There are going to be spoilers in this. A lot of spoilers, not even going to pretend to do a review without it. If you want the two sentence review if this is good, the answer is yes. It’s not a perfect season but it’s really good.

Spoilers Ahead

The Storylines

This is a bit of a different season. As the boys are growing older, it is like they are closer to the ages of the older generation. So instead of getting that split of the older kids, younger kids, and adults, we have two groups of kids and a group of adults. Plus then Eleven is split off on her own some. I think it is important to talk about all of these different groups and if their stories worked.

Eleven

Eleven is the best spot to start because really this world and overall story revolves around her. Her story, is both one of the more interesting parts and one of the less interesting parts. Her time in California is just fine. It has strong Carrie vibes but doesn’t really pay off. We already know she’s not a normal kid and doesn’t fit in.

And then we go to the new lab with Brenner and Owens. It is a very good vehicles for telling the story of Eleven’s powers, and who Vecna, Henry, the Orderly and One all are. The unraveling of that mystery with Eleven and Nina and Eleven getting her powers back works well. However, her time in this new lab, the fighting between her, Brenner, and Owens, the military showing up, there is too much of that and that part was not interesting.

The Adults

Then we head over to Russia with Joyce, Murray, Yuri, Hopper, and Antonov. And this is a bit of a mixed bag for me again. I really loved Antonov and her and Hopper’s relationship. How they loosely work together to really work together. How they both help out the other. And Murray and Yuri provide some good comedy for this.

Overall, really know knocks on the storyline for the adults. It does feel a bit like it’s less connected to the overall story though. And I get it, they need to get Hopper back to the rest of the group. The fact that they never really were in the same fight, even though they tried to help, is interesting. I’d have loved for there to be something more to get them directly involved.

Hawkins Kids

Easily my favorite part of the story, and I don’t think that’s a surprise. The Hawkins story has most of the bigger cast with Dustin, Lucas, Max, Erica, Nancy, Steve, and Robin and introducing Eddie. All characters that you really start to like.

They also have the best ability to interact with the upside down and it was fun to delve into there more. We’ve gotten these hints throughout the other series. We even spend time there, but this time we really get to spend time in the upside down. There are still mysteries to it but we know more now, some because of them.

And I also think that the Max storyline was interesting. What she is going through, Vecna targeting her, she’s a character I really like. She brings something different to the group. And to have her be a focus and really the whole Hawkins kids side of thing being so relationship drama free, I think it worked well.

California Kids

Finally, the California kids with includes Argyle, a great character, and Mike, since he timed up his spring break amazingly. But their story was intriguing. They got to do the whole road trip thing which is fun and very much a trope from that time period. And getting to meet Suzy’s family was interesting.

I think that their story was stronger once Eleven was gone and them trying to get her. While that intersected with hers at one of the more boring parts, overall, it felt real. And to see the emotion from Will and Mike. And just that relationship and rebuilding between Eleven and Mike, it worked well. Plus Argyle was a great humor character.

Stranger Things Season 4 Overall Story

To me, while there were outliers, mainly the adults, the whole story did work together. And I think you could argue that they lost this fight, Vecna still lives, Max is in a coma, because they split the party at the end of season 3. Now the adults being split off, or at least Hopper, makes sense, really all of them splitting makes sense. But it’s leaning into a D&D trope that way where you never split the party.

I also think that building up the history of the upside down is very good. And for Eleven and her powers. It makes the world that is being more impactful to go back. And they did it in a smart way where the consequences to the real world mattered as she was finding out all of this. It was an information dump, technically, for her stuff, but not one that felt only like explaining. There is a reason behind it.

How It Ended

So, this is a bit more speculation going forward. If you don’t know, season 5 is going to be the final season of Stranger Things. Now there is plans for a show set in the same “world” as Strangers Things. And The Duffer Brothers are the runners for that show as well. It is an idea that they had, not someone that they were asked.

