Awesome / Knights of the Dinner Table

For a gamer comic, Knights Of The Dinner Table has these in a surprising number.

Warning: Spoilers contained within.

B.A.

B.A. is usually the timid milquetoast of the group and Butt-Monkey to the Untouchable Trio’s antics, still manages to get some awesome moments.

• Any occasion when B.A. gets the better of the Knights, especially when it isn't a momentary victory, but an outright success.
  • As the tales of KODT continue, B.A. slowly becomes better as the Knights' GM. While he usually still loses in the end, he gets better at countering their usual antics, occasionally outmanoeuvre them, and generally make them work for the victory.
    • Issue #114, A Fresh Start: With a new Campaign before them, B.A. puts his foot down, tells the Knights they will be using new characters, rolled there at the table, with no connection to any previous characters, and stands firm against their protests. When Bob insists on running the latest version of his Dwarf Thief, B.A. looks at his Character Sheet, sees the usual nonsense (no stat below 16, legacy items from previous characters, etc), and responds by ripping up the Character Sheet in front of them.
  B.A.: Here it is in a nutshell guys. I'm taking control of the game back.
• One of his best was when the Black Hands took out the Knights paintball team (in a LARP game called Urban Assassin). When the Black Hands were celebrating their apparent victory, Gordo's Dalek costume opened up to show B.A. Guns Akimbo and he singlehandedly dispatched the whole group. He apparently recruited Sara to help him kidnap Gordo so he could pull a Trojan Horse tactic.
• In a previous strip, Ship of Fools, Brian manages to get B.A. to run their Hack Master Campaign for their SpaceHack characters, when B.A. was trying to avoid Hack Master for a session (see the Brian Folder below) Later, in The Turn About, B.A. gets his revenge. How? He has a Holodeck crash and malfunction, causing the Hologram Hack Master NPCs and Monsters to spill out into the rest of the ship. The whole thing soon dissolves into chaos:
  Bob: I'm telling ya we got freaking Orcs over-running Decks 5 through 11! We got a Spiny-backed Blue Ridge Dragon in the Mess Hall! The Ship is lost! I say we blow the reactor and take our chance in the Vac Suits!
  Dave: Vac Suits?! You mean leave the Ship?! Are you nuts?!
  Sara: I still say we try to crash the computer again.
  Brian: What have I done? I've created the Ultimate Monster!
  B.A. (thinking): Payback is sweet!
• Armload of Trouble: B.A. uses 'the fabled ruby of Wun-Kai' as bait for a dismemberment trap. The result: Bob's thief loses both of his arms, whilst Dave's fighter only loses one arm, but as such cannot wield his Hackmaster+12.
  B.A. I've said it before and I'll say it again— There's no party too powerful that a good trap can't bring down.
• In another session, Brian is prepping a fireball that will kill a group of skeletons without hurting the party by using the exact dimensions of the room the Knights are fighting in. He does kill the skeletons, but B.A. informs him that the entire party has also suffered damage. Why? Because Brian didn't deduct the volume within the room taken up by the skeletons.
• Wager Me This & Coal-lateral: B.A. pulls a simple effective trick over Brian's usual trickery. He calls the Hack Master Support Line for a 'Class IV' Riddle.... and pays an extra 10 dollars for 'Player Non-Disclosure', meaning when Brian, not recognising the riddle, tries calling the line he gets nowhere.
• B.A.'s old failed game DAWG the RPG. A game designed to systemize role playing a dog. After years of being regarded as a failure, he finally gets an offer to buy the rights to the game for 75 bucks. Unbeknownst to him, the game was bought by Gary Jackson himself and rereleased (barely altered at that). Furthermore, the early sales of the game helped Jackson make enough money to buy back the rights to Hackmaster from Heidi. B.A. helped save Hack Master for everybody and he doesn't even know it.
• At first, it seemed like selling the rights to Dawg : The RPG for a mere $75, only to see it turned into a huge hit at GaryCon, was just another example of B.A.'s Woobie status. He was forced to watch as others made a fortune on the game he created, while poor B.A. received 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 and mentioning how well it was selling for him. Later, though, in "Dawged" (Issue 177), Pete introduces B.A. to a young boy named Josh, who is a huge fan of Dawg. Josh is excited to meet the game's original author, and asks for B.A.'s autograph while telling him all about his character in the game. B.A. is touched and delighted by this, and later tells Pete that he feels like Charlie Brown finally kicking the football. And then later, in "Fishing Expedition" (Issue 224), Gary Jackson himself asks B.A. for additional material for Dawg, and offers to give him shared credit for the end product. This, in turn, leads to yet another happy moment for B.A. in "A Booth For Two" (Issue 225), as Patty gushes with excitement over B.A.'s opportunity with Hard 8 (and flirts with B.A. at the same time).
• In one of the old Dragon Magazine Strips, the Knights use a section of 'The Rules of Fair Play' that says the GM must clearly describe all pertinent information in any encounter to kill a surrendering Orc Chieftain and his soldiers without taking an penalty for alignment violations (B.A. never said the surrendering Chieftain was unarmed). Typical of the Knights....... only later, when trying to spend the loot gained from the Orcs, B.A. uses that same rule to point out that the Knights said that they were gathering the loot, but they never declared that they actually took it with them.
• KODT #232: B.A. finds out Brian roped Patty into buying several boxes of Hacker Jacks under false pretenses. B.A. tracks Brian down and forces Brian to refund all of Patty's money. Brian tries to weasel his way out of it, but B.A. isn't having it.
  Now Brian!! All of it..unless you wanna find another table to game at when we get home!

