#goals as a dnd player

[chirpsythismorning]

Vecna’s plan requiring Mike to leave for California means nothing. The number 1 following Mike cryptically at the airport means nothing. Them barely giving us Mike’s perspective the last two seasons (despite him being the original protagonist) means nothing and it isn’t setting up his POV to be revealed in s5 bc the entire audience is completely comfortable with where Mike stands as a character in regards to his deeper feelings/motives. No confusion there so no need to address that. Mike saying How will I survive a whole week without you guys at the start of s4 wasn't foreshadowing his fate at the end of said week. Mike standing in front of exit signs 3+ times in s4 is probably just a coincidence. Mike being associated with gaping mouths in multiple moments spanning the entire series, even going back to his very first line on the show, means nothing at all. Nancy’s vision about her family (Mike) dying was mentioned at the end of s4, but it didn’t happen so probably won’t ever happen, even though there’s still another season left set directly after the events of s4. Will calling Mike the heart and how without heart they’d all fall apart, was not in any shape form foreshadowing something happening to Mike and them all falling apart, bc Mike is definitely just a prop and everything in relation to his story only holds meaning on the surface or for other characters arcs and couldn’t possibly be hinting at something deeper that’s being saved as one of the many surprises for the last season.

[octopus-defence-squad]

I know I haven't posted a ton of art recently, but I have been working on refs for artfight (i'm octopus-defence there!) and this is my Wildsea PC Aurora!

She was a research vessel back when the seas were made of water, but sunk in a deadly storm. Now revived and given independent mobility by the magic of the Verdant Sea, she works as a navigator in the crew of Our Fucking Ship (actual name of the boat dear god) and is intent on finding out what happened to her former crew.

Her torso comes from her figurehead back when she was a boat, and her legs and hips were carved from scrap wood she found. I am obsessed with her

[spidergirl-fibula]

dnd players only standard for quality is cultural dominance and for that i hate them. every single one of them

[xiphactinusfish]

Kit Khat

[vulpixelates]

• Name: Saga • Race: Goliath • Class: Sorcerer & Paladin • Background: Deserter (Spy) • Deity: Fierna (archdevil, punisher of betrayal) •

• character tag • inspo tag •

Left on the doorstep of a monastery as a baby, sold from Amn to Mulhorand as a young child and broken out by rebels at fourteen, very little of Saga's life has been within her control. So when she was finally free she chose the name Saga to signify that for the rest of her life, she will be the one writing the story - and it will be one worth telling. Now, Saga is on a mission to explore her personhood and this big, magical world that she's been kept at a distance from for so long.

As an exercise in control and as part of a journey to discover herself, she has begun taking up a handful of new hobbies, such as carpentry and embroidery. Her carpentry needs work, but she has developed an arcane technique to transmute raw materials into useable construction products. Next on her list: knot-tying (to help with her sister's next boat), alchemy (to impress her smart new friends), and garment sewing (because she loves soft and flowy fabrics but clothes never fit her the way she wants them to).

Since the beginning of the campaign: At the footnote of a quest, Saga picked up what she now knows to be a cursed staff and has since been having dreams of drowning. Slowly, the pieces have been coming together: the staff seems to be tied to the unhinged archdevil Fierna, who rules over the underwater layer of Hell devoted to torturing those who committed betrayals during their time alive. Saga is mildly terrified and wholly unsure of what Fierna wants with her, but does not seem to be having ill-effects yet other than the dreams.

Appearance

Saga is a massive goliath woman, standing at just shy of eight feet tall. Though most goliaths have fully stone-like skin, Saga's distant relation to earth elementals shines through differently: veins of pink crystal-like stone cut through her dark brown skin. Her hair is afro-textured and currently shaved on the sides with the beginnings of short locs on top. Since beginning her travels on the open seas with her sister, Razan, Saga has been collecting many piercings.

In terms of real-life ethnicities, she would be a mixture of Middle Eastern and African.

