Is BA Felton actually the Only Sane Man who is just trying to be The Last DJ and run a good game or is he actually a terrible Gamemaster who utterly refuses to adapt his playstyle to theirs? He insists on them being "good" while knowing they don't want to be, railroads them into missions they don't want to play, and frequently tries to punish them in-game for their actions.
Is Bob a Psychopathic Manchild who suffers Skewed Priorities and Moral Myopia about his actual life or someone with a Freudian Excuse of Abusive Parents? Most of the strip indicates the former but Sheila, Bob's girlfriend, changes her opinion to the latter after finally sitting down to meet with Papa Herzog only to watch him sexually harass her as well as verbally abuse Bob for hours.
Is Brian suffering from a condition or just simply a Jerkass? He has extreme over-fixation on minutia, does not respond well to any sort of change in routine, has difficulty with social cues, and a variety of other things recognizable to on the spectrum gamers. This is actually something Jolly Jossed as many wrote in about it asking. He said he might have been influenced by some gamers who were when creating him, though.
Is Sarah the Only Sane Man like BA and a Nice Girl just trying to roleplay in a group that is Ax-Crazy or is she actually a Jerkass who deliberately loves abusing the others (sometimes physically) while being a Soapbox Sadie about how the game "should" be played. There's evidence for both.
The Knights' hiring of NPCs, maltreatment of them, and obsession with being "respected" by them seems like a combination of Hack and Slash and Hair-Trigger Temper. On examining the actual published 'Hackmaster'' rulebook, though, the combination of strict weapon maintenance rules, honor rules, and hireling reaction rolls seems deliberately designed to encourage players to do this. Is Sara the Only Sane Man, or just Wrong Genre Savvy?
Are the Black Hands actually worse roleplayers than the Knights? While they were created as an Evil Counterpart group to the Knights, they actually show themselves to be a lot more willing to follow the direction of Nitro's adventures, not constantly killing friendly NPCs, and actually interested in roleplaying their characters. Even their general dislike of each other and team killing isn't that much worse than what the Knights get up to.
Heidi Jackson is a person all of the Hard 8 staff loathe with a passion and consider something of a cougar in human skin. She treats the staff like crap, tears through their businesses, and speaks through a combination of lawyers as well as yellow. Except, of course, we find out that Gary Jackson married Heidi for her looks and dramatically mismanaged his company's assets. His Bunny-Ears Lawyer antics also led the company into financial ruin despite the fact it ran the equivalent of the world's World of Warcraft. Oh and he also got them involved in The Mafia. That's before he faked his death and appeared to their child on a regular basis without telling her (resulting in him getting years of therapy). Heidi's exasperation and dislike of her husband's True Companions makes sense.
Many newer readers to the comic are often surprised to find out that Hawk the Slayer, mentioned by the characters many times, is a real movie, given how so many other films and pop culture properties are given parody names within the comic.
Readers outside its distribution area may be similarly surprised to learn that Faygo is a real soft-drink brand, which does have flavours like Rock & Rye.
Hawg Waller's and Pizza-a-Go-Go were actual bars and pizza establishments, respectively. For bonus points, Waller's was actually in the real Muncie.
There's a lot of debate on whether Brian and Sheila are complex characters with bad habits, or absolutely vile and soulless people. And now the two of them are arch-nemeses. Coincidence?
Heidi Jackson, who everyone agrees is a vile and soulless person... but some readers love to hate her, while others want her to appear in just one more panel: one where she bursts into flame.
Squirrely is fairly divisive among fans. Some readers feel that Silly Simian justifies Squirrely's existence, while others feel that a super-chimp strains the strip's Suspension of Disbelief.
Bizarro Episode: The strip "Heroes on the Town" shows us a world where Bob, Dave, and Brian fully roleplay their characters, treat NPCs with respect, and are generous to a fault. In short, they live up to a lawful good alignment instead of just paying it their usual lip-service. Sara's behavior remains unchanged from canon universe. It can be quite bizarre to any reader used to their normal behaviors. The altered behavior is explained at the end when B.A. wakes up.
Complacent Gaming Syndrome: And they work hard at it. The Knights abuse the protege rules to keep slightly lower level versions of themselves trained and ready to go. Brian even keeps a meticulous journal and contingency spells to make sure his protege gets the journal upon his untimely death to make sure his new character always retains all his knowledge. Sara doesn't usually follow this trope, and B.A. sometimes forces the players to play something other than their standard character types.
B.A.: "I'm not forcing you to do anything, guys. You can create new [4th level] characters under the guidelines I've provided, or you can crank out the same old cookie-cutter characters and start at first level."
Diagnosed by the Audience: Brian is often subjected to this. He has a job that involves running an online service from his home (which he is said to not clean) and painting model figurines. He has a savant-like memory of obscure roleplaying game rules, yet sometimes forgets his own phone number. He is stated to become very uncomfortable when any social group exceeds four to six people, especially when it happens away from the context of a shared interest. He rarely speaks unless dealing with gaming, and has a face and body language that is usually unreadable. He's prone to withdrawing into his fantasies in social situations and once made up a girlfriend. And finally, some things that would annoy other people seem to have no effect on him at all, while something that others would take in stride can send him into a sudden and brutal fury, typically involving flipping over the gaming table in rage.
Gordo is very popular with some fans, especially with the recent strips that focus on his awesome home gaming setup.
Crutch has also amassed a respectable fanbase. Many fans reacted favorably to the sympathetic portrayal of his criminal past, and his attempts to assemble his own gaming group.
