Matthew Mercer


 * This page is about the actor. For the character from a one-shot campaign, see Matthew Mercer (character).

Matthew Miller, known by stage name Matthew Mercer, is a voice actor, a member of the main cast of Critical Role, and the chief creative officer at Critical Role Productions LLC. He is the Dungeon Master of the main Critical Role campaigns.

He is also a member of the board of directors for the Critical Role Foundation and the creative advisor at Darrington Press LLC. He has also been the Dungeon Master for several special episodes. He also voices Sylas Briarwood in The Legend of Vox Machina as well as additional voices.

Pre-stream
In 2012, Liam O'Brien asked Matthew Mercer to run a D&D one-shot for his birthday. At the time, Matthew kept telling Liam about the D&D game he was running and often invited Liam to join. The game then became an ongoing Pathfinder campaign.

When Matt created the campaign that eventually became Critical Role, he made up his own world, Exandria, and restructured some of the game system rules to allow for more flexibility in the storyline. He has been the Dungeon Master since the beginning of the campaign in 2012.

In preparation for the streamed series, Matt converted the game over from Pathfinder to Dungeons & Dragons, because Pathfinder combat is slower due to an abundance of various modifiers. D&D also has more name recognition. When converting their game, Matt had to create a custom fighter's Martial Archetype for Taliesin Jaffe's character, Percy, as the Gunslinger subclass didn't exist in 5th Edition D&D. The two of them took a full day to switch over the character and all of his stats and abilities.

Main campaigns
At the beginning of the series, Matt created custom battlemaps by drawing grids on paper. He eventually upgraded to three-dimensional maps, and spends time every week assembling battlemaps from the hundreds of pieces he has collected over the years. He hand-crafted some of the map elements, and has painted some minis by hand.

During the show, Matt is responsible for the music, and with the new Campaign Three set, the ambiant lighting.

In an open letter published a few days before the Campaign Three premiere, Matthew Mercer confirmed that he was working with cultural and sensitivity consultants "throughout the worldbuilding and presentation of Marquet" to ensure that aspects of the continent of Marquet, the main setting for the campaign, would be "lending a familiarity and celebrating aspects of those same languages and cultures without appropriating them".

Player characters
See also: Player characters played by Matthew Mercer Although Matt is the Dungeon Master for the main campaigns of Critical Role, he occasionally gets to be a player for one-shots and miniseries.
 * Matthew Mercer, Human Bard
 * Matthew Mercer, vampire
 * Trinket, bear ( and )
 * Reggie Burns, raccoon
 * Klaus, Christmas elf fighter
 * Clayton Sharpe ("UnDeadwood")
 * Dariax, dwarf sorcerer ("Exandria Unlimited")

Games played as Game Master

 * Campaign One: Vox Machina
 * Campaign Two: The Mighty Nein
 * Campaign Three

Custom D&D materials
Matt created several custom supplementals for Dungeons & Dragons, 5th edition, some of which are available on the Dungeon Masters Guild or have been included in official Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks:
 * "Blood Hunter" class Also available on D&D Beyond
 * "Lingering Soul" class
 * "College of the Maestro" (bard subclass)
 * "Gunslinger" (fighter subclass)
 * "Blood domain" (cleric subclass)
 * "Empathy Domain" (cleric subclass)
 * "Path of Fundamental Chaos" ( barbarian subclass)
 * "Path of the Juggernaut" (barbarian subclass)
 * "Runechild" (sorcerer subclass)
 * "Way of the Cobalt Soul" (monk subclass)
 * "Oath of the Open Sea" (paladin subclass)

D&D sourcebooks
Matt has worked as a writer and game designer on several official D&D materials.
 * Critical Role: Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting
 * Explorer's Guide to Wildemount
 * Critical Role: Call of the Netherdeep
 * Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn

Other actual play series
In addition to Critical Role, Matt served as the dungeon master for Geek & Sundry's CelebriD&D miniseries in 2017. He appeared as a player on twice on CollegeHumor's show Dimension 20: the first time as Leiland in Escape from the Bloodkeep, and the second time as Jack in Pirates of Leviathan. Brennan Lee Mulligan served as Dungeon Master for both games.

Matt also appeared as a DM or player on several other series, such as Force Grey, RealmSmith and The Adventure Zone.

Voice acting
Matt began his voice acting career with video games in the mid-2000s. He worked on several anime dubbing projects, and has lended his voice to dozens of characters in western animation. Some of Matt's well-known roles are Jotaro Kujo from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Levi Ackerman from Attack on Titan, and Cole Cassidy in Overwatch.

Personal life
At a young age, Matt suffered from a stutter. His father, who also stuttered, got him a speech therapist who reduced the effects to the point that only certain words trigger it. He has revealed in multiple interviews that he suffers from body dysmorphic disorder and has always struggled with his physical appearance.

As a freshman at high school, approximately 14 years old, Matt joined popular arts club, where he started playing Dungeons & Dragons Although he promptly fell in love with the game, most players at the table preferred mechanical aspects of DnD, which did not caught Matt's immediate interest. Seeing the potential and the instruments DnD provided for storytellers, he began DMing his own campaign wtih narrative incline.

Before his aspiration for acting, in his middle years school Matthew wanted to be a chemist and during his high school an illustrator.

When Matt began pursuing acting, he discovered that there were many Matt Millers in the industry. To make his name more memorable, he decided to change it from Miller to Mercer, a family name dated three generations back.

Starting with "Strangers with Candy" era in the late 90s, Matthew Mercer is a long time fan of Stephen Colbert and had him on dream DnD guest star list since July 2015.

On October 21, 2017, in between campaigns One and Two, Matt married Marisha Ray. They live together with their pets Omar and Dagon. For their third anniversary, Matt shared some video highlights from his engagement to Marisha. He created a fake escape room with the help of friends, where she had to solve puzzles and fight a monster before he proposed to her.

Matt has done cosplay as a hobby for years. He even cosplayed as Pumat Sol during a convention, and again for a Twitch ad that sometimes plays during episode breaks.

Trivia

 * He shares his middle name, Christopher, with Liam O'Brien.
 * When asked if he could be any player character in the game, Matt has repeatedly chosen Scanlan.
 * In the Critical Role Major Arcana Tarot Card Set, he (as the Dungeon Master) represents XXI - The World.
 * Matt's NPCs are sometimes borrowed from or inspired by his player characters from other games. Two of these characters are Grimthorne and Eskil Ryndarien.
 * It is possible that Trent Ikithon was also at least partially inspired by Matt's first D&D Character, a Militant Wizard called Emeritus Trent.
 * A miniature figure of Matt was released by WizKids in 2021 as part of the Character of Exandria set.
 * Matt's chosen drink for his Between the Sheets interview was a dark & stormy.
 * Every Halloween, the cast of Critical Role dresses up in costume for one episode. Matthew has dressed up as Geralt of Rivia (2015), Victor (2016), Dante from Devil May Cry (2018), Cole Cassidy (2019), Artagan (2020) and Laura Bailey (2021).
 * On Talks Machina, the host Brian Wayne Foster liked to "#ThankMyGuests" with names that were either mispronounced or wordplay that sounded close to their names. Here are the names for Matthew Mercer: