successfully got her entire party to jump into a pool of molten lava, thus winning a bet (B.A. could only get Dave to jump before the rest caught on, Nitro only got Newt and Gordo.) |
| 414 | * ShootTheShaggyDog: |
| 415 | ** The Knights go through one of the hardest dungeons ever, lose a favored NPC guide, and come out with the Lyre of Hound Slaying, trailing their vital organs... only for [[spoiler:Dave to get taken over by a magic sword and smash it.]] |
| 416 | ** See also B.A.'s ShmuckBait entry above. The story started with showing just how much time and care went into making that dungeon, only for those three fools to kill the whole party right off the bat on the ''waste disposal system''. |
| 417 | * ShoutOut: to ''Literature/TheHobbit'': |
| 418 | ** Nitro's players challenge an NPC to a riddle contest. Then this happens: |
| 419 | --->'''Nitro''': And now gentlemen, let us end this tiresome little game. Prepare to be pummeled by the Rubik's cube of enigmatic trivia...\ |
| 420 | '''Newt''': Nitro, you got that $1.25 I loaned you for the soda machine last week? I'm getting bored so I figured I'd pop upstairs and try one of those Sprite Remix thingies.\ |
| 421 | '''Nitro''': Sorry son. The wife took the last of my change for parking meter money.\ |
| 422 | '''Newt''': Are you sure? I'm really dying for some soda. What's that in your pocket there?\ |
| 423 | '''Nitro''': ''[angry]'' '''What's in my pocket?'''\ |
| 424 | '''Gordo''': It isn't fair to ask us what you've got in your nasty little pocket. I mean, really, what kind of a stupid riddle is that?\ |
| 425 | '''Nitro''': Huh? I didn't...\ |
| 426 | '''Gordo''': Well you have to give us three guesses then.\ |
| 427 | '''Nitro''': Gordo, that's not...\ |
| 428 | '''Gordo''': Hands! Your hands are in your pocket. Oops... I guess they aren't...\ |
| 429 | [...]\ |
| 430 | '''Gordo''': Um, um, um... string... or nothing! |
| 431 | *** Gordo was half-right: It was a garotte. |
| 432 | ** Weird Pete's "fictional" game of ''Fairy Meat'', in which you control a warband of cannibalistic yet cute fairies striving to eat each other alive in pitched battles through a CrapsaccharineWorld? [[TabletopGame/FairyMeat Yeah, that actually exists.]] |
| 433 | ** The vast majority of covers are these to geeky movies, television shows, other comics, and tabletop gaming books/modules. |
| 434 | * ShrunkInTheWash: In one story, Gordo goes through a [[EveryYearTheyFizzleOut period of disillusionment with favourite team, the Oakland Raiders]], and gives away his Raiders jersey. Bob takes it as a present for his nephew Hunter, who loves pirate stuff. A week later, Gordo is over his pique and sheepishly asks Bob if he can have his jersey back. Bob obliges, but explains that it shrunk in the wash, and hands over the now child-sized jersey. As there is no way it will fit him now, Gordo gives it to Hunter anyway. Hunter is overjoyed until noticing it is a Raiders jersey and declaring "The Raiders suck!" |
| 435 | * ShyBladder: Brian suffers from one. He often excuses himself from the game to go use the bathroom. {{Subverted}} in this is actually an excuse to do secret meetings with the characters or call Hack Support. |
| 436 | * SignsOfDisrepair: 'The Games Pit' was originally called 'The Games Pitstop'. At some point the word 'stop' fell off and Weird Pete couldn't be bothered replacing it. Some of the 'retro' strips (which are set in the past) show the store with its original name. |
| 437 | * {{Slapstick}}: Sara usually avoids the physical brawls at the table that often break out, either by being smart enough to avoid getting drawn in or by being scary enough that none of the guys want to mess with her. But sometimes she'll join in, and she'll be on both the giving and receiving ends. At least once, she was subjected to the "ultimate punishment" of being hung upside-down and left for B.A.'s cat to torment. |
| 438 | * SmallNameBigEgo: Earl Slackmozer is a local gamer who got an adventure published with Hard Eight. As such, he acts like a big shot in the local gaming community. Amusingly, BA eventually develops a case of this for the same reason. |
| 439 | * SocialSemiCircle: The Knights all sit at one side of the table (the one furthest from the FourthWall). |
| 440 | * SpeechImpairedAnimal: Squirrely, possibly. He can't speak, but smokes, drives, handles the till at The Games Pit, and plays video games and poker. |