[six-improbable-things]

I forgot to post anything about this, but I did the scene where I had to read some of my writing to the dnd party (twice!) and they were SO nice about it. I couldn't stop smiling. (which was kind of a weird disconnect since the scenes were super dark, lmao.) But augh, I'm so glad they were nice to meeee. My poor boy Rook is Going Through It right now, and things are about to get worse.

Next session we also might get to do our first version of ship combat using the rules I made which is kind of wild. I'm very nervous, but I feel like after this last session and sharing stuff I wrote with them (out loud!!!) I can handle it. Probably.

[steampunk-raven]

oh fuck I just realized how hilariously plural coded one of my main dnd characters is

[local-diavolo-anon]

i'm back!

ok so 2/3 days ago i found this youtube video where op turned Springtrap (or well, William Afton) into a fully build DnD character, and if i say so myself: things got out of hand fast

so here is my take on DnD Springtrap and specifically on that build (adding more infos under the cut for who is interested, i suggest to watch the video first)

starting with saying that unless you're playing in a scifi setting, this build is either not for you or to be modified, since in later levels spells are heavily centered around technomagic and electronic devices; personally when i will play him i will probably tinker around with the chosen spells and cantrips to make him less violently niche and/or more versatile

which kinda saddens me because it takes away not little of the characterization but, given most dnd stories take place in a medieval fantasy or high fantasy setting, a cantrip like On/Off or a spell like Remote Access are NOT particularly useful; so i will go for more psychic damage or necromancy oriented abilities, maybe i might take more than just 4 levels in artificier as well (especially given that again, all of those warlock spells at later levels are all technology oriented) but i need to see what those offer

however it is a kinda tank-y build given that with a shield on you can get up to a 27 of Ac, so even with low damage and not much hp you would not struggle too much to stay alive, and i like that!

as for the character himself, i put too much effort into my interpretation not to share it, so if anyone wants to play this guy as well, i fabricated a possible backstory that might come useful:

The character goes by the name "Dave Miller" (or whatever variant you want to use), and was originally a human artificier who created constructs for a living, mainly with the goal of offering aid to who needed it for whatever reason.

There however he ran into an issue, that being that a robot need a power source, and his own heart and lungs could not sustain a whole robot by themselves.

After losing part of his family to some kind of accident he became terrified of death, so with age he started replacing his own body parts with machinery to delay his last days (which made him a cyborg), until the point where he was very very close to become just a robot.

(This part may or may not involve a pact with a deity of death, this entirely depends on how you want to play him but it would make sense since the build is an artificier/warlock hybrid)

Through particular and very much not illegal experiments tied to necromancy he discovered that the life force of a living being could be shared, and used as a form of fuel. (possibly: age lived of the creature used= amount of extra months you get)

Here comes the second problem: this only worked with intelligent creatures, and more specifically, it worked best with creatures of your own race, which meant that he either went around murdering people or he found another solution. Non same-race creatures worked as well but not as good and there were not easy to find in the middle of a city and with a shop tied to your name.

And here is where and WHY he'd join a party of adventurers: after some time, his reserves or fuel were running VERY thin, and running into a group of adventurers was a god sent because by joining their party he essentially got a free pass to kill whoever he wanted, and reduce them to a dried raisin after sucking some life force out of them. Doing so you learn that the mowe powerful the creature is, the more energy it produces as well.

Your goal, that you as the player are following, when role-ing your character? essentially slay whatever powerful BBEG your Dm throws at you and suck all of that juicy fuel out of them, so that you can return to your little shop in the middle of the capital and return to create and sell whatever weird construct, doll, or robot comes to your mind for another few decades undisturbed.

And this is it. I think this might be a good backstory that could fit pretty much any setting you want to play this guy into, be it classic dnd or some scifi futuristic thing.

of course you don't NEED to use this one line per line, make up your own without looking back if you don't like it lol, dnd is the "make up shit and have fun" game after all!

