What do you think?
Rate this book
Knights of the Dinner Table: Bundle of Trouble #1
Knights of the Dinner Table: Bundle of Trouble, Vol. 1
Bundle of Trouble Vol 1 is a trade compilation of Knights of the Dinner Table issues 1-3 with extra features including the story of "Dave's First Game", the Gazebo urban legend and extensive character biographies. Knights of the Dinner Table is the longest running comic on the subject of games ever! Though B.A., Brian, Bob, Dave and Sara may play different characters in different games, their personalities always shine through. KoDT also features articles for gamers from a gamer's perspective. A hilarious and hysterical slice of (fantasy) life in strips and a wonderful celebration of the gaming culture.
96 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2002
1 person is currently reading
44 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
July 4, 2018
A fun and sometimes funny look at the many experiences at a gaming table. I'd only pick this up if you are a tabletop gamer or very curious about becoming one.
February 9, 2020
So, a compilation of the first three issues of Knights of the Dinner Table from the years 1994 and 1995. The strip itself is a bit older than that, starting in 1990 in the magazine Shadis, but those strips are in the Tales from the Vault collections.
So.
Um.
The comic tells of a gaming group in Muncie, Indiana. The Game Master is B.A. Felton, who'd like there to be role-playing in his game. Brian, Dave, and Bob are hack & slashers to the core, and will kill everything they meet. In the second issue, they are joined by Sara, who's also capable of diplomatic solutions. Nobody ever talks in character. I understand Bob, Dave, and Brian are based on certain people Blackburn knows, while Sara is a composite of many female gamers of his acquaintance.
It's been drawn once. There's a wide shot of the table and the players, a couple of close-ups, and some variation on these themes that's then copied and pasted into comic strips. These are short tales, a couple of pages long at the most, about how something goes wrong. Half the time the players threaten each other or B.A. with violence and in several instances they actually come to blows. It's like looking at some secluded tribe that never came up with the idea of non-violent problem solving. What I don't get out of this is why these people would spend time with one another or play role-playing games. They don't seem to be having any fun, ever. The strip is missing the love of the game that's intrinsic to the success of, say, The Order of the Stick.
The jokes are so worn that the stories would be disturbingly familiar even if I'd never read KotDT. The first story in the book is a retelling of "Eric and the Gazebo". There's a larp story, where Dave and Bob go to a vampire larp and start dressing up goth and wearing makeup and piercings, because larping is weird. There's the story where Sara joins the group, Brian doesn't dare talk to a girl, and Dave is a tedious sexist. Sara solves the situation by threatening Dave with violence. There's a story where the players go play with the infamous Nitro Ferguson (or Furguson, or Fergueson – Blackburn never settles on a spelling) while B.A. is away. Nitro runs an adventure based on Deliverance and Bob gets traumatised by what his elf experiences. He no longer wants to play the character. This is played for laughs.
In the editorials and the collection's introduction, there's a running theme of fans finding their own experiences and their gaming buddies in the situations and characters of the comic. In a way, I kinda also do, but in these characters I see all those people I've had to ban from gaming clubs and online spaces. The image of gamers in KotDT is suffused with the self-loathing that characterizes American nerd media, which makes most of this stuff entirely unbearable.
Hopefully it gets better. I have around 250 issues more of this to read.
So.
Um.
The comic tells of a gaming group in Muncie, Indiana. The Game Master is B.A. Felton, who'd like there to be role-playing in his game. Brian, Dave, and Bob are hack & slashers to the core, and will kill everything they meet. In the second issue, they are joined by Sara, who's also capable of diplomatic solutions. Nobody ever talks in character. I understand Bob, Dave, and Brian are based on certain people Blackburn knows, while Sara is a composite of many female gamers of his acquaintance.
It's been drawn once. There's a wide shot of the table and the players, a couple of close-ups, and some variation on these themes that's then copied and pasted into comic strips. These are short tales, a couple of pages long at the most, about how something goes wrong. Half the time the players threaten each other or B.A. with violence and in several instances they actually come to blows. It's like looking at some secluded tribe that never came up with the idea of non-violent problem solving. What I don't get out of this is why these people would spend time with one another or play role-playing games. They don't seem to be having any fun, ever. The strip is missing the love of the game that's intrinsic to the success of, say, The Order of the Stick.
The jokes are so worn that the stories would be disturbingly familiar even if I'd never read KotDT. The first story in the book is a retelling of "Eric and the Gazebo". There's a larp story, where Dave and Bob go to a vampire larp and start dressing up goth and wearing makeup and piercings, because larping is weird. There's the story where Sara joins the group, Brian doesn't dare talk to a girl, and Dave is a tedious sexist. Sara solves the situation by threatening Dave with violence. There's a story where the players go play with the infamous Nitro Ferguson (or Furguson, or Fergueson – Blackburn never settles on a spelling) while B.A. is away. Nitro runs an adventure based on Deliverance and Bob gets traumatised by what his elf experiences. He no longer wants to play the character. This is played for laughs.