| 441 | * SpitTake: Weird Pete does one - spraying his beer into Stevil's face - after learning that his character had been drinking owl bear urine. |
| 442 | * SpoilerTitle: When B.A. called one of his adventures "The Doppler effect", Brian immediately know it'd feature a {{doppelganger}}. So it was no surprise to him when B.A. told Bob under four eyes that his character wasn't himself anymore. |
| 443 | * StayInTheKitchen: |
| 444 | ** Bob has a very dim view of women playing [=RPG=]s (to say nothing of [=DMing=] them), and was prone to being very condescending to Sara, particularly in the early days of her membership in the Knights. (Dave and Brian have also shown signs of this attitude, but to a much lesser extent.) Thanks to Sara's general skill, this view has been mostly overcome. (Or at least Bob has learned not to be so vocal about it. See BerserkButton above.) |
| 445 | ** Finally inverted with Bob. He's so dedicated to game that he lost his job as a claims adjuster, got kicked out of his father's house and now lives with his girlfriend while working at a game shop for surplus product. So he is frequently shown wearing an apron while she sits and reads the paper. |
| 446 | * SufficientlyAnalyzedMagic: When the party managed to get a ridiculous loot haul, B.A. put the Hackmaster campaign on hold to play Space Hack, but tricked the Space Hack characters into visiting Garweeze Wurld and attacking their own Hackmaster characters, destroying their loot. The Knights realized this too late but B.A. made the mistake of essentially saying the Space characters' sensors could detect magic as a form of background radiation. This led to Brian teaming up his engineer character with his mage to make it so that the ship could analyze and then reproduce any spell at will using the ship's power. They eventually [[EarthShatteringKaboom blew up the planet]]. |
| 447 | -->''Dave'': El Ravager dips his sword in tribute to Garweeze Wur-- |
| 448 | -->''Sara'': SHUT UP!!! |
| 449 | * SurroundedByIdiots: This is Sheila's reaction on discovering who her final team-mates are during the "Grudge Match" arc. Following the elimination games, one member of each of the gaming groups is supposed to belly up to the table for the final showdown. Sheila expects to be backed up by the power players from the other 'evil' groups: the other players being supposed to take the fall to allow them to progress. Instead she ends up with the most useless character from every team. |
| 450 | * SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: Dave doesn't remember who told him about B.A.'s nervous breakdown, but it definitely wasn't Sara or Brian. |
| 451 | * TheSwearJar: Patty, a kindergarten teacher, maintains one for her gaming group Patty's Perps. |
| 452 | * TakenForGranite: Brian's character is turned to stone by a medusa in "The Stone Menagerie". |
| 453 | * TalkingToTheDead: Gary Jackson's funeral scene ends with Waco Bob talking to his body about what a friend he'd been and what he'd meant to gamers generally. The scene is concluded with [[MoodWhiplash a comical moment]] in which Waco checks that the coast is clear and rubs some dice on the body to infuse them with luck (an act for which the Hard Eight staff [[HypocriticalHumor had previously chased out several fans]], including Bob and Brian). |
| 454 | * TalkingWeapon: Carvin' Marvin and Tremble. And all the [=PCs=] really wish they couldn't. |
| 455 | * TarAndFeathers: |
| 456 | ** Happens to the Knights' ''[=HackBeard=]'' characters (except for Sara) when their crew mutinies in yet another TheDogBitesBack moment in "Justice on the High Seas". |
| 457 | ** And Knobby Foot gets tarred and feathered during ''The Bag Wars Saga''. |
| 458 | * TemptingFate: Bob lives his whole life this way. It's sheer luck he hasn't gotten himself killed or ended up on the street. |
| 459 | * TenderTears: Gordo is ''very'' sensitive and prone to [[InelegantBlubbering bursting into tears]] whenever he considers himself wronged. "Here comes the water works" is practically a catch phrase at the BlackHands table. |
| 460 | * ThatCameOutWrong: B.A.'s repeated line of "I've got wood for sheep" while playing ''TabletopGame/SettlersOfCatan''. Which is actually a long-standing bit of InnocentInnuendo among gamers who are familiar with the ''Catan'' series, so much so that it can be found on T-shirts, buttons, etc., for sale at game conventions and online. |
| 461 | * TheyKilledKennyAgain: The "Deadly Trappings" segment in the magazine always features a character called "Joe Cocksure" as the victim of the various traps featured. |