But let’s look at the world as it is now. Vecna is out there. Hawkins is a disaster area, what is going to be happen next? I expect that the finale will again be a face off against Eleven and Vecna, though that might be mid season. If they split it into two, I wouldn’t be shocked if Vecna is defeated by the end of the first half. For Hawkins, the question is, how do you close it up again? And that is where the story gets interesting.

Because I think that is going to be the harder part. Vecna might have an army around him, but he is injured both on the mental level and the physical. But how do you close everything back up again. I think we might see a character lost to doing this. In particular, I think Will might need to sacrifice himself. Not die, but go back to the upside down. Face that fear that he has and go back to close the portal. Eleven working on the outside and him on the inside.

I also think we end with more deaths in the season. Murray, unfortunately, and possibly Joyce or Hopper I could see dying. One of Steve, Jonathan or Nancy might die. And I don’t know if I think one of the kids will die or not. Max seems like a choice, if she never recovers, but she’s had that experience. And Will staying in the upside down could be seen as that. But I don’t know about Lucas, Dustin, or Mike. Mike seems fairly safe, but Lucas or Dustin could be a casualty.

Stranger Things Season 4 Final Thoughts

It is a very good season. I put my rankings of the seasons as 1 followed closely be 4. Then there is a gap down to 3 and a gap down to 2. Two is not bad, I think that it feels like it’s trying to be season 1 again without capturing that same feeling. Season 4 captures that feeling of season one and is darker as well. For me that is really interesting and works really well.

I think they walked that line nicely, though. It is darker, but they kept much of the essence of Stranger Things. And with that it let people who maybe don’t love that slight step darker stay engaged. Because, in the end, we want it to feel like Stranger Things and this season really did.

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Culling Board Games

The premise is pretty simple, what games are in my collection that are taking up space which I don’t like or I know I’m not going to play again. The execution is harder. I like board games a lot. For me, I like to keep a collection that has a lot of games in it. I have the shelf space, but that shelf space is filling up and as I talk about at the start, I have games from crowdfunding that are coming in. So I need to find more shelf space.

So what made me decide to stream some of this. Firstly, it is more content on the channel, and I hope that seeing what I have in my collection gives you an idea of what I like in gaming. To go along with that, it keeps me motivated to go through my collection. It would be easy for me to just skim it and find a few games. Going through Kallax cubby by Kallax cubby I now am forced to look at each game. Plus there are a few other content creators who talk about it a lot.

I mention them but Max from Tablenauts has a saying of ABC, Always Be Culling. And because of that and the games I have coming, it is time for more. I need to go through my collection and cull. Plus Alex from BoardGameCo does a video showing what is leaving his collection. I wanted to be different and go through my whole collection.

The Drink

So last nights drink was finishing off a bottle of Suntory Whiskey. It’s a Japanese whiskey and an enjoyable one. I didn’t talk about it too much, but it is part of my goal to drink through/clear up room in my liquor cabinet. I’d like to get less stuff in there, since some of the alcohol has been sitting there for a while. It was something I drank more before having a kid, stuff for mixed drinks really stand out, and now, I lean towards just sipping drinks.

Upcoming Streams

So next upcoming stream is on Wednesday with a start time around 8 PM Central. I’ll try and get the video up a bit sooner than I did with this one so you know it is coming. But what will I be streaming? I am going to do a play of Spire’s End. It is a story driven game, kind of a campaign game, but one I can generally play in a single sitting.

The next few weeks on Wednesday it won’t be a campaign game. I want to get through some other games that can be played solo. I also want to create more time for just chatting as I play. Campaign games tend to be harder to chat while playing. Mainly, they tend to have a whole lot more going on in them. So expect a few roll and write games and smaller games to get played. Any you think that I really need to try?

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However, you don’t have to play a min/maxed character when playing D&D, and I actually think that can lead to some better game play than if you do have min/maxed. The issue with min/maxed character can often lie with them being too good at everything and not having anything unique about them. A skilled player can role play a min/maxed character just fine so that they have depth and are a unique character, but they aren’t going to have as much to over come.

