Book Review: Order of the Stick/Rich Burlew's New Book
For those of you at GenCon right now (who still have time to read blogs while you're in Indy), I'd like to recommend that you pop by the Ookoodook booth (#1649) and take a look at Rich Burlew's new Order of the Stick compilation, Snips, Snails, and Dragon Tales. I preordered it back when it was initially announced, and due to printer delays, I just received my copy last week. I think this is the most fun collection that Rich has put out -- and it was all content that was new to me, which is a plus in my book. It includes the full OotS run from Dragon magazine (and though I love the new Dragon online, I think the sadness about the print version's demise is handled with the love it deserves in the final Dragon strips). There's also a whole 3.5e vs. 4e section that made me giggle; mocking the rules was one of the things that hooked me on OotS in the first place, so I'm glad to get some new jokes about the edition I'm currently playing. A final section, presumably meant to occur after the current web arc, give us fairy tales as told by Elan and Haley, a James Bond parody by Belkar, and Hamlet as told by Roy. (The last is clearly my favorite, if only because Hamlet is required reading for every student at Simon's Rock, and thus, seeing it get the gamer treatment was awesome.)
Several of my gamer buddies have taken a break from reading OotS as it posts, due to the delays in posting in recent months (years?) and because it's become very plot-centric as opposed to joke-centric. Snips, Snails, and Dragon Tales brings back the funny that made me love OotS in the first place without sacrificing any of the character interactions that I've stayed on for. So, if you're at GenCon and have a chance to get by the booth to check it out -- or if you're wavering on buying the new book from the site -- you should. It gets my thumbs up.