Edit: also no his outfit makes no sense, i just went with vibes and decided a tanktop dress shirt, a twin tailed gilet and suspenders OVER said gilet was a good choice.

[thydungeongal]

I saw your post on DnD having no consequences besides death and was wondering what systems you know that aren't like that,and how they accomplish it.

Really love your stuff btw!

First one that comes to mind is Fate. The way Fate achieves it is simple: instead of having death as a consequence, in Fate if your character gets taken out of combat (which will happen if they take Stress and they have no more Stress boxes to take that Stress and you don't elect to take a consequence instead) they're simply Taken Out. There's no countdown to death, the character is simply out of the conflict. And should the whole party get wiped in a conflict that simply means that they failed to achieve whatever it was they wanted to achieve in that conflict. This means that players can lose individual conflicts but the story doesn't end there. In fact, the game in some ways encourages losing in conflicts, because it can be a source of character development (via Extreme consequences which can only be taken once every now and then and that actually change one of the character's Aspects, basic building blocks of the character). Fate also allows, as far as I remember, simply conceding a conflict, meaning that characters lose the conflict but at least they get out mostly without consequence.

Blades in the Dark is another one: BitD is about doing heists and during heists characters can suffer a wide variety of consequences, including various degrees of injury. The important thing is that BitD allows players to declare that their characters are withdrawing from a heist whenever they want. This means that they get no payoff and go straight into downtime, and still have to deal with the various consequences like heat and entanglements. So, players basically always have the choice to retreat. (And in fact this is something that is very similar to older editions of D&D: before cyclical, individual initiative became the norm, characters would take turns together, and between rounds of combat players could decide that their characters would retreat. It wasn't of course automatic and there was a chance of pursuit, but there was a quick escape button available to players.)

QuestWorlds is another one that allows for players to define what their characters' goal in a given conflict (called Sequence) is, and allows for either retreating (and thus failing to achieve the story goal) as well as simply losing and failing to achieve the story goal with added consequence. QuestWorlds is very similar to Fate in how abstract it is in modeling conflict. QuestWorlds also models difficulty rising with every success since it seeks to model a certain type of narrative structure. It's a fascinating game imo

That's just a few though, and there are countless others as well.

[hamable]

I need Brennan to win an award. I need the world to know how exceptional a storyteller he is. How do you plan something like this?

I’m suddenly seeing the rat grinders as a sort of self insert for him. Not character-wise, but as tools for writing a mystery. Usually you start with the solution and work backwards. Brennan had to concoct this solution and prepare for every possible thing that the best DnD players he’s ever known might do to crack his story wide open. He needed an entire party of character foils whose primary goal was to cover their tracks and account for periphery details to outsmart The Bad Kids. An unfathomable amount of work to be able to tell this story at the pace it’s being told.

I found myself remarking earlier in the season how much planning and foreknowledge he had to have to have the variety of dome projections from @caitmayart he does and now I realize that’s just scratching the surface.

[probablybadrpgideas]

Play a regular DnD campaign but keep a bingo card for every player secret to the DM. The goal of the campaign is to abandon the plot and get a bingo first.

­

[saphic-with-t]

For senior year I think the bad kids would be insanely over powered (high level dnd is nutty) so here are some fun ideas to spice up encounters in a zany sit-com sort of way. This is a long post btw.

1. Physical regression fight

The bad kids are reverted to their freshman bodies and have to fight as their original level one forms.

I’d imagine it as a Last Standard Exam style onslaught. They start as their level one characters and after each semi-quick wave they regrow a little bit, regaining a few levels, until they finally re-reach their present body. Also funny if they have to go through their bodies most awkward puberty stages again.

2. Freaky Friday

The bad kids all swap bodies. All of the players swap character sheets and have to play their character but using the stats/classes entirely of another character. Extra fun if they can’t meta-game by reminding each other of certain abilities or actions they can do irl, as to hammer in how inproficient they are at being one another.

