My better half and I have been watching the final season of Stranger Things during the break and generally enjoying it. We're on tenterhooks for the last episode drop on New Year's Day.
Once again, the series draws heavily on D&D, with miniatures, missions into the Upside-Down being called Crawls, and references to the Abyss as a different plane of existence.
However, there's one reference that is niggling me. A character is described as being more like a sorcerer than a wizard, as they have innate powers. Now, the fifth series is set in 1987, during the halcyon days of the first edition of AD&D. It wasn't until D&D 3rd Edition that Sorcerers became a thing in the game rather than just an alternative name for a wizard.
RPG Stack Exchange has a great article discussing how sorcerers came into the game here.
I completely get why they use the reference like this; many of the folks introduced to D&D through Stranger Things will only ever have experienced D&D 5e where sorcerers have always been a unique class distinct from wizards. It makes sense to use the analogy to explain what's happening on the screen as the audience will get it. However, when you've been playing the game as long as I have, you get drawn to the anachronism and discrepancy, just like I can never unsee a misplaced apostrophe!
Anyway, I definitely recommend the final season as it weaves strands together from the past. Hopefully the last episode will deliver an appropriate send off; if it doesn't, perhaps it would have been better if Vecna wins.
28 December 2025
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