Lets take a look at the Stranger Things starter set for 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons. We open up the box and take look at what is inside. More than that though we break it down as a 5e D&D starter set. Down below you’ll find the video and transcription.

Stranger Things Dungeons and Dragons Starter Set for 5e D&D Video

Stranger Things Dungeons and Dragons Starter Set for 5e D&D Video Transcrition

Ted: ”You know, Dave, some people just don’t understand our fascination with D&D.”

Dave: “Yeah, it’s true, but what are you getting at Ted?”

Ted: “I just think that there’s, you know, people out there who think it’s weird.”

Dave: “See what you’re saying, man. You might even say it’s strange.”

Ted: “Well, there are Stranger Things out there.”

Dave: “Then let’s talk about the Dungeons and Dragons Stranger Things Starter set. Welcome to the Nerdarchy for nerds by nerds. I’m a Nerdarchist Dave and as always a hang out with this nerd”

Ted: ”Nerdarchist Ted.”

Dave: “Nerdarchy is a place for news, views, and homebrews for 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons. And sometimes we talk about other role-playing games too.”

Ted: “So if you don’t want to miss a single video with it, don’t forget to crit hit that subscribe button and attune to that notification bell.”

Dave: “All right. I think it’s pretty obvious we’re talking about Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition starter set for Stranger Things, it just came in the mail the other day. So you know, we decided to break it open and read it. We’re not going to really do an unboxing per se. We’re just going to talk about it a little bit. What’s in there, what you folks can expect and you know, you can decide whether or not you think it’s something you want to purchase or not. Maybe you’re new to Dungeons and Dragons and this is your first time encountering a video where we’re kind of like talking about this stuff. And, and this might be a good place for you to start.”

Ted: “So if you want to grab a copy for yourself, there is going to be a link over to Amazon in the description. We do have to say that it is an affiliate link, so it does a little way to help out the channel.”

Dave: “So with that, let’s dive into it. So what we actually get in here is we get two minis, one is painted and one is unpainted and they are the Demogorgon from Stranger Things. Folks, there might be spoilers in here. If you don’t want to know what’s going on with this adventure, you might want to skip this video. And so afterward, or maybe not, uh, we also get a set of dice. We only get six dice. We do not get seven. There is no percentile. But on the plus side, you don’t get a crayon and you don’t have to cover these in some of you know what that means and some of you, well you’re just out of the know.”

Ted: “So we get a set of basic rules that give you all the ins and the outs that you need to actually play the game. It goes in depth into the different rules. Your, your stats, the conditions. There’s a section for monsters and magic items. Spells.”

: “Yeah. It gives you everything you, all the rules you would need to play. The starter set does not give you any of the character classes. It gives you some of the spells, you know, basic rules in conjunction with the character she sees you get, you’re going to be able to basically play this game with these characters. I believe there’s five of them here. We get a bard hill dwarf entertainer, a little bit different. If you look at their stats, they’re using it. They definitely look like most of these are point by, and they’re not using a standard array, but we also have a cleric wood elf acolyte. We have a paladin human soldier, we’ve got a ranger, half-orc, outlander and a wizard half-elf acolyte. And all these characters start at the third level.”

Ted: “They start at third level, but on the back, it gives them, you know, how much XP they need and what they get when they actually level up. And it does take them up to level five, which corresponds to the spell section in the back of the starter set showing you spells up to the third level for the classes that would actually get them.”

Dave: “I will say, um, for the rest of the rules for the SRD if, if you want them, you can go online to Wizards of the Coast and you can get them there and download the pdf and that’ll add to what’s in this book here. Most of it is the same, but you’re going to get race information and class information from SRD.”

Ted: “So the monsters in that starter set, they range everywhere from a challenge one eighth up to a challenge four, there’s three challenge four monsters that are in there, two of which are actually unique to this particular module, the Demogorgon and the Thessalhydra, which I thought were, were really cool, fun and interesting monsters too, to use. So for me, getting access to a new stat block with something that I was looking forward to.”

Dave: “Yes. And the name of the adventure that comes with it, the adventure book Hunt for the Thessalhydra, and it is written from the perspective of Mike, the DM from Stranger Things, one of the kids. So you know, that part is kind of cool. I actually like this adventure as a beginner starter adventure, better than Phandelver. But with that being said, this set cost about double on Amazon, what you’re going to pay for, Phandelver and Phandelver you get a whole lot more adventure for your money. You don’t get it cool minis, but this, the set itself is you’re gonna get a lot more play hours out of it.”

