Game Masters of Exandria Roundtable

is a Q&A with Aabria Iyengar, Matthew Mercer, and Brennan Lee Mulligan.

Tips for session zero and character creation

 * Matt: They're recommended. They're not strictly necessary if you already know your group well, but even then, it's a good chance to make sure everyone understands the tone and setting of the campaign and reset expectations.
 * Aabria:Agrees, especially about setting the tone and expectations about safety tools/boundaries. She specifically mentions lines and veils.
 * Brennan: He first takes a moment to enthusiastically praise Matt for developing Exandria and allowing them to GM in it (Aabria joins in just as enthusiastically). Session zero is incredibly important for Dimension 20, as those seasons are short so a lot of work needs to be established upfront to ensure the season runs smoothly. In particular, railroading vs player agency is a false dichotomy: to handle a campaign with strict time, plot, or location requirements, use the session zero as a GM to ensure the PCs are thoroughly developed and then build your plot around that so the players actively want to be on the rails. This is much less important for a long-running campaign, where you have the time and space to figure out your characters, but for short campaigns, multiple session zeroes may be necessary and it may be helpful to do character creation as a group.
 * Aabria: Brennan used this method for Exandria Unlimited: Calamity's character creation and it meant Laerryn was well-realized prior to the series beginning and that Brennan knew how to motivate Laerryn through story.
 * Matt: When he GM-ed home games when he was younger, and when Vox Machina's campaign began, most people came to the table with their separately created characters, but even then, players building characters with pre-existing relationships (such as Vax and Vex) added something to the game. For the Mighty Nein, each player had a separate session zero with Matt to develop the character, and then group session zeroes with a few other players to see how they interacted and to explore the character. For Calamity, because it was so short and because the characters were established as knowing each other, it was vital to have those session zeroes to lay the intricate groundwork.
 * All the GMs note that for actual play specifically, a session zero that is not streamed gives people a chance to figure out character voices and otherwise get camera-ready, but this isn't important for home games.
 * Aabria: What is character creation like for the Critical Role main campaigns?
 * Matt: He doesn't tell players what specifically to play but rather tries to help them figure out what interests them, although he also keeps in mind the party balance. It's important to let people know they're not permanently locked in if they don't like the character or the character build, and that those things can be changed down the road.
 * Brennan: What do you do if you can't have a session zero for a last-minute one-shot, for example?
 * Aabria: Ask people why their character is here, and other broad questions to ground them in the setting.
 * Matt: If there's a little lead time but not enough for session zero, email the players and ask them a few key questions about their character background.
 * Brennan: Often when a player isn't having fun with a character, it's because the character isn't properly connected to the world or lacks motivations and history.
 * Matt: One of the first people he GM-ed for had a character with minimal backstory, but that character was still searching for power and didn't know what had killed his parents, so those were hooks that allowed him to find the character through gameplay. A huge backstory isn't necessary, though it's helpful for some people, but it's important to understand where the character is coming from in broad strokes.
 * Brennan: Agrees with Matt - in improv, this is called having justification for the character's behavior. The player should know why their character does anything out of the ordinary, and if they have that, it's often enough.
 * Matt: It's also worth noting that all backstory doesn't need to come up in the game, and it's important to ensure players are aware of that and that if they want something to come up, they tell the GM rather than assuming it will happen. In general, players and GMs need to communicate - most problems are simply a lack of communication.
 * Aabria: Regardless of whether someone wrote a massive backstory or if they wrote a minimal one or forgot to send it, a really good way to get to the heart of things is to ask players shortly before the first session what their backstory is. If they wrote a huge backstory, they will tell you what they think is most important, and if they didn't write much backstory, they will often provide some new information.
 * Brennan: Backstory is very helpful to the GM because, again, it lets them know what motivates the character and what plot hooks will be engaging without having to come up with everything on their own. It also helps in building out the world, if the game is not set in an already-built setting, because the type of classes or character backstory dictate what's necessary to include and what can be left out.

Using established settings

 * Matt: Started creating his own settings because he was intimidated by using existing ones and getting it wrong.
 * Aabria and Brennan: Sarcastically talk about how they definitely did not feel intimidated by running games in Exandria.
 * Aabria: More seriously, for any sourcebook, it's possible a player knows the setting better, but it's ok to call for a quick break and review the lore if you have to. People who watch actual play often expect that they have to be perfect immediately, but that's not true; players often try to explore weird and minor avenues, so be easy on yourself.
 * Matt: Part of the expectations you set at the beginning can be that you will not perfectly adhere to the canon of an established setting, and will instead make it your own, and you should.

