Transcript:Game Masters of Exandria Roundtable

Welcome to our Game Masters of Exandria Roundtable.

I am Matthew Mercer, joined by Brennan Lee Mulligan

and Aabria Iyengar!

(laughing)

The three of us have learned a lot from one another

and tonight we hope we can share some of that with you.

So we hope this round table covers some of your most

burning questions and is helpful to any game master,

but especially those hoping to play

in the world of Exandria.

But before we dive in, a shameless reminder that this book

is available now, with my co-designers, Hannah Rose

and James Haeck, we made Tal'Dorei campaign setting reborn

to be a handy resource filled with lore, creatures,

character options, and advice for running a campaign

in the confidence of Tal'Dorei.

So many amazing writers contributed to this book,

including Aabria right over here.

Ooh, what?

Who kept parts of the book hidden from me

so I could play an EXU.

But more on that later.

We are all so excited for more folks to play in the world

of Critical Role, and we wanted to give you a little peek

behind the curtain at our inspirations

in hopes that they help you build your own stories

and expand the world at your own tables.

So, without further ado, let's jump into tonight's

Game Masters of Exandria Roundtable.

All right, so, well, this is kind of free form,

you know, mainly just asking each other questions,

pulling prompts where it feels necessary

and conversing about it and sharing what knowledge we got.

I guess to kick it off, let's talk about building a game.

Getting started with the process of getting

a campaign ready, or getting characters together.

Let's start with tips for session zeros,

which I'll just start off by saying like,

they're really important.

Gotta do them.

They're not absolutely necessary if you already have

a group that you gel with, but if you can,

I highly recommend it 'cause even if you do,

it's a really great experience and opportunity to one,

make sure everyone's on the same page.

To make sure the themes are conveyed properly.

Everyone knows the expectations and the lines and veils

of who's comfortable with what at the table.

what do you guys love and what do you particularly recommend

when it comes to session zeros?

Oh, man.

I think, for me, especially if you're playing with a table

that you already know, I like it as just a tone check in.

Especially if you're coming off of,

this is a group and we play a bunch of things together.

I love the just sort of affirmation of tone before you start

a new kind of story.

And that way you're not kind of hitting the same beats

that you did before and everyone has a chance

to sort of decide to make a new choice for a new game,

and a new story that I think is really,

it's a little amuse bouche before your new game

to get the old flavor out.

And so that's my favorite thing, other than

establishing lines and veils.

I love safety tools.

I love having little check in things and X cards and stuff

on the table.

That's my jam, but yeah.

For those who don't know about that or are uncertain

about what safety tools are referring to,

you can search online for tabletop RPG safety tools.

Google it.

Lines and veils on Google, and there are many great

breakdowns put out by a number of great people

in the community that outline exactly what these tools

are for and how to easily incorporate them.

Yeah.

Brennan, what you got, bud?

For session zero, huh?

Yeah, yeah.

Boy, for session zero.

Take a minute, take minute.

I'm sorry.

We're just being so serious, and we're having a great time.

Can we just say what happened, which is that you opened up

the world of Exandria, the greatest fantasy world

of all time, and we got to come and do stories in it?

Matt, Matt, I don't like high fantasy.

This is my favorite world.

Yeah, this is dope and cool and thanks for letting us

come and play in it.

It was really nice.

It was all an accident.

(laughing)

This world wasn't meant to happen.

It just kind of happened on accident.

And then it kept growing, like the blob, and then,

a great movie if you haven't seen it,

depending on which one you watch.

And then better people came in to help me expand it

even further, so--

Equal!

Fucking lies.

I'm very, very happy.

I'm very excited and very grateful.

I love hearing you say like, it's an,

it's made me think of the fucking,

cursing.

It's allowed here.

Okay, balls.

Aabria: You said so many cusses on the show.

I know, but, it made me think of the running gag,

inside joke, the James Lipton questionnaire of,

"When you die and meet God at the pearly gates"

Because as the creator of Exandria, the idea of getting

to the pearly gates and meeting God and being like (gasps).

And him being like, "Listen, I'm gonna level with you.

I got no idea what the fuck is going on.

I got no clue what's, help, help, get in here."

Is weirdly spiritually affirming to me.

Session zero.

Yes, yes.

Session. Talk about setting the tone.

Now we've properly set the tone for this, so.

Exandria GM round table; the illusion of control.

Yes. Aabria: Ooh!

That's as real as hell, actually.

Yeah, yeah.

I love it, I love it. Shout out to Amy Carrero.

(laughing)

I don't know which of the six D20 core cast to even say,

it's really all of them. Aabria: All of the above.

All the above.

So I guess what I would say with session zero is,

there's a great quote by, I don't know if it's like,

Valtaire or someone, but the thing about like,

"I apologize for not writing you a short,

I didn't have time to write you a short letter

so I had to write you a long one."

Aabria: Yes. Right?

And that idea about the time it takes

to make something short.

So I really, at dimension 20 'cause it's so short

in the anthology pieces.

You know, our longest seasons are 20 episodes.

Sessions zeros are critical, they're critical, right?

Because there's an element of,

you know, I just talked, we were recording this

on a day where we also randomly did the Twitter spaces

for Calamity earlier.

People were talking about player agency

versus railroading, right?

Which is interesting, right?

Because there is, I think that is a false dichotomy.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because people, you know, always your players will do

things that you don't expect.

However, the way you get around the fact

that a shorter campaign, especially one with pre-built sets,

especially when that needs to hit certain things

at certain times.

It doesn't have a lot of freedom to it.

And for anyone out there running a one shot,

or doing something like that, let's say you wanna run

something in Tal'Dorei, and you know that there's a set

limit of time on it.

I used to run a game at a summer camp where it's like,

"Hey, August 28th, this has got to be over."

(chuckling)

Everyone's going back to different states.

The way you handle that and put that together, right?

Is essentially that you need rails, but it does suck

for those rails to come from the dungeon master,

so what you can do in a session zero

is do really definitive, deep character development and go,

"Who are these characters?"

Which is, I think a big part of doing planning

as a dungeon master is, at least for me,

what I use session zeros for is like,

look, I have a small amount of time to get this done.

I need to know everything about you because that's what

the rails are gonna be.

The rails are gonna be who you tell me you are.

Aabria: Yeah.

So that way you grant this full degree of player agency

and give yourself the ability to create rails

that were designed by the players, right?

Which is really, that's the best of both worlds.

That's having your cake and eating it too.

So for me, session zeros, I don't even just have one,

I'll have, I like to do character creation

all in the same room.

Aabria: God, can you talk about your character deck?

'Cause I think that's the thing, or sort of,

not singularly 'cause you blew me away.

It's crazy, I felt crazy being like,

"I have half a thought."

And then after talking to you for two hours, I'm like,

"I know everything about Laren and also I know you do."

Because there were really cool moments in Calamity

where you were feeding me, and it wasn't a railroad,

it was like, oh, you understand exactly what Laren's

motivations are, so you can help me see them and be like,

"Yeah, you're right, I don't hear that cool prophecy.

I hate this tree."

A million percent, which is, so I think that for that,

doing character creation all at the same table,

it's just that those, the shorter a campaign's going to be,

the more prep work ahead of time can enable you to achieve

these objectives in a way that feels organic.

So we do character creation altogether.

For example, I have a 13 year home game

that did not have multiple session zeros.

I had one night 13 years ago, I was 21 years old

and we were at my buddy Jack's place in Bronxville,

and I went like, "Here's the world.

What do you guys wanna be?"

And they all make characters on the spot

and I said, "Sounds good" Because I knew that the joy

was we were going to play and find out.

We had the benefit of time and this surging saga

that we'd be able to find all that stuff.

In a shorter run, you do character creation altogether

because the group needs to have a cohesive identity,

the characters need to have a cohesive identity.

And again, the easiest way to hit plot objectives

if you have those constraints is to have,

rather than be like,

"I need to guess what everyone's gonna do."

You just go, "What do you think you're gonna do?"

And you do that and then they will be kind enough

to just tell you.