Ted: “So in the actual module that’s there. I think there’s a lot of really great notes that I did not see. Uh, you know, any kind of DM perspective, you know, really giving little, little tidbits, little hints as you go, go throughout, Oh, if the players decided to go in this kind of a direction, you know, this is how you can interpret that. So it starts with, hey, here’s an NPC conversation. They already have a relationship and I really like, you know, those kinds of things. And you know, to a new DM, those little tips might be speaking volumes. Oh, don’t let them carry on because you know, Dustin might wind up roleplaying too much. Give them a way to push them on. I love that kind of stuff for new DMs because it gives guidance of what, I don’t know what to do. Oh well here’s tips.”

Dave: “Also, one of the things it’s done really well in this adventure is there are several instances where checks are called for now. Whether you make the checks or you fail the checks, eventually you’re going to get to where you need to be. The difference is. There are extra complications when you fail the checks, so I like that it does not succeed or don’t succeed. It succeeds or you’re going to have some extra problems that deal with.”

Ted: “You know, do this until you succeed is just an uh, an effort of numbers. You know, I can’t sit there and roll a d 20 until I crit it doesn’t really add anything to the play value. Whereas the circumstances where you have to play and okay well you got three checks. If you fail, fail, fail the story proceeds forward just more challenging. I think that is an excellent way to approach and for a new DM.”

Dave: “Also, I guess one of the things worth mentioning is everything is kind of made to look like it’s weathered or older and you know the box itself. I believe the starter set retailed on Amazon for about 25 bucks Phandelver you can get for about 13 bucks. You’re paying extra, I’m not going to lie, you’re paying extra for the name Stranger Things. They had the license, the brand obviously. So that’s going to be an added cost. I think this is for someone who’s just getting into it, the hobby they found Stranger Things and then they interested in Dungeons and Dragons, well this combines the two things. So that would be kind of cool for them or people like us who are veteran players but also enjoy the novelty of the Stranger Things brand being incorporated. You just have to determine if it’s worth the extra money for you or not. I mean, you’re going to get a couple of minis out of it, but I don’t think they’ve really compensated for the extra cost are going to get two new monsters. Again, I don’t think that’s going to compensate for the extra cost. Now, the coolness factor, that’s, that’s what we were kind of like digging on. If you look at the credits, uh, adventure by Stan and Ben purchaser, I’m probably butchering the crap out of that sorry.”

: “As we usually do.”

Dave: “Sorry, Ben. Ben Petrisor or, uh, uh, cartography by Stan! rulebook. Jeremy Crawford editing is basically the wizards of the coast team. So very cool. They’re, they, they’re involved with it. The inside of this actually looks like a notebook paper. it is not stapled. It is sown for the binding which is kinda cool. It’s an added thing. The adventure book itself is only 12 pages, two of which are blank for your notes.”

Ted: “So now it does say that this is supposed to be like a one-night session. You should be able to get through it all, you know, in one playthrough two at the absolute most if you happen to, you know, go through all of the extra challenges and having to basically fight everything because I know some, some players out there, I was like I must explore at all and I will say that you know that you know, while there are no new magic items in the actual starter rules, if you play your cards right through the adventure, there is a magic item that you can start the game off with. Which I thought was pretty cool and actually speaks heavily to the theme of the particular event. But you also mentioned licensing and this is the first time I’m seeing something on a D&D product with a stamp on that. It says Hasbro gaming.”

Dave: “It says Hasbro gaming. It says Netflix. Yeah. It’s all over the place with that. Yeah, it is definitely. It’s, it’s cool. It’s very cool. And it, to me it speaks to going a little bit more mainstream. Now you mentioned that magic item, it’s Winter’s Dark Bite, it’s kind of cool. It’s just a plus one greatsword, but if you use against the Thessalhydra, it’s a plus three and if you’re in the upside down, it’s a plus four weapon. Actually. That’s the highest plus in the game that I’ve seen ever.”

Ted: “For 5th edition.”

Dave: “Yeah, for 5th edition. Now you alluded to the fact that weapons can go up to plus five I’ve yet to see anything above a plus three that’s a plus four special circumstances. So cool things about this adventure. Once you’ve got like three standout NPCs. Then you have a couple of others that are very, they’re not really detailed, but they’re, they’re mentioned, you get, I would say three adventure areas. One being the troglodyte caves and then you have the curse labyrinth that’s kind of attached to it and that’s how you get to the Upside Down. And then you know, you actually travel through the Upside Down and then back into the real world through a cool ritual and then you get to them, like the Thessalhydra’s lair.”

