How did you first encounter the Order of the Stick?

[MtlGuy]

It was the completely unexpected result of a semi-random encounter. Every year a group of my pals and I in Montreal go to a friends cottage near'ish to Toronto. This past May my friend introduces us to a friend of his we haven't met before, his DM. He surprised us with a Dungeon crawl set to Pathfinder (I was like whatfinder? I thought we were playing D&D? Oh Pathfinder is the new D&D... gotcha). I hadn't played or DM'd since 2nd edition, I rolled a Dwarf Cleric named Thorik, who oddly enough had a loosely similar backstory to Durkon's, exiled from the Dwarf metropolis of Thorbardin on Krynn to search for his temple's stolen rug (I joked that Jeff Bridges was his deity). We played until we passed out and the next day I took my dog for a paddle boat ride. Best. Vacation. Ever.

So I came home with a renewed interest and I started reading articles, catching up on what happened since TSR went bankrupt. I was directed to this site while looking for articles and discussion on "Tucker's Kobolds". Believe it or not, I still hadn't noticed the comic at that point, but I kept coming back and eventually I did notice, hey there's a comic here!... It's pretty funny!... and wow, what a great story, I am hooked! Now I know the same insatiable hunger for new comics that the rest of you folks must have been experiencing for the better part of a decade.

Imho, Order of the Stick is to D&D what Futurama is to Sci-Fi.

It makes me wonder, maybe there are more 'older' (I'm 31) D&D fans like myself that would be interested in the story if they only knew about it.

[Umberhulk]

One of my gaming pals mentioned it. This was a bit before book 1 was released. I was hooked pretty quickly. I turned two other people onto it.

[shamgar001]

It kept coming up on tvtropes. Everywhere I looked, as surely as Anime/Manga had the most examples for any given trope, OotS was mentioned.

[The Oni]

TVTropes. It was damn ubiquitous.

[konradknox]

A friend showed it to me around the time when the comic was 250 pages. Was hooked since then. I read for three nights straight until my eyes were closing.

[Unisus]

My brother told me about this comic - don't know exactly when, but at that time the German versions were still up. I found the English originals later and actually never stopped coming here to look for the next one *smile*

[Tetsujin-28]

I used to browse TV Tropes before it went to crap and OOTS was mentioned all over the place.

[genderlich]

This article: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/tt/20060207a. That link in the sidebar goes to #274, but the comic was well past that point by the time I found it. The first strip I remember having to wait for the next update on was 473.

[Weiser_Cain]

I saw another comic by Rich, which I think featured a goth girl and Banjo the clown puppet(?), looked for more of that and got this.

[Infinite]

TV tropes. The best part is though, the trope I got to it from? Intermission.:smallbiggrin:

[Muenster Man]

Wow, TvTropes seems to be the gateway drug for OotS.

Same for me too. I started binge reading TvTropes early this year and wanted to find out more about this comic and started reading during the stretch of downtime the site was having. But way before that I google searched DnD rules and builds and frequently came across forum threads on this site. Had no idea there was a comic attached to it. Turns out one of my friends loves it too, while another didn't like the style and abandoned it early:annoyed:. I keep trying to re-recruit him, though:biggrin:

[137beth]

Someone in one of my old gaming groups had the books, so I read SoD, OtOotPCs, DCF, and NCfPB before ever viewing the online strips. Then I forgot about it for awhile. Then I started reading the online strips.

[Chuikov]

Yep. It shows up a lot on TV Tropes, so if you're on a trope binge you start to get curious, pop in to take a look, and then stick around because it's good.

[Dire Lemming]

A friend referred it to me, though neither she nor I have ever played Dungeons and Dragons.

[SowZ]

Can't remember exactly what, but I was googling something D&D related and got this website and went, "Oh! I've heard of this." then began reading it from the beginning, thought it was fairly funny but didn't get too terribly far, (maybe to the end of the dungeon.) I came back a couple weeks later when something reminded me of the webcomic and I was bored. So I came back to read a few more, got into the beginning of the Azure City arc or so, and it was only then that I was truly hooked.