3. Dance Fight

Similar to the Broadway fight from unsleeping city. All the bad kids have to fight in the middle of some major performance/dance act. Maybe it happens during some sort of audition or performance Fabian is doing.

They all have to navigate doing very high level performance and acrobatic checks which means balance actions and recourses have to be spent on both making sure everyone is good at performing and also on fighting well.

4. Doppelgängers

The bad kids fight themselves. Exact same levels, exact same stats.

Extra points if they don’t know which ones are the real ones, so half of the players are fighting with npc versions of the other half and vice versa. This means they have to also figure out which ones are the fakes mid-fight and some of them were actually playing as their own doppelgänger, semi-similar to the Baron fight in junior year. This also means Brennan would be playing as some doppelgängers but also as some of the actual real characters since those players are unknowingly the doppelgängers.

5. Shipping wars

Some ultra-powerful weirdo god-monster is running a spicy dating game and has kidnapped the bad kids. It is super over the top and annoying and is trying to convince/make the bad kids date eachother and fight eachother as couples. The fight is about tricking the freaky god-monster into thinking they actually have fallen for their assigned partner while pretending to fight the other pairs, with the eventual goal of killing it.

Can’t think of any pairing combo that this wouldn’t be funny with. Adaine and Riz would be bad at acting no matter what, Fig and Fabian would be way to convincing, and Gorgug and Kristen would be super awkward with their partner and also not fully know if Fig and Fabian were actually being serious about their respective partner.

6. Babysitter

Fabian has to spend the entire fight protecting/dealing with new baby sibling. Can hand them off to friends if need be. This includes dealing with a child who has 1 hit point in a high level battle, but also doing stuff like making sure they stay asleep (somehow) or changing a dirty diaper.

7. Freaky Friday 2: Parental Controls

All swapped to their parent’s bodies. Adaine becomes Jawbone, Fig becomes Sandra Lynn, Gorgug becomes one of the thistlesprings, Riz becomes Sklonda, Kristen becomes Lydia Barkrock (her secret mother figure), and Fabian becomes Hallaarial (or funnier option, Gilear).

This is funny to me because whatever spell or curse did this considers adoptive/non-genetic parental figures over biological/legal Gaurdians. Also this is extra funny if they have to team up with their parent who has swapped with them. So Adaine has to deal with Jawbone being in her body, Fig with Sandra Lyn being in hers, Gorgug with one of the thistlesprings, etc.

Also funny if other npcs show up (Ayda became Arthur Aguefort, Bucky Applebees as either Mac or Donna, etc).

Would love to see all of these honestly, would love to hear other dumb silly fighting bits y’all would want to see.

[vixensdungeon]

I've always wanted to create a dnd campaign that involved court intrigue, where the players could try to play different sides against each other, but I don't have a good idea of how to do it, and any time I've asked for advice all I received was "your players are going to wreck everything don't even try lol." Do you have any advice on how to run a game like that?

Some of my compatriots here would jump on you and tell you to play a different game, but not me. No, since you said you wanted to involve court intrigue, I think Auntie Viv might have some wisdom for you.

Before I dive into the subject of courtly intrigues, different factions that players can play against each other have a natural habitat in D&D: the dungeon! If your underworld includes several groups of monsters, there can be all sorts of political interplay between them.

But let's say you want to spice up your game with some proper court intrigue. I say spice up, because if you want that to be the focus of your game, you really might want to look into other games that will support what you want to do better. But I certainly think such activities have a place in D&D, the game about gaining temporal power. If you're starting at level 1 or thereabouts, the characters probably won't be powerplayers yet. They'll more likely be pawns, or merely get glimpses of the true machinations of the Great Games of the Lords. But that doesn't mean you can't involve them. Have NPCs in the starting town be part of factions, either openly or secretly, and make interacting with them have consequences in the Great Games.