Ted: “Right.”

Dave: “Right. So you get there are three adventure areas or they’re kind of cool. I like the random labyrinth they put in for their curse labyrinth.”

Ted: “I liked the way that they did that and I’m, I’m probably going to use, you know, some iteration of that particular, you know, layout for some different things that I’ve done. So that’s something that I would definitely lift out the metal that the dark winter’s dark bite is made out of is a unique material specific to this particular adventure. And it’s, you know, comes from the upside down. So to me, that speaks is, okay, well is this a whole another plane of existence?”

Dave: “Well. Yeah, they said it’s a demi-plane, so”

Ted: “Well, you know, I’m, I’m explaining. So it was like, you know, that could lead into its own adventures of, okay, well you know, how different smiths and things really like working on, you know, different and unique materials. So like that could lead to its own adventure, you know, of like surviving and mining, you know, out there and it’s to try and get more of that material.”

Dave: “You could do a whole adventure where you’re going and getting more materials. Absolutely. So there’s a bunch of stuff. There are three NPCs are unique. As I said, they don’t really, um, I, they’re not going to stretch in our brains too hard on two of them. It’s King Tristan in, you know, they explained, you know him, he’s a friend of yours, brings you in to do some work and then you have the Lost Knight and the Proud Princess.”

Ted: “Yes.”

Dave: “I found the way they implement the proud princess to be very interesting because you’re not supposed to fight her and they make it very clear. Uh, and they enter special rules for fighting her, which basically say you’re going to lose.”

Ted: “That was probably the, you know, from a 5th edition standpoint, that definitely has far more of like the, you know, old gaming style and it doesn’t fit with the typical 5th edition mechanics. But it definitely does fit to the aspects of, you know, what that encounter is supposed to be. It would have been nice to see a different style. You could like, oh, the characters aren’t going to get above the fifth level. You can make this person be a challenge 12 or challenge 13 and be like, look, I’m all powerful. You’re not going to bring me down. Don’t even try.”

Dave: “I think they saved the room from the stat block and just been like, here are these two lines. It really dictates that you are not bringing down the Proud Princess. I mean obviously, veteran players doing this could just implement a different stat block from, you know, from the back of the Monster Manual, from the NPCs. I think the idea though was to, just to keep it simple as a starter set and that’s probably why they did it legitimately is, is a way you could play the game. Uh, it does kind of take away the player’s agency in the sense that they’re going to, no matter what they do, they really can’t win against the Proud Princess.”

Ted: “Right.”

: “She’s got unlimitedhit points. You need to crit to hit her and she does, she automatically hits you and does a lot of damage. So yeah, that part is a little railroady. But for the most part, I actually liked this adventure. I think it’s well put together. I think it would be a fun session to run. And it’s very, it’s very old school. It’s very simplified for people that aren’t familiar with the game and it incorporates the social pillar, the exploration pillar, and the combat pillar.”

Ted: “And I, and I think it really does it well. I think this is a really great selection and you know, reading, reading through, I think it would be a fun adventure to play or run.”

Dave: “Absolutely. So with that, the question is what do you folks think, uh, we’ve weighed in and kind of gave you our overview of it and there is link description. If you want to check it out for yourselves, you can go down to the comments and discuss if you’re already playing it, if you’ve played it, uh, what you think. Maybe you hate Stranger Things. Maybe you love Stranger Things. I Dunno. So if you really like this product, uh, and when it tells us, uh, your thoughts on it, you can do that in the comments if you haven’t checked it out yet, but you want to, there’s that affiliate link to Amazon where you can purchase your own Dungeons and Dragons starter set Stranger Things. But Hey, did you enjoy this video If so, we want to invite you to join the Nerdarchy adventuring party. What can they expect over there, Ted?”

Ted: “So we create products every month for both players and DMs alike.”

Dave: “Hey Ted, don’t forget they get entered into monthly giveaways automatically.”

Ted: “True, Dave. But that’s not all. We also do weekly hangouts with the patrons at select levels, and that’s not all, that’s just a small tip of what we do overall Patreon”

Dave: “So with that, until next time.”

Both: “Stay nerdy!”.