[ArnoudX]

Yup. Also Tvtropes for me. Have been around for a few years since then :)

[CoffeeIncluded]

A whole summer spent on tvtropes.

[oball]

A post on Websnark, in days of yore.

[Morthis]

A "what is your favorite webcomic" post on another forum. I saw this mentioned, read a couple of comics and kept reading.

[Kaiisaxo]

Tv tropes again, after finding lots and lots of references it was inevitable to try to take a peak. Indeed.

[DolGrenn]

Somebody linked to Elan's first bard-song comic in the forum section of Darths and Droids. I went back to the beginning, started reading, and didn't stop until the latest comic! (Which incidentally was the last comic before the Giant hurt his hand.)

[nohamotyo]

TV Tropes, fall of 2008. Good job, dedicated person(s) who put a reference on damn near every page. And to the Giant, for the source material and making panels convenient as page images.

[WindStruck]

A somewhat random internet acquaintance sent me a link to one of the strips on this site. It was the one where Roy was looking for a new weapon and was naming practically everything conceivable, but the shopkeeper didn't have anything and was just wasting his time.

[kxm]

Tv Tropes. It was actually this (and Darths and Droids) that got me into DnD, not the other way around.

[Shhalahr Windrider]

Usenet. Someone posted a link to what was then the newest (or almost newest) comic (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0102.html) in rec.games.dnd. I got hooked.

[Xan499]

I was reading release notes for a roguelike called Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup and one of the entries was "added a dwarven language option (based on durkon)" or something similar. I wondered who that was and ended up finding OotS.

[Antipode]

My first encounter with Order of the Stick was borne of an active search for new webcomics to read, because back then I was only reading Antics and Penny Arcade, and still considered the hardly-updating VGCats to be a current standard of how webcomics should be. My extensive search via Google, TVTropes, and other mediums led me to Awkward Zombie, Brawl in the Family, DM of the Rings (which eventually plopped me onto Darths and Droids too from a mention someone gave there), Friendship is Dragons, Hark! A Vagrant, and Order of the Stick, though I don't remember which in particular flopped me over to here.

What I do recall, though, was that the Order was in the midst of the present arc by the time I caught up - I think it was around where Sir Thumb received his verse.

[Hendel]

Some of my gaming group suggested it so I went to take a look. I was not in to many of the standard ones like Knights of the Dinner Table, etc., but there was enough table talk to get me interested.

I logged on and saw #20 with V casting Evan's Spiked Tentacles of Forced Intrusion and the chimera's reaction of "wait, what?" and I was hooked.

In the early days it was a little sporadic but the Giant made the effort at one point to have I believe a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday comic and that was great. He later removed that and it evolved to the system that we have today, but it has been a staple of mine for years.

Truth be told, I really enjoy and miss the good old days when the comics were about silliness in the rules and the players themselves. Don't get me wrong, I love the current plot driven themes, but those were simpler days when there was not so much snobbishness on the forums about characters and this and that.

Still bar none the best web comic or any type of comic available for me.

[Demolator]

I took a vacation to the Empire of Blood one day, but they captured and enslaved me for not having papers. About a month later, I was freed by Haley and V. After I thanked them, they told me to look up their group name online, and I found this.

[Etheolin]

I first found a link to the comic from the old NeverWinter Nights community forum. I followed the link and fell in love with it right off the bat. I've been reading the comic for years (and ghosting the forum). I have no idea how long I've been a fan though... at 45 years of age my mind just doesn't comprehend time anymore. :smallsigh: I've been here since Miko was introduced. How long ago was that?

[angry_bear]

There was a throwaway joke in the web comic "Goblins" about Order of the Stick being better, and I googled it... Kinda been hooked since then.

Technically it was a "Tempts Fate" comic on the Goblins site, but still. :smallsmile:

[Gil-Galad II]

I logged on and saw #20 with V casting Evan's Spiked Tentacles of Forced Intrusion and the chimera's reaction of "wait, what?" and I was hooked.



