Rich Burlew

A very funny prequel to the main plot of OoTS, starring everyone's favorite adventuring group. My favorite bits are the Durkon backstory, of course, because dwarves (and especially dwarven clerics) rock. :D Nice introductions to everyone, with judicious decisions made about who gets lengthy explanations and who doesn't. If you want to know why Belkar is a maniac, you won't find out here, but if you want to know about Roy's family issues, this is the place to see it.

Dungeonscape reminds me in many ways of the film The Emperor's New Groove: it shares a great deal of art and text with its producers' other works, but they are executed in such a different voice that one wonders how it slipped past the managing editors. But perhaps one should expect Dungeonscape to take a radical approach to the mechanics of dungeoneering, considering one of the authors is Rich Burlew, creator of the D&D-riffing webcomic The Order of the Stick. Many gamers will divide a show more supplement's contents into "fluff" (flavorful description of the fantasy world) and "crunch" (the game rules that make it happen): what Bulmahn and Burlew have created here is technically 90% crunch, but with such clear purpose and utility that it seems 95% fluff. As they offer new rules for architecture, traps, monsters, and character classes, the authors simultaneously acknowledge the strange and arbitrary nature of "the dungeon" and celebrate it as the venue for D&D adventures. Where else could one get away with shark-filled acid pools? And what other book would so generously grant them? show less

This penultimate volume of OOTS is a lot of fun and has a bit of everything: split narrative lines among different groups, flashbacks, foreshadowing, self-referential jokes, author commentary, and all the silliness we've come to expect from these comics. I am glad that one particular plot point got resolved in this book, though, because—while important to the main plot—it was one of my least favorite things. (Also, the resolution for it was very nicely done.)

This third opus in the ongoing tale of the Order of the Stick is quite probably the best yet. It has a more cohesive storyline, which is probably due to the fact that at this point Burlew started to plan longer storyarcs in a more detailed way in advance. His pacing is also better here, and we see some long over-due storyarcs come into fruition.

This might also stay the best book in the series, as the comic's level has dropped a bit since the war.