In the editorials and the collection's introduction, there's a running theme of fans finding their own experiences and their gaming buddies in the situations and characters of the comic. In a way, I kinda also do, but in these characters I see all those people I've had to ban from gaming clubs and online spaces. The image of gamers in KotDT is suffused with the self-loathing that characterizes American nerd media, which makes most of this stuff entirely unbearable.
Hopefully it gets better. I have around 250 issues more of this to read.
April 27, 2009
Blackburn precisely captures the weird, careening flavor of tabletop roleplaying is this spot-on comic. Sympathetic, antagonistic, simply portrayed and wonderfully rich characters sit around the gaming table. They cooperate, clash, and jeer their way through absurd fantasy and science fiction role playing adventures: we the audience are privy to the revealing conversational Rorschach blots that show their drives. The comedy is authentic, the dialog complex and breezy at the same time.
The collections only hold the comic episodes, but the monthly publication is more of a complete magazine, and is very worthy of the gaming enthusiast's attention: short articles, reviews, an entire assemblage of gaming culture! A great addition to any gamer's monthly reading. (What more proof do you need: my own role playing podcast Dice Make Bonk got its first review in a particular issue thanks to Kenneth Newquist -- in PRINT no less.)
I return to these volumes when I can't get the gaming for realzies. Blackburn hits the gamer's psyche clean on the noggin.
(This is a stub for collected volumes 1-9)
The collections only hold the comic episodes, but the monthly publication is more of a complete magazine, and is very worthy of the gaming enthusiast's attention: short articles, reviews, an entire assemblage of gaming culture! A great addition to any gamer's monthly reading. (What more proof do you need: my own role playing podcast Dice Make Bonk got its first review in a particular issue thanks to Kenneth Newquist -- in PRINT no less.)
I return to these volumes when I can't get the gaming for realzies. Blackburn hits the gamer's psyche clean on the noggin.
(This is a stub for collected volumes 1-9)
November 20, 2025
I'd never read KotDT during its actual years of publication, but had HEARD of it in passing. The small fame attributed to it by whomever I heard it from, combined with its age and place in a gaming magazine from the pre-2000's piqued my interest enough to want to check it out now, just to know 'what is this thing?'
'What this thing is' is a pretty classic piece of old comic media, oozing with the sort of independent flavor of old-school zines. It's mostly ONE image (there are a few variants), with (somewhat) neutral expressions on the faces of all the characters, who are the gm and players of a roleplaying game arranged around the titular dinner table. The art is only just serviceable (though I'd dare to say it's at least the equal to 'Dilbert'), so it is the dialogue that is the point of the comic. Via immense blocks of text, the characters - who are a collection of old-school rpg stereotypes, including the stereotype of 'token girl' - engage in the sorts of rpg shenanigans that you both hope never occurs at your own table, but simultaneously envy a little bit. Toxic as these friends and their gaming behaviors are, at least they seem to meet regularly and carry games to their conclusion with more than a few good stories to tell.
And that's about it. It's not genius, but even though it wasn't actually a part of my childhood it does still give me the warm fuzzies of nostalgia, perfectly evoking the bare-bones, independently-made, underground feel that rpg's had in the era before you could find AI-art-stuffed D&D manuals behind the counter at the local pharmacy. It's humor is based explicitly on the sort of grognard-ish behavior that modern young players would find highly problematic and disturbing to even contemplate, though I would defy anyone who has played even one session to not find something relatable within Blackburn's depicted sessions.
'What this thing is' is a pretty classic piece of old comic media, oozing with the sort of independent flavor of old-school zines. It's mostly ONE image (there are a few variants), with (somewhat) neutral expressions on the faces of all the characters, who are the gm and players of a roleplaying game arranged around the titular dinner table. The art is only just serviceable (though I'd dare to say it's at least the equal to 'Dilbert'), so it is the dialogue that is the point of the comic. Via immense blocks of text, the characters - who are a collection of old-school rpg stereotypes, including the stereotype of 'token girl' - engage in the sorts of rpg shenanigans that you both hope never occurs at your own table, but simultaneously envy a little bit. Toxic as these friends and their gaming behaviors are, at least they seem to meet regularly and carry games to their conclusion with more than a few good stories to tell.