And then you get to prep around that.

Yeah, I was gonna jump into that too and say

one of the cool things beyond just figuring out

your character, and you hit on this a little bit,

your character's objectives and kind of where you hope

to see them go or what mysteries you wanna lay out

for the GM to grab onto and maybe introduce

as part of their story is the inner character relationships,

'cause I mean, growing up and playing this game

beginning when I began my history as a GM,

people would just come with their characters

and throw them into the pot and see what happens,

which is a fun way to do it.

That's how Vox Machina started,

but even then, we were all creating characters together

and that's when Laura and Liam went like,

"Let's make them twins."

And now they came into the game

with a pre-established relationship.

They got to talk on their own, and they already walk in

with a further realized dynamic between the two of them

that affects how the rest of the party comes together.

With the mighty nine, I did session zeros independently

with each character, so that everyone had an opportunity

to kind of really think about it one on one

and play with it a bit, and then we did a session zero

where they brought some of the characters together.

So that once again, beyond just being

a well realized character, they had some pre-established

relationships that then they could come in

and feel comfortable having somebody to lean on in this

kind of creative soup of, "I'm beginning a new adventure.

How do I find this?

Where do I ground myself in there?"

And to the point of Calamity,

deeply, deeply set relationships

that all of you work together in advance of this,

that when you jumped into the game,

you all already knew each other's characters,

you had, you know, overt and secret histories

with each other and all of these layers of goals and secrets

you had between each other that just made the rest of it

so juicy, and you wouldn't have that unless you established

a proper extensive session zero to let that build.

Yeah.

I do, you go, you go. You do it.

You do it.

Finish your thought.

I was gonna just say that,

that idea of, so the sessions of a character generation

being its own thing, following up with those individual,

what really makes your character tick,

and then having even, this is more for actual play,

but having a session zero where the cameras aren't rolling,

so that someone can be like, "Hello, hello, hello.

No, I'm not doing that voice."

So bail, bail. Sometimes session zero

isn't enough, you know?

(laughing)

You'd be in a campaign too, and Sams Nott's like,

"Hello, I'm not"

It lasted three episodes, it just went away,

and we're like, "Yeah, it's for the best."

We all agree to forget.

Yep. And that's good.

But I do have a question about, for a longer form campaign,

and knowing that for the main campaigns on CR,

you're doing a lot of home brewing for your players too.

What is character creation like when you know

that your players are going to have to sit

in a character for roughly 100,000 hours?

That's part of the conversation I have with the players.

One, I don't ever want to tell them, you know,

"You should be this." You know, it's always about,

"What do you wanna play, what inspires you?"

And talk with the other players so you all feel like

you have a comfortable group that, you know,

overlaps in ways that doesn't feel like you're, you know,

contradicting each other or that you're,

you don't feel unique enough in the setting,

but also ask them questions of,

"Is this something that you're excited about

in the long run?"

And you know, here are the things that we can do

if it ends up not being as excited,

we can always pivot, you know?

There's people that are very stringent.

You know, your character is locked in this

as you go forward, but if that's not fun for your group

and it doesn't hurt anybody at the table, you know,

if you can go in partway into a campaign

and if they're not liking the character,

they can sunset that character and they can make a new one

or they can, you know, transition into a different

narrative element.

Just because a person started their first 10 levels

as a paladin doesn't mean they can't discard it

and start life as a warrior, and not necessarily multi-class

but just switch over to it if it's fun.

Discard those mechanics.

Get rid of levels, reskin, do a different, I love that.

I love that so much.

That makes such a great narrative thing.

So here's another funny question too.

When you don't, what are the tactics you guys use to get

around situations where for logistical reasons

you couldn't have a session zero?

You know what I mean?

You're thrown into a stream, you're doing a one shot,

something else.

How do you bring that, the things you would normally get

out of a session zero into something in medias res?

I'm a huge fan of the giving everyone their opening moment

by themselves to just be like,

"Okay, here's your opportunity to explain

who the fuck you are.

And we're all gonna take notes together and be like,

"What are your priorities in this early moment?"

'Cause yeah, there's been many a charity game

where it's just like, "Hey, this came together

11 minutes ago"

And I'm like, "I've seen nothing, I know nothing.

Who are you, what is this?

What are we, what do we care about?

Oh, you're a monster, tight.

Okay, okay, okay, yeah."

And to that point, if you don't have time to do

a session zero, you can just email a set of questions

to the players, just to get them thinking about it.

'Cause they can be like, "I'm a wizard who's good with

fire magic."

You're like, "Cool, but what's something they regret

from their childhood."

Aabria: Yes! They're like, "Huh."

And you just give them a few prompts.

Some questions you can email them.

You can do them all across the board to all the players,

or if you have a little time, you can tailor them

to each character to be unique.

Ask them questions about, you know,

"Who else in the party owes you a favor and why?"

You know, "Who else in the party do you hold

a grudge against and why?"

You know, just give them little tidbits that can kind of

help replace some of those conversations that happen

in session zero to get them thinking,

so when they do show up at the table,

you've tricked them into putting a little more thought

into who they're gonna be playing

and how they're gonna come to the table prepared.

Love that.

Write that down.

Sucker your players into caring about the characters

and each other.

Boom.

Let's just also acknowledge, there's nothing,

there's nothing you can do if the players don't care.

At the end of the day, you know,

I don't care how the good of a GM you are.

The players are the driving energy of the game.

I truly feel like the weird thing about all these tabletops

as a GM, is weirdly, you're a one person Greek chorus.

You're the supporting cast.

The story has to follow what's happening out there.

And I feel like there's a weird analogy I always like

of, when you're baking, you'll find out what you didn't

put into the mix in the oven.

You find out way too late what's not there.

And I feel that way all the time when people make characters

and they'll get three or four sessions into something

and be like, "It's not clicking for me.

There's something happened this session that wasn't fun."

And you're like, "It has nothing to do with this session.

You made a character with no connection to the world

that they're from.

Or you made a character that has no history."

The complicated things about backstory,

I don't think you need all the backstory in the world.

What backstory is there to do is to give you a sense

of trajectory.

Where you are coming from informs where you are going,

and it's the going that's essential.

So people will be like, "I don't need backstory."

And you're like, "Cool, where's your momentum coming from?

How are you moving?"

'Cause if you start with someone who's like, "What's up?

I have a class and spells and magical gear

and literally no desires and no attachments."

And you're like, "Buddy, that's enlightenment.

I don't know what to tell you.

You're actually done.

You win."

"You beat the game."

"You beat the game.

You have no attachments and no desires?

You have no goals, no enemies or friends?

Who are you?!"

So yeah, that stuff I think is momentum.

There's precious little I feel I can do

if a player doesn't have those things.

And even then, depending on the style at the table,

it can be fun to explore that in the moment.

One of my best friends in high school

who was one of the first people I GM'd for, Ian.

Love him to death.

His character was a randomly wandering martial artist

on a search for power.

And that was his whole backstory.

And you know what?

We had fun.

We had fun finding out what that power was,

finding out where he was wandering,

finding out what happened to his parents,

'cause everyone in D&D has dead parents.

And you just kind of find it as you go along.

So yeah, don't feel like, you know, to your point,

every player has to necessarily feel like they are gonna

write a 40 page backstory, and you don't really

want that necessarily.

You know, one page is good for me, you know, two pages more.

At a certain point, it becomes a little challenging

to incorporate all the details of the story

if there's expectation to it,

but if it's just for the personal, you know,

the personal player use, that's totally fine.

There are real life humans that don't have 40 pages

of backstory.

You know what I mean?

You don't have to go nuts.

It's just the idea of, yeah, and I think that's right,

of the detail is less significant, I think,

than the idea of, in improv, we used to talk about

the feeling of, when does your character have justification

versus when they don't, which is improv terminology of,

do you know what motivates their unusual behavior, right?

And I never found a way to articulate it

but I always knew the feeling of it,

and it felt like the Iron Man. (mimics clunking sound)

that last one where something clicks.

Yeah. That's how much

backstory you need.