| 462 | * TitleConfusion: The label for stories set prior to the current ongoing story was changed from "Retro [=KoDT=]" to "Lost Tales of the Knights of the Dinner Table" because some fans misinterpreted the former label as an indication that the story was a reprint from a previous issue. |
| 463 | * TokenGoodTeammate: Again, Sara. Debatably Gordo for the Black Hands. |
| 464 | * TokenMiniMoe: Hunter, Bob’s adorable nephew. |
| 465 | * TomeOfEldritchLore: When the Knights play ''[[TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu Scream of Kachooloo]]'', Brian advises burning every book because they are always one of these. Of course, considering what happened in the last game... |
| 466 | -->'''Dave:''' But that was a traveler's guide to Boise! |
| 467 | * TooCleverByHalf: Brian. He always presses for maximum advantage in his schemes which makes forgetting something almost inevitable. |
| 468 | --> '''Bob:''' Dammit, Brian! How can you be so ''smart'' and so ''stupid'' all at the same time? You've ruined ''everything''!! |
| 469 | * TotalPartyKill: A frequent occurrence. |
| 470 | * TranquilFury: |
| 471 | ** B.A. gets like this when his players go too far with mistreating {{NPC}}s or derailing his campaign. |
| 472 | ** After B.A.'s group lost a paintball war with the Black Hands which he had timidly opted out of, [[spoiler:he kidnaps Gordo, steals his Dalek costume and infiltrates the Black Hands victory celebration to take them out GunsAkimbo at point blank range.]] He earns the respect of his group after that incident. |
| 473 | * TrenchcoatBrigade: The Whisper |
| 474 | * TheTropeFormerlyKnownAsX: |
| 475 | -->"Will 'The Character Formerly Known as the Man with No Name' and now associated with this symbol please be advised that he has inexplicably attracted the unbridled wrath of the Gawds and has just been turned into a newt!!" |
| 476 | * TheTropeWithoutATitle: Dave's "Man with No Name" character which quickly devolves into TheTropeFormerlyKnownAsX. |
| 477 | * TrueCompanions: |
| 478 | ** The Knights may bicker and fight with each other, but heaven help you if you humiliate one of them. |
| 479 | ** Averted by the Black Hands; they're just that dysfunctional. |
| 480 | *** They almost play it straight once. When voting for a replacement GM when Nitro is forced to step down, they decide to write in Nitro's name as a symbolic show of solidarity. Except Newt [[ChronicBackstabbingDisorder votes for himself]] hoping that the other votes will be invalidated and [[ComicallyMissingThePoint he'll win unopposed.]] |
| 481 | * {{Tsundere}}: Sheila Horowitz. Sara is a more subdued version. |
| 482 | * TyrantTakesTheHelm: When Heidi Jackson comes to power. She rushes a new edition of ''Hackmaster'' out the door that incites ''riots'', firing half of the original Hard Eight team while she works. Essentially it's an attempt at satirizing [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Lorraine Williams]] and the last days of Creator/{{TSR}}. |
| 483 | * UnnecessaryCombatRoll: The Black Hands try charging a heavily armed enemy fortification in the open. As Nitro is getting ready to mow them down, Newt asks if he remembered to factor in the series of evasive Kirk shoulder rolls they were performing. |
| 484 | * UnstoppableRage: Don't mess with pack apes, touch Bob's dice, or mess with 7/8 of the {{Game Master}}s in this comic. You will get punished. |
| 485 | * UnusualPopCultureName: Johnny Kizinski names his youngest son [[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings Frodo]] after convincing his wife that it was the name of a relative of his from "the old country" who died fighting the Russians. His other son is named [[Franchise/StarTrek Sarek.]] And recently, Chad and Reese named their son [[Literature/TheHungerGames Peeta.]] |
| 486 | * TheVamp: Bridget Keating, a beautiful woman who wears skimpy costumes at conventions and delights in [[IHaveBoobsYouMustObey using her appearance to manipulate the "geeks"]] (not least by involving them in the LARP ''Vampyres: Lords of Darkness'' and then using them for manual labor). |
| 487 | * VictoriasSecretCompartment: In issue #181, Sara gets hold of the infamous cursed die Fitz and keeps it away from the rest of the knights by dropping it down her cleavage and zipping up her catsuit. |
| 488 | * VillainProtagonist: The Untouchable Trio, even though they ''think'' they're Knights in Shining Armor. |
| 489 | * VillainSue: [[invoked]] |
