The first thing you see when you open up Welcome to Hellfire Club is a picture of Hawkins’ Dungeons & Dragons club’s seven members (RIP Eddie Munson), clearly meant to tug at the heartstrings of Stranger Things fans. Especially because the backside of that photo is a heartfelt note from Eddie to Dustin, the “last will and testament” of “Eddie the Banished.” Eddie had always planned to pass Hellfire Club’s leadership over to Dustin when he finally graduated. He just never expected he’d die after performing the most metal concert in the multiverse instead.
Released Oct. 7, Welcome to Hellfire Club is a D&D kit from Wizards of the Coast billed as a finale to Munson’s unfinished campaign shown in Season 4. In reality, Welcome to Hellfire Club instead delivers the absolute perfect D&D entrypoint for Stranger Things fans that are curious about finally trying the game. For seasoned D&D players, you’d have to be a Stranger Things superfan to really enjoy a series of four low-level adventures where you can play as Dustin, Lucas, Mike, Will, or Erica’s character.
In Eddie’s own words, this kit is a “secret trove of adventures” and hardly a way to “Finish the Campaign” we saw in Season 4. We don’t know exactly what level members of the Hellfire Club are when Eddie runs that confrontation against Vecna in Stranger Things, but Erica says her Rogue, Lady Applejack, is level 14. To actually face Vecna in any edition and live to tell the tale? Your party would have to be max level or close to it.
The current 5th edition version of “Vecna the Archlich” has a challenge rating (CR) of 26, meaning that even max-level players will struggle in battle against him. Technically, that means he’s a fair and balanced enemy for four level 26 players — yet 20 is the max level.
Stranger Things has always played it fast and loose with its representation of D&D. (The real Demogorgon is a sentient Prince of Demons, not a flower-faced feral beast!) But that’s a nitpick that hardly matters here with what’s a genuinely great and comprehensive start kit.
There’s a streamlined Play Guide that overviews the basics of D&D for Dungeon Masters and players alike, along with cards for 36 spells and 20 pieces of magic equipment. Perhaps most useful for players is the “On Your Turn” reference card that lists everything they can do on their turn, including a list of all potential actions. For anyone who actually plays at a physical table rather than a virtual tabletop, this is an incredibly useful way to keep track of your action economy rather than fumbling with a bunch of books and notes.
Similarly, for DMs, there are 30 monster cards. Most of them are quite weak common enemies and NPCs, but there are two CR 5 and one CR 6 creatures in here. And pretty much every monster from the show except for Vecna himself is here: Corrupted Rats, a “Shadow” that looks like the show’s spider-like Mind Flayer, and naturally a “Demogorgon Spawn” with a flower face. For any DM running an in-person table of low-level adventurers, these cards are a huge boon. Even the monsters ripped right out of the show can fit in just about any adventure. And each also has a black-and-white drawing you can show players. I’ll probably wind up plucking most of these cards out of the set and putting it into my bigger DM bag I use when running in-person games.
The kit includes level 1 character sheets for all the D&D characters we saw on the show: Erica’s Rogue, Dustin’s Cleric, Lucas’ Fighter, Mike’s Paladin, and Will’s Wizard. They’re completely filled out, so there isn’t an option to cleanly update them as players progress through the four short adventures included in the set. Players might as well print out a blank sheet and fill that out instead, perhaps with a totally custom character.
The four adventures themselves heavily echo each season of Stranger Things with annotations from Eddie offering commentary throughout, collectively framed as a gauntlet that potential Hellfire inductees have to pass to join the club. Greyhawkins is the main setting, and the first adventure sends adventurers into the Dungeon of Shadows to find a gnome named Flizzlebin. But that dungeon is connected to the Vale of Shadows and has a mirror dimension version called the Shadow Dungeon — an obvious nod to the Upside Down.
The first is a run-of-the-mill dungeon crawl complicated by a dip into the Upside Down Shadow Dungeon, then players must investigate and cleanse a network of corrupted tunnels running underneath a farm. “Ballad of the Rat King” sees the party investigate a string of disappearances. (And yes, there are lots of corrupted rats.) The grand finale sees the party fight in the thunderdome-style Hellfire Games. Eddie’s music-loving fiend, Dardew, serves as the master of ceremonies.
It’s easy to imagine a version of these adventures that didn’t work because they were bogged down by too many shoe-horned references to the show. Yet the designers did an excellent job of towing that line here. Even for D&D players who’ve never seen or simply don’t care about Stranger Things, these four adventures have enough variety and interesting things in them to keep a table entertained.
While I’d have loved to see a high-level mini-adventure that actually finishes Eddie’s core campaign against Vecna, it seems those hopes may have died with Eddie.
In the hands of a DM and group of players who love Stranger Things and want a solid low-level campaign to play, Welcome to Hellfire Club truly delivers. As a DM, there’s very little I would change. It has all the maps, flavor text, and stat blocks you need. As a player, I’d probably cook up a unique character to try out that still vibes with the show. Eleven as an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer? Max as a Way of the Open Hand Monk “Zoomer” darting in and out of battle? Eddie as a College of Glamour Bard? The possibilities are endless!
With the start of the show’s final season, there’s no better time to consider embarking on the quest to join Hellfire Club. Who knows? Maybe it could prove the catalyst to finally get your D&D-averse friends into a campaign. Stranger things have happened.
