Spoilers Stranger Things Season 5 - SPOILERS

[Morrus]

As someone who hasn't watched the show but is very aware of its ties to D&D, I was pondering something in regards to Vecna being a villain in the current season.

As D&D is a tabletop game in the universe of the show, were Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson aware of the various monsters in the series in some fashion? And thus based aspects of D&D off of their experiences? Also, did the protagonists at any point go "if anyone knows how to best kill Vecna, it'll be the writers of D&D" and attempt to contact TSR offices? Apologies if these questions are well-established ground, but they are what comes to mind first and foremost when I hear about an iconic D&D villain being an antagonist.

No, the kids in the show name the monsters they face after the villains in their D&D game. The monsters don't resemble the D&D villains, they just share the names as the kids needed some way to refer to them. They aren't actually Vecna, Demogorgon(s), and a mind flayer.

(In fact, demogorgon is a type of creature, not an individual; and the mind flayer is a singular creature, not a type).

Vecna

A demogorgon

The mind flayer​

 

[Ryujin]

As someone who hasn't watched the show but is very aware of its ties to D&D, I was pondering something in regards to Vecna being a villain in the current season.

As D&D is a tabletop game in the universe of the show, were Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson aware of the various monsters in the series in some fashion? And thus based aspects of D&D off of their experiences? Also, did the protagonists at any point go "if anyone knows how to best kill Vecna, it'll be the writers of D&D" and attempt to contact TSR offices? Apologies if these questions are well-established ground, but they are what comes to mind first and foremost when I hear about an iconic D&D villain being an antagonist.

It was the reverse. The kids named the monsters that they were running into after creatures that they knew from D&D. The creatures names weren't revealed to them by having to deal with them.

 

[Libertad]

No, the kids in the show name the monsters they face after the villains in their D&D game. The monsters don't resemble the D&D villains, they just share the names as the kids needed some way to refer to them. They aren't actually Vecna, Demogorgon(s), and a mind flayer.

(In fact, demogorgon is a type of creature, not an individual; and the mind flayer is a singular creature, not a type).

It was the reverse. The kids named the monsters that they were running into after creatures that they knew from D&D. The creatures names weren't revealed to them by having to deal with them.

Thank you both for your answers!

 

[billd91]

There are things I'm noticing about this season.
1) The aging of the kids in the main cast is even more visible than it was 3 years ago. This is perfectly understandable but for some of them the changes are much more noticeable this time. That's neither good nor bad, but it is just a little jarring in a couple of cases.
2) In the 3 years since season 4, something else has changed and it's hard to really put my finger on exactly what it is. I felt that season 4 maintained much of the same feel, pacing, and intensity as the prior seasons despite it too coming about 3 years after its preceding season. Season 5 started out feeling a bit.... deflated by comparison. And I don't know if deflated is really the right word here, but there's something different about the season in how it feels to me. It's been getting better over the first 4 episode drop, so maybe it's just a transient thing, but I was starting to worry if the Duffer brothers had lost some of their mojo with the series.