How did you find OotS?

[brian 333]

Sadly, I never saw Rich's work in Dragon Magazine. I was never a subscriber because I was far too mobile, but I had an extensive collection of 1980's and 1990's issues.

By the time Neverwinter Nights came out my friend, who was recovering from a severe back injury, had played Baldur's Gate to death. I set up his computer to play NwN online, and he became quite good at Arena and other combat styles. In setting it up I got involved in NwN's role playing community.

A fellow roleplayer mentioned a self-aware stick figure D&D parody comic with a halfling ranger who bore an uncanny resemblance to my main character. The issue I first saw was Xykon on the throne in Dorukon's dungeon, but Mail Call was the most recently published strip at the time. (I remember thinking that the author had made up the questions and the names of the people who asked them just for the jokes.)

It didn't take long to catch up reading all thirty strips, back then. I was hooked, though I was not yet aware of the forums. Even when I began reading the forums, it wasn't until I saw Ian and realized he was Haley's dad that I posted for the first time.

Sadly, after hosting two worlds and playing in many others, NwN fell into the cracks of time. Intermittently living on the road made Internet difficult to maintain, and there have been times that I have been away from OotS for months or years. But I always ended up back here, and as I work my retirement job and build my retirement home I look with some dismay at the impending conclusion of the OotS saga.

When it does come to a close I know The Author will continue to create new things. My nostalgia for the old days is hoping that there is, somewhere, a younger reader who will have that new creation as a touchstone the way OotS has been for me.

Mail Call is still my favorite strip, though there are so many that could claim that title. But my favorite part of OotS is this forum community. Sisters and brothers all, even those of you who don't like me. When the last strip is published and OotS comes to a close, I will weep in the best company a forum browser could ever know.

[pearl jam]

I came to OOTS from a NWN-related forum as well. I don't remember exactly what the current strip was at the time, but I think it was around the introduction of Miko, but maybe still before the hood had come off?

*EDIT*

It was a while before I ever visited the forums and years before I actually registered to post something.

[Bohandas]

I first encountered it in Dragon Magazine

[Algeh]

I know I was linked from somewhere else on the internet - my guess is probably Steve Jackson Games' Daily Illuminator, since that's how I found a lot of internet sites at the time.

This would have been before the Miko reveal in strip 200, but probably after the end of the first book, so likely during the starmetal sidequest? I know I was able to buy the first printing of the first book when that was announced, and I remember the wait when Rich sprained his wrist (and so did Elan). I skimmed the forums off and on, but didn't create an account until much later.

[Caerulea]

Embarrassingly enough I'm fairly confident I first found this place from TvTropes. I almost never go back there and I'm still here so it was a good find.

[HxCSaus]

I can remember exactly. The xkcdsucks blog post about #965 compared it, unfavourably, to OOTS #423 and #457. I poked back and forward a little bit, I remember instashipping Roy and Elan and my heart sinking pretty quickly because of Haley passing love notes to Elan in the battle. I was pretty insufferable about my identity back then, yes.

Kinda wanna change this name too, if I'm honest, but at least it's unique. Had no idea I made an account back in 2012 using this email.

#810 was the latest comic at the time, I think. I went to latest then decided to read the whole thing from the start, but I can't remember what point in the comic's time I was updated. Definitely before #819, I can remember getting the update for that.

[Trixie_One]

Rpg.net.

Can blame that place for introducing me a whole bunch of stuff in terms of media including webcomics, some that worked out like OOTS, and some not so much, before I left it for good.

Was around the first visit to Azure City if I remember right.

The xkcdsucks blog post about #965 compared it, unfavourably, to OOTS #423 and #457.

I am deeply puzzled to discover that was a thing. I mean XKCD is hardly Ctrl-Alt-Del, or Sinfest after the maker went off the rails.

[Metastachydium]

Embarrassingly enough I'm fairly confident I first found this place from TvTropes. I almost never go back there and I'm still here so it was a good find.

Eh, there's no shame in that. I found OotS the same way, in fact. The first strip I actually read was, if memory serves, Miko's attacking the Order during the storm in No Cure. I'll readily admit that it kind of failed to impress me too much. I haven't gotten into it until after I'd begun to binge the Battle of Azure City after some link from TVTropes dropped me in the middle of it. Thereafter, I read through most of WaXP, DStP and Blood Runs in a thoroughly non-linear fashion, straying into early UD or No Cure on occasion.

The first time I checked what the latest comic was, I've found it to be no. 1108 (maybe 1109). Curious how it all began, I also then jumped all the way back to no. 1. I was shocked, let me tell you, and praised my luck that I didn't begin reading there (full disclosure: to most of DCF, I'm yet to warm up).

