The Order of the Stick Adventure Game
December 2007 Issue
Features
- From the Editors
- Craft Check: Gamer Cake
- Gaming in the Media: Cyber-Stupidity: Jade Raymond Edition
- Market to Me: Female Protagonists
Interviews
Articles
- Gender & Live-Action Role Play: Identity Crisis
Author: Samara Hayley Steele
- Naked and Terrified
Author: Elizabeth McDonald and Karen Healey
- “My Mom Likes Your Game”
Author: Mara Poulsen
- Speaking from Authority
Author: Richard Pilbeam
In this ongoing series, Samara shares her experiences as a female LARPer in a male-dominated LARP Organization.
Elizabeth and Karen dialogue on a set of miniatures called “Hot Chicks 3.1: Naked Distress”.
Mara looks at the casual gaming industry and what it means for female gamers.
Richard discusses the default "he" and what it says about sexism in the Warhammer 40,000 universe.
Gamer Stories
Reviews
The Order of the Stick Adventure Game: The Dungeon of Dorukan, Giant in the Playground Games and Advanced Primate Entertainment, 2006
I’ve been a fan of Rich Burlew’s comic, The Order of the Stick, for several years. When I was perusing the shelves of my local tabletop gaming store and saw that there was a game based on the comic, I snapped it up in a hurry, despite not knowing anything about it.
When I sat down with it at home for a leisurely perusal, I noticed that the back of the box specifies “3+ hours” of estimated time for gameplay and suggests that you’ll need to “clear off the table for this one” in order to have enough space to play the game.
“Dang,” I thought. “I bet this is one of those games that it takes a long time to figure out how to play. I wonder how I’ll find someone willing to mess around with it with me for several hours?”
The adventure game playing spirits must have been watching over me, because only a week or so later my husband and I were entertaining a friend, Brandy, who expressed a deep desire to “play a board game or a card game or something.”
I had just the thing.
Gameplay
The Order of the Stick Adventure Game: The Dungeon of Dorukan is something like a board game, and something like a card game and something like a tabletop roleplaying game. Once you get going, the gameplay is reasonably intuitive, at least for people who regularly play all three of those other types of games. The most difficult part is trying to understand the rules the first time around. My copy of the game came packaged with an official errata and FAQ booklet, in addition to the rule book, if that gives you any idea.
Anticipating that players might have a hard time getting started, the game also comes with a short comic featuring the cast of The Order of the Stick explaining the rules more briefly, and with a hefty dose of the comic’s usual style and humor. Even the short rulebook, however, is eight pages of information to digest. The complete rulebook is thirty-one.
So we spent a lot of time on the rules. Brandy read the quick-start rules.
While Jameson read the full rules.
And then Brandy read the quick-start rules again. I was busy during all of this making snacks, which is an important part of the gaming experience.
Even with this intensive study, we had to refer back to both booklets countless times during our first halting hour of play, and the gameplay is complicated enough that I don’t feel I can do it justice in this review. Suffice it to say that there are lots of different types of cards, some of which are used to create your character’s attributes, and others of which create the playing board and the challenges and rewards upon it.
The pace started to pick up nicely for us once we’d gone through several rounds, and by the end of our play time we were moving along fast enough to really appreciate the fun and humor of the game.
Characters and Setting
People familiar with the comic will recognize the characters and situations in The Order of the Stick Adventure Game: The Dungeon of Dorukan. Those who aren’t but who are familiar with roleplaying game and fantasy novel conventions will still find the archetype-like (but with funny twists and additions) wizard, rogue, warrior, cleric, bard and ranger (sort of) characters entertaining.
The setting is the Dungeon of Dorukan, which can change composition with every gaming session, and the goal is to reach the bottom, fighting past monsters (and party members, at times) and gaining loot on the way. It’s a classic plot, and works very well for this game.
A Little Advice
If you pick up a copy of The Order of the Stick Adventure Game: The Dungeon of Dorukan, I would advise that you try something like what I did, and get together with a very small group of friends to play it through a time or two to get the hang of it before you try it with a larger group. Even with our group of three, there were long pause-to-consult-the-rules moments for each of us that irritated other players who were ready to move on, and who would then become distracted and seek entertainment elsewhere and need to be called back to play. With a full group of six all trying to learn the game at once, gameplay could quickly grind to an absolute halt.
But if you can learn the game well enough to help others through it, a very good time can be had.
We’ll definitely be playing The Order of the Stick Adventure Game: The Dungeon of Dorukan again.
