No mistakes in the title. Spoilers ahead but who cares. Watch the first season and never bother with the rest.
So I've been rather quiet about Stranger Things, the other shitfuck trashfire that pushed normie lemming morons toward D&D, at least most of them half-stupidly went toward D&D 5E instead of the game actually presented in the show, a mish-mash of B/X and AD&D 1E.
But it's final episode aired earlier tonight so I wanted to say - Goodbye, Goodnight, and Good Riddance.
In Season 1 there was some minor D&D references, and for the most part they were fairly apt and correct. I consider Season 1 to actually be a good show, and like True Detective, it would be better if there was never a follow up and it stood on it's own forever.
In Season 2 they introduced "Demodogs" but otherwise didn't reference anything D&D related. This is because I don't think the Duffers actually know anything about D&D. If they did then someone would have named "Demodogs" either Hell Hounds or Blink Dogs, because they are things from D&D and fit diagetically into the setting.
Season 3 was annoying pointless filler, everyone knows this. Nothing really advances and everyone just member-berries that Malls were a thing once. Also they finally add a chick in it and make her lame and gay, in spite of chemistry Joe Keery and Maya Hawke have during this season, which dissolves and is never seen again, but that actually makes sense. We're already in "Modern Audience" mode so basically everything romance and sex has to be on the back burner or non-existent unless it's a mixed-race couple. Then it can exist but probably should be a C to D plot, which is what happens with Lucas and Max.
In Season 4 we steer back to D&D. The excellent Eddie Munson is prominent throughout the season, meaning he's assuredly going to die horribly, but at least he gets a guitar solo beforehand. D&D is portrayed incorrectly as the montage shows a d12 rolled with a d20 at the same time during a session, but there is a very, very small chance that this actually happens in AD&D1E. Infinitesimal. Also Lucas' lame bitch kid sister proclaims her character is an X level Rogue (I think it was 9th), which has multiple stupid connotations including the idea you can transfer characters between different DM's campaigns and that there was a Rogue class prior to 3E in the year 2000. There actually was but there's almost no chance that a fan-made character class an obscure article in Dragon Magazine is really what she's talking about. Later we have "Demobats" make their first (and last?) appearance, with two characters (Eddie and Dustin) who would instantly note and categorize their behavior as literally Stirges.
Lastly "Vecna" arrives. While Vecna was a thing at the time, in the form of flavor behind a few artifacts, there's a very real demilich that would more likely be cited - Acererak from Tomb of Horrors. Now because his name is basically impossible to say aloud I understand why they would have used a better pseudonym for the big bad of the series (that - spoiler alert - is also the Mind Flayer because that's the easiest way to kill them both at the end which is really the middle of the final episode) I realize they'd want to go with Vecna because it's easier to say and generally sounds cooler. But a teen in 1985 who is into D&D would have likened him to Acererak (or perhaps Strahd) not Vecna.
In Season 5 we mostly go thankfully without D&D references until episode four, badly named "Sorcerer" or "The Sorcerer" or whatever. In any case, the first instance of the Sorcerer existing as a D&D character class is in D&D 3.0 in the year 2000. Especially in the lame-ass way they used it (because Mike specifically and word-for-word defines the Sorcerer class from 3E, meaning the writers probably used ChatGPT to look it up and copy/pasted it into the script). Previous editions (like the ones from 1987) would have either lumped this in with the Magic-User, Mage, or Psionicist. Technically everything anyone uses in the entire show is Psionics, and that's existed since AD&D 1E and therefore would be acceptable terminology, but I'm sorta picking nits there since the "demogorgon" wasn't exactly similar to the D&D Demogorgon. It's OK to have some artistic embellishment if it is thematic. 'Demodogs' and 'demobats' fucking suck as names, though. When you have the opportunity to use Hell Hounds and Stirges, seriously use the better terminology dipshits.
Tonight the final episode aired. I started typing this post after midnight. There were at least two bad references to D&D in the final episode. The first was during Dusty's Valedictorian speech, he referred to "two" types of chaos, "chaotic good" and "chaotic bad". Of course even 5E lemming retards know that the alignments are three, and they are chaotic good, chaotic neutral, and chaotic evil. Dusty, being an adamant and avid D&D player during the time it literally gets his ass kicked to do so (this happens early in the 5th season) would not make these mistakes. Later, more mistakes crop up as Dusty's character during the D&D session is described as a "bard" which is a nearly impossibly hard class to get into in AD&D1E.
Millionthly they are fighting Strahd in supposedly I6 Ravenloft and the party has dwindled down to Will the Wise, a "Sorcerer" now that everyone's forgotten the AD&D terminology that he's a Magic User. There's some bullshit present that may or may not exist that is hindering him from casting spells (I don't remember what they said and won't bother going to watch again) so someone asks him to whack Strahd with his stick and Lucas says it will "only do 6 damage and Strahd has 30 HP left" which are both things Lucas, a player, can't possibly know. Also Max is playing something called a "Zoomer" which I assume is just a semi-clever reference to her generation and not an outright fuckup of D&D lore. Lastly Dusty the "bard" dies during the combat, really the first thing that we see at the table, and his death is basically ignored after the encounter resolves, as it wouldn't fit Mike's denouement. This I can forgive, likely the party could resurrect the "bard".
What I can't forgive is them spitting in the audience's face. Basically how Mike's campaign concludes is a TPK, which is how a lot of proper campaigns end. But Max, being a bitch, bitches about not having an I-Win button to fix it and have the game come to a satisfying conclusion. What is then introduced is a magic bullshit deus-ex-machina where Eleven's NPC (not sure if she ever actually played D&D at any point in the show) has a summoning incantation which allows the GM to narrate the big bad being killed by said friendly NPC. This was presumably set up in a previous game session that nobody could possibly remember. But Will is the one who is alive at that point and makes "the call". This is actually the kind of bullshit campaign ending everyone who actually plays RPGs hates. IE not theater kids or other excessively estrogen-filled tables (soyboys, cucks, the gender challenged, sexual deviants, modern women who use excessive estrogen like testosterone, etc). "You fucked up and Strahd killed you all, way it goes" is a better ending than "NPC comes out of the woodwork to save your punk asses. Feel heroic?"
This show has never gotten D&D right since it's first season concluded. The writers never took it seriously and the actors never took it seriously enough to give a flying fuck since their paycheck cashed just fine. I hear there is a lawsuit against the Duffers claiming that they stole or plagiarized the first season's manuscripts off someone else. I'm frankly apt to believe this claim. They don't know old D&D worth a shit and couldn't be arsed to look ANYTHING up. Fuck 'em, I hope they lose.
Stranger things was a good season of television, and a bad series of television.