[Ruck]

I also found OOTS through TVTropes. I don't even remember which of the many pages that linked the strip that I followed to get here, but the strip itself was #428. I was impressed enough by the intelligence and ingenuity displayed by the characters there to be interested in what happened next, so I read the next strip, and then the next, and then I kept going and decided probably sometime into the Don't Split the Party run I should start from the beginning.

[Steveio]

The 8-Bit Theater guest comic.

Started reading OotS during the hiatus after #484.

[ZhonLord]

I came across the comic by chance during the vampire arc. I believe 1130 was the newest page at the time. I thought it was interesting, but got distracted shortly after by other stuff and lost track of it.

Then I rediscovered it while bored during the lockdowns and looking for new stuff, someone referenced the comic in a D&D discussion group. So I tracked it down again at the start of the Redcloak negotiations. From there I marathoned it beginning to end and realized just how much of a good story I'd been neglecting. I've kept up with the live updates since.

[Elanfanforlife]

I also found it on TvTropes, read for a while, and then decided to start from the beginning.

[hroþila]

Someone made a thread about OotS back in January 2006 at another message board I still frequent, I started reading from the beginning because the very idea of approaching a comic in any other way sounds confusing and blasphemous to me, and I really liked it, so I read the whole back catalogue and then every new strip as they came out. Or at least I think that's when I discovered it - I didn't actually post in that thread, so it's possible that I didn't see it and that I only started reading a couple months later after getting a direct recommendation from this friend of mine who also frequented that message board and who did post in that thread to say this comic is awesome. Anyway, at some point I started lurking here, and some years later I registered.

[InvisibleBison]

I first found OOTS fifteenish years ago through the D&D website, where an article I was reading had a link to 12. I found that comic sufficiently amusing that I went and read through the rest of them, and I've been following it ever since, though I didn't discover the forums for some time and lurked for years before joining.

[Mike Havran]

I followed a link in one of the comments in DM of the Rings, which I read as a LotR fan. I read OotS from the beginning to somwhere around 353, then stopped for about a year or so. When I resumed and finished the binge, strip 849 just came out. Afterwards, the usual process: rereading the strips -> finding forum -> lurking -> registration.

[soroso]

I learned of OotS through the TVTropes site - specifically one about the Scoundrel.

I didn't know that OotS was that big of a trope namer.

[Robots]

I had seen it around on TV Tropes before, but one of my friends recommended it to me. At first I didn't think much of it, but hoo boy did that opinion flip around once they got out of the dungeon. I went from "What the hell does she see in this comic" to "Oh my God I see exactly what she sees in this comic".

It's probably one of my favorite works of all time, but it's difficult to recommend to others sometimes because it's hard to tell them a comic about silly little stick figures has one of the best character development arcs I've ever seen. I have to pull a Homestuck and tell them "This gets better after act book one."

[Manga Shoggoth]

Embarrassingly enough I'm fairly confident I first found this place from TvTropes. I almost never go back there and I'm still here so it was a good find.

I still go there - the site is interesting and often sends me in directions that I might not normally have gone. Such a one was Colour coded for your convenience, which sent me to Now If Only We Could Organize the Fiends Somehow (an interesting piece of foreshadowing?...).

Of course, I didn't go straight to reading the strip from that, but it put it on my radar, and from then it was only a matter of time.

[MesiDoomstalker]

I found it from a real small DnD 4e webcomic known as Heroes of Lesser Earth (HOLE). I found HOLE while randomly trawling, loved it as it came into my life just as I was getting into DnD (though 3.5 despite 4e's new hotness; did not understand the 4e references at all). The writer/artist had mentioned a contemporary DnD webcomic, Order of the Stick, in the forum discussion of the one of the more recent uploads post-binging the HOLE backlog. Then I binged Oots, HOLE ended a few months later and has since fallen off the face of the internet to my knowledge. I wish I could find it; I enjoyed it alot even if I only vaguely remember the specifics.

[drDunkel]

I came across a reference I didn’t get and got on a Google investigation. I think it was something about Belkar. Found OoTS and this was about five years ago.

[Ruck]

The funny thing is, I'd never played a game of D&D proper when I found OOTS. I'd played a couple of D&D based games, and I had some interest in the topic, but D&D never really was a thing for me, and wasn't at all the reason I became interested in the strip. Heck, most of what I've learned about how D&D works mechanically has come from my efforts to better understand the strip (including, of course, the MitD thread).

