The Order of the Stick

''The Order of the Stick'' (''OOTS'') 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'' (''D&D''), 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 as of April 2024.

Although it is principally distributed online through the website ''Giant in the Playground'', ten book collections have been published, including several print-only stories (''On the Origin of PCs'', ''Start of Darkness'', and ''Good Deeds Gone Unpunished''). 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''. Provided by Wikipedia