Then as the party levels up, make sure they gain not only in personal power, but also in political power. Give ways for players to integrate their characters into your world. Not knowing the particulars of what you have in mind, I can only give general advice, but think of at least one way each class can invest in the setting. Rogues may join or found guilds, fighters can be given forts to command, clerics can be given positions in the local temple, and so on and so forth. This will gradually involve them in the Great Games, and if you've made them care about things beyond their character sheets, you'll have ways to curb their worst excesses. If they threaten the king, the king can do way worse than deal damage to them: he can mess up their holdings.

As for the intrigues themselves, map out your factions and their goals. You should have some idea of what the various sides will do over time without player interference, and don't be afraid to roll with the punches when the party inevitably swerves things off the road. So if the king's trusted vizier, Baron Doomshadow, is funding bandits to disrupt trade along the King's Road, you might have a timeline of how the bandit activity ramps up. But if the players get involved in solving the bandit problem, have some contingencies for Baron Doomshadow to respond with.

Most importantly, integrate intrigues into the main activity that D&D supports: adventuring. Because at the end of the day, that's what the characters will excel at most no matter how they're built.

And don't be afraid to check out some game that's actually built for intrigues anyway, because it might have some neat tips and tricks you can use.

I hope any of that helped!

[tales-from-the-aether-ttrpg]

Something ive noticed about a lot of people who play dnd (myself included) is that… they arent really playing dnd.

I don’t mean that in the - they’ve homebrewed the system to the point where they are basically playing a completely different game. i mean it in the way that dnd is less of a game and more of a tool or frame work to tell improve stories with friends. Thats why so many tables have a significant amount of homebrew rules or play it loose with the rules - because dnd is secondary to the act of telling a story.

Unfortunately, dnd wasn’t built for such a narratively focused sandbox. It was built around dungeons and adventuring and violence in general - an aspect that is only a fraction of many stories that dnd is used to tell.

I think that is why so many people are resistant from trying other ttrpg systems that may give them a better player experience. They dont play dnd to play dnd but they dont even realize that. The game is secondary so why does it matter what game they play? Everyone at their table is already versed in dnd so they can make it work as a framework even if its trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

This is something ive been thinking about a lot while making my ttrpg Tales from the Aether as I am inspecting my own view and experience with dnd and what i enjoy about it versus what could be done better. Why do me and my friends play dnd? To hang out and tell stories. Dnd happens to be the system i knew at the time we started and thus it is the one we used. But there is nothing particular about dnd that supports this goal while there are many things that hold us back - such as characters archetypes and classes being so ridged and having practically zero guidance for running the game outside of combat or adventuring. This is where homebrew comes in.

Ironically thats the entire premise of Tales from the Aether. I started making it years ago with the idea that this system is specifically a framework for people to tell improve stories with friends. That is the whole point. All of the mechanics revolve around giving players the tools to do what they want while the rules act more as a form of in universe world building (like a hard magic system) than actual rules.

The reason why so many people who play dnd are hesitant or straight up refuse to try out other ttrpgs is because the game is secondary. Its a tool. Its a framework that they can build off of to create the experience that they want. Its familiar so they know how to bend it, what parts to chip off or expand, to give them what they want. A new ttrpg, even if its one that gives them everything they want in a ttrpg, is unfamiliar and thus not worth investing in when they already have something that works well enough.

Idk i may be way off base here but from my own experience and from watching live plays and reading people’s takes on dnd and playing the game… thats kinda the conclusion ive come to.

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

Making Humanoids Less Human

I did make a small post on this, but now I've got the art for a much bigger and more detailed post! so here we go.

I had several anonymous asks that all came in quick succession weeks ago. Every single one of them was basically just a variation on "how would you take (typically humanoid) fantasy being, and make them look less human?"

