It's easily my favorite show that's come out in the last decade. Well written, well acted and with a great premise. It's amazing that the Duffer Brothers weren't even born in the 80's and they really capture the feel of the decade.
I think they capture most of it, yeah. About my only cringe has been... I have been a gamer since middle school -- a couple years off from the gang here ('85-'88 for me). BattleTech/MechWarrior, Star Wars, Marvel Super-Heroes, Star Trek, Robotech, Call of Cthulhu, Shadowrun, Vampire: The Masquerade... and, of course, D&D. I had a couple gaming groups here where I grew up, was in two others when I lived in New York, was in another when I lived in Japan (military base), another two when I was living in SoCal, and I have known people across the fandom in those years, through various other channels. I don't know what the Duffers' sources were for how gamers talk and act and, well...
game, but it never looked like how they portray it, with any of the people I gamed with. Not quite. Exactly
one of my groups used minis and maps to sort out combat positioning. I know it had to have been a thing, or Ral Partha, Reaper, and Citadel wouldn't have made all those minis back in the day -- but I never really encountered the people who were using them for that. Warhammer and BattleTech, sure.
The most accurate thing about it has been in the first episode of this season. I remember the Satanic Panic, and we actually had that moment portrayed. Greg's mom was a Christian Scientist and he had brought their periodical with him one week and was reading it while we were getting settled and getting snacks and such. He read about the devil worship, ritualistic rape, human sacrifice, and all of the other garbage gamers were accused of doing. He broke off at one point and said, "Boy, I'm glad I brought this -- we've been doing it all
wrong!" And, I admit, we had a Hellfire Club in high school. >_> Our school wouldn't let us use that particular four letter word, so it was officially on the books as the Science-Fiction Club, but everyone, from the principal down, called it what it was. As with the one in Stranger Things (I'll bet good money), we named ours after the fictional one in X-Men, not the real-world gentlemen's club for eighteenth-century libertines. We did not, however, have T-shirts.
The
most unrealistic thing, worse than them having the wrong
Falcon in series 1, was them using Eddie's D20 to roll. You got your own dice -- often multiple sets. You were always on the hunt for dice that liked you -- especially D20s. And you
never touched someone else's dice.
Especially not the DM/GM's.