Patty is very popular with readers. One of the most common requests from fans is "More Patty's Perps!"
Bob Herzog's "steam tunnel" incident is based on the very not funny story of James Dallas Egbert III, who was the basis for the book as well as movie Mazes and Monsters. In real life, Egbert was believed to have lost himself in Dungeons and Dragons and went down into the steam tunnels to commit suicide. This would later turn out to be a complete hoax by con man detective, William Dear, who more or less made up the story whole cloth (though Egbert had run away and suffered mental issues). Bob's story had a much happier ending where he really did get lost in the steam tunnels but was found days later.
A great number of the incidents during Heidi Jackson's takeover of Hard Eight are based on real life ones done between Lorraine William and the creatives of TSR. Their fights over the profitability of Hackmaster novels versus game product, for instance, and attempts to dumb down the game for casual gamers (which goes over like a ton of bricks with hardcore fans).
Growing the Beard: KODT was initially a short, fairly shallow series of one-off jokes featuring Flat Characters, no ongoing story, and crude art. Over the many years of its publication, it's evolved to a lengthy, deep series featuring fully-fleshed out characters, long story arcs, and...slightly less crude art. The turning point was probably when it stopped focusing on every strip being a brief joke ending in a punchline, and started truly dwelling on the narrative of the campaign, as well as the lives of the denizens of Muncie.
Iron Woobie: B.A. No matter how many times the Knights trash his lovingly-crafted campaigns, he refuses to back down and keeps coming back for more, week after week.
Jerkass Woobie: For all his selfish and manipulative behavior, Brian is still a deeply insecure, rather lonely man who lost both his parents in a car accident, has an unrequited crush on Sara, and, as was revealed in a flashback, had a father who was verbally (and probably physically) abusive to him.
I thought you guys said those game were all about being heroes and doing things larger-than-life. So THIS is it? Shooting men who don't even see it coming? Then rifling their pockets for loose change? You're pathetic. A couple of muck swillin' bottom feeders livin' off the misery and misfortune of others.
Misaimed Fandom: No matter how horribly Heidi Jackson treated the Hard 8 staff, there were always some readers who insisted that the only reason the men disliked her was because they resented having to take orders from a woman.
Some readers of the magazine hatedNoah Antwiler's column "A Gamer's Rant on the Movies". It drew a number of complaints, largely from readers who seemed to be taking the column seriously. For a while, its page was printed with a dotted line down the side, with instructions to readers on how to cut out the page if they did not like it. Despite the support of Jolly Blackburn, who thought Noah's rants about bad sci-fi and fantasy movies were funny, the column was canceled after an on-line poll on the Kenzerco forums declared it the most hated part of the magazine.
The replacement column, Gaming The Movies, qualifies as well. Ignoring the fans of Noah Antwiler's original column who are still petitioning for his return, there is a vocal portion of the fan base who claim that the column is little more than an instruction manual on how to rip-off things you saw in a movie and use them in your game.
Strawman Has a Point: Bob's dad seems harsh and unreasonable for forbidding Bob to game, but given that Bob ultimately gets fired from his job for feigning illness too many times to game, it seems he has a point, at least about Bob. As of Issue 194, Bob's dad reveals that he knows that Nitro is teaching his grandson Hunter gaming and actually COMMENDS him for giving Hunter lessons in assertive self-reliance. This, combined with his objections during the Cattlepunk game he played, indicates that he's objecting to Bob's Comedic Sociopathy and personal irresponsibility, not to gaming in general.
Unintentionally Sympathetic: In "A Quiet Evening" (Issue 172), Bob and Sheila are watching a movie together in their apartment. After sitting in absolute silence for nearly an hour, Sheila asks Bob, "How was your day?" and Bob exclaims, "Geeze Loueeze ... What's with the third degree?!" The audience obviously isn't supposed to be on Bob's side in this little exchange. Some readers were, however. Although they acknowledged that Bob was being unreasonable, they were nevertheless pleased to see any sign that Bob might stop letting Sheila ride roughshod over him.
Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Bob, Dave, and Brian's reluctance to let Sara GM a game is consistently portrayed as nothing more than a sexist prejudice on the part of the boys. For this reason, the audience is always expected to be on Sara's side. The problem with this is that Sara actually is a terrible GM. She adopts a "my way or the highway" approach to the game, instead of taking the boys' particular playing styles into account. She forces them to play characters they don't like or can't identify with. And worst of all, in her Muffy the Vampire Slayer game (Issue 101), she commits the cardinal sin of having an NPC be the driving force of the story, with the players' characters relegated to supporting roles or merely observing the NPC performing all the action. Because of this, it is sometimes difficult for readers to sympathize with her when she fights to sit behind the GM Screen. Even some female readers who normally root fervently for Sara have stated that they would never want to play a game under her as a GM.
Values Dissonance: The comic spoofs an era of Tabletop Games which had a much more adversarial relation between the players and Dungeon Masters than modern games. Players of more modern RPGs might end up being confused at the Comedic Sociopathy that takes place on both ends.
, who was the basis for the book as well as movie Mazes and Monsters. In real life, Egbert was believed to have lost himself in Dungeons and Dragons and went down into the steam tunnels to commit suicide. This would later turn out to be a complete hoax by con man detective, William Dear, who more or less made up the story whole cloth (though Egbert had run away and suffered mental issues). Bob's story had a much happier ending where he really did get lost in the steam tunnels but was found days later.