This blog does not exist for me to just give people original designs for free, my goal is to show off my own personal thoughts about fantasy design and help people figure out how to adjust their own designs to fit their vision better. That means when people ask me questions about how to do something, I want to give them things to think about so they can come to their own conclusion. I don't mind making original designs to illustrate concepts, but a whole flood of "show me how to make this specific thing look different" all at once like that was too much. I'm not answering them all individually, it's just not what I want to do.

But what I can do is show my own thoughts and ideas about how to take any fantasy design and push it further away from "human", and you all can look at my ideas and figure out your own way to do things!

So here are the main 4 methods I've come up with to make humanoids look less human.

(image description: a simplified drawing of a humanoid face surrounded by four altered versions of the same face. clockwise starting from the top left, they are:

Speculative, drawn as a cat person. Additive, drawn with horns, pointy ears, sharp teeth, and a second pair of eyes. Subtractive, drawn with blank eyes, no nose, and no eyebrows. Exaggerative, drawn with a long face and huge eyes, as well as a wide mouth, narrow nose, and big ears.

end description)

I am personally a fan of the speculative route, which means exploring an alternate root of evolution to create a new design. Through this method, I've created monkey elves, frog goblins, and pig orcs.

the additive option is the most common, I think. adding new feature or doubled features to a humanoid form is a very intuitive way to change the design and make it look less human. you see this in most fantasy and scifi designs, like star trek aliens and the dnd player races.

subtractive and evaggerative are the most common options for people that like the uncanny valley. it's really easy to make uncomfortable designs by removing or exaggerating recognizable features, and they're often used together. Slenderman, for example, removes all facial features and skin color but also exaggerates the limbs and body.

Combining the four methods will give you a really interesting design as well! So for practice I decided to explore an alternate design for Tieflings, the part-demon player race in dnd.

(image description: four examples of differnt tiefling designs using the previously described methods. the additive example is just offical dnd art of a tiefling woman with purple skin, horns, and a long tail.

the subtractive sketch looks very alien, with a bald head, empty eyes, and no other facial featuers aside from a small mouth. it has three fingers per hand and two toe per foot.

the exaggerative sketch shows a hunched humanoid figure with huge eyes and big ears. the neck, limbs, and digits are all long with claws at the ends of the fingers and toes, and the limbs are also quite muscular.

the speculative sketch shows a bipedal figure with features similar to a giraffe, including a long neck, ossicones, and hooves.

end description)

now, because tielflings have such a distinct look to them, obviously my new sketches don't really look like tieflings, do they? the only one that comes close is the giraffe. relying only on one type of alteration to the human form has left the designs rather empty and lacking in the more iconic traits of the original concept. so i tried a sketch that combined my ideas! it came out looking like a completely different creature lol, like it could be a kobold or something, still not really a tiefling.

(image description: a sketch of a creature with a giraffe-like head, long tongue, and sharp teeth. it appears to be roaring at something and stands in a half-crouch. it has long limbs with hoof feet and clawed hands, as well as a long tufted tail curled behind it. end description.)

didn't work out. too far into the animal side of the speculative evolution, I think. so I tried again and got a design I liked much better!

(image description: a digital painting of a tiefling leaping back and casting a glowing orange spell. she is wearing a tunic with a corset and detached sleeves, as well as several pieces of jewelry. Her skin is purple with dark patches like a giraffe's spots, and she has a giraffe's ossicones as well as hoof-like hands and two-toed hoof feet. Her tail is long with a tuft at the end. She has glowing eyes and a flat nose, and there is a single sharp tooth visible poking out of the side of her mouth. end description.)

Brought the face back into slightly more human proportions and that helped a lot. Sometimes designs just take a few tries! that's normal.

and hopefully this is helpful to all of you! there are so many ways to alter humanoid designs to come up with something original and unique to you!

[evilbookworm]

Okay guys, I’m making an episode post!!! Already posted a short one on Escape From Camazotz, but here’s a brief interpretation and meaning of each episode title!  And please, this is an interpretation, not concrete proof!

