Outside of Critical Role and Baldur’s Gate 3, few media properties have inspired as much interest in Dungeons & Dragons as Stranger Things. The show heavily featured the tabletop RPG, both in scenes of play and with creatures like Demogorgon and Vecna as antagonists.
It’s only natural, then, that a Dungeons & Dragons x Stranger Things crossover set is on the cards. Welcome to the Hellfire Club is the second Starter Set for the tabletop RPG featuring Stranger Things content, presented as written by Eddie and serving as the campaign he never got the chance to finish.
Welcome to the Hellfire Club is a much more in-depth affair than the previous Stranger Things set, offering everything a group needs to get their Dungeons & Dragons game off the ground. So, how does it all come together? Does Welcome to the Hellfire Club give new players the proper entry point for Dungeons & Dragons, or is it just a cheap cash grab based on a TV show?
The Stranger Things: Welcome To The Hellfire Club Box Has Everything New D&D Players Need
Stranger Things: Welcome to the Hellfire Club not only comes with all the basic bits needed for Dungeons & Dragons but also offers four adventures that can be played in a row, intended to provide a complete campaign experience with battles, exploration, roleplaying, and even a murder mystery. Welcome to the Hellfire Club comes with:
- A Rule Book
- Four adventures, each intended to last roughly one session
- A set of dice
- A DM screen
- A double-sided poster map
- Two double-sided adventure maps for use with the adventures
- Pre-written character sheet for five characters, ranging from levels 1-3
- Two sheets of pop-out cardboard tokens, five of which are standable player character figures.
- Magic item cards.
- Spell cards
- Player reference cards
- Monster cards with stats for everything that appears in the adventures, as well as artwork to show the players
- Battle tracker with columns for Hit Points, Initiative, and Status Conditions
That’s a lot of items for a single box, and it contains a ton of stuff that will remain useful after the campaign is finished, especially the player reference cards, which outline things like what can be done when the Action or Bonus Action is used in combat.
The spell, magic items, and monster cards have more limited uses, as they only contain content that appears in the adventures. However, these can still be useful for low-level games run after the group has run through the Welcome to the Hellfire Club content.
Having a handy reference card for things like Healing Potions and the most commonly used Cantrips, like Guidance, is really handy, especially for a new group.
The Stranger Things: Hellfire Club Books Are Fantastic
Old-School Dungeons & Dragons Fans Will Be Right At Home
The five books in the Welcome to the Hellfire Club set are presented in a mix of comic-book style and the aesthetic of the ’70s and ’80s iterations of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
The artwork evokes the earliest days of Dungeons & Dragons, and while the newer players that the starter set is aimed at may not appreciate the references, it will delight those who remember the old days of the tabletop RPG.
All of the books come with notes spread throughout written by Eddie, which provide advice to budding DMs, the kind that experienced hands will give newbies whenever they take up the screen.
These are also fantastic and offer great tips outside of the usual dry guidelines for running a campaign. It’s the kind of idea that should be adapted into other adventures and campaigns in the future.
It was odd to see expletives in the text, especially since this is a product more likely to be aimed at kids and teens. It’s something parents should be aware of if they’re going to buy for their children.
The adventures also feature a few upsetting situations, like a quest to find a pet cat that ends with the players discovering its savagely murdered corpse, and they need to decide how best to relay this information to the owner.
Welcome to the Hellfire Club is definitely not for younger kids, and parents of more sensitive children should maybe look at one of the other Dungeons & Dragons starter sets instead.
The adventures also include helpful information at the start, like breaking down individual plot elements the DM can learn in advance, and a list of monsters and magic items that will appear in the game so that the DM can prepare. It’s a fantastic addition for new DMs that significantly reduces the time it takes to get vital information during the game.
It’s something that should also be incorporated into future Dungeons & Dragons books, as campaigns like Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden started to include features that made it easy for DMs to run the campaign with minimal prep, but this approach faded away over time.
Stranger Things: Welcome to the Hellfire Club Uses Characters From The Show
Stranger Things: Welcome to the Hellfire Club comes with five pre-made characters based on ones from the show. As the adventures run from levels -1-3, the level 2 and 3 character sheets are already written and are handed to the party when they level up.
This expedites the game considerably, though new players might be chomping at the bit to select their own new abilities, spells, and subclass. The presentation of the character sheets isn’t perfect, however, with a tiny font that makes it hard to read. The yellow paper, while matching the aesthetic of the older editions, can also be hard to read.
A key difference between Welcome to the Hellfire Club and other Dungeons & Dragons starter sets is that it uses the new iteration of the rules introduced at the end of 2024. This means it includes rules for things like Weapon Mastery, breaking actions into Study and Magic, and Heroic Inspiration.
The new Dungeons & Dragons rules can best be described as ironing out some of the issues with the previous version of 5E while adding elements that can be harder to track. Weapon Mastery is a big one, as it tends to give enemies debuffs that the DM needs to note and remember.
Weapon Mastery does make standard equipment more useful, but it adds an extra layer of complexity that new DMs need to be aware of beforehand.
How Are The Adventures In Stranger Things: Welcome To The Hellfire Club?
Welcome to the Hellfire Club comes with four adventures: The Vanishing Gnome, Scream of the Crop, Ballad of the Rat King, and Devil, Metal, Die. The idea with the four adventures is that they offer a smorgasbord of Dungeons & Dragons experiences.
The Vanishing Gnome is a straight dungeon crawl with a handful of character interactions, but primarily exists to showcase the rules. Scream of the Crop has more of a hook and chances for roleplaying, leading into a more standard dungeon crawl with more rules introductions.
Ballad of the Rat King is a murder mystery with a ton of character interactions, with a few fights scattered throughout. Devil, Metal, Die is like an exam: the players are sent to the Nine Hells and must survive a bunch of bizarre situations, putting all the skills and information they’ve learned throughout the game to good use.
The standalone nature of the adventures might be off-putting to people who prefer the Lost Mine of Phandelver approach, where there’s a continuous storyline played out over weeks and months. Welcome to the Hellfire Club works better as an absolute introduction to the game, as the players don’t need to remember any plot details between games.
Stranger Things: Welcome to the Hellfire Club is easily the best Dungeons & Dragons starter set to date, and while the content might not be appropriate for younger kids, it should be fine for most families.
Anyone who loves Stranger Things will especially love the starter set, as it not only captures the show’s aesthetic and the era of D&D featured in it, but also its story’s feeling, especially with all its references to creatures like the Demogorgon.
While Stranger Things might be drawing to a close, its effect on Dungeons & Dragons will continue forever, and Welcome to the Hellfire Club is the ideal bridge point between the two, preparing people for more adventures for years to come.
- Franchise
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Dungeons & Dragons
- Original Release Date
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January 26, 1974
- Publisher
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Wizards of the Coast, TSR Inc.
- Designer
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E. Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson
- Comes with everything a budding D&D needs to learn the game
- Box comes with tons of items that will be useful after the campaign ends
- The four adventures evoke the feeling of the show and are full of Stranger Things references
- Some of the content isn’t suitable for younger kids