And that can be a sentence or it can be a book.

But when you go, "Got it." Matthew: Yeah.

I will say unto that, too, expectation

of backstory integration.

For me, I've always considered character backstory

that is delivered to the GM

is an invitation to play with it.

But, it shouldn't be an expectation.

Yes.

You know, I've seen some conversations

in the space in the past of people being like,

I wrote Nixie a backstory and my GM never

made it its own story.

And it's like, well, different stories

find their way of happening naturally in the world

based on how the players interact

and how the GM wants to run the game.

It's definitely an invitation

and if you do want to see that come

to fruition, that's a conversation

you should have in a session zero with the GM

to be like, hey, these are things.

There are some elements to this

that it'd be cool to explore if it fits within your story.

And just let them know that's something

that you are excited about as a player

to maybe get into.

But if you just like, pass the paper over

and silent wait for the next three years

for something to pop up

and then get angry that it never happened,

that's a lack of communication.

And once again, like a lot of the problems

that happen at the table just come

from a lack of communication.

Truly.

Brennan: Yeah.

My favorite tip for the extensive backstory people,

and people who are like, I have a backstory,

but I forgot to send it

because I'm also a bad person sometimes.

Is right before the game starts,

asking everyone at the table, pulling them to the side,

and asking 'em really quick, like, what's your backstory?

Because someone that wrote 40 pages

is going to remember the thing they care about the most.

And for those who didn't come up with enough,

they will generate something in the moment as they talk.

And I'm like, got it.

I got the most important thing.

And I read the 40 pages,

but you actually only care about this one nugget,

right now, at least.

So that's the one I'll remember and carry through

in the beginning and we can revisit

the other 39 pages later.

See, I think I definitely fall

on the other side of the spectrum in terms

of like, for me, when I get the 40 pages of backstory.

And again, ultimately it is agreement

and conversation about what's the game

you all wanna play together?

Aabria: Yes.

For me, I am lazy.

So, when someone hands me 40 pages of backstory I go,

oh, plot hooks you'll bite on every time?

Thank you.

So in other words, there's an element of like,

I, you know.

Like, I often poke my PCs for that stuff

because I wanna go like, hey, what's the stuff

that is gonna be like slam dunks for me?

Right? Like, that I can stitch.

Because you know, with "D20" I make,

I would say I make like 30% of the world

and that's when we do character generation.

And then people pitch stuff.

And I was like, no clerics?

No clerics at all?

Don't develop gods, underline.

And then, you know what I mean?

Literally being like, where's your interest gonna be?

Because it helps me save on prep time

and it makes sure that I don't miss

when it comes to plot hooks

because it's never gonna be like, I don't know.

You know, like a mysterious necromancer

in a corner of a tavern.

And they're like, fuck this guy.

What's up with this dude?

And I'm like, your uncle, right?

The guy you said you don't like

and you swore to kill, he's here.

You know, like?

The Bolo, sorry.

No Bolo, please.

Mm-hm.

God damn, Bolo.

Ugh, Bolo's the best.

(laughing)

Killer guy from Bolo.

That's our next novel, it's the whole Bolo saga, legacy.

Yes!

Bolo!

Thank you, Sam.

Oh my god.

Another interesting point, as far as like

getting GMs prepped in the early stages.

Since Tal'Dorei or Exandria in general

is an established setting.

And this is a conversation

that I'm interested to have as well,

that can be daunting for people who are new or old players.

I personally, as I learned to GM,

I would just create my own setting

because I was too scared to dive into established settings.

Like Forgotten Realms, or Greyhawk

when I first got into D and D.

And so I understand that there can be

a reticent sort of, an anxiety about

not wanting to ruin a setting,

or not wanting to run it incorrectly.

And I think this would be kind of like,

a good conversation to have on how

to get past that fear and ways to prepare yourself

for something like this if it's something

you really wanted to do.

One thing I'll say is,

no one would ever correct you about running Tal'Dorei wrong.

You've never had that fear, right?

I actually was super, like, confident.

Yeah.

And I was like, you know what's gonna be good

is to run in a campaign setting,

where the shit I have to make up

on the spot immediately becomes canon.

Aabria: Yeah, that's fun.

And that's gonna be fun, actually.

That's gonna be super not stressful.

That's gonna be good for me.

This is a great topic.

We're going in a great direction.

This is good, this is good.

I love it.

The good news is, for the majority of you,

it will not be live streamed to the internet.

So you can fuck it up as much as you want.

And no one's gonna poke ya about it on the internet.

Yeah, dude, fuckin' ice water in my veins.

(giggling cup)

Hey, try it when the guy that made the world

is at your table.

(laughing)

You were great.

Thank you, but.

Yeah, I mean people know this,

but I literally was like, Dani Carr

with a blowgun in the corner.

If I say some shit that's not true, shunk.

Please, please, help me!

But I... all of that to say, it's... yeah.

So, don't do it.

Don't even try, is the thing.

No, I think, yeah, the way you kind of put it where,

this feels the way it feels like when you run

any sort of campaign or source book.

Where you know that there's a possibility

that someone at the table will know

the setting a little better than you

because anyone can buy the book

and study harder than you did

because you were doing all the things

to build a story.

And no one 100 percents all the lore.

I think it's just the idea of, one,

if you have the ability to, take a break

and go look something up.

I think there's this weird tension.

Especially when people watch a lot of actual play,

to be perfect immediately.

Video games have buffering.

You can just be like, I have to poop real bad

and then take the book into the back

and study for five minutes and come back out

with the answer that you want,

or the lore that you needed, or like,

players are always gonna go in the direction

of the one thing you didn't prepare

and they're gonna go sprint that way.

So give yourself a little bit of grace,

I think is the first part of being comfortable.

I'll also say to that, too.

As part of the session zero, beginning of the campaign,

establish this is your version of the setting.

Yes.

You know, if you really wanna be hardcore

into canon you can, but really, and that was the intent

with writing Tal'Dorei Reborn and writing Wildemount book

was to ensure that this was information that you could use

that's meant to be helpful that you can take and use

as much as you want to the letter,

or break it apart and make it and customize it

however you want to for your own setting at home.

Just letting your players know

that this is your version of the world.

Some things will be considered the same.

Some things might change.

Some things might contradict and that's intended,

because it's yours, not mine.

Not yours, not yours, but it's yours.

Yeah!

Wow.

That was good.

I love that.

You answered that too good.

I was making it up.

Yay.

Yay!

There's, what's the prompter saying now?

Are we supposed to--

I can't read anymore, I took my glasses off.

Uh.

Okay.

What is it saying?

I was doing it sincerely.

Exandria is a labor of love and collaboration.

Yes.

And as part of that conversation, Aabria.

Oo!

What was it like creating Niirdal-Poc?

Oo! Thanks for asking.

Ha, ugh, can't speak in that voice.

Just let it drop.

It was so, okay, man.

It's so cool.

It's such a beautiful thing

to have been able to start off

in like a established place and be like,

here's like, let's play all the greatest hits.

Like, here's Emon

and those things that we know and love.

And looking at the, yeah.

The moment we were able to move and create something new,

that was like the gift.

Because you get your opportunity to say,

here's the theme that I take from this world

that I love so much.

And as someone who didn't get raised in high fantasy,

to me, the interesting part of this world

and this sort of Campbellian mono-myth that you play

with a group and improvised

is that idea of aggregating power

and deciding what you're gonna be.

And it's usually a hero, but not always.

And yeah, Niirdal-Poc was my little love letter

to the idea of being at the precipice.

Because the brief was very fun for

that first Calamity.

They were right at level two going into three,

knowing that half of the cast was going

to take their characters into a long form campaign

and then pick all of your subclasses while we were playing.

That idea of like power undifferentiated

and being in the moment, making the decision

about the person and the hero you wanted to be.

I wanted to create a little city

that sort of lived in the like,

we don't really see the difference

between divine power and nature power

and arcane magic.

It's all just potential and what you wanna do with it.

So it ended up being like a fun little theme.

And then I just wanted to add a bunch of vowels.