(My ignorance of D&D extended to the degree that when I was a child and got Eye of the Beholder, I didn't know multi-classing meant your EXP was split among all the classes and they leveled up separately. I tried playing parties full of multi-class characters because of course more powers are better, right? Didn't work out so great for me.)

I think I found OOTS almost seven years ago-- couldn't have been much time before I registered for the forums. I believe #1008 was the newest strip when I first showed up.

[Zarhan]

Also in team TVtropes, 5 years ago or so. The exact page was https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p.../RightBehindMe - at that time the page had also a panel from https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0246.html included.

I went on for archive binge. Having played D&D I got most of the jokes but it's not like they were having me giggling until https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0034.html came up - that was something that I definitely could relate to. That kept me going for a while..and then Linear guild appeared and the whole gag-a-day went to something resembling a plot, so got hooked then. Caught up around the time when the group had just met Minrah.

[dmc91356]

Someone posted a quote like "Roy is dead!" or something like that on sorcerers.net, a board I help moderate. Many of us had no idea what he was talking about. I followed the link, binged from #1 to that point (#443), and have been reading here ever since. I formally joined a lot later as the comic was 2007, but I did not sign up until 2013.

[wombat31]

I found OOTS from the old wizards of the coast forums. I was reading a thread probably around the time Eberron first came out, and Rich posted in the thread with a short comic about Roy recruiting a warforged to the party because they didn't need to sleep. I thought it was cool looking so I followed the link in his signature and I've been here ever since

[Rinion]

When strip #253, 'Larry Gardener and the Angry Half-Orc', went up in 2005, there was a news post about the parody on the Harry Potter fan site MuggleNet. I followed the link and never left. I was 14 years old then, 31 now. I've been reading the comic for more than half my life.

The funny thing is, I'd never played a game of D&D proper when I found OOTS.

Nor had I. I've since played it because of OOTS.

[littlebum2002]

I tried to find the forum post that led me to OOTS, to no avail. It was on the JayIsGames forum (boy does that bring me back). The post was making a joke referring to the last panel in #754 about physics crying alone in the corner. I immediately became hooked and 11 years later I'm still here.

I'm still jealous of all the old school readers who got here before ~2007 or so because it seems like back then the forum was a tight knit community where everyone knew each other and that seems pretty cool.

The funny thing is, I'd never played a game of D&D proper when I found OOTS. I'd played a couple of D&D based games, and I had some interest in the topic, but D&D never really was a thing for me, and wasn't at all the reason I became interested in the strip. Heck, most of what I've learned about how D&D works mechanically has come from my efforts to better understand the strip (including, of course, the MitD thread).

Same here. I never really played any RPGs before reading the strip, and the strip actually got me into D&D, although family life means I no longer have much time for it anymore.

[Laurentio III]

Found in the list of suggested webcomics list of another webcomics I don't remember about.

[KorvinStarmast]

I first encountered it in Dragon Magazine

As did I and I disliked it. Did not care for the art style, it made no sense, it wasn't funny. I had picked up a Dragon mag at a book store (I still had my 3.5e core books then, but had not read Dragon in a few years). My memory of comics like Finieous Fingers, Wormy, and Snarfquest, as well as the Phil and Dixie strips, in Dragon were my basis for comparison, and the OoTS strip didn't meet the standard, for me.

Some years later, I followed a link in a comment at RPG.SE (thank you, @SevenSidedDie!) to the polearm shop strip. I had first heard that Monty Python sketch on a record when I was a teenager, and I was of course very familiar with Gary Gygax and the polearms list in AD&D 1e.
That strip made me smile.
I went back to the first OoTS strip and tried to see what was up. After a bit of a slow start I began to appreciate the strip, so I've kept up and gotten the books. I did finally get a copy of Snips Snails and Dragon Tales, and have a context to appreciate the strips from Dragon.

[H_H_F_F]

Through these very forums, actually.

I was looking up a D&D 3.5 thing a few years before starting my account, and got the answers I was looking for in a discussion on the 3.5 forum here. I infrequently looked up stuff on the forums over the years, and at some point got curious about the comics that were apparently here.

I glanced at them here and there, but only seriously started reading them in 2021.

[Khay]

I hung out at a game store in ye olden days, and they had a big clunky desktop computer set up near the counter. Internet access, though! Sometimes the people working there would read webcomics during working hours, when the shop wasn't busy, and one time I asked about the funny stick figures while buying a booster of - probably Guildpact or something. Then I'd write down the URL on a piece of paper and visit it the next time I would have internet access, which would've been later that week.

This wasn't even that long ago, but the pre-smartphone era feels like ancient history, doesn't it?