Hooked like the chimera? :smalleek::smalltongue:

Anyway, I digress...once again, it was TV Tropes that brought me here...via DM of the Rings, which I read a couple of years ago. I then went to Darths and Droids, and after catching up to the current arc, I needed a new comic. OOTS seemed to be mentioned a lot, and I enjoy D&D, even if I don't play it much, so I started...and haven't stopped.

Regretfully, I caught up just after Brave Sir Thumb was grievously wounded, so I had a long wait after the initial archive binge...!

[Quorothorn]

I believe this (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0068.html) was the first strip I ever read, and yes I, too, must sadly say I got to it via TV Tropes. When I started reading, the story was in the early Resistance arc, I thiiiiink this (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0518.html) strip, or near-abouts, being the first one I read when it came out.

[TrollCapAmerica]

I cant remember how exactly I stumbled on this comic but this topic has made me want to remember.Im pretty sure I started reading in 05' or 06 since the oldest OOTS memory I have is going to a webcomic panel at a Cincinnati based convention I visited a few times back then and explaining to non-D&D fans what the appeal of the comic was.

[pendejochy]

I came here because of Burlew's guest strip on 8-bit Theater.

[orrion]

I came here because of Burlew's guest strip on 8-bit Theater.

This.

But I can't remember how the heck I found 8-bit theater.

[Onyavar]

I took a vacation to the Empire of Blood one day, but they captured and enslaved me for not having papers. About a month later, I was freed by Haley and V. After I thanked them, they told me to look up their group name online, and I found this.

I was a refugee fro Azure City, encountering them on Hinjos junk just before it set sail. It was a rough trip out of the harbour, but once Captain Axe got us away, I cheered with everyone else here on the Forum.

[Porthos]

I saw another comic by Rich, which I think featured a goth girl and Banjo the clown puppet(?), looked for more of that and got this.

That would be the (very) short lived Five Foot Steps. No Banjo in it though.:smallwink:

The links are still buried on the WotC website, but not easliy found. This post has them all in easy to click format.

As for me? Back in 2005, my local gaming group was suddenly talking about this new comic they found ALL THE TIME. Intially thought to myself, "Overhyped" and tried to ignore it. But after a couple of weeks of even more chatter, I started to follow it off and on soon after they left the first town post-Dungeon of Durokan (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0143.html). By the time they reached the Black Dragon Cave, I was hooked and have been ever since.

[urbanwolf]

Dragon magazine, oh how I miss you :smallfrown:

[TubaMortim]

Another nerdy guy at school mentioned it when I was... 13 or 14? Seven or eight years and soon 900 strips later, never stopped reading :smallsmile:

[Arcanist]

This was some time ago, but I vaguely remember it being something like this. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6k4cwj9_0k)

Hmm... Yep, that is how it happened... After I was captured, I was taken to a prison where I was required to read web comics for the rest of my days until I managed to escape and become a secret agent. Codenamed: Solid Snail...

A friend of mines recommended the comic to me :smalltongue:

[Mike Havran]

I found a link and recommendation in commentary to one strip of The DM of the Rings.

[Domino Quartz]

I discovered OotS on TVTropes early in 2010, and read a few random strips that were linked to on various trope pages, but I didn't start actually following it until around the time 804 was posted.

[Blas_de_Lezo]

2006. I was unsuccessfully trying to optimize a bard in the Wizards boards and I found a link to the strip where Elan sings about Dorukan's Dungeon.

[The Pilgrim]

I found a link and recommendation in commentary to one strip of The DM of the Rings.

Ninja'd ....

[Bird]

Around 2004, I think I found a link here from the Wizards of the Coast forums. I was probably following a link left be Zherog (who had an Elan avatar, I think?) or Medesha, who wrote that "The Duke's Wolf" story which is on this website. Or maybe I was somehow following a trail from the Giant's own "Halfling Skiprock Champion" prestige class, which, IIRC, won a prestige class competition on the Wizards forums before OotS began.

