Stranger Things 4: Trailer for Volume 2

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Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) has seen a resurgence in popularity thanks to playing a prominent role in Netflix’s hit drama Stranger Things. Debuting in 2016, the show started off with schoolchildren Will Byers (played by Noah Schnapp), Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard), Lucas Sinclair (Caleb McLaughlin), and Dustin Henderson (Gaten Matarazzo) playing the fantasy board game in a basement. After Will went missing and Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) showed up, the group used D&D to try and understand the sinister happenings in Hawkins – but could they just be playing a version of the game in Mike’s basement?

WARNING: This article contains spoilers from all seasons of Stranger Things

Is Stranger Things just a Dungeons and Dragons game?

The clues appear to be there with the characters likening the Upside Down to the Vale of Shadows and Shadow Realm in season one.

The creature they refer to as the Demogorgon looks different to the one in the show, but does have similarities to the creature in D&D, which is described on the Forgotten Realms Fandom as having a “body at once sinuous like that of a snake and powerful like that of a great ape”.

Season two introduced the Mind Flayer which was targeting Will with its psychic abilities before it managed to crash into Hawkins in the third outing.

Finally, season four introduced Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower), who was flung into the Upside Down by El after she battled with him amid the Hawkins Lab massacre.

Vecna is also another creature from D&D, who is also known by the moniker “Master of the Spider Throne”, which would fit with Henry Creel’s (Raphael Luce) obsession with arachnids.

Additionally, when Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer) and her friends entered the Upside Down through the gate in Eddie Munson’s (Joseph Quinn) trailer ceiling, they were still in 1983.

This timeline would suggest the school kids are still playing D&D back in 1983 when Stranger Things first started and this is nothing more than a flight of fancy.

Although this is only a theory, it would also fit with the Duffer Brothers’ vision of creating a homage to 80s pop culture and really leaning into this era and could be likened to the films Neverending Story, Labyrinth and Videodrome which blur the lines between reality and fantasy.

Express.co.uk also spoke exclusively to Elle Dwight, the CEO of the free online role-playing game (RPG) platform Role about her thoughts on this theory and the influence Stranger Things has had on D&D.

Elle said: “One of the joys of role-playing has always been that the fantasy is all around you, just at the edge of your imagination, waiting to be grasped. As a world that seems to twist reality in a sinister way, it would make sense that the Upside Down pulls from the imagination and fantasy of all these kids dreaming up the world they play in D&D.

“Whether that world is literally the world of D&D is probably left intentionally vague, but the correlations are there.

“Even as a nightmare realm, it is still a realm steeped in magic and imagination. That sounds like D&D to us!”

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Elle and her childhood friend Ian Hirschfeld founded Role together in a bid to create an inclusive and accessible platform, bringing tabletop games, board games and RPG online.

Role has many different games on its platform, including D&D, which has skyrocketed in interest and play. Elle said there was a “positive correlation” between the start of the new season of Stranger Things and users taking to the platform with a 130 percent increase in people playing D&D.

She also said the numbers of people reading up how to play D&D had shot up by a whopping 285%.

Elle explained: “The show’s characters playing D&D in their Hellfire Club seems to have encouraged many gamers to seek a community of their own, with the number of D&D Game Rooms created by users on Role now at 80 percent of all Game Rooms, up from 50 percent prior to the latest series.”

According to Fiction Horizon, D&D boasts over 50 million viewers worldwide made up of casual rather than active users.

The Role executive said Stranger Things was just one of the franchises bringing interest to RPG with The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Game of Thrones propelling fantasy into the mainstream.

Additionally, she suggested the growth of D&D was down to the game being featured in pop culture thanks to The Big Bang Theory and Rick and Morty.

She said: “The blockbuster fantasy movies and series have played their part in making audiences excited about the exploration and adventure of the new worlds that these stories introduce us to. This prompts people to try out RPGs and play D&D to emulate the experience for themselves.”

For more information about Role, visit playrole.com

Stranger Things season 4 is streaming on Netflix now

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