Kenzer & Company received many requests from fans of the comic to produce an actual "HackMaster" game, but initially they thought that licensing "Dungeons & Dragons" would be impossible. In 1999 the "Dragon Magazine Archive" software was published where Wizards of the Coast failed to get permission to reprint many of the original articles such as the "Knights of the Dinner Table" comic in the electronic media archive. A contract dispute was settled out of court, they reached an agreement about creating a derivative work, that led to K&C's publication of "HackMaster 4th Edition" in 2001. As a nod to the fictional version from the comic, this first edition of "Hackmaster" was published as the 4th Edition.