[Goosefarble]

Huh. You know, I asked this question a long while ago, when I first started using the forums, and back then most people said they found OotS from Dragon Magazine. Now it's all TVtropes. Odd.

Anyway, I actually found out about it from a game called RuneScape which I used to play. There's a character in it called Movario, and his examine info is "He knows a thousand arcane secrets, and each one would drive you mad." Which as you probably can tell is a reference to Vaarsuvius. Someone told me about it, and I read the comic, and, well... as you say, hooked.

[Anatares]

My dad showed it to me almost ten years ago. I don't know how he found out about it but he was on a big D&D kick and the comic got him to dust off his first edition red box. I was a first edition Lawful Elf and my brother a Neutral Warrior. We had some crazy fun times fighting dragons and picking up way too many cursed items and making hostile orcs stop and laugh at us. It was soo much fun.

He fell out of love for the comic at some point, early on maybe when it got serious, but I've always been a reader :P

[Solse]

I once searched "webcomics" on Wikipedia, because I was really bored. OOtS was listed as an example of a stick figure comic or something. I checked out the article and clicked the link. After reading the first comic, I was like "What the??? I thought this would be a Two Gamers on a Couch sort of thing. Where are the computers? And what's with all of the D&D references?" I promptly stopped reading it, because at that point, I was like "Screw it, I'm reading Penny Arcade."

Years in the future, but not many...

I was starting to realize that the Order of the Stick was mentioned on just about every page of TVTropes, just like many other posters. I remembered my past experience with the comic, and for a while, didn't want to read the comic. But then everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked I finally decided to give the OOtS just one more try. I am now so glad that I did. I instantly fell in love with the Order of the Stick, and did an archive binge in a week or two.

And that's my story.

TL;DR: I found the comic on TVTropes.

[runeghost]

A gaming buddy mentioned it, after quoting Belkar's line in game, "Run, my pretty little chunks of xp!" I didn't start reading right away, but did start reading Erfworld, then naturally started reading Oots too - sometime around the start of the Azure city arc, if I remember right.

[hamishspence]

I first saw it in Dragon Magazine, then read someone else's copies of Dungeon Crawling Fools & Origin of PCs, then bought my own and started reading the online comic.

[littlebum2002]

Some forum I was quoted V's line when she said of the Empress "I won't cast any more spells just to allow the laws of physics time to recover", which was a very recent strip at the time. None of the jokes made sense (because it's in the middle of a story arc), but I started from the beginning and fell in love!

[Ceilican]

I was reading some other comic's forums (I think Goblins), and there was a thread asking what comics other posters read. Order of the Stick came up a lot, so I checked out the hubbub. The strip was the group riding the Sandworm and Hailey disappearing. Haley amused me there, so I started going through the archives.

Really, that strip wasn't that far back, but it feels like I've been reading the comic for a loooong time. Possibly because I've read through the archives and my hard copies so many times.

[Dungeon_Crawler]

My brother told me about it

[Rogar Demonblud]

Honestly, I'm not sure. RPG.net forums, probably, since the page with the Pit of Outdated Monsters was a bit of a meme for a while.

[wingnutx]

It was mentioned on Penny Arcade.

[Balain]

A friend e-mailed me a link to the comic when it was at about strip 10. With a comment "I think you will like this" He was so right.

[strijder20]

Someone who is developing an extension on an extension on a game I play put a quote of Durkon in his sig (although I don't remember which one).

[Imbicatus]

Dragon Magazine, back when it was in print. I came to the site when the strip was in two digit numbers, I'm thinking somewhere around the 60s.

[hamishspence]

The strip didn't actually appear in Dragon until December 2005- which would correspond to OOTS strip 250 or so.

Though the game, or the book Dungeon Crawling Fools, might have been advertised in Dragon earlier than that.

[chainik]

A post on Websnark, in days of yore.

Same here, sometime back in 2005.