Category: Order of the Stick

If you are the ardent fan of Dungeons & Dragons, then The Order of the Stick is the comic series that will be interesting to you. It was created and drawn by Rich Burlew in the form of Stick Figure Webcomic. The events take place in the Dungeons & Dragons game with rules of 3.5 edition. This story was also printed in Dragon – an official magazine of Dungeons & Dragons.
This comic series, also known as OOTS, has a complex storyline. It satirizes role-playing games in general and provides its own ironic mock version of the medieval fantastic times. This is a parody of everything – starting from the typical roles of characters and ending with average battles, romantic events, and dramatic situations. The story revolves around six adventurers whose main aim is to save the world from an eternal lich who threatens to destroy it. These adventurers are not very knowledgeable of game’s rules. It often leads to hilarious misunderstandings and situations. Over one thousand episodes have been already released on the website Giant in the Playground.
Main heroes of the story include versatile parody characters. To begin with, there is a typical leader of the group, Roy Greenhil. He is an old fighter who plays the role of Only Sane Man. This is a role usually given to one normal character among weird and strange ones in the story. Then there is an action girl in this story, Haley Starshine, who plays a role of a female badass, who is really tricky plus can fight on the equal level with a man. Haley has a gold fever and is thinking about treasures. What a story without an elf? The next protagonist is Vaarsuvius, an elf who also happens to be a wizard whose ambiguous gender is the source of constant running jokes.
Where there are elves, there should be dwarfs. That’s why another member of the team is a dwarf called Durkon Thundershield, who is famous for his strictness. He also performs the function of group’s priest by worshiping Thor and asking for his help and protection. Another protagonist is Elan, a bard with not very bright thinking skills but a tendency for excessive dramatic effects. The last character is a brutal barefoot barbarian, Belkar Bitterleaf, who has problems with anger management and easily kills people without the slightest reason. So this is the whole team of the Order of the Stick.
These unconventional heroes’ aim is to prevent Xykon, the Chaotic Evil, from mastering his plot of world destruction. Being the main archvillain of this story, he possesses a monstrous creature, Snarl, and has many terrible allies like Redcloak, a goblin priest with a great army of goblins ready to fulfill Xykon’s orders. Snarl is an insatiable beast which was born at the dawn of creation and who can literally eat the reality. But it is the final aim. Meantime, they have to fight with numerous Xykon’s minions, monsters, and evil paladins. The plot is getting more complicated when Elan’s twin brother, Nale, appears to be an evil leader of the group called Evil Counterparts trying to murder the Order of the Stick.
Getting popularity and a big fanbase, the author decided to print books on the basis of the comic series. The pages from comics were published in five volumes – Dungeon Crawlin’ Fools, No Cure for the Paladin Blues, War and XPs, Don’t Split the Party, and Blood Runs in the Family. These books contain extra side plots which give more information about the main storyline plus additional events connected happening with the main heroes.