That's all, that's it.

I mean, that's honestly the trick.

Add vowels, add apostrophes.

Make it look fancy.

I mean, you're not gonna get a more solid GM tip

than throw an apostrophe in there.

Yo, get that in there.

That's good.

Get it in there.

I love that.

The kind of like Promethean, in between space.

That liminal space of possibility.

That's so fun.

Thank you for adding to the world.

Yeah!

Brennan: It's so cool.

I ugly cried when I saw the first mock up of the map

and it was on there.

And I was like, oh.

Ryan, my poor husband, was like,

I don't know what to do.

Like, he just stood there as I just scream sobbed at my cat.

Because it was real and apart of it.

It was great.

So thank you for that weird moment in my relationship.

Matt: Hey, happy to provide.

I was like, once a month.

Yeah.

It makes me joyful.

I think I've said this to you before, as well.

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.

You know, like?

And I feel like, you know, as a person

who's not a parent, this is the closest thing

I have to a child is this world.

And watching other people kind of become family

to it as well, and kind of adding

and developing it in their own way,

it's really kind of special.

Story babies?

I think we got story babies.

Oh, hell yeah.

Speaking of story babies, let's talk about what you did.

Yes!

Because I got a place.

You got a time.

Brennan: Yes.

What was it like building out

the sort of legendary Age of Arcanum?

For the record, I was so much more relieved to have it.

Like, I think what you pulled off,

with the first ExU and then Kymal after it,

is so much scarier to me.

And such a bigger lift.

Because as much, because I'm sure people

at Calamity aren't like, you could fuck up the past

and change the future.

But to me I was--

Roll natural 20s.

Brennan: But to me I was like--

I was counting 'em.

I was like, oop.

Wait, half way there they were like, ha, ha, wait.

I had a button to shut it down if it got to three.

I was ready. Yeah, that's good.

So here's the thing.

When you don't have those first two,

because it goes one in 20,

one in 400, one in 8,000.

One in 160,000 or 1.6 million?

In any case, the first two 20s take it down

from either 160,000 or 1.6 million

all the way down to one in 400.

Which is way more like...

No, but to me, the like, I was very intimidated

by the idea of having the past behind you.

Which is what ExU, the situation is.

Is you have the full weight of the canon there.

Weirdly, when I, you know,

Matt was talking to me about like, oh, ExU,

here's all the corners of the world

that warrant exploring.

And Matt threw out the Age of Arcanum and I was like,

that was not said by accident.

Like, that's a part of this world that Matt loves.

And the entire Aeor arc in C2 is, I mean, you know.

There's a million of my favorite arcs.

But that one does stand out

as being like, what an incredible piece of world building

because fantasy, like what Exandria nails

and what Matt nailed in C2 is fantasy is bad with time.

Fantasy is bad with time.

All respect to J.R.R. Tolkien.

I'll cry every time Theoden's on screen

or in the book, for the rest of my life.

"A sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises."

But, we gotta--

What did you just say?

We gotta get to "Return of the King."

Oh my god.

We gotta get there.

We'll get ya there.

We'll get cha there.

But, like, I've called it out in the past.

That like, in Middle Earth,

the best sword that ever got made

got made 10,000 years ago.

And if you compare that to the real world

advancement of weapons technology on Earth

you start to go like, how are blacksmiths doing emotionally?

Are they okay?

They're all doing bad.

They're all like, yeah, I guess there was

an elf a long time ago who made

the best thing there's ever god damn been.

And what's so great about Exandria

is that it exists in time.

Matt is so good about having fucking holidays

and a calendar and time moves.

And it creates a feeling of reality

to all these things.

And when you go into C2 with Aeor

you get the feeling of like, no, no.

This like, yes, we have this lapsarian, Edenic thing

that's necessary for fantasy of like,

how do you populate a world with tons

of dungeons and magic items that are unexplained?

You need some long ago time.

And in Middle Earth, Tolkien kind of just goes like,

yeah, shit was dope back then.

And it stopped being dope, anyway um...

(laughing)

Verbatim, that's what he said.

That's what he said.

But with Calamity there's this incredible

in world explanation for how this stuff got lost.

So, it was.

Oh this is, I'm sorry,

I take 40 minutes to answer a question.

Aabria: No, it's not.

My brain, I'm so... I apologize.

Aabria: Your brain is good!

We're here for this.

But the point being, it was an incredible time

to go back to.

And it was really exciting to go back there

because it was basically, as an improviser,

the ability to yes and all of the implications

of this deeply tragic, horrifying.

You know, you get to Aeor, Cognouza, the Genesis Ward.

You know, all this stuff.

You get into this thing.

The Immensus Gate.

And you start going like, this was not like now.

And you know, it's different.

You get to this world and you're like,

this place was bureaucratic and Byzantine.

And things aren't like this anymore.

How strange.

And you see visions of a more technologically advanced,

which is a big departure from the Tolkien thing.

It's not just like, oh people were more magical back then.

It was like, no, no, no.

There was a whole system going on.

So that was, so everything with Avalir

and everything in Calamity was a huge yes and,

and a huge ability to basically tap

into a piece of storytelling DNA and go, okay,

spread that out.

Like, what's the evolution tree that comes off

of that Aeor arc from C2?

And it was a god damn dream.

And specifically to be in the ancient past was,

I felt like, a big load off.

To be like, I'm gonna go into the ancient past.

I'm gonna side swipe to an unnamed sky city

and we're gonna make something where

it's going to sort of like, have a little bit of space

for six of the best players in the world

to fuck my shit up and not ruin anything in the canon.

But also you explain the shattered teeth

which is fucking dope.

That was so cool.

That was... delicious.

There was some of my favorite stuff

that came out of talking with Matt in that one were like,

because I think that we were talking about it before.

Because remember?

In the early stuff of that it was like,

yeah, where does Avalir go?

Like, it's bopping around.

It's sort of this traveling city.

For the record, just to jump in here,

so much of my life since Critical Role started,

even before that just at home,

is just by myself in my room building this shit.

Because the only people that cared about it were my players.

Getting to collaborate with people,

both in these books and then to actually world build

and have you add to this is so awesome

and so freeing.

Aabria: Yay!

To have somebody to bounce it off of.

It reminds of when I used to co-GM with my friend Zach

like 15 years ago.

To have somebody to bounce ideas off of,

and to tie things together.

And these conversations were exactly that.

I remember taking Omar to the vet with Marisha

and while she was taking care of business inside

I'm out there for like an hour on the phone

with you talking about just like the cosmology

of Exandria and how the gods relate to mortality

and their creations and the historical kind

of truth behind a lot of the different gods.

And I like, I don't get to have

these conversations with anybody.

You know, like that's awesome.

But anyway, sorry, not to cut ya off there.

Yeah, I need another 20.

Thanks, man.

Yeah, please don't cut me off.

What was I saying?

Essentially, it was a beautiful time to explore.

And tying it into the lore, the shattered teeth,

the Vespin Chloras, and the divinities, right?

Because those are the things that sort of like,

you couldn't Purvan Suul.

Talk about a moment where you have to improvise

where you're not expecting it.

I was like, we've got the Purvan cameo

and he's dipping.

And Sam and Louise being like, wait!

Yeah!

And I was like, don't make me do more stuff with Purvan.

That's a part you can really fuck up.

I was like, very careful about not giving them

like surface.

You know, like part of having Avalir be again,

a before unmentioned place, I was like,

whatever you guys do here,

it's like I've child proofed the house.

Sorry, not that the players were themselves children.

But you know, foam surfaces.

Well maybe, thanks.

You want something they can break it.

100%.

Yeah, you wanna have that thing where it's like,

okay, we're gonna be in a corner of the setting

that if you break it or don't, whatever.

Matt: Yeah.

It's gonna survive it.

Rather than doing it in like,

we first talked about doing it in Aeor.

I was like, that's really intimidating

in a very scary way.

Because like, we know that Aeor has to survive

well into the Calamity.

Mm-hm.

There's a lot of things that need to get hit there.

