David Kenzer
David S. Kenzer is a game designer whose company, Kenzer & Company, is best known for the comic book series Knights of the Dinner Table, as well as for various role-playing games such as HackMaster.
Company start-up
In the early 1990s, David Kenzer, a law student, was playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons regularly with five friends, including Brian Jelkey and Steve Johansson. In the spring of 1993, the group decided to start up a company in order to publish AD&D adventures. Kenzer filled out the paperwork to incorporate the company, and put "Kenzer and Company" as a placeholder for the company name. When the five friends objected to the name, Kenzer told them it was only a placeholder, and they were free to come up with a better name for the company. A discussion produced no consensus, and Kenzer laid down a deadline of a week to come up with a better name before he filed the papers. No better name was submitted, so the new company became known as Kenzer & Company.First products
Studying Intellectual Property law at the time, Kenzer was sure that the company could produce non-licensed material for AD&D without TSR's approval. Their first project, published in 1994, was the AD&D-compatible adventure The Kingdom of Kalamar. The adventure was marked "suitable for use with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" printed on the back cover, and included the disclaimer text "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is a registered trademark of TSR Hobbies, Inc. Use of this trademark is NOT sanctioned by the holder."After producing another adventure, Kenzer decided to branch out, producing a licensed collectible card game based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail in 1996, which proved to be a bestseller.
''Knights of the Dinner Table''
Kenzer began a casual relationship with Alderac Entertainment Group, which had just started to publish the RPG magazine Shadis, with Jolly Blackburn as editor. Kenzer and his staff wanted Blackburn to join Kenzer & Company after he left AEG in 1995, and Kenzer and others visited him in November 1996 during a local convention, during which Blackburn became convinced that Kenzer had the business sense and integrity he wanted in a partner.Kenzer & Company began publishing the Knights of the Dinner Table comic books by Blackburn, and beginning with issue #5 it became the work of the "KoDT Development Team" made up of Blackburn, Kenzer, Jelke and Johansson.