I got the Stranger Things D&D Starter Set for Christmas and I have to say I am blown away by how well the included adventure "by Mike Wheeler" is in terms of being written for new DMs. I'm going to start recommending it for people who want to DM and are afraid to start.
It's designed to look like it's handwritten (but with a clear readable font) pages of notes to himself but in the process it includes things like "Lucas will get bored by this so be ready to move things along by" or "If they got lost chasing down imagined leads have ___ show up."
I'm less sure how I feel about the presentation of the starter rules, and the included sample character sheets contain at least one major error that might throw new players - the Paladin's copy/pastes text from the Cleric on Channel Divinity, thus referencing the wrong abilities.
As someone who already knows the game this works for me as a retro throwback to the kind of baffling error that made so many RPG products in the 80s and early 90s completely unplayable without inferences and interpolations and making things up...
...but it makes me hesitant to recommend the product as someone's sole introduction to the game, the ostensible purpose of a starter set. Still, the included adventure is probably easier for a novice DM to run than the Lost Mines of Phandelver or any other starter adventure.
I don't know how much of that was consciously writing to be newbie friendly and how much of it was writing in-character as the DM for a bunch of distractable pre-teens who care more about big monsters and exciting moments than rule minutiae. But it works. It really works.
Also, the drawing of a Thessalhydra by "Mike" is better than much of the previous official artwork. New gold standard.
(And big Strong Bad energy. Check out the majesty of his excellent use of Consummate Vs.)
(And big Strong Bad energy. Check out the majesty of his excellent use of Consummate Vs.)
And just to be clear: this is not a Stranger Things D&D variant. It's vanilla 5th Edition D&D with a retro presentation and a short Stranger Things-themed adventure (the Upside Down features as the equivalent of the Shadowfell, its D&D counterpart, and there are demogorgon stats)
It also includes two demogorgon figurines (one painted, one not) and a basic set of dice with a charming metallic cobalt blue finish. The dice kind of sum up the odd blend of modern and retro sensibilities: it's a BASIC set of dice, no second d10 for doing percents...
...and it's obviously blue in memory of certain early efforts in polyhedral dice making, but the very nice metallic gloss is not something you would have found in a battered red cardboard box in the 1980s.