An example of a poorly min/maxed character is Robert Langdon from The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown. In the book, he is figuring out all of these puzzles with no problem, he’s able to do fairly athletic things no problem. And for a long time, you don’t really think that he has any flaws. Then he has to get into a small car and you find out that he has claustrophobia, which is then “cured” the next page. Now, this is clearly an example of how not to min/max a character in a story so that you don’t end up removing anything interesting or unique or challenging for them. But the same holds true, in a world of magic and fantasy, when you have a character doesn’t naturally have some flaw, it’s easy to play them without flaw, and often times, without character because of that.

So instead of min/maxing the heck out of your character, you might want to go about creating a character who isn’t the ideal combination of things, but is still effective in the game. This gives them a true weakness and true strength in given situations. Let’s look at our Mountain Dwarf Fighter, the tank/fighter build that we did. Without using anything special, we were able to create a character that was going to be getting a lot of hit points each level and had a lot of armor class from the very early levels. Yes, they were weak-ish to magic, but they were meant more to deal with melee combats, and with their hit points, unless they are being mentally dominated, they are going to be tough to get out of a fight.

There are certainly other ways to bring in flaws and issues to the character for role playing purposes, we didn’t touch on the background items like Personality Traits, Flaws, Bonds, and Ideals, which I’ve done articles on previously. But those are limited to role playing for a character like our tank, and more likely than not, the person playing the tank would be there for the combat more than the social encounters anyways. So those things might be lost on the character sheet.

If, however, you wanted to create a more flawed tank, but still be a tank, you can certainly do that. When we created our tank, we gave them both solid dexterity and strength. The advantage of having both of those solidly stat’ed is that you can get into combat quickly and still hit well. Let’s say instead, for the tank, that they were actually a nerd growing up and loved brewing, keeping the Mountain Dwarf and Fighter in the mix and same equipment, we can just adjust the stats to make it a very different character.

If, instead, we keep the 14 in Constitution because it becomes a 16 with our racial bonuses, so that we still get our +3 to health each level until we hit our first ability score increase, where we can make it a four. Then, instead of doing strength and dexterity, we focus on intelligence and wisdom, we get a very different character. We still have 19 for our armor class and 13 HP at the first level, but we’re now not that great at hitting anything with a lower than average strength, since I put an 8 in there. That becomes a -1 for a modifier, though, we are proficient with the weapon, which gives us a +2 bonus for a +1 bonus overall, the damage output is just going to be bad. Now, you still have a character that can tank and is actually better at dealing with mental domination than our previous one was, but is worse at fighting.

We’ve also created a character with a more unique backstory for role playing purposes. Why are they so good at deflecting punches and hits? Maybe they were bullied as a kid, and they never learned to fight, but instead they developed the skills to take a punch and not be affected by it, and that’s how they dealt with their bullies. That skill then translated well for them when they decided to go out adventuring to learn more about the world and find out information that they don’t know, because they can go around and if something tries to get them, they can still take a punch. That’s more of a unique character that easily comes out of the choices we made in not making a character with their ideal stats.

When you create characters, do you strive for a character that is the ideal at one thing, such as combat or social interactions, or do you seek to create a character with a more interesting story naturally built in?

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An example of this would be a fighter in Dungeons and Dragons who knows that they want to tank. The two primary stats for them are going to be strength and constitution. With more strength, they’ll be able to do more damage on their attacks and be more likely to hit. But constitution for the tank is the biggest thing. Constitution helps bump up hit points and makes it harder for that character to be taken down.

Now, that’s a simple look at what Min/Maxing is in D&D, but it goes beyond that, and there are some reasons to not find it that great in your game. Most of the time it is going to be fine and good if a player does that in the group, the concern is that you have someone min/max into an area that another character is supposed to be better at. Maybe the fighter in our example also puts points into Wisdom and now they are better at perceiving than a class that naturally would want wisdom is, and the fighter is now stepping on the toes of another character. Fighter isn’t a great example for this, but classes that get expertise like Rogue and Bard can have this issue if a player min/maxes over another character specialty.

