1 Mike: An army of troglodytes charge into the chamber!
2 Mike: The foul stench exuding from their slimy bodies saps your strength. Save versus poison.
3 Dustin: Since when do troglodytes smell bad?
3 Lucas: Since forever! Did you even read the rulebooks?
4 Dustin: We’re not supposed to know everything about all the monsters!
4 Lucas: Have you ever even played D&D?

As much as I admire The Duffer Brothers and their mostly authentic recreation of the 1980s as a setting in Stranger Things, they seriously got their representation of Dungeons & Dragons off. I already talked about "the Demogorgon" in the previous strip of this new theme.

The shooting script of Episode 1 contains the following lines (page 5):

MIKE: An army of Troglodytes charge into the chamber!
He slams SIX WINGED MINIATURES onto the map.

Now, troglodytes are described in D&D as:

• "an intelligent humanoid reptile. It has a short tail, long legs, and a spiny "comb" on its head and arms. [...] A troglodyte also secretes an oil that produces a stench, nauseating humans and demihumans unless a saving throw v. poison is made." (Basic Set)
• "a race of reptilian humanoids who dwell in subterranean places. [...] When aroused for battle, troglodytes emit a secretion which smells extremely disgusting to humans - including dwarves, elves, gnomes, half-elves and halflings. Those humans failing their saving throw versus poison are affected by revulsion so as to lose 1 point of strength per melee round for 1-6 rounds, cumulative." (AD&D, 1st Edition)
• "revolting lizard creatures [...] somewhat humanoid, standing about 5 feet tall and weighing 150 pounds. They have spindly but muscular arms and walk erect on their squat legs, trailing a long, slender tail. Their heads are lizardlike and crowned with a frill that extends from the forehead to the base of the neck. [...] When a troglodyte is angry or frightened, it secretes an oily, musklike chemical that nearly every form of animal life finds offensive. All creatures (except other trogs) within 30 feet of the trog must make a Fortitude save (DC 13) or be overcome with nausea." (3rd Edition - although this was released in 2000, so wasn't available in the 1980s like the two previously quoted editions)
• (I was going to type some of the 5th Edition description of troglodytes here, but an annoying flaw of the 5th edition Monster Manual is that it doesn't actually have text descriptions of the physical appearances of most of the monsters any more. It seems you're either supposed to just know that troglodytes are reptilian humanoids and roughly what they look like, or figure it all out from the single illustration provided. I find this to be a serious lack, and I question the judgement of whichever author decided that this was a good idea.)

Like Balrogs, they don't have wings.

Fortunately, this was just the shooting script. It's difficult to see in the episode as the miniatures are only shown for a fraction of a second, but I'm reasonably sure the miniatures used don't have wings.

Anyway, enough of me ranting about D&D. Admittedly it's a subject I'm passionate about. We only critique that which we love. And rest assured, this new Stranger Things theme is not going to just be D&D nitpicking - it just happens that the opening scene involves the game. We'll be getting on into some other jokes and maybe even some story development soon.

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A few readers have pointed out that it's more realistic for a D&D game to be played with incorrect/mismatched/improvised miniatures than it is for the players to have exactly the right miniatures to represent the monsters. I would argue back, but... this is actually true.