Order of the Stick

First, a warning: Order of the Stick is almost certainly not funny (and is probably completely impenetrable) if you haven't played pencil-and-paper role-playing games, especially Dungeons & Dragons (and more especially, post-Second-Edition AD&D, and distinctions and caveats like this are bread and butter for OOTS). But if you're hip to the mysteries of the 12-sided die and have ever sat with your head in your hands while some rules lawyer explained in detail why any fool could see that fireball attacks shouldn't affect his Cleric, Rich Burlew's comic will kill you good.

With deceptively simple art (I was surprised at how attached I became to a bunch of brightly-colored stick figures), Order of the Stick perfectly finds the middle ground between satirizing and making love to the quirks and intricacies of D&D. It mocks (and god knows there's plenty of room for mockery: arcane, arbitrary rules; poorly-thought-out adventures; improbable occurrences just for the sake of plot; blatantly made-up "exotic" cultures and races; fifty thousand different niche varieties of pole arms… Stick laughs at all of it), but it's a very loving sort of mockery; you wouldn't be able to make fun of this stuff if you hadn't immersed yourself in it.

And, much like the games it lampoons, Order of the Stick somehow transcends the silliness and genuinely engage you with story, following a band of adventurers through a series of storylines that very strongly resemble an ongoing D&D campaign (the characters will even occasionally take breaks to reflect on the fact that they're gaining levels). The plots are ridiculous and the villains intentionally 2-dimensional, but Burlew's very good at slowly making you feel like there's something really important at stake underneath all of the Ogre jokes. I now catch myself religiously checking the OOTS site for updates; I can't tell if I'm doing it for laughs or to follow the story, but either way, I'm enjoying it.

It's been ten years since I've rolled a 20-sided dice, but steady doses of Order of the Stick get me to thinking that maybe it's time I looked up just how the saving throw system has changed.
--Keith Pille