“Something is coming. Something hungry for blood. A shadow grows on the wall behind you, swallowing you in darkness. It is almost here.”
The first dialogue spoken in Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” 12-year-old Mike Wheeler’s (Finn Wolfhard) scene-setting for a fictional attack he’s about to unleash on friends Will Byers (Noah Schnapp), Dustin Henderson (Gaten Matarazzo) and Lucas Sinclair (Caleb McLaughlin) in his basement, immediately establishes what is inarguably the show’s most iconic product tie-in: “Dungeons & Dragons.”
The influence the iconic table-top roleplaying game has had on Matt and Ross Duffer’s ’80s-set, sci-fi phenomenon is undeniable, both in terms of how often the game itself is played throughout the show, and the classic monsters and villains it has inspired within the show’s universe.
But the impact “Stranger Things” has had on “D&D” over the past nine years is equally impressive as the show (along with significant contributions from Critical Role, Dropout’s “Dimension 20,” and 2023 film “Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves”) made what was largely still considered a cult classic game into a mainstream 2020s pastime.
“I’ve been playing and running games for over 10 years now,” “Dungeons & Dragons” game designer Justice Arman told Variety. “And to see this explosion with 5th Edition and see ‘D&D’ bring people together during the pandemic through games over Zoom, I really am so glad to see this kind of renaissance happening. And it’s in no small part to shows like ‘Stranger Things,’ to our friends over at Critical Role, to all of these kind of artists who, much like Eddie Munson, probably played this game when they were younger and got inspired to become storytellers and now are paying it forward.”
Last month, Hasbro and “Dungeons & Dragons” maker Wizards of the Coast released “Stranger Things: Welcome to the Hellfire Club,” a collaborative 3-5 player tabletop game product based on “Stranger Things,” which was made in partnership with the Duffers and Netflix. The game features the “lost adventures” created by “D&D” player Eddie Munson, the beloved Dungeon Master for the Hellfire Club introduced in the fourth season of “Stranger Things.”
The “Welcome to the Hellfire Club” set is a direct tie-in for the show and comes with character sheets featuring the “D&D” characters played by Mike, Dustin, Lucas, Will (not officially a Hellfire Club member, but they just had to get Will the Wise in there), and Lucas’ sister Erica (Priah Ferguson), and campaigns made in the classic 1st Edition format that Eddie and the “Stranger Things” kids would have been playing back in the ’80s. The materials are even styled to look worn and tattered, like they’d been discovered in someone’s attic after years of use.
“I really love this set, because I think it was a really fun chance to, not only combine what is fun and amazing about ‘Stranger Things’ and ‘D&D’ and what those those two brands have in common, but also a chance for Justice and I and the rest of the team to do a little history dive into 1st Edition,” “Dungeons & Dragons” franchise creative director Kara Kenna said. “We did so much visual research into fonts, reading some of those modules that Eddie would have had. And it was a really fun deep dive, even into getting to look at the modules he would have played, and what we could pull from them to add to this experience.”
Arman, Kenna and the team incorporated plenty of Hawkins-specifics into the set, drawing from “Stranger Things” lore to make the work feel authentic to the in-universe storyline heading into the show’s fifth and final season, which debuts on Netflix Thursday.
“For the earlier seasons, we walked this kind of interesting line of, we could have made these adventures just repeat beats from the show, but we wanted to find this line line between what people who are familiar with the show saw, as far as theme and inspiration, even some Easter eggs, but also giving them the agency to tell their own unique fantasy stories around it,” Arman said. “The second adventure in this set, ‘Scream of the Crop,’ takes a lot of inspiration from Season 2. There’s blighted farms. There are tunnels beneath the farms. There are some creatures underneath there. But the story that emerges is also one that’s categorically ‘D&D.’ And that also relates to the conceit of this set; that Eddie is entrusting these four adventures to the next wave of Hellfire Club. And there’s a beautiful welcome letter at the beginning that’s addressed to Dustin, basically encouraging him to finish his campaign, to take these things forward. And we’re kind of asking our people who play the set to do the same.”
While the “D&D” team wanted to make this game a love letter back to the show that is itself a love letter to “D&D”, they also wanted to “make sure this was a full 5th Edition experience,” so “that it didn’t feel like something less than that for anyone that does play” today’s modern “D&D” offering.
“But the pre-generated character sheets start you out without having to do any homework,” Kenna said. “You can just start with those characters at whatever level you want. And then the adventures are shorter, so it’s a little easier to do in a night or a couple nights, rather than having a big, long campaign, if you haven’t done that before. It has that balance between feeling like a nice entry point, but also is really a full 5E experience.”
As for whether you’ll get some hints to the “Stranger Things 5” plot by playing through “Welcome to the Hellfire Club,” Arman and Kenna confirmed they were exposed to Season 5 storylines and got “small hints” while developing the game.
“Justice and I got to go to Atlanta and be on the set of Season 5 while they were filming for a day, which was very fun,” Kenna said. “We got to see some of the costuming and some of the things that are coming up in Season 5 as inspiration and part of the collaboration. But knowing the date that this came out, the goal was definitely not to spoil anything that we’re about to see in Season 5. We really focused on the overall tone of the whole show, really capturing that adventurous spirit that’s in both ‘D&D’ and ‘Stranger Things.’ And if there are any spoilers, you’ll find out later.”
As “Stranger Things” comes to an end, the Duffer Brothers are already planning a prequel series at Netflix. Does that mean more “D&D” collabs ahead?
“We don’t have anything announced right now, but we’re always open,” Kenna said.
