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.

Although it is principally distributed online through the website Giant in the Playground,[2] ten book collections have been published, including several print-only stories (On the Origin of PCs, Start of Darkness, and Good Deeds Gone Unpunished).

The Order of the Stick began its run on September 29, 2003, on what was Rich Burlew's personal site for gaming articles at the time.

When presales of the first OOTS compilation book allowed Burlew to make writing his full-time job, he increased the number to three per week.

[17] The comic is created directly on a computer using the vector-based software Adobe Illustrator, and the art style has been upgraded several times.

[n 5][19] After he sprained his wrist in 2005, Burlew used some of the time he took off from writing the comic to improve the designs of the main cast, straightening their lines and adding tiny details like the runes stitched along the edge of Vaarsuvius' cloak.

[21] He has also written that he is attempting to compensate for past instances of "unintentional sexism and/or insensitivity to gender issues"[22] but, being a straight white male, he finds it difficult to speak authoritatively about minorities without the proper knowledge.

[23] The comic's central protagonists, known collectively as "The Order of the Stick," are a party of adventurers who are questing to destroy the evil lich Xykon who is attempting to conquer the world.

The Order travels to Wooden Forest, where Vaarsuvius slays a black dragon so they can loot its hoard to retrieve a rare "starmetal" to repair Roy's broken sword.

Roy reluctantly agrees once he learns that Xykon has survived and is recruiting a massive army of hobgoblins to seize the remaining gates.

Xykon and Redcloak attempt to activate Soon's Gate, which is hidden within a gem embedded in the royal throne, but Miko, having escaped from prison, destroys it to prevent this.

Vaarsuvius then flies to an isolated island to search for Haley, where s/he is attacked and defeated by the mother of the black dragon whom s/he had killed during No Cure for the Paladin Blues.

While O-Chul and fellow paladin Lien travel north to Kraagor's gate, the Order sails to the Western Continent.

At the Godsmoot, they discover that due to the threat of the Snarl, the gods are casting votes (conveyed through their mortal representatives) on whether to destroy the world and start over.

There, they watch Xykon's party attempt to find Kraagor's Gate, which is hidden behind one of hundreds of dungeon doors leading from a ravine.

In Firmament the Order gain allies (among them Hilgya Firehelm, accompanied by her and Durkon's infant son Kudzu) and fight newly vampirized dwarves.

Using a magical hammer gifted him by Thor, Durkon damages the Council table sufficiently to get the vote delayed indefinitely.

They investigate the paladins' disappearance, but Durkon and Minrah abscond (against Roy's orders) in an unsuccessful bid to win over Redcloak to Thor's cause.

In the ensuing fight, the two dwarves are routed by Redcloak, Xykon, and others; they hide, tricking the villains into seeking them behind one of the many doors, then rejoin the rest of the Order.

O-Chul and Lien wake to find themselves chained to a wall at the mercy of Serini Toormuck, now elderly and part troll due to a past accident.

In the commentary for No Cure for the Paladin Blues, Burlew likens this story to the squabbles that might arise in a group of roleplayers, which threaten to destroy the fun that they have created together.

[41] The comic occasionally directly comments on current events in the roleplaying game industry by the inclusion of characters that represent the participants.

This theme was employed again when a character in the online strip voiced Burlew's eulogy to D&D co-creator Gary Gygax immediately after his death was announced.

[51] Critics sometimes cite the insular nature of in-jokes regarding the D&D rules that crop up regularly (especially in the early part of the comic's run) as a barrier to new readers, noting that without a working knowledge of fantasy roleplaying games, much of the humor may fall flat.

[52][53] However, the comic is just as often seen as being accessible to casual readers without such gaming knowledge due to the strength of the main cast's portrayals and abundance of character-based humor.

Some critics praise its "surprisingly expressive art", with PvP cartoonist Scott Kurtz adding that the comic would not be as funny or have as much heart if the characters were drawn in any other style.

[54] Others denounce its simple geometric characters as "merely functional"[53] or (as fellow webcomic creator Jackie Lesnick put it) only "good for someone who isn't really an artist".

[27][61][62] Burlew has addressed similar criticisms within the comic itself several times, either by contrasting his usual art with more realistic drawings or by simply putting self-deprecating dialogue regarding his style into the mouths of characters.

The bonus material for Dungeon Crawlin' Fools, for example, includes a nine-page opening to the story that Burlew felt introduced the characters in a more organic way than the online comic's cast page.

[4] On Jan. 22nd, 2012, Burlew launched a Kickstarter[75][76][77] campaign to get The Order of the Stick: War and XPs back into print, which eventually raised enough money to reprint the whole book series.