Rich Burlew

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Rich Burlew

Birth name	Richard Burlew
Born	September 1, 1974(1974-09-01)
Nationality	American
Area(s)	Writer, illustrator
Pseudonym(s)	"The Giant" or "Giant in the Playground"
Notable works	The Order of the Stick
Awards	Gold ENnie (2007 Best RPG Regalia)^[1] Five WCCA awards^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5]^[6]

Rich Burlew (born September 1, 1974) is an author, game designer, and graphic designer best known for his webcomic The Order of the Stick. He has also written several works for Wizards of the Coast's Dungeons and Dragons game. He owns and operates Giant in the Playground, a small press publishing company formed to publish his comic work and named after his frequent forum screen name.

For his work on The Order of the Stick and his assistance in launching Erfworld from obscurity to critical acclaim, Rich Burlew was named #5 on ComixTalk's list of the Top 25 People in Webcomics for 2007.^[7]

1 Biography
- 1.1 Fantasy Setting Search and GiantITP.com
- 1.2 The Order of the Stick
2 Bibliography
- 2.1 Game Design Credits
- 2.2 The Order of the Stick Trade Paperbacks
3 Interviews with Rich Burlew
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Biography

At the age of 12, Burlew first developed the basics of his now-trademark stick figure art, drawing a tiny comic called "Mr. Demon" for his lunchroom friends.^[8] He kept doodling his stick figures long after, even as he attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, where he earned a degree in Illustration. He admits that "everything [he] learned about color use or panel composition...[he] picked up at Pratt."^[9] After leaving college, he worked as a professional graphic designer in New York for several years, working primarily on elementary school textbook design and layout.^[10]

Burlew first began playing Dungeons and Dragons in high school, but his interest in the hobby lapsed until 2000, when Wizards of the Coast released the Third Edition ruleset for the game.^[10] Upon running his first adventure with the new rules, Burlew found he needed several identical miniatures to serve as bandits for his players to fight. Rather than buy lead miniatures, he used his graphic design computer to draw simple stick figure cut-outs in the style he had developed as a youth. He continued using stick figure monsters for years in his D&D game.^[8] During his gaming, he was frequently the GM, a role he has likened to writing a webcomic in several ways.^[9]

[edit] Fantasy Setting Search and GiantITP.com

In 2002, Wizards of the Coast announced a contest to find a new campaign setting for their D&D game, dubbed the Fantasy Setting Search.^[11] From a field of over 11,000 gamers who sent in one-page descriptions of their worlds, one of Burlew's four entries was chosen as a finalist. He was asked by Wizards to produce a 100-page setting bible for his world, competing against two other designers.^[12] While the contest eventually selected Keith Baker's Eberron as its winner,^[13] the experience encouraged Burlew to begin seriously pursuing a career in game design. He was also offered additional writing work from Wizards of the Coast the following year, contributing monsters like the battletitan and the shadesteel golem to Monster Manual III.^[14] His entry in the setting search remains the unpublished property of Wizards of the Coast, and Burlew is under a non-disclosure agreement to not discuss it.^[15]

In June 2003, Burlew launched his website, GiantITP.com, in hopes of "turning [his] paltry name recognition into something resembling a job."^[8] He dubbed his new site, "Giant in the Playground," after his screen name on the Wizards.com forums, to try to capitalize on his reputation there as a knowledgeable gamer.^[16] The site languished for several months, until he decided to add a webcomic to the site to bring recurring traffic (in the hopes that it would subsequently lead to more game design work). He transferred the images from the stick figure miniatures he had produced for his D&D game into a page-long comic, and thus began The Order of the Stick in September 2003.^[8]

[edit] The Order of the Stick

Further information: Order of the Stick

The Order of the Stick is the stick figure fantasy story told in webcomic form by Burlew on his website, GiantITP.com. It gained heavily in popularity through 2004, with Burlew realizing he had created a successful story when several friends in an online D&D game spent an entire session berating him for writing a scene where a villain impales a main character.^[17] He announced the publication of the first compilation in book in December of that year. Shortly thereafter, he reported that preorders for the book had been so successful that he was prepared to quit his job as a graphic designer and apply himself to comic and game writing full-time.^[18] Since then, he has produced one additional compilation and two original black-and-white "prequel" books to add to the Order of the Stick story.

In November 2005, new strips of The Order of the Stick began appearing in Dragon Magazine,^[19] extending the potential reach of the comic significantly. Burlew described the feeling of seeing his comic on the same page that once held What's New with Phil & Dixie as "awe-inspiring" and "weird".^[20] The comic ran in the magazine until its final print issue.

Burlew also drew a short-lived webcomic for the RPGA website, entitled Five Foot Steps,^[21] that featured more traditional cartoon art (i.e. not stick figures) and depicted a diverse roleplaying game group at fictional Rollmoore College. The strip only lasted for 5 installments, for reasons that have not been made public.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Game Design Credits

Monster Manual III, Contributed. (September 2004, ISBN 0-7869-3430-1)
Explorer's Handbook, w/Frank Brunner and David Noonan. (August 2005, ISBN 0-7869-3691-6)
Spell Compendium, Contributed. (December 2005, ISBN 0-7869-3702-5)
"The Order of the Stick Adventure Game: The Dungeon of Dorukan", w/Kevin Brusky. (October 2006, ISBN 0-9663-4764-7)
Dungeonscape, w/Jason Buhlman. (February 2007, ISBN 0-7869-4118-6)
Tome of Artifacts, Contributed. (June 2007, ISBN 1-58846-935-9)

[edit] The Order of the Stick Trade Paperbacks

The Order of the Stick: Dungeon Crawlin' Fools (February 2005, ISBN 0-9766580-0-3)
The Order of the Stick: On the Origin of PCs (August 2005, ISBN 0-9766580-1-1)
The Order of the Stick: No Cure for the Paladin Blues (November 2006, ISBN 0-9766580-3-8)
The Order of the Stick: Start of Darkness (June 2007, ISBN 978-0-9766580-4-7)