But let’s look at some of the positive things that can come from it as well. If you are smart about your min/maxing as a party, you can have character who cover all the bases that you want. You can cover attacking, social interactions, sneaking, healing, etc. and be good at all of them because you and the group have min/maxed the skills of the group. This means, you aren’t ever going to feel inadequate when trying to do something, if you are there as a whole group. And, if you are in a combat focused game, everyone can focus on doing more damage and hitting more consistently by min/maxing as well.

I will also add, that if you are min/maxing, it’s good to have the whole group doing it. Sure, one player character can be min/maxed, and that would probably be fine. But if you have four of you at the table and three of you are min/maxing and the other player isn’t because they don’t know how, I’d recommend helping them min/max, or if they don’t want to, don’t fully min/max your own character so they don’t seem like they’ve fallen behind or can’t keep up with the rest of the group. I’ll go back to the saying that I learned from The RPG Academy, “If you’re having fun, you’re doing it right”, and that means fun for the whole table.

But let’s talk about how you go about min/maxing a character, because, it can be fun to play that extra powerful character in a game of Dungeons and Dragons. When I go through this, I’m going to be using my fighter example where combat and tanking in combat is their most important thing.

The first thing to look at is what class you want to play. In this case, we know we want to be a tank and we want to hold up well enough in combat. We have a few options, we could do barbarian for their D12 hit die, but the limitations on armor puts the barbarian more into an attacking role, whereas fighter has more armor options can use a shield which will bump that armor class up even more.

With that figured out you want to think about what race you are going to want to take. In our case, we have a couple of different options. The Half-Orc has +2 to strength and +1 to constitution to start with, and that would allow us to create a good combat character. The Mountain Dwarf, however, has +2 to both strength and constitution, which is just better. However, the Half-Orc, in it’s favor, has a trait called “Relentless Endurance” where, when it gets knocked out or down to 0 hit points, once per day, it can go back up to 1 hit point and keep on fighting. That is useful, but I’d prefer the extra hit points that we’ll be getting from the Mountain Dwarf.

Now, going back to the class, we have some features to look at, at the first level. The main one being the fighting style we can get at first level. We have a lot of different option. Protection would be interesting, because we’ll have a shield, but defensive is even better for us, because it gives us a permanent boost to our armor class.

Finally, because background doesn’t give us that much in way of bonus to this fighting min/max build that we’re doing, let’s put our stats together. We’ll use the standard array as not to make it confusing, but that gives us a 15 and a 14 to place. I would place the 15 in constitution, giving us a 17 to start with in that stat, and then a 14 in dexterity, actually, versus strength. The reason for this is that we have a 13, which will give us 15 in strength, but only would have given us a 13 in dexterity. With the 14 in dexterity, it means that our initiative is going to be a +2 instead of +1 for our die rolls, and we still have a +2 to hit, which isn’t bad. It also gives me two odd numbers, so at level four when I get to go up a level, I can take my strength to a 16 and my constitution to a 18, and improve both of those stats to a +3 and a +4 respectively.

But wait, I forgot one last thing, we get our equipment as well. Now, I could have gone shopping for this, but standard equipment works out well for us here. We get chain mail for armor, and we can get a shield that are going to make us hard to hit as well.

So let’s look at some of our key stats. At level 1, we’d have 10+3 HP, so 13 hit points isn’t bad at all, but more importantly, we have an armor class of 19. That is extremely hard to hit. So while, maybe, a lucky hit would be able to take us down, but unless the monster is rolling with a decent modifier to their attack, it’s going to be hard for them to hit us. Our fighter is set to run into the fray, take on attacks and slowly deal damage to the enemies.

And you can do this with any class or any character type that you want, whether it is for combat or not. But should you, that’s the question, I’ll be talking about why you might not want to or why I generally don’t use the most min/maxed characters out there.

How do you play in a video game RPG or D&D? Do you like min/maxing, or have you ever run into an issue with it?

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So that we’re all talking about things from the same starting point, I want to introduce a concept that I think is important in this season of Stranger Things and that isn’t there in other seasons. This is the writing concept, but also works in other creative mediums, that you don’t want to show your audience the gears, the workings behind what you are doing. To explain this further, in a good book, the story can seamlessly transition between multiple characters having their moment or finding the information that they need (for a mystery sort of story) and it feels like it’s all part of the same story. When you start to see the gears, you can tell when it’s going to be one characters turn to be hero or the focal point, because the other characters change to foil or background roles. The story lacks that smooth storytelling consistency that you expect.

If I’m introducing this concept, that clearly means that I think that Stranger Things Season 3 suffers from this. And that would be correct. I think in a few of the relationships or pairings, Joyce and Hopper and Lucas, Mike, Max, and El it is really notable. There are almost moments where it seems like the character changes from what they were before to match what they needed for this season. This might get a little bit spoilery here, but you might have seen online about them messing up Hopper in some people’s opinions. And, I can see why people say that and in some ways that I agree with it.

In this season, Hopper is much more aggressive or angry, and I think that there are several reasons for this, but I also think that they are a bit heavy handed with it. The reason that I think it can work is because Hopper has closed himself off or a long time from feeling. And now with Eleven, he is starting to feel again, but it isn’t just the happy emotions, it’s the hard emotions, and he reacts strongly to feeling those again. He isn’t able to fully process them, but, like I said, I think that it done with a heavy hand too often. It became his personality, being the angry person, instead of having more of a complex character. And sometimes, it’s so that you can see the gears working to set-up a moment for Joyce.

With both groups, Joyce and Hopper and Mike, Lucas, Max, and Eleven, their stories are taken to the extreme reaction of things. And when it’s more extreme, you start to lose the depth of character that was created to them in previous seasons. That isn’t to say that it wouldn’t be easy to bring it back in a future season, but the writing was done to give everyone their moment, but done too obviously. Compare that to Dustin, Steve, Robin, and a surprise character, and their banter and relationships are done so extremely well. The actor who plays Steve, Joe Keery, is really good, and does a good job of playing what is now a caring but also still wanting to be popular character. He went from a jerk in the first season without much depth to a character who has a ton of depth and interest now, as compared to some of the others who are working backwards from that this season.

But let’s talk some about the whole story and the monsters. I actually really liked the season as whole, even with some rough spots with various character groups. What makes it work pretty well, in my opinion, is that you get a human aspect to a larger extent as a bad guy, like you did in season one, but you still have that upside down and monster feel. The big addition of another evil organization works really well, but what is that organization. I will say that Cary Elwes as the mayor only works so well. The main issue is that he’s clearly putting on an American accent and it’s obvious. Most of the time it isn’t an issue, but it just doesn’t work as well as it could have, which is a shame, because I like Cary Elwes, especially in Psych. This season, to me, felt a bit more like highlights of 1980’s tropes, as well. While, at times it felt a bit heavy handed with that, what they started with and how it ended, it actually worked well and made sense. I also really like where they ended the season. I’m not going to go into spoilers, but they are setting it up for season four to be a story that is potentially bigger than just Hawkins, which feels like what they need to do at this point.

Overall, I really enjoyed this season. I just think, especially early in the season, there are some things that a writer can take from the story as to what not to do. But you can also take good things from it, like how to use period piece references so it’s not too heavy handed, so like the 80’s references, versus the too heavy a hand in Captain Marvel with 90’s references. I’m at the point with Stranger Things, though, I hope that they start writing seasons that they are going to be their last, they could probably run the show for a few more seasons, but, it feels like a story that should be wrapping up soon, and while still really good, a story that I don’t want to overstay it’s welcome or overstep, like it did with the book that I trashed in review before.

What did you think of season three? Were there any fun surprises in it for you, who was your favorite character from the season?

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