And that's about it. It's not genius, but even though it wasn't actually a part of my childhood it does still give me the warm fuzzies of nostalgia, perfectly evoking the bare-bones, independently-made, underground feel that rpg's had in the era before you could find AI-art-stuffed D&D manuals behind the counter at the local pharmacy. It's humor is based explicitly on the sort of grognard-ish behavior that modern young players would find highly problematic and disturbing to even contemplate, though I would defy anyone who has played even one session to not find something relatable within Blackburn's depicted sessions.
January 16, 2021
Full of stereotypes, awful artwork, not politically correct... and yet added up together is fun and enjoyable. Most of the strips are independent of each other and rather short. It's made of relatable game stories and little character (and playing character too ^_^) development. Newer strips (e.g. >10 year newer) are at times too heavy on character development and leave the original "gaming" flavour out. But having story arcs encompass several strips can also make for more amusing and interesting narrative (e.g. bag wars anyone?).
It will have a special place in my heart, since at the time I could read here about role playing games being played at a table. My experience was more about reading DM manuals than actual gaming, since my group only met once a month (back then in my early teens), and usually we spend that day creating characters or learning yet another gaming system ^_^
It will have a special place in my heart, since at the time I could read here about role playing games being played at a table. My experience was more about reading DM manuals than actual gaming, since my group only met once a month (back then in my early teens), and usually we spend that day creating characters or learning yet another gaming system ^_^
January 22, 2018
My brother has an incredible collection of comics and graphic novels, so he offered several options for completing the comic-related tasks for the 2018 BookRiot Read Harder Challenge. Even though comics/graphic novels aren't typically in my reading rotation, I've had a lot of fun with these tasks so far and am glad they were included. I selected this for "a comic that isn't published by Marvel, DC, or Image"; it was published by Kenzer & Company.
While I suspect that I missed out on some of the gamer humor, I still enjoyed reading this one and found myself laughing out loud more than once. It was fun talking about the installments with my brother who said that his college gaming group suspected that they were being monitored by the author. He claimed that they did not have a gazebo incident, though :) In addition to the humorous strips, I also enjoyed the lead-in blurbs for each of the three sections and the back story write-ups for all of the characters, which were hilarious! Whether you're a gamer or not, this is a funny collection worth a read.
While I suspect that I missed out on some of the gamer humor, I still enjoyed reading this one and found myself laughing out loud more than once. It was fun talking about the installments with my brother who said that his college gaming group suspected that they were being monitored by the author. He claimed that they did not have a gazebo incident, though :) In addition to the humorous strips, I also enjoyed the lead-in blurbs for each of the three sections and the back story write-ups for all of the characters, which were hilarious! Whether you're a gamer or not, this is a funny collection worth a read.
July 15, 2018
It’s hard to go wrong when you open with the Tale of the Mighty Gazebo. And when you finish the book with the letter to the editor that inspired its inclusion. And top it all off, include the reprinted story of the gazebo unearthed from ancient fanzines. This story that loosed the arrow into a thousand role playing urban legends.
September 18, 2021
The stories in this first Bundle of Trouble were a bit too old and basic, but I still enjoyed them. The series will get better…
November 5, 2021
Reliving a classic
September 14, 2023
This comic gives examples of funny game nights and quirky outcomes of them. It is drawn pretty easily yet has a cool look. It is recommendable for people interested in RPGs.
I personally did not find it that interesting.
I personally did not find it that interesting.
March 26, 2010
Mawk's Christmas present to me, since 2009 rounded out nearly a full year of being a full-fledged D&D Gamer. It's funny, but I think it might hit a smidge too close to home for a certain one or two in our group. I do love Sara, because she's funny and smart and not an idiot like some of the group.
Further, I liked the second one, too, but got really annoyed with the overuse of "gawd."
Further, I liked the second one, too, but got really annoyed with the overuse of "gawd."
July 12, 2013
This book - actually a collection of comic strips from the Dragon magazine - is hilarious. I admit, only gamers can really understand this form of humor, but it is great to watch this gaming group and compare them to players you have met in real life.
February 24, 2016
Cute gamer humor, makes me want to rally the old D&D crew. It's not earthshaking stuff but it's amusing enough for a comic strip. This early volume also shows the strip's DIY roots, as it's full of misspellings and other little endearing mistakes.
May 27, 2012
Dungeons and Dragons humor is never very funny (unless you are making fun of Dugeons and Dragons players), but gamers would find some chuckles in the sterotypes that make up this gaming group.
June 30, 2014
I still have my old Shadis issues where KODT premiered. I should probably catch up on current gen.
September 22, 2021
Looking forward to Vol. 2
October 27, 2014
Very funny, even when rereading. The art is hideous, which adds to the charm.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews