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Order Of The Stick




  Author Rich Burlew
  Url http://wwwgiantitpcom/cgi-bin/GiantITP/ootscript
  Status Usually updates three times a week will be updating only on Monday and Wednesday through August 2006
  Began 2003 {Link without Title}
  Genre Fantasy , Comedy


The Order of the Stick, nicknamed '''OotS''', is a thrice-weekly Webcomic about a group of adventurers. The humour is centered mostly on Dungeons & Dragons , along with other Role-playing games. While it is principally published on the web, two book collections have been published, including a print-only story (''On the Origin of PCs''). It also appears monthly in Dragon Magazine , published by Paizo. The pre-order sales numbers for the first OotS collection, ''Dungeon Crawlin' Fools'', encouraged Rich Burlew to quit his day job and write OotS full-time. Before that, OotS was twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays.

It is drawn and authored in a deliberate Stick Figure style by Rich Burlew, a graphic designer and game designer living in Philadelphia . While the stick figure art is usually created on a computer, accounts of historical events have been portrayed in hand-drawn crayon to distinguish them from events in the strip's present.

A significant portion of the humor of the strip is based on the characters Being Aware of the game rules which govern their lives—they discuss their Hit Point s, their class levels, the chances of random encounters, and stop in the middle of combat to check their "to hit" modifiers. They also appear to be aware that they are characters in a Dungeons and Dragons based comic strip. The humor of OotS is best appreciated by those who are familiar with the conventions and clichés of Paper & Pencil Roleplaying Games .

OotS is ostensibly updated every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but strips may sometimes be delayed due to unforeseen circumstances, such as the author being ill or stranded in another part of the country. As of 5/1/06, due to an increased workload, Rich Burlew has reverted the update schedule to tentatively Monday and Wednesday only until August.


CHARACTERS

See Also: Characters of the Order of the Stick



The comic's central characters include:

  • Roy Greenhilt (human fighter): Competent and shrewd, Roy is the group's long-suffering leader and instigator of most of their adventures.

  • Belkar Bitterleaf (halfling ranger-barbarian): The token evil character, Belkar is the group's Id .

  • Durkon Thundershield (dwarf cleric): Playing close to type, Durkon is wise and stolid, but often taken aback by his companions' exploits.

  • Elan (human bard): Elan is happy-go-lucky, and not very bright. He means well, but survives mainly on charm and fool's luck.

  • Haley Starshine (human rogue): Though she's sharp-tongued and materialistic, Haley is the thief with a heart of gold.

  • Vaarsuvius (elf wizard): Vaarsuvius is a brilliant and powerful mage, but somewhat lacking in people skills. Vaarsuvius's gender is ambiguous.



COLLECTIONS

  • ''The Order of the Stick: Dungeon Crawlin' Fools'' (2005) ISBN 0976658003

  • ''The Order of the Stick: On the Origin of PCs'' (2005) ISBN 0976658011



EXTERNAL LINKS