A lot of people seem to think this is good, so I bought issue 1 on Drivethru.

It's rather like a fast-food cheeseburger. Tastes good, but mostly a reminder of all the better things you could be eating.

I enjoy it--its a comic (in Muncie, just down the road--whooo!), and a generic sourcebook.  The articles aren't all home runs, but I've ended up with some great ideas out of it.  

As for the comic, yeah, they live in the sort of organized, widespread gaming community that is myth to nearly all of us, but I enjoy some of the powergaming and stupid things the group does, as well as the antics of Hard 8 and Gary Jackson...

It was funny, but at the end, I was thinking 'Nodwick is funnier'.

You only have the first issue which is just a series of short jokes.  Later on the comic starts to have long story arcs which run for months.  I really enjoy KoDT although I don't keep up with it as much as I used to.  I find OotS to be superior now days but KoDT still runs a close second.

Narf,

If you want to see what it looks like now, you should download the free promotional PDF copy of #132.  

Download the free KODT #132 PDF.

Quote from: Narf the Mouse;272603It was funny, but at the end, I was thinking 'Nodwick is funnier'.

Nodwick funny? When?

Yeah, you really, really can't judge the comic on issue one. The same is true of just about any comic.

Some runs of the comic are brilliant, almost perfectly capturing the spirit of D&D gaming back in the early to mid 80s, D&D's heyday. Other times, like now, it gets a little too bogged down in its own mythology - Good Lord, when will the whole turgid "Heidi Jackson" storyline end? or God-DAMN how long did the "Cattlepunk" focus last? - and drags on with plots and subplots that just aren't that compelling...which is also true of just about any comic.

KoDT's strength comes from its characters (it sure ain't the art). They came into their own when the comic evolved into one with ongoing storylines, rather than one-off gag pages like in Dragon. I'd say picking up copies of issues from anywhere from 75 to 100+ would give a better indication of what the comic is like, and why it's appealing.

I followed it from #1 to issue #99.

IMO, #1-late 70s are the best, while the closer you get to 100, the more the editors phone it in. KODT take as an on-going read is a good satire of games, gamers, and geeks. There's the nice-guy GM who gets pushed around by his players, the combat junkie, the munchkin, the rules-lawyer, and one real role-player. Most of the cast are protrayed as losers who live to game.

It depicts (at first) RPG companies as super corporations, and later as starving entities.

Along the way it manages to cover some campaigns that actually sound interesting.

What lost me was that it went from a gamer comic book to a effort to create a gamer magazine; the Knights page-count dropped, while gaming articxles (usually about Kenzer products) and editorials about self-publishing and small-company subjects expanded. And around 90, the strips radically declined in quality; before, the plots advanced at a fairly brisk clip, but starting in the 90s, the pace went to slo-mo.

Kenzer as a whole went from a shining star in the gaming business with several very promising lines, to the nearly-dead entitiy it is now at about the same time. Its down to publishing (late) generic supps for Kalamar, a decent enough setting. Its various systems (Hackmaster & varients) are gone due to the loss of their license, and the promising new lines (Aces & Eights) are years behind shedule, or to be more accurate, dead. PDFs sales of abandoned lines such as Fairy Meat are about all that is sustaining them. They claim that they are planning a comeback as soon as they get their licensing issues solved (and funding), but that's unlikely.

KotDT is a classic. It reminds me of some of the people I have gamed with over the decades.

I dunno OneTinSoldier, Aces & Eights seemed to sell pretty well, based on the C&GR figures - and they've put out a handful of supplements for it (print and PDF) since it came out. Also, they've managed to keep the magazine going come hell and high water, and God knows there's very few people out there who have manage to do that in the current climate in the industry.

That said, I do agree that the comic suffered when it tried to become a general gaming magazine. That's why I've been sticking to following it through the "Bundle of Trouble" compilations.

Quote from: Warthur;272706That said, I do agree that the comic suffered when it tried to become a general gaming magazine. That's why I've been sticking to following it through the "Bundle of Trouble" compilations.

Yeah, I agree.  I have almost no interest in the gaming articles.  I'm just waiting on the BoT's to catch up to where I left off reading.

To me, KotDT is an example of the endless capacity of most gamers for self-loathing, like many threads on tBP.

-clash

Quote from: OneTinSoldier;272668I followed it from #1 to issue #99.
.....
What lost me was that it went from a gamer comic book to a effort to create a gamer magazine; the Knights page-count dropped, while gaming articxles (usually about Kenzer products) and editorials about self-publishing and small-company subjects expanded. And around 90, the strips radically declined in quality; before, the plots advanced at a fairly brisk clip, but starting in the 90s, the pace went to slo-mo.

I won't argue quality with you, since that's subjective.    But the gaming articles started appearing in the #30s and #40s (though I may be off by a few issues).  Plus, the Knights' page count never started falling - for the most part, the strips actually gained pages.  It might have just seemed like a decrease since the rest of the magazine got bigger.  

QuoteIts various systems (Hackmaster & varients) are gone due to the loss of their license, and the promising new lines (Aces & Eights) are years behind shedule, or to be more accurate, dead. PDFs sales of abandoned lines such as Fairy Meat are about all that is sustaining them. They claim that they are planning a comeback as soon as they get their licensing issues solved (and funding), but that's unlikely.

Actually, I'd say KODT is sustaining us much better than Fairy Meat...  

Yes, many of the HackMaster (4th edition) books were produced under our license agreement with Wizards of the Coast, and when that agreement expired, any books produced under that license went out of print.  We do still have several original HackMaster 4th edition products (print and PDF) available as you can see on our web store.  We are currently working hard on the next edition of HackMaster, many rules spoilers of which have been posted on our discussion forums.  There's no licensing to deal with anymore.

As for Aces & Eights, it was released in 2007, with reprints and new material this year.  Then we've got  four new Aces & Eights products planned for 2009 (two adventures, a supplement, and a GM Screen).

Hope that clears any misconceptions!

Quote from: Warthur;272706I dunno OneTinSoldier, Aces & Eights seemed to sell pretty well, based on the C&GR figures - and they've put out a handful of supplements for it (print and PDF) since it came out. Also, they've managed to keep the magazine going come hell and high water, and God knows there's very few people out there who have manage to do that in the current climate in the industry.

That said, I do agree that the comic suffered when it tried to become a general gaming magazine. That's why I've been sticking to following it through the "Bundle of Trouble" compilations.

Yeah, they are hanging on-and in the industry, that does say a lot. But the glory days are gone.

I was a huge fan in the heyday-I thought there was a lot of potential there, and Kalamar is still one of the best vanilla fantasy settings around.

But its a far cry from where it was five or six years ago. And they're still stuffing KODT with pointless crap. The bundles are nice-if they ever pass 99 I may pick up the pdfs.

Its too bad-they had promise. Our gaming group even was mentioned in one of the KODTs, before the transition to gaming rag became terminal.

Bagwars, man.  NOTHING in gaming comics tops Bagwars.

KODT was one of the first gamer comics that really SPOKE to gamers.  We all knew guys like that, and we all played in games like some of those at one point (We had the whole "Gazeebo" episode happen in our group, but it evolved around the misinterpretation of "grassy knolls" vs. "grassy Gnolls".  Having a group of characters going around stabbing piles of dirt because they thought some guerilla force of Gnolls were covering themselves in sods and hiding in ambush in a field was hilarious in and of itself).
Its not the greatest thing ever, but it was the first gamer comic I was aware of the spoke directly TO gamers, and ABOUT gamers.