Bob

• Bob shooting long-time nemesis Red Gurdy Pickens.
  • The set-up as well. Bob pulls of a plan worthy of Brian, which not only sees him take out Red, but put him in a position to become the defacto ruler of the town.
• Away from the table, when Bob finds himself kicked out of his parent's house, he surprises us all by getting an apartment, pay for food and rent, and generally survive on his own.
• Another one has him solving a challenge that had stumped the rest of the party, including Brian, for several hours. The challenge involved an expensive opal and goblet, placed on a stand in the middle of a large square rug. The trick was that whoever got the opal and goblet could keep them, provided they didn't 'bear down' on the rug (along with other rules such as no missile attacks, no magic, etcetera). Bob's solution? Roll up the rug to the stand, and then simply pick the opal and goblet up. The kicker? He solved it on his first attempt just after hearing about it.
• He also managed to disarm a nuclear bomb in a game of Hacknoia. How did he do it? Removing the timer's triple-A battery.
• Why should you never touch another man's dice? Because they may go ballistic and assault you, as poor Nitro found out with Bob at a Hackcon. Mostly a Moment of Funny, but some awesomeness when you consider that Nitro is a hulking U.S. Marine veteran and Bob looks like he'd blow away in a stiff breeze.
• By throwing everything he had into an attack and making some exceptional rolls, Bob manages to get through Gary Jackson's character's ridiculously powerful defenses to do a single hit point of damage to him. It doesn't sound very awesome until you realise that no one has managed that for the last seventeen years.
  Bob: "Woo - he bleeds! The bastard bleeds!"
• After Bob picks a fight in the small town of Hang Nail, resulting in the townsfolk beating the group up and dumping them miles outside of town, Bob takes advantage of the rules—one which sets the likelihood of running into beggars on a country road, and one which says a group of ten beggars counts as a mob capable of overpowering any foe—to whip up an army of over 150 beggars that lays waste to the town. Particularly awesome because B.A. didn’t realize what he was doing until it was too late.

Sara

• Sara gets one during a game of Hackbeard (a pirate RPG), where Bob, Dave, and Brian (playing Captain, First Mate, and Quartermaster respectively) are living lives of luxury on their ship via abusing their power greatly and being Jerks to their (NPC) crew, with Sara (the Boatswain) trying to act like a benevolent swashbuckler. Eventually, the crew mutiny, and Sara convinces the guys to let her handle this. The result is that while she successfully stops the mutiny, the crew now want her as Captain. Sara decides to accept, and then gets payback on the guys via roleplaying and the NPC crew.
  • Just as Brian points out that the situation is survivable, and that the three can return for vengeance later, Sara informs them that she has no intention of letting them go, and has the crew open fire on them. The guys get ticked off and essentially Rage Quit, but as far as Sara is concerned:
  Sara: Ah, who cares. It was totally worth it to see the looks on their faces.
• Sara running a sci-fi game for the Knights and managing to keep things (mostly) on track and let the players have fun, at the same time - something practically unheard of in this comic, where the norm is that either the GM is tormenting the players or the players are wrecking the GM's plans. Even Brian tells her she's doing a great job, and he's not easily impressed.

Dave

• Although he favours fighters, and often comes across as an idiot, on the two occasions where Dave has played a magic user, he has shown, with some prompts by Sara and lessons from Brian, that he can play such characters, and do so well.
  • Especially in the case of his first magic user, a Gnome-Titan Battlemage, as said character only had an Intelligence of 8, meaning he could only do cantrips, and Dave was not getting lessons from Brian at the time. Despite this, Dave was still able to prove useful to the party.
• In a Scream of Kachoolu Campaign, the Knights find themselves fighting Brian. They come up with a plan, but are each cut down and reanimated as Zombies until only Dave is left. Against ridiculous odds, when the opportunity arises, Dave tries to enact the plan on his own, and pulls off feats worthy of an action movie.
• The Tremble arc. With Nitro in his corner as 'Tremble', Dave proves to be a very formidable opponent to the Knights.
• In one Dragon Magazine strip, Brian is actually agreeing with some of B.A.'s decisions because the rules back him up, eventually leading Bob to attempt revenge by buying and burning a spell book Brian wanted. Brian casts a 'Woefully' Charm spell on Bob to make him hand over the book and then humiliate him...... only for Dave, of all people, to point out that the rules say that casting a 'Woefully' class spell forces the caster to then sleep for 36 hours, allowing him to help Bob get vengeance by beheading Brian.
• When Bob has to defuse a bomb in a game of Hacknoia, he initially panics because he has to cut three wires in a specific order, and his character is colour blind. It is Dave who points out that with only three wires, he has a 1-in-3 chance of getting the first wire right, and a 50-50 chance on the second.

Brian

Brian, thanks to being a former GM and a Rules Lawyer, has incurred approximately fifty of these over the course of the comic, none of which can be deemed more awesome than the other.

• Throwing a stake at a vampire lord and killing him at first level in a Heroic Sacrifice. Additionally, he did it partly as revenge for a previous decision made by B.A. which killed off one of Brian's characters.
• Destroying B.A.'s massive adventure 30 years in the making by collapsing a support column in the basement.
• He has contingencies for everything. His most elaborate being the meticulous journals he keeps and the procedures he has in place to guarantee that those journals make it to his protege (who he usually has trained and equipped by the time he dies).
  • Another example of these contingencies is having some of his spells tattooed on the backs of Bob's and Dave's characters in case he's in a situation where he doesn't have a spellbook.
• He once prepared a wish consisting of one massive run on sentence consulting the Hackmaster book of legal definitions and retaining the services of a paralegal just to make sure it was ironclad. It granted him immortality. B.A. needed the help of several local Gamemasters to uncover a flaw in the wish (the only one being that his immortal status made it so a deity could get revenge on him and he had already earned the enmity of multiple deities.) At that point, a clause in the wish reversed all of its effects and granted Brian a 25,000 gold piece consolation prize.
• At one point, Brian plays a Spaceship racing game with the Black Hands (think Wacky Races, but in space and with guns instead of gadgets). The other players have built themselves varying types of ships which they believe will let them win the race. Brian, we soon find, has essentially built a mini Death Star, and plans to win by being the last Ship on the board. The kicker? He had made a bet with Stevil beforehand, that "forty bucks say you don't win." Stevil ends up taking him out kamikaze-style by ramming him...but Brian wins the bet anyway. Because since they were both dead, neither of them won. And the terms of the bet said that Brian won the money if Stevil didn't win. Stevil wound up relenting and paying up.
• In Ship of Fools, B.A. runs a campaign of Spacehack, which ticks off the Knights (except Sara) since they wanted to play Hack Master. During the game, they come into possession of a derelict spaceship. Whilst repairing it, Brian discovers that the ship has a Holodeck. The result? Brian repairs and reprograms the Holodeck to play Hackmaster, meaning their Spacehack characters are playing their Hackmaster Campaign—which is what the Knights wanted to play in the first place.
• Spaced Out:' When creating a Spacehack character with a military academy background, Brian sacrifices several points from his Strength, Intelligence, and Dexterity Stats to gain a load of extra building points. It looks like he's been too greedy and overdone it, only for Brian to choose an addiction flaw for more building points, then choosing his addiction in the form of a drug that as a by-product boosts the addict's Intelligence, leaving Brian with all those building points and his Intelligence stat not as good as it originally was but still above average. He then uses his background and reduced Str and Dex to be discharged from said military academy with 'separation pay', which he then uses to buy a powered suit that raises his Str and Dex near to what they were.
  Brian: In short gentlemen, I sacrificed 27 attribute points, took a major character flaw, and ended up with a character with above average stats, 64 major skills maxed out, a powered armour suit and some pocket change. Is that Kewl or what???

