The Order of the Stick


The Order of the Stick is a comedic webcomic that satirizes tabletop role-playing games and medieval fantasy. The comic is written and drawn by Rich Burlew, who illustrates the comic in a stick figure style.
Taking place in a magical world that loosely operates by the rules of the 3.5 edition of the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, the comic follows the sometimes farcical exploits of six adventurers as they strive to save the world from an evil lich sorcerer. Much of the comic's humor stems from the characters' awareness of the game rules that affect their lives or from having anachronistic knowledge of modern culture. This in turn is often used by the author to parody various aspects of role-playing games and fantasy fiction. While primarily comedic in nature, The Order of the Stick features a continuing storyline serialized in one- to four-page episodes, with over 1300 such episodes released.
Although it is principally distributed online through the website Giant in the Playground, ten book collections have been published, including several print-only stories. An alternate version of the strip appeared monthly in Dragon magazine for 22 issues; these strips, among others, are collected in Snips, Snails and Dragon Tales.

History

The Order of the Stick began its run on September 29, 2003, on what was Rich Burlew's personal site for gaming articles at the time. Burlew initially intended the strip to feature no plot whatsoever—depicting an endless series of gags drawn from the D&D rules instead—but Burlew quickly changed his mind, and he began laying down hints of a storyline as early as strip #13. The strip was originally produced to entertain people who came to his website to read articles, but it quickly became the most popular feature, leading Burlew to eventually abandon writing articles almost entirely.
The Order of the Stick began as a twice-weekly comic that debuted new strips on Mondays and Thursdays. When presales of the first OOTS compilation book allowed Burlew to make writing his full-time job, he increased the number to three per week. Since 2007, the comic has been published on an irregular schedule due to the author's ongoing health concerns. That included a hiatus from September to December 2012, after Burlew had an accident that severed the tendons in his right hand.
In December 2019, Burlew stated that the story would end after one more book, but also noted that still means "years and years" of planned content. He noted that the two preceding books took five years each, and that the upcoming final book may be longer than either.

Magazine strips

On September 30, 2005, Burlew announced that The Order of the Stick would begin appearing in Dragon, the long-running official D&D magazine. The strip debuted in the December 2005 issue, on the last page of the magazine. The following issue, OOTS appeared as a four-panel strip in the magazine's interior, but by the February 2006 issue, it had returned to a full-page strip on the last page, a position it held until the magazine's last print issue in September 2007.
The Dragon version of OOTS featured the same main cast of six adventurers, but saw them adventuring in an unspecified underground location. None of the villains or supporting characters from the online strip appeared, with the exception of Mr. Jones and Mr. Rodriguez, who appeared together twice. Burlew has stated that the events of the Dragon strips take place in an alternate universe from the online strip, and events in one storyline do not affect the other. This status quo was broken for the sake of a joke, however, when a character in the online strip referred to the July 2006 Dragon strip by claiming that "I told you that in one of the Dragon Magazine comics, so I'm not even sure that's the same continuity."
Starting in January 2013, a of the comic appeared in Gygax Magazine, a new tabletop gaming magazine published in print and digital formats. The Gygax magazine was discontinued in 2016 after the sixth issue due to a legal dispute. Burlew indicated in a forum post that he would republish the Gygax comics in another format at some point in the future.

Evolution of art style

The comic is created directly on a computer using the vector-based software Adobe Illustrator, and the art style has been upgraded several times. In strip #103, the curved and crooked panel borders were replaced with straight—though still slanted—black lines. Burlew now questions how he ever thought the initial format was acceptable. After he sprained his wrist in 2005, Burlew used some of the time he took off from writing the comic to improve the designs of the main cast, straightening their lines and adding tiny details like the runes stitched along the edge of Vaarsuvius' cloak. These changes were humorously acknowledged by the characters themselves when they premiered. Burlew made adjustments to the colors that were required when the material was to appear in print for the first time. The later comics feature more frequent double- and even triple-page strips than in the early days, when longer strips were reserved for special occasions. In strip #947 the artwork was upgraded again, adding volume to characters' limbs that were previously drawn as simple stick-figure lines. In addition to these permanent improvements to the art, two variant art styles are used to distinguish the events of certain comics from those taking place in the story's present. Historical events relating to the plot are portrayed in a hand-drawn crayon style both in the online comic and in Start of Darkness, while events in the "prequel" print-exclusive stories are shown in black-and-white.

Representation of minorities

Burlew has said that he includes stances on social topics in his comic because he worries about the impact of his work beyond momentary distractions. He has also written that he is attempting to compensate for past instances of "unintentional sexism and/or insensitivity to gender issues" but, being a straight white male, he finds it difficult to speak authoritatively about minorities without the proper knowledge.

