Fuzzy Knights was an online comic created by Noah J.D. Chinn and published by Kenzer & Company

Kenzer & Company

Kenzer & Company is a Waukegan based publisher of comic books, role-playing games, board games, card games, and miniature games....

. It starred stuffed animals who enjoy role-playing games such as HackMaster

HackMaster

HackMaster is a role-playing game produced by Kenzer & Company, being a revised expansion of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. It started out as a fictional game, a parody of the most ludicrous aspects of D&D played by the characters of the Knights of the Dinner Table comic strip by Jolly R. Blackburn...

and Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy role-playing game originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. . The game has been published by Wizards of the Coast since 1997...

. What started out as a simple one-shot tribute to the Kenzer gamer comic series, Knights of the Dinner Table

Knights of the Dinner Table

Knights of the Dinner Table is a comic book/strip created by Jolly R. Blackburn and published by Kenzer & Company. It primarily focuses on a group of role playing gamers and their actions at the gaming table, which often result in unfortunate, but humorous consequences in the game...

, turned into a cult hit that continues to gain new fans. Gary Gygax

Gary Gygax

Ernest Gary Gygax was an American writer and game designer best known for co-creating the pioneering role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons with Dave Arneson. Gygax is generally acknowledged as the father of role-playing games....

, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, was an admitted fan of the Fuzzy Knights and wrote a promo for the trade-paperbacks (see below).

Production

The first online strip appeared on Noah's personal website on December 8, 2002. Not long after, it was given a print strip within the Knights of the Dinner Table magazine itself, starting with issue 75. The Fuzzy Knights Online strips moved to the Kenzer & Company website on April 8, 2003 with updates twice a week.

The Fuzzy Knights cast and crew started production in facilities in Tokyo

Tokyo

, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

, Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 but in late 2004 made the move to a new studio in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. After a brief hiatus due to the move to London, the Fuzzy Knights kicked off a new storyline with a live action mockumentary, Fuzzy Knights 2: The L.A.R.P. The stand-alone story arc known as Tabletop Campaigns, finished its run on January 26, 2007 with episode 114. The original Tournament War storyline began reruns in February 2007 using a four panel per page format to save space on the servers. After an extended hiatus the L.A.R.P. storyline resumed production in the summer of 2008.

Characters

The main stars of the strip were four stuffed animals. Mossfoot, the adventurous green teddy bear, is leader and Game Master for the group. Violet, the violet and sometimes violent teddy bear, is Mossfoot's girlfriend. The others stars are Target, the black cat who hates LARPs (Live Action Role-Playing), and Ben Bunny, who speaks with a Scottish accent that occasionally slips into Jamaican. Collectively they call their role-playing group the Fuzzy Knights and they have had several adventures away from the gaming table.

Many other living "fuzzies," as the characters are called, inhabit the Fuzzy Knights world and most of them seem to be drawn toward role-playing games as well. The first story arc of the series involves fuzzies gathering from around the world for a HackMaster tournament that ends up turning into a war against an insane hamster toy named HamaEstra and his army of robots that appear to be arts & crafts projects made by kindergarteners.

Trade paperbacks

In December 2003 the Fuzzy Knights' first 22 online strips were reprinted in a trade paperback called Tails From The Table that included liner notes from the creator and bonus strips. Volume two of the series went on sale at Gen Con Indy in August 2005. Even though the strips are reproduced in a smaller size and a black & white format, they enable new readers to catch up with the backstory up to the beginning of the Tournament War.

In January 2006 the first trade-paperback was reissued in PDF format.

Fuzzy Knights RPG

In 2005, an original role-playing game set in the Fuzzy Knights universe was produced by the series creator and went on sale as a PDF download at the Kenzer & Company website.

External links

• fuzzyknights.com Official website
• Fan Archives Yahoo group