Obsidian’s Josh Sawyer leads the charge of RPG fans playfully roasting Stranger Things for its D&D rule flubs: ‘The oldheads are going to catch all these things’
“Season ruined,” Obsidian studio design director Josh Sawyer (Pentiment, Fallout: New Vegas) declared on BlueSky alongside a clip from Stranger Things’ recently released fifth season. In the video, Finn Wolfhard’s Mike Wheeler expounds on the power of Dungeons & Dragons’ Cleric class—specifically AD&D 1st Edition’s Cleric.
“Even cooler, she can cast a Dimension Door,” Wheeler claims while listing the Cleric’s capabilities. “BULLSHIT,” Sawyer can be heard exclaiming from off-camera. Sawyer and other viewers began tallying up some of the show’s other tabletop inaccuracies. Here are a few, from both this season and prior:
- Commenter Blake Barton notes that the show’s characterization of the Sorcerer is anachronistic, with the modern class not appearing until 3rd Edition in 2000.
- A roll of seven when casting Prismatic Spray, resulting in the violet version of the spell, is described as causing blindness (“WRONG!” Sawyer hollered over a clip of this moment).
- One commenter, danyq, pointed out that the show has referred to Thieves as “Rogues,” the class’ name in 3E and beyond.
Season ruined
— @jesawyer.bsky.social (@jesawyer.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-12-22T00:08:58.721Z
While not the worst thing going down in our world of sin and cruelty, I was struck how a show so heavily drawing on D&D for its imagery and plot could keep getting it wrong. I also find it weirdly joyful and life affirming how, as PC Gamer senior editor Wes Fenlon put it, D&D realheads like Sawyer “know this detail and can pull the exact 1980s reference book off the shelf to prove the doubters wrong.”
Literally, it turns out. “Walked into Josh’s office this morning and he was holding a copy of AD&D,” wrote Obsidian narrative lead Kate Dollarhyde. “I thought, ‘What could he possibly be doing with this?’ But didn’t ask. I see now he was posting.”
“It’s interesting, because the Duffers are about 10 years younger than me and they’ve admitted they’re more Magic: The Gathering aficionados than D&D players,” Sawyer told me via email when I reached out about these muck-ups in the show. “The D&D experience of the kids on Stranger Things is similar to mine.”
That experience began with the Basic and Expert Sets of D&D, before branching out into Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. “I met an older kid (Tony) at the public library who introduced me to both Bard’s Tale and 1st Edition AD&D,” said Sawyer. “Tony was the Eddie Munson of my RPG development.
“My friend group played fast and loose with AD&D rules when we were in grade school and middle school, but that generally bent toward rule lawyering in early high school, then extensive house ruling in late high school.”
The mention of house rules segues into a devil’s advocate defense I’ve seen for the Stranger Things kids messing up those rules: What could be more true to life than tabletop players, especially kids, getting stuff wrong or making their own changes? But Sawyer argues this doesn’t fit how the cast is characterized elsewhere, while there’s another, far more likely explanation in real life.
“The way Eddie browbeats Erica before letting her join suggests that he takes the game way way too seriously,” Sawyer said. “In my experience, high school groups either follow the rules as written (RAW) or they house rule with intentionality based on the tastes of their group. I.e., it’s more understandable in the first season, less plausible in the fourth and fifth seasons.
jfC
— @jesawyer.bsky.social (@jesawyer.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-12-22T00:08:58.632Z
“The other thing that makes me look sideways at the errors is that so far in the fifth season, the lines aren’t just wrong for 1st Edition (which is what they’ve been playing), but they’re correct for 5th Edition.”
The Rogue name and Sorcerer class are both later innovations that remain in 5E today. Trickery Domain Clerics do gain access to Dimension Door now. And while a violet Prismatic Spray banishes the target to another plane in 1st Edition AD&D, it causes blindness in 5th Edition. “Taking that into account,” argued Sawyer, “It’s less plausible that the kids are making errors or using house rules, much more likely that the writers referenced 5th Edition materials.”
This isn’t exactly a capital offense or anything, at least in most US states at the time of writing. But I found myself convinced that pointing this stuff out rises beyond rules lawyering for funsies into a genuine critique of the show. Stranger Things is a period piece, after all, and the only direct exposure many younger viewers might have had to a more alien version of Dungeons & Dragons.
I find that sort of unfamiliarity or disconnect to be one of the most interesting things a period piece can do. Instead, the show opted for something smoother and more digestible—a wasted opportunity given D&D’s place of pride in Stranger Things’ plot, and a series of anachronisms that can clearly grate on viewers in the know.
“The oldheads are going to catch all these things,” Sawyer concluded. “I didn’t play D&D Companion, Master, or Immortals, but I’ve played everything else from Basic and Expert to 5th Edition. I also made a few A/D&D games in my professional career, so these rules were seared into my brain. Forty years of tabletop gaming dies hard.”