Characters

Protagonists

The comic's central protagonists, known collectively as "The Order of the Stick," are a party of adventurers who are questing to destroy the evil lich Xykon who is attempting to conquer the world. Though they have many allies, the official members of the Order of the Stick are:
  • Roy Greenhilt: A 29-year-old lawful good human fighter, Roy assembled the Order to defeat Xykon, and is its leader. Roy is a counterstereotype of the traditional "dumb fighter" cliché, being knowledgeable, rational, and a skilled tactician. He was conceived as the straight man to the rest of his team's antics, but over the course of the comic he learns to appreciate their various eccentricities.
  • Haley Starshine: A 24-year-old "Chaotic Good-ish" human rogue. The Order's second-in-command, she is skilled in stealth and deception. In early strips, the group thinks of her as the typical greedy thief, not knowing that her father was being held for ransom and she originally left a Thieves Guild to become a wandering adventurer to raise the money. She develops a romantic crush on fellow member Elan and, later, begins a relationship with him.
  • Durkon Thundershield: A lawful good dwarven cleric, is the healer of the party. He had worked with Roy for years prior to the founding of the "Order of the Stick." Durkon is a cleric of Thor and travels through human lands on the orders of the high priest of Thor, who exiled him as a result of a prophecy. Durkon speaks and writes in a Scottish accent and has a fear of trees, taking any opportunity to fight them.
  • Belkar Bitterleaf: A chaotic evil halfling ranger/barbarian, Belkar is an erratic, casual killer driven by selfish impulses. He joined the Order to escape justice from a deadly bar fight in which he knifed fifteen people. The Order does not abandon him, despite his bloodthirsty tendencies, due to Roy's belief that he must keep Belkar under control. Belkar's loyalty to the Order fluctuates with his mood, and, despite frequently thinking about it, he never actually betrays them. He adopts a housecat named Mr. Scruffy to be his animal companion and suffers from a curse caused by his actions, leading to his character development.
  • Elan: A chaotic good human bard/Dashing Swordsman. Elan is the happy-go-lucky, childlike bard of the Order. Early in the series, he is frequently inept and oblivious to the motives of those around him, such as Haley's long-concealed attraction to him. Raised solely by his mother, Elan discovers early in the story that his absent warlord father raised his twin brother, Nale, to be an evil mastermind.
  • Vaarsuvius: An arrogant and condescending true neutral elven wizard, whose gender is deliberately ambiguous, causing occasional confusion in teammates and others. Often addressed simply as "V" by teammates, Vaarsuvius tends toward unnecessary verbosity, often to the point of becoming ineffective as a teammate, although sometimes it can be of value; and is motivated by the need to gain "ultimate arcane power" as an end unto itself. Vaarsuvius was married to an equally ambiguously gendered elf baker Inkyrius, with two children, but Inkyrius filed for divorce due to Vaarsuvius's quest for power taking priority over family matters.

    Antagonists

The comic's central antagonists include the following:
  • Xykon : The archvillain of the story, Xykon is engaged in a plot to conquer the world by controlling a world-destroying being known as the Snarl. While he has a notoriously short attention span and requires near-constant amusement, he is also capable of truly horrific acts of evil.
  • Redcloak : Xykon's main ally, he is a high priest of his deity and commander of the goblinoids that serve as the lich's minions. He is motivated by concern for the goblin people and their poor lot in life, believing that harnessing the power of the Snarl will allow his god to bargain for a better place for all goblins. Unlike his boss, Redcloak is a patient planner and a competent leader, and has shown an inclination for scientific thought.
  • The Monster in the Dark: An enigmatic, childlike monster that lurks in darkness under a pink umbrella. Although designated as Xykon's secret weapon, the Monster is terrified of almost everything, including the dark. On the rare occasions he has used force, he has demonstrated incredible power. The paladin O-Chul deemed the Monster "a good man" after befriending him.
  • The Linear Guild: An adventuring party comprising "evil opposites" to the Order. While the Guild originally sought a powerful magic artefact, its purpose turned solely toward defeating the Order after their first encounter with them. Each of their engagements with the Order results in the Guild needing to recruit new members, not all of whom last long. Recurring characters include:
  • Miko Miyazaki : Strongest warrior of the Sapphire Guard, Miko is dispatched to apprehend the Order at the request of her liege. Her sanctimonious attitude and her frequent judgment of others on moral grounds create conflict with the Order, although both oppose the forces of Evil. Miko breaks her Paladin oath by killing Shojo, her liege lord. She is killed during the battle of Azure City.
  • General Tarquin: The de facto ruler of the Empire of Blood on the Western Continent and the father of Elan and Nale, General Tarquin is a lawful evil fighter who has schemes within schemes. Much like Elan, Tarquin is genre-savvy and has a flair for the dramatic, and becomes upset when others fail to respect literary convention.
  • Minister Malack: A lawful evil lizardfolk cleric of Nergal and close friend of Tarquin; secretly a vampire. He harbors a grudge against Nale for killing his children and befriends Durkon soon after they meet, but later turns him into a vampire. Ultimately murdered by Nale.
  • Vampire Durkon: An evil spirit created by Hel to fit the darker aspects of Durkon's personality. When Durkon is vampirized this spirit takes possession of his body, keeping the original Durkon a prisoner in his own brain. He is Hel's agent in the attempt to sway the gods' vote to destroy the world. Sacrifices himself when outwitted by the real Durkon.
  • Hel: The Northern goddess of death, daughter of Loki. At the creation of the current world, she and Thor agreed that she could have the soul of every dwarf who died without honor. The dwarves since became a race of honorable warriors, frustrating her plans. When the gods debate whether to destroy the world, she attempts to swing the vote to Yes, since if the world is snuffed out every remaining dwarf soul becomes hers.
  • Inter-Fiend Cooperation Council, or IFCC: a trio of archfiends, who are Sabine's superiors and the masterminds behind numerous antagonistic groups and events in the story. Their agenda is to have the Order destroy the Gates and release the Snarl.