Gaming Guardians

Gaming Guardians is a webcomic that debuted 7 May 2000 and was created by Graveyard Greg and Andrew Babb. It has had several spin-offs, including two other comics and a role-playing community. The current artist on the strip is The Webtroll.

Premise and characters
The comic's premise comes from the belief that every time a role-playing game is run, an alternate reality (or "system") is created. Most of the time, these systems run their course, but sometimes they are unduly influenced by outside forces (overtly or otherwise). That's where Graveyard Greg and his team, the Gaming Guardians, step in to set things right.

While the webcomic is not specifically a furry comic (unlike some of Greg's other work, such as Furry! and Carpe Diem), furry characters and systems pop up frequently.

For example, two members of Greg's team are Angus, a gentle giant of a minotaur whose mind was damaged by one of the team's enemies, and Pidge, whose primary form until recently was that of a white kitten. Greg, himself, is infected with lycanthropy, and in recent strips was learning how to control and utilize that trait.

Also, major story arcs have occurred in FurryMUCK and the Napping Cat's Dream (which itself isn't exclusively furry, but has a high percentage of furry characters, many of whom popped up in the arc). Additionally, Gaming Guardians has crossed over with other comics before -- notably, Supermegatopia. While the team has not gone to an Ironclaw system in the main comic, Greg and Webtroll have done advertisements for Ironclaw featuring Graveyard Greg and EDG (his robotic sidekick second-in-command) shilling for the RPG.

Spinoffs
Gaming Guardians had a spin-off comic known as Powergamers, which featured a team of heroes who defend the real world (or "Primary System") from attacks from rogue systems. Maus Merryjest appeared as one of the Powergamers in several strips, as does a tough-as-nails rat girl named Trace. As of August 2005, the Powergamers strip went hiatus, with no evidence of renewal.

There was also a strip called The Guardians, which stemed from an attempt by an enemy to trap Greg, his allies, and several enemies in a D20-based system of the enemy's design. When Greg, et. al., escaped, the system generated versions of them and kept running. This strip is similar to what Marvel Comics is doing with their "Ultimates" comics - same characters, different situations.

The Gaming Guardians and Powergamers characters have popped up elsewhere, usually as cameos.

Role-Playing community
Not surprisingly for a comic about folks defending role-playing systems, there's a role-playing community based off of the comics. Much of the role-playing occurs in two places: the Gaming Guardians IRC channels, and the Gaming Guardians forums (formerly on The Nice, but moved after a long term outage there). However, in the time both the comic and the roleplay continuity have been running, some differences in continuity have developed between the two. Notibly, the two continuities diverged at the end of the Jester War, the roleplay community theorizing on events as they would have unfolded should the Gaming Guardians have evolved into a larger organization with multiple teams and support needs.

For the most part, most of the characters created are rank-and-file members of the Gaming Guardians, taking care of situations that aren't drawing the attention of the "main team" (as seen in the comic). Just as the former Powergamers comic line got phased out, characters based upon that continuity got rolled in with the main RP community "command structure".

Just as there are a sizable number of furry characters in the webcomic team, a number have risen to "high rank" within the role-playing framework (Most of the rank-and-file seen in the comic have been humans). Other characters are based on published tabletop RPGs, popular fandom universes, video games, miniatures games, other web-based roleplay communities, or "homebrew" settings favored by some players.