I have the prequel. It’s definitely a good read if you’re an OOTS fan. You’ll also occasionally see references in the strip to things which were in the prequel book, but were never in the online strip.
‘Hold Person’ had me snarfling.
Good to know – I plan to get the prequel book for sure, and probably the other ones too now. I just bought a shirt mainly because some of them are supposedly going out of print soon. It’ll just be the first bit of what’ll prolly be a whole pile of money I send that guy’s way. He deserves it.
“…they keep changing it” made me lol again.
I take back every sweeping generalization I’ve ever made about web comics. I just finished reading this one from beginning to… I guess I can’t call it “end,” maybe “current.” I really really like this one, so well I’ve already recommended it to a couple of people who have the prerequisite old-timey D&D geekery to really appreciate it.
I think OOTS is hitting critical mass. I’ve been reading it for about a year and a half, and in that time it’s gone from “obscure gem almost no one ever heard of” to “darling of the geek boards”. Congrats on the success, Rich, it’s well deserved.
So the backlash begins next month?
Troy
It’s going to be difficult to be that edgy guy who hated OOTS before everyone else did. The source material, old school D&D and role playing, is venerated. You have to dislike the source material to dislike OOTS. As opposed to PA: it’s easy to dislike the comic because it has strayed so far from the source material. They do so many comics now which have nothing to do with games; and so many of them suck.
It’ll be hard, but they’ll manage; I have boundless faith.
Maybe it would help if some sort of annual OOTS charity was founded.
The only thing PA does that i really think sucks consistantly are their Cardboard Tube Samurai features, which is a clever idea that seems, now, more like a portfolio demo for getting a bigger job in the animation industry.
My favorite PA cartoon probably has to be their Thanksgiving themed “The Birdsea” http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/11/24
Order of the Stick is a fun cartoon, that’s really totally different than PA. PA is more like meta-commentary, the junction between games, lifestyle, popular culture, and geeks thinking about themselves. OotS is happy to wade in the cliches and have fun; PA is “above” that now and passes humorous judgements down from their cartoon ivory tower.
Not at all like the denizens of this board, eh?
I never felt bad about the board making fun of the strips I like, nor do I think OOTS sucks.
My wife and I own it. It’s fun–but so far it’s just been the two of us. We need gaming friends.
Not all ivory towers are undeserved.
I’ve played it once. It was fun, although one playthough wasn’t enough to tell if it had any long-lasting depth or not.
It does a nice job of encouraging people to get into character. I had lots of fun with Belkar, happily backstabbing everyone else at every possible opportunity. :>
How does the guy make money? I just realized there are no ads on the site. Is it purely through book/game sales? He says in his latest news post that he’s been lucky enough to do this for a living for two years etc. etc., and that got me thinking.
merchandising. Sneak attack, bitch!
I guess that’s where the PA backlash started from. It’s one thing to make affectionate fun among your geeky friends, (which is what OOTS does and does well) and another to come off as judgmental when the private personalities are nothing
Their byzantine writing does little to help win audiences that aren’t in geek mode. Where OOTS has enough of a storyline to hook even non-D&D geeks.
Okay… I made it through 301 tonight.
It just keeps getting better and better, and then there’s a hilarious movie food joke at the end of the first arc!
At one point I was truly marveling at the writer’s ability to smoothly slip a plot recap into the dialog, and the one of the other characters totally points it out!
Impressive.