Episode 1: The Crawl

Ok, I've seen a lot of people translating this and interpreting it to be an episode about a mission, and while this could be right, I think there’s more to it. We all know very well about the show’s constant references to DND, the roleplaying game the party loves. In DND terms, a crawl, or a dungeon crawl, is a scenario in which players must navigate through a sort of maze, “dungeon” if you will, while battling monsters, avoiding traps, and solving puzzles.

                                      So, this episode might be a mission, as has been said many times, but it could also be in a maze of types. A possible terrain in the UD? I just find it very interesting.

Episode 2: The Vanishing of —----------------

Ok, this has pretty much been confirmed for being Holly Wheeler, considering how much she’s appeared in recent bts pictures, but Nancy and Karen fit the 5 letter pieces don’t they? Just a thought, though it probably is Holly.

As for what it could mean in dnd terms, not much really, just some vanishing spells, but this episode will definitely be interesting!

Episode 3: The Turnbow Trap

I was hoping to find this as a dnd term as well, but sadly, it was not. I did find something else rather interesting though. Turnbow is the Americanized version of the Alsatian name Dürrenbach, which means dry stream. So “The dry stream trap,” what could that mean? I was honestly puzzled at this for a while and I couldn’t figure it out. What do you guys think?

                                                             

Episode 4: Sorcerer

Okay, we're all clearly thinking of Will Byers here. Maybe not a cleric, but a Sorcerer is quite similar. Clerics are more medicinal, healers by class. On the other hand, Sorcerers are masters of arcane magic, which is using magic energy in the world to manipulate reality through spells. This definitely ties in to the theory that the UD is Wills mindscape.

                                       

Episode 5: Shock Jock

Shock jocks are essentially radio broadcasters or talk show hosts who entertain listeners by using humor that is mildly offensive to some people. This could totally be a reference to Dustin, considering his constant tinkering with radios. Maybe he’ll be in charge of radios or somehow be part of a secret news source. There are many theories, really.

                                     

Episode 6: Escape from Camazotz

Oh, I love this one. In dnd, Camazotz is the Olman god of bats and horrible things that fly in the night. ANd who got killed by bats in the previous season of Stranger Things? Eddie Munson! No, I don’t think this means he’ll come back, but I do think he’ll be a villain of sorts. 

               

There’s something else, though. Camazotz is also a planet in A Wrinkle In Time, which has been theorized a lot in Stranger Things. Camazotz is essentially a dark planet controlled by evil. People who live there don’t have their own thoughts and are controlled by a central brain called IT. Remind you of anyone? Yeah, Vecna (No not It from It lol). Camazotz more specifically defines what happens when someone just hands over their free will. Sort of like what Vecna does with his victims. He tries to make them accept their death before he kills them.

                               

Episode 7: The Bridge

This one was pretty hard for me to really analyze. I’ve looked through dnd searches and tried to look for meanings of bridges in ST, but I haven’t really found much. Generally, its communication and union, which is kind of conflicting, considering the goal for the final season is to destroy the UD. Maybe I’m looking too much into things, and it’s a literal bridge into the UD. All I could really find is in the movie Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, a bridge is crumbled by a sorcerer, but that’s really it.

                                                   

Maybe it has something to do with the UD being Wil’’s mindscape, and it’s a sort of bridge he creates between the two worlds. Or maybe he is the bridge between the UD and the normal world.

Episode 8: The Rightside Up

I think this one’s pretty self explanatory. The UD will be destroyed and everything will be Rightside Up again. Just like the last episode of Stranger Things Season 1 was called the Upside Down, this is the plain opposite. It will be the episode where Hawkins is saved, and Vecna, whatever he is, is defeated for good. (and byler becomes endgame :) )

                                 

Hope you liked this analysis! It was really fun to make! And please leave your interpretations in the comments if you saw something differently! Thanks :)