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, (@matthewmercer) is a voice actor and the Dungeon Master (DM) for the show Critical Role, as well as member of the board of directors for the Critical Role Foundation.

Pre-Stream
Matt began DMing in his freshman year of high school after playing in a campaign with a particularly bad DM.

When Matt created the campaign that eventually became Critical Role, he made up his own world of 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.

Before the Geek & Sundry streaming gameplay sessions, the group would meet every month to month-and-a-half for about eight hours. This infrequency was problematic, as many of the players needed to be reminded by Matt of elements of the storyline, how to play, etc.

When Matt told the other cast members about Geek & Sundry approaching him about making Critical Role, the group's reactions were recorded for posterity.

In preparation for the stream, 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 doesn't exist in 5th Edition D&D. They both sat down and took a full day to switch over the character and all of his stats and abilities.

Custom D&D Materials
Matt created several custom supplementals for Dungeons & Dragons, 5th edition, some of which are available on the Dungeon Masters Guild:
 * "Blood Hunter" class Also available on D&D Beyond
 * "Lingering Soul" class
 * "College of the Maestro" for the bard class
 * "Gunslinger" Martial Archetype for the fighter class
 * "Blood Domain" for the cleric class.
 * "Path of the Juggernaut" for the barbarian class.
 * "Runechild" sorcerous Origin for the sorcerer class.
 * "Way of the Cobalt Soul" for the monk class.
 * "Oath of the Open Sea" for the paladin class.

Matt's Player Characters
Although Matt is the Dungeon Master for the main campaigns of Critical Role, he occasionally gets to be a player when someone else takes over the DM/GM chair. These are the characters he has played as so far.
 * 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")

Matt has also played as a player on two separate occasions on CollegeHumor DnD show Dimension 20. The first time being Leiland in Escape from the Bloodkeep and the second time being Jack in Pirates of Leviathan.

Trivia

 * Between Campaign One and Campaign Two, Matt married Marisha Ray, who played Keyleth and Beauregard.
 * 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.
 * When asked if he could be any player character in the game, Matt has repeatedly chosen Scanlan.
 * Matt builds all the battle maps used in Critical Role himself and even paints some of the minis by hand.
 * 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.
 * 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), Jesse McCree (2019) and Artagan (2020).
 * 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.
 * On Talks Machina, the host Brian Wayne Foster likes to "#ThankMyGuests" with names that are either mispronounced or wordplay that sounds close to their names. Here are the names for Matthew Mercer so far: