Order of The Stick Adventure Game: The Dungeon of Durokan Deluxe Edition

Great game, guaranteed for hours of fun (added value if you know the comic). When you read the advice to play the game on a large surface head this advice! the game will take up a lot more space then you initially might think

I love the Order of the Stick, the strip. Even a bad idea has its moments in the strip, because there is so much going on and the producer is a clever and funny guy who knows D&D and has thought long and hard about it for a long time. You haven't met "pithy" until you've seen a storyline from this strip.

I dislike this game, though I don't want to. I've tried it several times and it suffers from the fact that the gameplay simply cannot sustain the point or the joke for the length of time the game takes to play.

The designer has spoken on the subject, and seemed to think that the board game should take about the same time as a session of D&D. That design goal was achieved, but it was a mistake to begin with in my opinion.

The joke milieu is fun, but wears thin after a couple of hours. By the third hour most people I've played with are beginning to suggest a game of something else, and finishing much after that is really an exercise in mental stamina in my experience.

The mechanics are card driven and quite innovative in their way: The board is built anew each time from cards that represent rooms and levels in the eponymous dungeon. Players play the characters from the Order of the Stick, represented by card "standees" familiar from the strip, and vie with each other to get the most loot. Loot that a given character "drools over" is worth more to that character than other loot. Loot is represented by cards, and is won by thrashing monsters. The references to the strip are many and the humor content is through the roof.

Monsters are cards played by the other players (and perhaps the phasing player him/her self too), forming a stack in which monsters form alliances to gang up on the phasing player. Monsters in other rooms on the same level may also contribute.

This is where it gets overly complex in my opinion, and constant arguments over what monster is "up" and who can help it were a feature of early games. Also, it isn't hard to end up with piles of monsters that cannot be beaten or driven off or gotten off the board. This is a depressing and unfun feature of the game. If I want to play a game I can't win I'll play Arkham Horror. The mechanism is somewhat like that of Munchkin, except that a munhkin monster that is unbeatable GOES AWAY at the end of the turn. OOTS:DoD Monsters hang around forever.

The cards are sturdy enough, for cards, but there are so many you'll need a component check after a game if the box got dropped. The box can, at least, hold all the components with ease (something that is becoming rare with boxed games once they are unpacked the first time).

The deluxe version of the game has pieces that "shorten" the game. I bought an expansion pack that contained those parts as I was an early adopter. I was very dismayed to read the instructions that came with that expansion.

So here is my method for shortening a game of OOTS:DoD to a reasonable time: Limit the number of floors to three plus the special level. If someone hasn't found a stairwell by the last card in a level, it is in that last room. Only allow gang-ups in the same room (controversial, this, but it does stop the stupid and keep things manageable).

Your mileage my vary of course. People have been claiming on the internet that they enjoyed six hour games of OOTS:DoD. I've never had a game that didn't end after three hours where everyone wasn't voicing the opinion that enough of a good thing was enough.

This is not a game I can get players for in my local friendly game store, and they are board game crazy.

My advice would be to find someone, me maybe (I can be found gaming at a store in Plainview NY most weekends), and play before you pay. I'll wheel it out for anyone willing to give it a go and am always on the lookout for that new player who will show me the point I've missed or the rule I've misinterpreted which will make all I've said above total hogwash.

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I love the game, and the shortening rules provide excellent options to speed up and time limit a game that before took way to long.My one disappointment is the really cheap/thin plastic inside the box.The box itself was packaged perfectly by amazon with no marks on it, but inside the plastic separators were all torn up.I will have to find a different container to keep my cards separated in.

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I wanted to do a review for this game, because my opinion differs quite a bit on this game from the person below me. True, I began playing this game not really expecting it to be that great after awhile. In fact, it felt like there were certain things that felt suspiciously similar to games like Munchkin.

After giving it a real go, however, I had a very enjoyable time, and before I knew it, 3 hours had gone by. This is one of those games that is hard to recommend to certain people. I'm a pretty hardcore gamer, and I had fun with this, but I don't think it's for everybody. If you like RPG parodies like Munchkin, this will probably be up your alley. The only major difference is that you play as a specific character who gets specific items each game. It isn't as random.

But while this game is meant to be light-hearted and fun, it can sometimes be very punishing in difficulty. Yes, sometimes it's the luck of the draw (most results will be based on a 1-12 die roll), but you can also get help from your friends on defeating monsters. That is, if they don't stab you in the back while they're at it.