So, yeah, so that's what it was like

doing Age of Arcanum stuff.

It was a joy, incredible.

I mean, I know I sound like a broken record here,

but it's just cool.

You guys are cool.

This has been fun.

Another cool facet too, of having you guys play

in this world is everything you do.

You know, you keep saying,

"I don't wanna, you know, mess anything up."

And you haven't, you know, the only thing.

I didn't wanna mess it up, it's like,

"I'm gonna ruin it."

And no, and you tried.

I broke it.

You broke a lot of things.

Thanks.

But there was one thing you couldn't stop.

Heartbreak.

And the Calamity, I guess.

It's in the name.

But so many facets of the player choices

of the world building that you've both done are now Canon,

and that gives me more things to play off of

in the future too, and it's kind of the cyclical thing

where we're just, I don't know, we get to fill in the gaps

and push back the fog of war,

and it is a world building ascent, which is awesome.

It isn't just, I've been building this thing

and you guys did your own side stories.

It's passing the baton back and forth,

and nothing is more exciting than watching

what you guys do, or playing in what you guys are doing,

being like, "Oh, that'll be fun to maybe pull into a later,

you know, campaign" Or like, "Oh, this would be a fun thing

to reference down the road" Or, "oh, that actually ties

this thing together that I hadn't had time

to really flesh out."

Or "Wow, that's not at all what I was anticipating.

It's much cooler than what I was thinking of.

We're gonna go with that now." You know?

I just love the whole process.

So thank you guys for taking the plunge.

And to that point, and using this at home,

you don't have to worry about any of this pressure.

You can do whatever the fuck you want.

You wanna stop the Calamity, go for it.

Aabria: Oh my God, do it. It's fine.

Brennan: Stop the Calamity!

Aabria: Don't let it happen.

If you see a tree and it doesn't make sense,

you should just leave it.

You just trust a tree is maybe the thing.

It's the sun tree's ancestor.

Look what you did.

Look, I expected to play it, just to be like, "Hey."

The hubris of slightly disliking hippies.

(laughing)

Our parents remember that.

Fuck you and fuck your tree.

Aabria: Every wizard is a yeppy.

Of course they hate anyone that walks around barefoot.

Wizards wear their shoes to bed.

They're not cool.

They're not chill people.

Brennan: I wear my shoes to bed.

Yeah.

Here's a fun question.

And before we answer this, it's totally fine (indistinct).

Of the lore that you've established

and brought into Exandria, what element of it

is your favorite?

What thing are you most proud of in what you've created

in this world?

Oh, that's a good question.

Brennan: Wow. Dang.

You're gonna wanna speed this little bit up while we think

in real time.

I know it seemed disrespectful in Kymal,

but to me, I just loved the idea

that even a generation after one of the worst things

that ever happened to Tal'Dorei

in the Chroma Conclave happened.

To me, irreverence, and a lack of holding the past

as sacred, it's a hopeful thing and a sign of progress

where we're like, "We're no longer wounded by that

so we can laugh at it."

So making the Chroma spa cave

and really just the world's goofiest little casino,

to me was that idea that nature heals

and sometimes it heals a little stupid, but it does heal

and moves forward.

And then when you mentioned the taste of Tal'Dorei

in the main game.

My group chat of all of us while we're watching blew up,

we're like, "Did you see?"

I'm like, "Yeah, I'm watching, ah!"

Oh, and I can't take all the credit for that.

The taste Tal'Dorei was Basheer Ghouse',

one of his contributions to the Hell Catch Valley.

That was Basheer's little thread that he threw to me,

and then I got to flesh out from within there.

That was another example of passing the baton

back and forth when world building that makes something

really special.

Yeah.

I love that.

Exploring that was, all the external chaos and internal,

deep sigh that I could have ever hoped for.

Just, "Oh, God, you're right." Now I have now have

a Casa Bonita in Tal'Dorei, and I thank you for that.

I'm so sorry.

No, it's wonderful.

It's fucking great.

(laughing)

But it's true though.

It's one of the things that, you know,

for all of it's bumps and warts,

I always appreciated about South Park,

is that it is willing to take sometimes deep tragedy,

and as part of the process of processing it

and healing from it, to be able to find the humor

in the darker elements of humanity

and kind of showing its face.

I think that's a really fun example of that.

Brennan: Humor, yeah.

I love that.

Like you were saying--

Do you do funny stuff?

'Cause I just cried for four weeks straight.

God.

(laughing)

Cool, cool. Damn!

I'm still dehydrated by this whole show.

I'm sunburned from this side now.

Ah!

Matt: Fucking Two face over here,

just flipping my coin.

Honestly, when the bolo scene happened,

part of me was like, "Get your laughs in now, motherfuckers.

Tone's not coming up from this."

Amazing.

No, but honestly, like you're saying,

I believe irreverence as healing is beautiful.

And I think that, honestly to that point,

humorlessness does not occur in nature.

When I have been around death in my real life,

there's almost always been laughter.

Not at the expense of death.

One of the ways I put it talking with Iz about it was like,

"Death is not a punchline, but it is the perfect setup."

Death renders everything around it absurd.

Yeah.

Brennan: So weirdly, I've always, in moments that

I've been in, either at funerals or dealing with

the post mortem.

Even just logistics of like,

"Okay, our family member has passed away.

I have a reservation for us at Buca di Beppo."

And you just go like, "Yeah, 'cause we are hungry again

and we will have to eat, and later today,

some of us will poop.

Some of us will poop on the day of death."

Yeah.

Brennan: And everything is rendered hilarious

by the presence of death there.

So I feel like irreverence, that's actually, I feel like,

both me and Iz have that shared value of yeah.

It's why we loved everything everywhere all at once so much

because it's profundity and absurdity are deeply in love.

They go hand in hand, right?

The world is very profoundly meaningful and deeply silly.

Daniel Sloss has a wonderful piece in one of his standups

where he talks about using humor in the darkest of moments

as a wonderful, necessary relief of stress and emotion.

And some of his, he has a whole story about,

his closest friend waits for the perfect moment

with the perfect joke at the most inappropriate,

emotional beat, and I can't help but feel that

deep in my heart and love that truth wholly.

Brennan: Yeah, a million percent.

To the Exandria thing.

I think what I,

in terms of a piece of lore,

I really enjoyed just, you know,

there was a chunky bit of lore for Avalier.

You were a champ, Aabria, in terms of being the stem wizard.

Everyone got a lot of lore.

You were like, "Here's 40 spell engines."

And for everyone that kept track of what the fuck

those spell engines were, you're a champ and a pro

and I appreciate you.

I threw a lot of jargon at people.

And I think that the jargon for me was part of the point

of being like, "If you're a little intimidated

by the amount of crazy wizard shit going on.

Yeah, it was intimidating at the time."

This was out of hand.

This got a little goofy.

I think I texted you, Matt, one day being,

you were like, we were scheduling a meeting

and I was like, "Just sitting here,

coming up with fake wizards."

(laughing)

This is my job today.

This is my job.

My job today is I've come up with 30 fake wizards.

Got all their names.

There's so many of them.

Call three fake wizards, go.

Madara glyph.

Aabria: I feel bad about her.

Let me just say, that was the meanest thing I did

and I went home, I was like, "I feel bad about that."

It's pretty harsh.

Ooh.

Shout out to Madara.

Madara, ooh.

Still fuck that tree, but I'm sad about the girl.

Yeah, Madara.

Well, you know, I definitely was like,

"I'm either going to bring that back later

and have it be like, "Oh, she quit"

Or something fucked up happened."

But then, you know, the apocalypse happened,

another shit, Scott took priority.

And I think too, just the idea of being able to bring

Vespin Chloras in.

Bringing Vespin Chloras, in terms of a piece of lore

to really connect, because the world remembers Vespin

as such a villain, and to really underline

that his greatest sin was the greatest sin of his age,

which was hubris.

In other words, this guy was not a nihilist.

He didn't want to, he wasn't like, "I wanted to release

the betrayers and I succeeded."

He, like every other fucking wizard,

thought he could do some cool shit and was wrong.

