I had a lot of anxiety about what comic I should be doing. I considered doing a comic about me and fatherhood. I considered doing a comic about my time as a library worker. I even thought about doing a strip about grade school. The idea came up of just combining the entire list of ideas into one strip. That way I could explore whatever theme or joke I wanted to tell. Since it was such a good idea, it was probably my wife’s. I decided to embrace it, and now we have the current version of Rule Zero.
Rule Zero is a rule in roleplaying games that has a few interpretations. Some read it as “The game master is always right.” That means that the person who’s running the game is considered infallible, and if you don’t like it you can find another table. I prefer another version of the rule that states “The rule that comes before any other rule is to have fun.” It doesn’t matter what page 321 of the rule book says. What matters is whether the game is fun for everyone involved. In the same way, this is what Rule Zero is to me now. It’s a comic about tabletop gaming, sure. But it’s also about friends, life, and all the craziness that comes with those things.
The comic has been jumping around a lot in terms of cast. That’s because it was important to me to establish the different characters that will be appearing in the strip. You now know the Players and the GM, which consists of Howard, Beth, CJ, Quincy and Anna. You know some of the library crew, including Prudence, Desmond and Harrison. You’ve also met Max and Amy, two kids who frequent both the library and CJ’s store. Now that all the characters are introduced, I hope to get back to the Players. In fact, Friday’s strip is about them again.
Thanks for being patient while I set the stage. Now that everyone’s in their place, I can’t wait to share more and more of these guys with you. Hopefully some of them don’t scare you off. (Howard….)