D&D in Stranger Things (and its many inaccuracies to do with classes)
OKAY so I am seeing so much misinformation about dungeons and dragons in stranger things online right now particularly on Reddit where I’m seeing people apply 5th edition rules to stranger things where they literally play BECMI AND ADVANCED D&D! So this is for anyone who wants a break down of the characters’ broken D&D classes!
To begin in the first seasons on stranger things the main party play Basic and Expert dungeons and dragons (aka BECMI) this is important because if you play 5E D&D the rules are really different. For starters what we consider races and classes are fused into one category which means being a halfling counts as a class like fighter although race adjacent classes are categorised as Demi-humans they are still a class and magic users have to always be human.
This all breaks apart though when you look at some of the Parties D&D OCs in season 1:
Will: Elf, Cleric and magic user
Dustin: Dwarf, Bard
Okay so because race and class are the same thing in BECMI you can easily look at these characters and assume that they are multi classing right? Except multi classing isn’t a thing in BECMI so how is Will three different classes and Dustin two when you can only be one, the only way I can justify the writers doing this is if you say that the party are using dual classing rules from Advanced D&D and fusing them with BECMI even though it’s implied that the party only started playing AD&D in season 2 as that’s the first time we see one of the books which really begs the question of why don’t the party just play advanced then if they prefer the rules? Also another point is Dustin’s character being a bard which yet again is not a class in BECMI… but is in AD&D
Also side tangent but Will’s character is actually so overpowered because BECMI classes are really unbalanced so for him to be playing a Demi-human and a magic user is really overpowered and I don’t know why Mike would allow him to do that.
I think the conclusion of this is not everyone wants to read an 80s D&D manual for 100% accuracy and sometimes it makes more sense plot wise to change the rules for a tv show and honestly it doesn’t matter if their game is accurate or not :)