| 490 | ** "R-R-RED GURDY PICKENS?!" |
| 491 | ** Subverted with Gilead, who only appears to be a VillainSue thanks to the Knights' extreme MoralMyopia. [[invoked]] |
| 492 | * TheVoice: |
| 493 | ** B.A.'s mom (although she has appeared in some of the non-canon strips by the Brothers Grinn [and is ''smokin' hawt!'']) |
| 494 | ** Her appearance in those strips is based on a throwaway remark by Johnny Kizinski in an early strip that B.A.'s mom looked like Deborah harry from Blondie. |
| 495 | * WaxMuseumMorgue: "The Stone Menagerie" |
| 496 | * WeaponWieldsYou: Tremble. As of issue #207, it has taken over Sara's character, with Brian as her minion, and the pair are planning to TakeOverTheWorld. |
| 497 | * WeWinBecauseYouDidnt: Brian wins a bet against Stevil this way. |
| 498 | * WhatDidIDoLastNight: According to Jolly, this is the end result of drinking Mojo Dave's mojo juice. |
| 499 | * WhatTheHellHero: |
| 500 | ** Subverted repeatedly for comic effect. [[CharacterFilibuster Even when B.A. stops the game]] to rant at length about [[YouBastard what evil bastards his players are being]], his players (except for Sara) ignore him. |
| 501 | ** A more straight example comes when Brian is called out for exploiting Bob's addiction to tabletop gaming even when he's in a bad financial situation. |
| 502 | * WhoNamesTheirKidDude: Johnny Kizinski names his youngest son [[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings Frodo]] after convincing his wife that it was the name of a relative of his from "the old country" who died fighting the Russians. |
| 503 | ** His other son is named [[Franchise/StarTrek Sarek.]] And recently, Chad and Reese named their son [[Literature/TheHungerGames Peeta.]] |
| 504 | * WomenAreWiser: Sara throughout the series (though B.A. is not far behind her). Especially pronounced in Sheila's relationship with Bob. |
| 505 | * WorthlessCurrency: One Old West roleplaying game campaign ended with the victorious players shaking down the villain for millions of dollars. Unfortunately, despite the villain being a Confederate Army renegade, it never occurred to them that the money would be in worthless Confederate dollars. |
| 506 | * WorthlessTreasureTwist: |
| 507 | ** Attempted by B.A. in the Lyrion's Academy adventure, where the Untouchable Trio (plus one) followed rumors of "the ultimate treasure" to the site of an ancient library (motto: knowledge is the ultimate treasure). Brian turns it around on him -- B.A. established that the places is several centuries old, which means that the library's antique parchments and furnishings are worth over a million gold pieces. |
| 508 | ** In another storyline, the ''players'' find themselves with a worthless treasure -- after they win the TabletopGame/HackMaster Tournament, they discover that the advertised $1500 grand prize is a actually a voucher redeemable only for certain specific (i.e. crap that they're trying to unload) [[HonestJohnsDealership Hard 8]] products. The Hard 8 staffer in charge of the tournament had [[LetsGetOutOfHere wisely left]] before this was discovered and a riot broke out. |
| 509 | * WorthyOpponent: Despite the combative relationship between players and DM, the Knights ultimately see B.A. as one of the few gamemasters who will push them to their limits without being unfair or tyrannical. |
| 510 | * XanatosGambit: Brian's 10-page wish: Even though his character was killed anyway, the contract rewound time, voided the wish, and gave Teflon Billy 10,000 gold. |
| 511 | * {{Xenofiction}}: B.A. designs an RPG in which players assume the roles of dogs. |
| 512 | * YouCanLeaveYourHatOn: Both Sara and Bob's characters end up stripping in an attempt to earn cash to continue the mission in Dave's game in #201. |
| 513 | * YourCostumeNeedsWork: Gary Jackson gets third place in a Gary Jackson lookalike contest. Of course, [[spoiler:he was supposed to be dead at the time]]. The contest [[spoiler: and the "supposed to be dead" thing]] enabled him to [[LostInACrowd show up at [=GaryCon=] incognito]]. |
| 514 | * YouDidntAsk: When teaching new games to their "friends", Brian and Pete usually leave minor rules they plan on exploiting later out of the explanation. |
| 515 | --> '''Brian:''' Oh, I thought I mentioned that. [[JerkAss Didn't I?]] |
| 516 | * ZorroMark: The cover of ''Knights of the Dinner Table'' #26 "The Mask of El Ravager" show what happens when the Knights attempt this stunt. |
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