Worldbuilding

 * For Aabria: What was it like creating Niirdal-Poc? Aabria loved it because she doesn't come from a background of high fantasy but has always loved the idea of deciding what hero you wish to be, and created Niirdal-Poc to represent the potential of all of your choices.
 * Matt and Brennan: The secret to GM-ing is to add a lot of vowels and apostrophes to place names.
 * Aabria: Having Niirdal-Poc added to the Tal'Dorei map was an incredibly emotional moment for her.
 * Matt: He rejects the auteur theory; Exandria was never built from a single dominating vision but slowly by necessity and accident, and he loves seeing other people add to it.
 * For Brennan: What was it liking building out the Age of Arcanum? Brennan actually found it less intimidating than what Aabria had to do with various locations in Tal'Dorei. Fantasy often doesn't handle the concept of time and past ages well; Brennan found Matt's depiction of Aeor really great at addressing this (vs. the classic high fantasy stories of a "lapsarian, Edenic" age that never address the stagnation since that age); it explains why ancient relics and dungeons of a bygone age exist without sacrificing the idea of ongoing progress, as well as why things were different and more advanced at that time. Brennan used those ideas to create Avalir and the plot of EXU: Calamity. It felt a lot easier to him, though, to set the story in an ancient city that no longer exists, rather than places that are embedded in the lore of Critical Role. There was some pressure, however, because while it was fun to flesh out Vespin Chloras and make him more sympathetic and complex, having known figures like Vespin or Purvan Suul meant there was a risk of contradicting existing lore so he had to create a world with elements that could be broken and elements that could not be. He also chose not to use Aeor as a setting because of the pressure of having it have to exist during the Calamity.
 * Matt: Matt has spent a lot of time building out the world alone, but he had collaborated before when he co-DM-ed and really likes having people to bounce ideas off of, so working with Brennan and Aabria has been a great opportunity from his perspective, not just theirs. He's excited to bring in the lore they created into the main campaigns.
 * Aabria: She did, as a player, try to break it things, but could not.
 * All of the GMs also point out that in a home game, feel free to stop the Calamity! You're not beholden to the lore in a home game, as discussed.

What lore that you've created in Exandria is your favorite?

 * Aabria: The Chroma Conclave-themed spa in Kymal from Exandria Unlimited: Kymal; it just felt so indicative of how irreverent people can be even only a few decades after a catastrophic event, and she's excited for Taste of Tal'Dorei to come up in Campaign Three.
 * Matt: Taste of Tal'Dorei is a Basheer Ghouse addition!
 * All the GMs discuss the absurdity that tragedies provide and how comedy can come from that; they reference the absurdity and depth of emotion of Everything Everywhere All at Once as an example.
 * Brennan: He's proud of all the lore work on Avalir and appreciates Aabria's role as Laerryn, keeping track of so many arcane engines. Part of portraying the Age of Arcanum was specifically having a huge amount of lore and jargon to make it clear how magically developed and labyrinthine the world was. He also liked portraying Vespin Chloras as a flawed but not evil person whose main crime was not megalomania but simply hubris. He also credits the Ring of Brass for doing a lot of the heavy lifting of worldbuilding just through portraying who the people in this world were.
 * Matt: Matt really loves what Aabria did with Byroden, which was an important location for Vex and Vax but which was never seen during the Vox Machina campaign. He especially likes how it portrays a certain type of real-world culture that is deeply relatable for many viewers.
 * Aabria: Aimee Carrero's input was invaluable in building out Byroden, and Aabria has always found the American South to be the most "magical" part of the country; she also wanted to build it in contrast to what we knew of Syngorn.
 * Matt: What makes Byroden and other worldbuilding good is that logical thread of understanding why a town is unique in the ways that it is.

How Matt built Exandria
(Most of the below was answered by Matt.)

