Stranger Things ... Can We Just Play D&D

 Stranger Things and Dungeons & Dragons have been feeding each other energy since episode one. It is one of those rare cases where a piece of pop culture borrows heavily from D&D, makes it part of its DNA, and then ends up shaping the game right back. It is a magical feedback loop, the kind of thing El and Will would draw on a notebook with ominous red pencil.

The Duffer Brothers grew up with D&D, and the show wears that devotion on its sleeve. The opening scenes of the young party around their basement table tell you everything you need to know: D&D isn’t just a hobby, it is the lens through which these kids understand the world. Every monster gets its name from the Monster Manual. Every mystery gets filtered through initiative, hit points, “fireball it,” and the shared imagination they have learned from the game. Vecna, Mind Flayer, Demogorgon, Shadowfell style vibes… none of these are literally the D&D versions, but the kids use D&D terminology as their mythology. The game becomes the metaphor that allows them to survive.

Over time, things get… stranger. The influence starts running the other direction. Stranger Things becomes one of the biggest pop-culture engines driving new players toward Dungeons & Dragons. Stores started stocking Starter Sets with Stranger Things branding. Wizards of the Coast released an official Stranger Things campaign box that lets you play Mike Wheeler’s “lost adventure.” Actual-play groups and D&D livestreams saw traffic increase thanks to the show. Even the big Vecna resurgence in 5e owes some of its spotlight to season four. Vecna was always a major villain, but now he is a household name. Well, thanks to Stranger Things and Critical Role. 

The aesthetics of the Upside Down have quietly shaped D&D as well. 5e adventures started leaning a bit harder into that mix of psychic horror, body horror, and suburban uncanny. A lot of folks writing D&D (and OSR adjacent projects) cite Stranger Things when describing a certain “kids on bikes meets cosmic dread” vibe. Campaigns like Wild Beyond the Witchlight and Vecna: Eve of Ruin are steeped in nostalgia and dark fairy tale logic, the same tonal cocktail you see on screen.

I have been rewatching the series for the first time in preparation for the final season. There is a lot more going on in these episodes than I remembered. There are also more than a few things that made their way into Baldur's Gate 3. The Mind Flayer nautaloid looks an awful lot like the "Mind Flayer" of Stranger Things. The inside of the Nautaloid looks a lot like the Upside Down.

So at this point, the relationship between Stranger Things and Dungeons & Dragons is less a straight line and more a circle, or a peculiar zig-zag thing. The show borrows D&D language to explain the impossible, D&D borrows the show’s style to explore new corners of fantasy horror, and the rest of the hobby branches outward with games inspired by the whole vibe. Dark Places & Demogorgons, Kids on Bikes, Stranger Stuff, Tales From the Loop, the whole retro-weird youth adventure genre owes some of its momentum to Hawkins, Indiana. And Hawkins, in turn, owes a lot to Dungeons & Dragons.

What started as four kids rolling dice in a basement turned into one of the biggest cultural cross-pollinations the hobby has ever seen. Stranger Things reminded mainstream audiences that D&D is about imagination, friendship, and fighting nightmares with the people who know you best. And in return, D&D gave Stranger Things a shared language, a mythic shorthand, and a way for its characters to name the horrors in the dark.  It is kind of perfect, really. D&D taught a generation how to dream, and Stranger Things took those dreams and projected them onto the screen in flickering neon and psychic static. 

I knew D&D had made it mainstream when some 20-something online was super excited to explain who Vecna was to me. 

Season five will probably dial all of this up even more, and I’m honestly looking forward to spotting the threads. Because when a show and a game get this intertwined, the real fun is watching how each new idea ripples out across the other. 

Just one week to go.