And to take Matt's world building of the age of Arcanum,

they overreached, they went too far.

And to be like, not only is that Vespin's crime,

it's the crime of these people,

and so you as an audience watching Calamity can infer,

because this is all you're seeing,

that this is true everywhere.

And so that in a weird way, so many, you know,

one is an instance, two is a coincidence,

three is a pattern.

You see all the ring of brass and you go,

"Oh, the whole, this is the world.

This is the water that all these fish are swimming in."

And so that, to use Vespin for that and say,

and paint the whole age with that brush through him

and the ring of brass was my favorite part

of that world building.

I think definitely the establishing of Vespin

as far as the Calamity goes is one of my favorite things

that you finally got to show and reveal within the lore

as a character that's been kind of this spooky specter

throughout the history, as well as, I mean, you know,

establishing the creation of the shattered teeth

and the final reveal at the end.

Just such a great, great moment.

To put the spotlight back on you.

One of the things that I thoroughly enjoyed through EXU

was a very important city that had never been seen in person

for the entire campaign that was deeply tied into

the backstory of two main Vox Machina characters,

Vex and Vax.

The town on Byroden, that they grew up in

that had been spoken of and written of in the loose tales

and meant to be kept fairly vague until we visited it.

And then we had the opportunity to,

and you brought it to such vibrant life

(laughing)

in so many wonderful ways that I wouldn't have expected.

And as another example, in ways that made it far better

than I would've done myself.

And once again, this is one of the things I love

about collaboration is being surprised at how people

continue to elevate things beyond what you can,

you know, even as the initial creator of it.

And it completely changed my perspective on that city,

as something that was like, "Oh, that's a fun thing there

that maybe we'll ever get to" To now like,

"I really love Byroden and I really want more stories

to be told in it."

And now people have a very clear idea of not just it

as a fantasy town, but also elements that reflect

actual real world experiences and cultural touchstones

so that people who live in those sort of environments

and in those parts of this, you know, south and,

you know, beyond the border there can look at it

and be like, "Oh, I know exactly what that is

and I can build off that for my own home game."

Hell yeah.

And I love that.

And shout out to Aimee Carrero

'cause we had that conversation about Laredo, Texas,

and I've yelled many times on the internet about why I think

the American south is the most magical part.

There's something storied about it

in this very interesting way.

And also having the fun of making a place that felt

homey and cozy in the way that the descriptions

and experiences of Singorn weren't in order to validate

Vex and Vax's path, of the way they romanticized their youth

that we never saw versus the sort of coldness

of the Elven city that we did get to see.

And it was just fun, and pies are fun.

Matt: Yeah.

And I'll say to that point too, it's that logic thread,

I think, that makes world building good, you know?

You can make up a bunch of towns and be like,

"These towns are unique in their own way."

But when you get down to finding the logic as to why

they are the way they are and what makes them similar

and contrasting against the other nearby societies.

Those logic questions that you ask yourself

is what ends up leading to really, really good

world building 'cause it feels alive.

There seems to be reason to why things exist

the way they are and where they're going.

And you know, that's kind of my exercise whenever

I'm trying to world build is, you know, have some fun ideas,

throw them down and then start the logic matrix.

So how does this fit now against everything else around it?

How does it affect the space that I've put it in?

And if it doesn't work, do I move it elsewhere?

What do I change to make it work?

Does it bring up more questions about things

I've already created?

And then how can I, you know, change the math

on these things so they all now work together

and make sense, and that's part of the problem solving

and kind of puzzle aspect of world building that's so fun.

Aabria: So fun.

You guys are freaking great at it, and I love it.

Aabria: We learned it from you, story Dad.

(laughing)

Brennan: Learned it from you.

What's next on the thing?

Yeah.

Okay, I like, do you wanna ask this?

Yeah, I'll ask, I got this.

Aabria: We gotta stop squinting so hard.

We're just like, "This is natural."

Yeah, put on my glasses.

Aabria: I will put mine back on.

I can't see for shit, y'all.

Huh?

Well oiled machine.

Brennan: Matt.

Yeah, brother?

Oh, no.

Oh God, I'm blacking out.

Matt: Drink some water, it's fine.

Just more coffee.

Never had water a day in my life.

Aabria: Yes!

What were some of the--

That's what catheters are for.

Matt?

Yes, Brennan?

What were some of your inspirations for Exandria?

(laughing)

That was almost a spit take, so I'm done.

This is actually great,

because like great, like Exandria itself,

Exandria was born in a misty past

that none of us have access to.

Yeah. Yeah.

Brennan: Which is pretty fucking cool.

That's a little bit of the Matryoshka doll of the genesis.

We come into campaign one part way through,

so the idea of, it's genesis really starting as other,

yeah, what were his inspirations?

And I also do kind of want the real world info.

Not only your kind of lore building stuff,

but also, where were you in your life

when you were building it?

Aabria: Ooh, yeah.

That's interesting.

Who were you when you built this?

Right.

Younger.

(laughing)

Yeah, I'm done with drinking.

That's a whole spit take.

We're done here.

Okay, so, Exandria started as a reaction to wanting to run

a game for a bunch of my voice actor friends who,

some of them hadn't played in a long time

and some of them had never played.

And so it wasn't meant to be a world,

it was meant to be a city.

I just built Stilben.

It was a swamp town for a one shot,

and I've got nothing more beyond some basic facets

of the town.

A couple of inn names, a couple of road names,

a couple of factions and a general through line,

a one shot we could play in six hours at home on a weekend.

Aabria: Amazing. And that was it.

That wasn't even an Exandria.

There was no name for the world.

It was just a town.

And then we finished the one shot

and then the email came in.

"Hey, that was great.

When's the next one?"

Oh, so now we're gonna, now it's becoming a campaign,

and they were hooked, and I was like, "Yes!"

And so then the next, you know, game turned into Westruun,

and then I built the area around Westruun.

And then after that second, third session, I was like,

"Oh, this is becoming an actual campaign.

I guess I gotta start building this."

And so from there I began going into Photoshop

and started just, you know, scanning hand sketched,

the outside of Tal'Dorei.

That's so cool.

And there wasn't even Exandria then,

then it was just Tal'Dorei, and I still have my old files

that I really poorly done on Photoshop.

But yeah, so it was just a slow building thing.

And then eventually they had explored enough of it

and began to ask and invest in enough of the world's history

and the lore that I had to write it.

And so I began to expand upon that in my head,

and then I came up with the name of the world,

which was Exandria, and they asked about other continents,

and I said, "Sure, Issylra, and I will never get to it.

And then eventually when we do, I'll flesh it out."

And you know, it just kind of organically happened

as we played, it was laying the tracks down

in front of the train as the players are exploring it.

And then the more I did that,

the more I fell in love with it.

And then just wanted to see more of it realized

and wanted to kind of flesh it out.

And then it became the logic thing.

It began from what was just throwing things together.

One of the things that bothered me about

fantasy world building, as a person that grew up

reading novels and watching fantasy films and TV.

A lot of high fantasy is wonderfully designed

in its flare and its color and its magic

and its, you know, robust sense of wonder.

And then it breaks down if you look past the curtain.

Like you were saying earlier with Middle Earth.

At a certain point, you're like,

"Yes, well, it's magical time where things

of wonder occurred.

Now there are dwarves."

And you're like, "Right, but."

So you're 3000 years old, but your generations

are each 150.

How do you know that if you go on a date with someone,

it's not your descendant?

Do you guys keep a record of this somewhere?

I would. You'd have to have

little bracelets or something.

That probably still happens, I'm sure,

in the Kryn dynasty.

(laughing)

Love that.

Kryn dynasty matchmaking bookoo bucks, baby.

Aabria: Guarantee you're not related.

There's an interesting book I remember reading

many years ago that a friend recommended to me called,

I think it was, "Many lives, many masters."

Which is an interesting story, I say.

It's supposedly based on a true story, but eh,

about, you know, past life aggressions and people

discovering that they had reoccurring souls that would

show up in different past lives, and in this life they were,

you know, partners, in this life, they were neighbors,

in this life, they were father son,

but they were a continuing cycle of spirits.