Origins and inspirations
Originally, Exandria wasn't known by that name at all, and it was just the basics of the town of Stilben, which Matt built for the one-shot for Liam's birthday. After it became an ongoing campaign, he built new towns as needed, starting with Westruun, where Vox Machina went next, and as it continued he eventually built out Tal'Dorei, and later Exandria, and other continents like Issylra. The logical thread of the world did not come first; it began to emerge later in his worldbuilding and some of the earlier material was more thrown-together. Matt also notes that sometimes high fantasy is similar in that there isn't much of a logical connection.

One of the inspirations for the Kryn Dynasty was the book Many Lives, Many Masters which is about past life regression; while he doesn't necessarily believe the premise, it was an excellent inspiration for a society based around reincarnation.

More generally, he agrees with Brennan, that if you have a world with ancient relics and strange ruins, you must have a history of that world that explains them, which is how the Calamity came to be. Similarly the Divergence came from wondering why the gods don't interfere and why instead a random group of adventurers has to save the world.

When did it feel complete enough to let others contribute?
On some level it's never complete! Additionally, actual play means other people document the world and remember all the contradictions that come out of improvisation, which can be stressful.

Brennan brings up the Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn and Explorer's Guide to Wildemount as signs that, even if the world is still being built out, there is a considerable amount of completed worldbuilding that's very different from how it's done on Dimension 20. But he also understands that as a GM, one wants to create a world that feels very real to the players, even if it is not truly ever complete.

Matt talks about how those books - already created with collaborators - are intended as "scaffolding" upon which people can build out more lore.

Why do you make your villains so hot?

 * Brennan: As Aabria established, each EXU DM gets to have one Betrayer God, so after he saw her play Lolth he decided he'd get a turn.
 * Aabria enjoyed him doing that because she felt she couldn't have Lolth turn on Opal the way Asmodeus turned on Zerxus.
 * Matt brings up how fun it is to play with new players who don't know the conventions of the game and see all the things they do as a result, because more experienced players tend to fall closer within the conventions until they become so confident in their knowledge they then loop back around to playing with those conventions again.
 * Brennan appreciates how Aabria played that because the GM, despite the name, isn't truly the master; they should be serving the players and trying to provide them with the general experience they were looking for.
 * Matt: Getting back to the original question, the internet and audiences are thirsty and consider villains hot regardless of GM intent.
 * Aabria points out Lucien seemed deliberately hot; Matt argues that this is because Molly, who shared the same body, was established to be hot by Taliesin, and therefore did not come from DM intent but instead, player intent. Also Matt did want to reference classical art and muscles.

Theater of the mind vs. maps

 * Aabria: EXU was a change because she had previously mostly done theater of the mind, so she wants to know how Matt and Brennan feel about maps.
 * Matt: For smaller groups, theater of the mind is often more fun unless there are players who truly love maps and minis - it's more cinematic and faster to run. For larger groups, however, it's really hard to envision the battlefield without some kind of visual aid. Matt also really likes minis just as a fun hobby.
 * Brennan: Brennan wants to credit Rick Perry for all his work on the Dimension 20 sets; because of the nature of the show a lot of the monsters and settings are highly specific and need to be built in-house, which Rick and his team does. For home games, however, he uses dry-erase boards and simple tokens - he recommends Othello pieces because you can track hit points on them with dry-erase marker. Generally, though, Brennan does prefer to have maps, both because he often plays with larger groups and because a lot of classes do benefit from having detailed information about the battlefield layout for such things as dashing or area of effect attacks.
 * As Brennan talks about the times Emily Axford has used area of effect to great use, Matt points out that the DM can also benefit from a map for targeting the PCs.
 * Both Matt and Brennan also discuss that the maps can be used to help players envision the environment beyond just the enemies in the fight; they may engage with objects in a way they otherwise wouldn't if they can see them on the map. Matt finds building a map helps him plan the encounter and think about it in more depth.
 * Matt reiterates that you can use very simple maps on graph paper, rather than expensive setpieces, and that he used that for his home games.
 * Brennan adds that while theater of the mind can be faster, it often comes at the expense of cool weird moments based on those odd object interactions, and that it's crucial for the GM to remember to still build atmosphere so the players can get the experience of the battle within their mind, rather than only thinking of combat.
 * Matt points out that you can get limitations from maps too; in theater of the mind, players might ask questions that lead to interesting developments, whereas for a map they may assume that only what is on the map matters, so a GM should remind the players to still ask questions about the environment.

