Three mates meet in a home in Madrid, after ending the Netflix collection Stranger Things. At the tip of the final season they have been carried away by the tempting impulse to strive Dungeons and Dragons, the role-playing recreation that the collection’ protagonists take pleasure in a lot, generally known as D&D. Now they’re gathered, with a big open field on one facet: D&D: Heroes of the Borderlands, reads the colourful cowl of the latest model of the sport. None of the three have ever performed something prefer it.
After a decade because it started to be broadcast, Stranger Things has left an curiosity within the function. The iconic board recreation is so intertwined with the DNA of the collection, created by the Duffer brothers, that it opened its first chapter (again in 2016) with the protagonist youngsters enjoying a marketing campaign of D&D —the narrative adventures through which customers take part over time. Little by little, the success of the collection additionally triggered curiosity in D&D, which immediately experiences unprecedented visibility: after a distinct segment interval, and even accusations of satanism that sought to banish it, it has caught the eye of most people. And these chargeable for the sport search to retain that focus with their new simplified version, though not a lot: it’s nonetheless essential to get the books, study the foundations, or should persuade and coordinate a gaggle of individuals to have the ability to play it.
The motion of Stranger Things begins in 1983. At that point, Dungeons and Dragons He was nearly a decade outdated. Created in 1974 by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, it’s thought of the primary commercially accessible role-playing recreation. Players generate their characters based mostly on quite a lot of races (elves, people, or dragonborn) and courses comparable to paladin, sorcerer, or druid—Holly the Heroic, a cleric and Mike’s sister, is talked about within the collection; or Will the Wise, a magic person and alter ego of Will Byers. Each recreation additionally has a dungeon graspsomebody who doesn’t play, however acts as a storyteller, guiding the narrative of what occurs to others (that is what the character Mike Wheeler did within the first season, after which the tragic Eddie Munson on the head of the Hellfire Club within the fourth season).
According to Wizards of the Coast, the corporate that publishes D&D for the reason that mid-nineties, in 2020 greater than 50 million folks had skilled adventures on this shared universe since its launch. Stranger Things It has been seen, as of December 2025, greater than 140 million occasions, in response to Netflix knowledge.
From “satanic game” to bestseller
But Dungeons and Dragons It didn’t obtain that recognition with out issues. In the Eighties, the role-playing recreation grew to become generally known as “Satanic Panic.”atanic Panic), title promoted, primarily, by conservative sectors of the United States. This present described the function, the cube and their mentions of sects and demons that the gamers face as a gateway for younger folks to Satanism, a prejudice that additionally affected the heavy steel. From that panic got here quite a lot of multimedia items that tried to vilify D&D, however maybe probably the most fascinating is a film made for tv in 1982, titled Mazes and Monsters: In his first main function, actor Tom Hanks performs a younger man who will get misplaced within the recreation’s narrative, which he confuses with actuality, endangering his life.
From these combative beginnings, the saga grew, furtively increasing its affect on standard tradition, till in recent times it rose to the forefront. mainstream: with the film Dungeons and Dragons: Honor amongst thieves; the good animated collection Vox Machina, which adapts the campaigns of the role-playing group Critical Role on Prime Video; or the extremely acclaimed online game Baldur’s Gate 3 (BG3), which has offered greater than 20 million copies and was topped the most effective title of the 12 months in 2023. Even the creators of Stranger Things they cited BG3 as an affect in resolving their very own story.
All of those creations don’t characterize, even near, the complete growth of Dungeons and Dragonswhich additionally advantages from a sector, that of board video games, which has skilled an actual growth for the reason that pandemic lockdown compelled folks to search out home made methods to cross the hours.
New horizons, simplified
A basic board recreation like Monopoly o Catan tells you what you are able to do; D&D, as a substitute, it asks you what you need to do. But that freedom, mixed with the variety of manuals and paraphernalia required to run a marketing campaign, is detrimental to its accessibility. That’s why the saga has now delved right into a center floor: a board recreation with the identical freedom as an journey, however self-contained, like a sort of ready-made playful The current D&D: Heroes of the Borderland is that creation, which permits gamers to assemble their characters and dungeon grasp Choose a packaged journey, and begin enjoying like children from Stranger Things.
There can also be a model with a patina extra typical of the universe of Once, Vecna and the demogorgon (characters from Stranger Thingsthe final two borrowed in flip from D&D by the protagonists of the collection). It is about Dungeons and Dragons: Welcome to the Hellfire Club, which takes the identical ready-to-play system from Heroes of the Borderlandshowever he paints it Stranger Things, as if a recreation was being performed directed by Eddie Munson himself.
The three gamers from Madrid depart their cube and pencils on the desk. Outside, in actuality, evening has fallen and it’s time to put every little thing away and for the individuals to go house. Someone guarantees to “role” extra subsequent time (act with the mannerisms of their characters, their voices, actions and motivations). They evaluate the expertise with what they’ve seen within the present Netflix and talk about with one another what to do within the subsequent session.
https://elpais.com/cultura/2026-01-21/stranger-things-y-dungeons-and-dragons-una-alianza-de-dados-y-monstruos.html