Order of the Stick
A comic involving a party of classic D&D style adventurers who refer to the rules in an in-universe style. Much of the "humour" comes from wry observations about the system and settings, which often walks the line between parody and copyright violation. The comic has gone from fun parody to serious pastiche of epic fantasy over the years, something that's known in the industry as "Doing a Cerebus".
The story is written by Rich Burlew, who's claim to fame is coming in second place (or, as he likes to call it, "first loser") in WotC's contest to write the next great campaign setting. Rich lost to Eberron, which should give you good idea about what he came up with, depending on how you feel about Eberron. We'll never actually see his entry, as one of the conditions of the competitions was that Wizards of the Coast got to keep it, and it seems they locked it in a darkened room and forgot about it. This is probably a good thing.
Butthurt Fa/tg/uys tend to whine about the fact that this is a stick-figure comic, which goes to show that we know dick-all about design and simplicity. Compared to Servants of the Imperium this shit is gold.
Recently, Burlew raised over ONE MEELLION DOLLAHS via Kickstarter to get all the paper and ink books reprinted, despite the whole thing being available for free on his website which involved everyone who donated pretty much being showered with keychains and never-before-seen comics, plus other stuff.
/tg/ of course, loves all of Order of The Stick... but nobody is going to accuse /tg/ of having good taste. Besides, everyone knows that Andrew Hussie's MSPA webcomics are a million times better, because Rich Burlew is Andrew's bitch. fapping to homestuck is all we want to do.
Links
- Skub
- The website
- The TVTropes article where you can see all the clichés Burlew uses.