It's a very interesting story,

whether or not you believe that or not.

I don't necessarily, but it was interesting to read.

But that was an element of that inspiration

in the creation of the Kryn dynasty

and as being a developer, I was like,

"That's gonna be an interesting scenario to all of a sudden

be born coming to realize your previous, you know,

memories and be like, "Huh?"

You there, my oldest teacher.

I was your father 300 years ago."

You know, "This is odd.

Let's go have a sandwich and have some therapy."

You know, it's a weird scenario.

But yeah, so then I guess to what you were saying earlier,

the world building of logic began to be,

okay, this is a game of "Dungeons & Dragons."

There are ancient relics.

There are ruins that contain mystery and power.

Why do they exist?

There has to be something that buried them.

There have to be a reason

not only that people could build great things,

but then lose them, and that's where the idea

of the Calamity came into to play.

And also the Divergence was one of the things

that bothers me in a lot of fantasy settings

where there are powerful deities, all-powerful entities

that guide the threads of fate and walk amongst the planes.

But then all of a sudden, if there's a great danger,

it's up to a couple of lowlife heroes in a tavern to beat it

and the gods are like, "Uh, (hums) fix it for me," you know?

The logic kind of broke for me there

so I wanted to come up with the reason

that the gods were removed from the world

so that the players still felt they had agency

and couldn't rely on the gods to fix all their problems.

And if they did, I wouldn't have to be like,

"The god just says, nah," you know?

(laughs)

Gonefather known for being like,

"Mm we'll put a pin in it." (laughs)

You're not entirely wrong.

But yeah, so a lot of it was just kind of logicing out

those facets of history that bothered me

in other fantasy settings and wanting to try

and lay out some ground rules early in

that would help me down the road

if we ever crossed those paths.

Brennan: Yeah.

I could go on a whole tangent from there,

but I think those are some loose answers to that question.

Aabria: Yeah, oh, that's so cool.

God, the idea of being in Westruun

and of having a feeling of,

I think we're in the oldest part of our world, not actually.

The idea of a world that grew organically

from something small and then over time, you know?

Aabria: Right? That's so beautiful.

It's very weird. I know I have the files somewhere.

I'll have to look at my old, old maps

where it's just the Dividing Plains.

I don't think they were called the Dividing Plains yet.

It was just, there's a town

and there's a gash out of the mountain

and there's just grass and there's a little mountain here

and there's Stilben and that's your map.

Aabria: Yay!

The idea of, is there part of you that wants to,

I don't know, to me, if I were in Exandria I'd be like,

"I want to go to Stilben" just to be...

Aabria: Oh yeah.

Some part of me, I'm drawn to that town. It's so cool.

Funky little fishing town.

Funky little fishing.

Love it. Little swamp town.

There has to be someone in Stilben now

that has a small trade where they sell relics

of the legendary Vox Machina that are totally just fake

and giving shitty titles on them.

Beautiful. So good.

I have a question. Yes.

Do you remember the moment where Exandria

felt not complete, but whole to you?

At what point were you, I've laid enough track

and now it's connected and the train can go on its own

a little bit without me...

Never. Okay, cool.

It's always a-- Yay!

(hyperventilates) Okay, what next do I have to do?

Oh god. (laughs)

Which is, that's a special stress

when it comes to actual play.

When you're at home, the only people you have to impress

are the people at your table.

And what we do, the stakes are a little larger.

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.

Yes, oh shit, what did I just say?

Oh god, I have to say it again? Oh, what did I call that?

I'm still getting over, Aabria, you asked Matt,

"When did the world feel done?"

And Matt stone cold went, "It doesn't."

With this right here! (laughs)

Folks, get it at your local gaming store.

"Tal'Dorei Reborn." If that's not done...

And this is a continent, folks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's one continent!

They got Wildemount, too! Yep!

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? (laughs)

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!

(laughs)

It's the problem is the only thing my brain's

going to remember from all of that is Biggityburg.

Welcome to Biggityburg. Oh, I'm different.

But no, I think it's a--

Ruins of Avalir

in the Shattered Teeth, Biggityburg.

Biggityburg deep in there. Welcome to Biggityburg.

Go home, play that in your worlds

and tag Brennan on Twitter when you do it.

Let me know how it goes in Biggityburg, #Biggityburg.

Truly, but with that though, I think that is a testament,

Matt, to your, every GM is different.

And I know what you mean of rendering this stuff in detail,

there's always more to be done.

There's always more world-building to be done.

But I do think that your knowledge of this world

is so deeply inspiring and the idea, too,

of a world that,

'cause I think you want that feeling, right?

For me that feeling of, you sit at a table

and you look up at a GM and that GM goes,

"Oh, I literally know about this world.

I would pass out from exhaustion

before I was finished explaining to you

everything I know about this world."

And you want that feeling as a player to be like, it's real!

You know? Yeah, yeah.

I think that's such an interesting thing

where players always do that.

They always say that, "Did you know? Did you prep that?

Was that written down before?"

But you feel that as a player when you sit down,

and I think like the beautiful thing about Exandria,

and again, even you, of course your answer

was going to be like, "It's not done yet" because--

World building is a hallmark of great storytellers.

Brennan: Yeah.

Or lazy ones. (laughs)

You know what? You could be both.

It can be very much.

You're incredible,

and you got to roll around in the compliment.

Brennan: You got to roll around in the complement.

Okay, okay, I'm going to try

to be better at that, thank you.

Hey!

But also not done in the sense that what I set out to do

with this and especially with the books is to not be,

"Here, Tal'Dorei, it's done."

It's, "Here, Tal'Dorei, this is what me and Hannah

and Joey or James Haeck have put together.

And there are many spaces in here for you

to continue to build off of.

It's a thorough scaffolding for you

to also take the inspiration to build off

in however way you want to."

Nothing makes me happier than meeting Critters in the wild,

conventions pre-COVID and also in the street

and an occasion here and there

and them telling me about their home games.

Aabria: Yes.

And some people are scared to mention it.

Others are more excited

to tell me the things they've changed.

I'm like, "Yes, please tell me how you've broken my world

and made it your own." Yes.

Because that was what I want to hear.

I want you to feel like you own now

this setting in your own way.

And so that also is kind of what I mean

when I say "it's unfinished," meaning I hope

that in passing it off,

it continues to grow with everyone else.

Yeah. That's beautiful.

(sighs) Man.

Why do you guys make your villains so hot?

That's my question. It's not on the prompter.

Why do I make villains so hot?

First of all, I was following in your footsteps

because Aabria established that every Exandria GM

gets a Betrayer God as a goodie bag on the way out.

Yeah, that is fun.

That is fun. That is fun for us.

I saw you with the Spider Queen and I was like,

"I'm doing that shit." (laughs)

There was nothing more gratifying than watching you

have that, big spoilers, turn moment 'cause I was like,

"I could have never done that."

Aimee would not have let me be bad.

She'd be like, "No girl!"

I'm like, "I got girl bossed."

The fact that Aimee, and once again, this is a testament

to why I love playing with newer players.

Aabria: Yes! Oh, when they don't know what they could do.

There's a cycle, I'm noticing,

through the years of playing of a player cycle.

When you first begin, you don't know the boundaries

that a lot of experienced players expect or understand.

The more you know the game, the more you tend to,

more often than not, stay within the confines

of what the game establishes as the rules.

But when you're new to it, you don't really understand that

so you take wider swings, you make stranger choices.

You really kind of push against those boundaries

'cause you don't know where the boundaries are.

You're like a kid who's learning how to walk

for the first time and bumping into the furniture.

And it's wonderful, and then eventually you kind of fall

into those lines and not always,

but sometimes you find yourself

kind of subconsciously sticking, coloring within the lines

because you've learned to do so.

Then over time you begin to realize you've been doing that.

And then you go back to being weird again.

Yeah.

And that's my other favorite point.

It's new players or extremely experienced players.

Yes. That have come back

to reclaim their stupid youth as players.