How much time do you spend preparing for a session?

 * Aabria: Generally, she spends around as much time preparing as she does playing the session (ie, a four hour session needs four hours of prep). A lot of this is making sure the key information is something she knows by heart and can riff on easily. She also, however, is not including time spent thinking about the game while doing something else.
 * Brennan wholeheartedly agrees about thinking about the game while doing other things; he, Matt, and Aabria all then share many anecdotes of times they spaced out in the middle of doing something else to think about the game they DM, or were doing weird NPC voices, and their spouse noticed. Pro-tip: do not do weird NPC voices in the bathroom when other people may need to use the bathroom.

How do you keep a game on the rails, especially for shorter, self-contained stories?

 * Brennan: Actual play has more rails than home games do because of the requirements of the medium and to tell a specific type of story, and also Dimension 20's sets are built in advance so the story does need to go to certain places, which means character creation needs to happen very early so he can write the story. Since that's not what most GMs need: in a home game, the GM should remember they are not actually the storyteller. As a D&D player, Brennan wants full immersion such that he can play as that character without acting like he's in a story. However, this means the PCs will try to solve the problem through the most efficient way possible, and that doesn't necessarily make the best story, so it is the GM's role to guide that desire to find the solution their characters want into something that takes an interesting path. The GM should react to the players, rather than having a story in mind to start.
 * Matt: If you've prepared the world and, as Aabria said, you know it very well, you can let the players go and then the prep can be somewhat modular; you can let the players explore the world and highlight what's most relevant to them and makes sense in context. He also recommends making sure that even if players roll low, you provide them with enough information to continue on, even if it's not the full picture.
 * Aabria: Aabria has a reputation for having a very cinematic, movie-like style, and it's in part because everyone's familiar with movies and their act structure, so she tries to GM in that framework because people will naturally want to follow it without you needing to push them into it.
 * Brennan calls out Aabria's GM skills as being apparent even when she's a player; Laerryn's role in EXU Calamity made Brennan's job easier because she took huge and narratively satisfying risks and showed a great sense of storytelling as a player. He also compliments her "what you don't see" GM-ing moments.
 * Matt hopes to get a chance to properly GM for Aabria, even though she does count . Matt also agrees with Brennan that GMs often make fantastic players because they understand both sides of the table.
 * Aabria loved GM-ing for both Matt and Brennan in EXU and Misfits and Magic respectively for that same reason.
 * Matt finds actual play great because it gives people a chance to see far more GM-ing styles than one otherwise would; when he was growing up, you really only learned from your own GMs.

What are your favorite GM snacks?

 * Aabria knew how intense EXU: Calamity was because Brennan was snacking less; Brennan agrees but he did still need to break his diet to have a cola during the final episode because of the stress levels. She also noted that the one benefit of doing her season when the set was set up for social distancing was that she could eat all the weird snacks that she wanted, but did not want to have Funyun breath when doing scenes in EXU Calamity in which she was sitting next to and doing romantic scenes with Sam.
 * Brennan asks Matt and Aabria how they don't snack while GM-ing, and Matt says it's partially anxiety and partially because during the early days of Critical Role, someone online made a comment about snacking...but mostly anxiety. Aabria agrees. Brennan finds this strange because his snacking is in part due to anxiety; it's his stress response. They finish off with an anecdote about Tony Pepperoni.

Quotations
Matt: I despise the auteur theory of world building and creation, in film in general, but you know, in this instance. The idea of one person is the author of a space and kind of domineers over what's right and what's wrong with that. This was, once again, all created kind of out of accident. And the necessity for it to build and as it kind of took on a life of its own, nothing has been more fun and more exciting than watching it grow beyond me.

Matt: (on what is most stressful about worldbuilding) When people are assembling wikis and pages that are listing out all the contradictions within the things you've established in your lore. And you're like, "Fuck, fuck! I forgot that! That's not what I meant. I misspoke on. Okay, well, I'll figure it up later." The "what did I just say" panic I've only ever felt in actual play.

Aabria: If you see a tree and it doesn't make sense, you should just leave it.

Brennan: This is not done? I'm just going to go home, I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Take it, man. What the fuck? Not done? I got three months between seasons, okay? Welcome to Biggityburg. Here we go. It's the new town. This is the new season. You wackity-schmackity doo, 10 episodes. Help me!