The Black Hands

• They may be a bunch of self-centered jerks, but apparently the Black Hands are so good at role-playing that they convince two ex-cons that they were planning a real Bank Heist.
• Herdsmen of the Apocalypse: During a Cattlepunk Campaign, the Black Hands are trying to get revenge on an NPC Sheriff, only to accidentally cause the herd of cows they were in charge of to stampede through a town, effectively wiping it and its inhabitants off the map. After their initial shock, they celebrate their unexpected success, and then use their new-found 'Hooves of Mass Destruction' as a weapon to take control of the Campaign by destroying every town on the Frontier for loot and exp.

Hard Eight

• Though we only hear of it second-hand from Jo-Jo, Gary Jackson once ran an important tournament, despite losing his planned adventure and notes with his luggage at the airport, by using 'nothing but the Random Dungeon and Random Monster Tables from the Gamemaster's Guide', and pulls it off without anyone realizing.
  Jo-Jo: He told me "If you growl loud enough and make a lot of noise people tend not to notice you've forgotten your pants and that you're standing in your underwear."
  Pete Skipowski: What the hell is that supposed to mean?
  Jo-Jo: I think it was Gary speak for 'The Game Must Go On!' You take control of a bad situation and ride it out.
• After Gary Jackson's Death, Jo-Jo give a speak that is as Heartwarming as it is Awesome that shows their loyalty and love for the Company and for Hackmaster.
  Jo-Jo: We've been pulling together around here for twenty years! And not on some fat lawyer's salary either!

Other

• The Tremble/Carvin' Marvin story arc had one for each of the knights including Johnny as well as Nitro.
  • Even Dave of all people, using a simple ruse to trick Brian into launching his plan to take out Dave prematurely.

    Brian: I blew my entire wad of tactical spells on a fricking illusion?*gulp*

• Jolly R Blackburn linked to our main article. And the fans are pretty impressed with it.
• Years of in-game (and publication) time came to a head in #187 with the Untouchable Trio +1 inadvertently liberating thousands of people trapped in an alternate dimension. Now, if only they'd meant to....
• The Garycon Arc, specifically the D-Day LARP. Also overlaps frequently with Crowning Moment of Funny.
• Crutch in Dead Man's Bluff from Issue #62. Crutch - still a newbie at this time - managed to single-handedly save the side of the righteous in a gamer Grudge Match thanks to his masterful employment of a rare magical artifact against the more experienced and more treacherous Shelia.
  • The icing on the cake? Afterwards, Nitro confessed that he'd voted against Crutch being granted membership in The Black Hands, thinking Crutch would never be a good gamer. Shockingly, Nitro admitted he was wrong and said he'd be proud to have Crutch sit at his table in the future.
• While debate my be had over whether or not her actions toward Bob at the same time are justified or not, the fact that Sheila put the fear of God into Brian when he swindled Bob out of his and Sheila's rent money is an awesome moment in itself, as it kick started Brian's Character Development and made him reexamine how he's treated all of his friends over the years.
• The very existence of KODT itself. Jolly Blackburn created the initial strips as something amusing for Shadis Magazine, never intending them to become anything major. Its seems the Knights took that as a challenge: Look at them now.

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