Sure, this game may never be nominated for any game of the year awards, but I feel it does a good job of trying to accomplish what it sets out to do. It's just that there may be games more suited for people who want to play games of this genre. The one thing I will say that I loved about this game though is that it gave me enough freedom to choose from fighting monsters, stealing items from other players, exploring the dungeon, searching for loot, teaming up against other players, and laughing at all the silliness that was going on. So if you don't take your games too seriously, and want something a little more light-hearted, I would recommend picking this one up. Below I'll list some pros and cons I found from playing this:

Pros:

+ Light-hearted fun for gamers of all experience levels.

+ Lots of ridiculous humor specific to each character. They all feel fully fleshed-out.

+ The game is different every time you play.

+ Expansion pack adds some nice cards, including a variation that makes the game much shorter.

+ There is really no way for anyone to "die" or "lose." Everyone is in the game the entire time without any significant penalties if you DO lose all your HP.

+ "Backstabbing" other players never feels like anyone is out to get you. That is, unless you do it to others too much...

+ One of the few games that is appealing to the non-gamer girlfriend crowd.

Cons:

A lot is left up to chance.

Can amount to a pretty long game, even with just two players.

Appeals to a certain niche of gamers. Not every hardcore or casual gamer will probably enjoy this.

Certain rules can be a little difficult to grasp at first

Some monsters are far too common. The idea is that monsters of the same type give each other bonuses, but I would have preferred more variety.

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The Order of the Stick comic is quite funny, if you have the right background with RPGs so you can catch all the inside jokes. This "board game" variation also has a lot of humor to it. I say board game in quotes because you build the dungeon room by room by laying cards down on the table. The graphic design is excellent.

You play one of the characters from the comic, such as Durkon the Dwarven Cleric or Haley the Rogue Archer. Each Player has a set of Schtick cards that represent his or her special abilities. You start out with three of these cards and can add more in play. Acquiring duplicates of these cards gives you Boosts to their listed abilities.

You move from room to room in the dungeon, trying to make your way down to Xykon's lair for the final confrontation with the big bad, battling monsters along the way. Upon entering a new room, you are given one or more monsters to fight by the other players. These monsters have funny illustrations and dialogue taken from the comic, and may have special abilities of their own. You roll a twelve-sided die, add up all relevant modifiers, and try to defeat the monster's attack or defense values, depending on the circumstances. When you defeat them, you get Loot cards. Defeat enough monsters and you can trade them in for more Schticks. When battling monsters, you can also trade the Loot cards you have accumulated to other Players, provided the Loot card has one or more symbols that match the character whose aid you are seeking. This aid boosts your attacks and is often the only way to defeat certain monsters.

There are a lot of other elements to the game, which I don't have the time or patience to list here, except for one of the deal-breakers for me: Players are actively encouraged by the winning conditions and the Schticks in the game to backstab each other. Yet you have to cooperate with each other to have a chance of winning. The result is a game with a really schizophrenic feel. Are you competing or cooperating? Aiding or sabotaging? Combine this with the need to account for all the niggly little ability modifiers that crop up on various cards and which may or may not stack with other monster modifiers and room modifiers and adjustments caused by special Screw This cards that you or OTHER Players may throw into your battles to help or hinder you, and the game play is SLOW.

Moreover, the sheer randomness of the monsters you will face and WHEN you will face them is aggravating. It's entirely possible to be facing extremely tough enemies on the first level that you have no real chance of beating, depending upon how cruel the other Players are. There's no strategy that will help you with this. Certain Player characters are simply completely helpless when encountering certain types of monsters that negate all of their significant Schticks. In addition, the Players themselves are woefully unbalanced. Haley is clearly the most powerful, with Roy probably coming in second, while Belkar and Vaarsuvius are one-trick ponies at a consistent disadvantage.

This leads to a game in which it is difficult to plan, that requires you to add up a lot of different modifiers and keep track of special abilities even though dumb luck is often going to screw you or pull you through, and where defeating the most monsters is no real guarantee of victory in the end if you get back stabbed.

We've played the game half a dozen times, because I want to like it, but my experience has been that it routinely brings out the worst in people, encouraging arguments over the rules, petty bickering over things like "why didn't you heal or aid me last turn?" and backstabbing that can bring progress to a crawl just when momentum was being built. In other words, it encapsulates the things I like least about role playing games and compresses them into a brightly colored, visually attractive package. If it wasn't for the humor on the cards I would give this game a "1" for actual play experience. It's funny, but I don't see the point in spending four to five hours of often dull play punctuated by arguments and resolving rules disputes just so that someone can cherry-pick a victory.

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