And Aimee was a perfect example of a player

who just didn't give a shit

and wanted to just follow the thread

and push in the best way.

And the two of you playing off of each other, I, oh my god.

I was at the table just kind of going "What is happening?

(laughs) This is amazing."

That's so good.

But I think, Aabria, your proficiency and excellency

in reading that because that's the thing, right?

It's so funny the term master,

game master or dungeon master,

it creates this hierarchy, but it's an inverted hierarchy.

'Cause what it is is,

you are in the position of service as a GM.

It's like you are singular, even though all these people

share one role and you have a singular role,

I've always compared it to the person

who's making dinner in a small kitchen.

Yes.

'Cause the kitchen can't fit that many people.

You're making dinner for everybody.

And I feel like you're saying, to read your players and go,

"I'm going to serve you in this moment

and give you exactly what you're asking for,"

that is what you are.

You're a genie. You're like, "I'm going to grant your wish."

What's the experience you came here to get?

Let me give it to you.

And I feel like that was an unparalleled example

of reading what a player wanted in that moment

and being like, "Cool, you get your wish."

Ah, it was great.

Yay! It was so great.

To answer your question, that is the audience's eye

and the internet is thirsty.

Yeah, we are.

I don't try to make villains hot.

I make villains villains.

And then the internet goes, "They're hot."

And I'm like, "I don't, how?"

That's a hot boy.

Okay, no, well, that-- That's a hot boy.

Well okay, no, Lucien is hot because--

I walked into this room and was like, "Oh, hey, baby."

Well, look, look-- Smash!

Lucien is hot because the character

that eventually became Lucien was established as hot

by the creator of that character.

And then thus, I had to represent them

as also being equally hot.

Brennan: Your hands were tied. He had to be hot.

Right. Your hands were tied.

Yeah. And why was he mostly naked?

'Cause I wanted him to be. Yeah, there we go!

Well, because it is, and it is very much

that kind of angelic, biblical kind of visual,

that classic painting I wanted to reference

and I wanted to see his muscles. (laughs)

It's good to see muscles. Right?

It's good, it's good. Yeah.

While we're talking about building

and having physical stuff,

let's talk about my favorite new skill

that I got to learn for ExU, which was physical maps

'cause I'm a theater of the mind kid until this.

So talk to me, y'all people who have done this way more

about the process of building maps

for encounters for your games.

Ah, to start, I'll say I've played both theater of mind

and map and I love them both for different reasons.

Yeah. I think for smaller groups,

I prefer theater of mind unless everyone really,

really enjoys having miniatures and maps,

but theater of mind can tell a quicker story

and combat can feel more cinematic

if you're not having to focus down

on something that's on the table.

But with larger groups like five, six or more players,

theater of mind can become challenging

for people to understand spatial awareness,

and that's where the minis really come into to play for me.

But when it comes to maps,

I'm also a huge fan of miniatures.

I've been collecting them for a long time.

I call 'em my adult LEGOs

'cause it really is just like sitting down

and bringing something to physical life and being creative.

Yeah, how about you?

I'm going to give Rick Perry a call, see--

(laughs)

Well, I will just say, I remember when you told me

about the beauty of Blu-Tack

and I was like, "Oh my god, it's so..."

That changed.

Oh, Blu-Tack. Well, that's a Rick Perry original.

So on Dimension 20, we have Rick Perry

who's our production designer who is a brilliant man

and his whole shop and Katie McGeorge,

his whole shop of people are awesome that come on

and produce our miniatures which is,

even if I were a minis collector

so many of our Dimension 20's seasons

are set in Candy Land "Game of Thrones"

or high school for heroes, right?

So we do a lot of pop culture mashup things

and a lot of genre mashup things,

which means that all of our stuff

needs to get built from scratch.

Yeah. Yeah.

And Rick does an incredible job of doing that,

but it also means that the maps we play with over there

get featured in the episode where they appear and then we

(blows kiss) wish them a fond farewell and off they go.

But when I'm playing in home games,

I have the dry erase, I have the minis.

I have the tokens, I have stuff.

I really recommend Othello pieces if you have a home game.

Oh.

Because you can flip them over to the white side

and then dry erase on them for hit points

and you can track the hit point right--

Huh. Damn, all right.

I never thought of that. Write that shit down.

Yeah. That's good, this is good.

That's a life hack right there.

I enjoy that. Life hack.

You just have how much.

And if you don't want to give away

how many hit points they have,

and also subtraction's harder than addition,

you just literally write how much damage they've taken

and you keep in mind their HP total.

Aabria: Ooh, that's good.

So I do prefer maps because I think

that there is a lot of fun for tactical.

And I also play with larger.

I think your point about larger groups is exactly right.

Yeah. And especially there are,

I think if you are a big theater of the mind head,

put a little bit of, either check in that your group

really doesn't care about balance or really doesn't care

that those mechanical things

are not of the utmost importance

because there are some classes that will get short shrifted.

Yes. Yes.

Brennan: By a lack of a map more than others.

Very true.

Rogues, really screwed by a lack of a map.

Those bonus action, Cunning Action

really helps to have a tactical layout.

Area of effect, forget it if you don't have a map.

The amount of times Emily Axford

has raked me over the coals.

Shout out to Emily Axford.

The amount of times she's raked me over the coals

by being like, "Hey man,

you lined up all these little dudes.

There's 12 in a line,

the maximum amount I can hit with a lightning bolt."

And I'm like, "Yeah, that's a good, that's a good point.

They're definitely in that line." There's no arguing.

Conversely, it's also fun when the players

all are doing their rounds and it comes to the enemy's turn

and they realize that they've all gotten a line.

Yeah. Yes.

Yeah, that does feel good. It's delicious.

That's very, very delicious, too.

Aabria: That's nice.

And also again, if you have battle,

if you put a lot of love into your battle maps,

grist for creativity can occur anywhere.

So one of the fun things, too,

like Rekha Shankar in "Bloodkeep"

where she sees a bunch of chains

that Rick Perry's put all over the battlefield

and she's like, "Can I grab one of these elves with a chain

and make him into a reverse gravity chained up balloon man?"

And you're like, (sighs) "I can't argue with the board.

You absolutely can." Yep.

We're measuring out the distance.

That's all incredibly doable.

And to that point, you don't need masses of amounts

of Dwarven Forge terrain or anything to build out a map.

To your point, having just paper and pen on the board

to draw out the areas.

I for years did it all on large graph paper,

that I would get easel-sized paper

with one-inch by one-inch grids on it.

Aabria: Nice.

And would draw the maps on there

and would use dice as position modifiers.

And even without that, if someone asks in theater of mind,

"How far are they away from me?"

I can go ahead and put some dice or some pennies down

and just show a general distance

so there is spatial awareness but without having to do

all the effort of having to feel like you have to show up

with an entire fully-built immersive map there.

But if you want to do that too, that's also a lot of fun.

Aabria: That's very cool.

I love the process of having an idea for a map

which to me is, okay, what enemies are on there?

What kind of terrain would this require?

What sort of fun challenges

can I put in front of the players

to make the tactics beyond just a slogfest?

What things can the enemies use against them

in the environment and what things

can the players use against the enemies in the environment?

Yeah.

And then if I can, throw a couple of random things down

and see what the players do with it that I wasn't expecting.

The chains is a perfect example.

You just sometimes throw shit down,

kind of Yahtzee it out in front of you and be like,

"Oh, we'll see if anyone comes up with something creative."

Yeah, I love when the players surprise you.

They're like, "Does this make sense?"

And you're like, "Yes,

and that's why I put that there for you."

Oh my god, incredible!

We had in Campaign Three, there was the Shade Mother fight

where it was in this deep mine that had been abandoned.

And there was this terrifying

kind of alien queen-esque-like creature that was down there

that was kind of building a hive slowly.

Aabria: Cute. And they go in to fight it.

And in the abandoned mine spaces,

there was this giant machine that I had

just sitting at the base of this large rock tower.

And it was just part of the cool space there.

And then Liam as Orym is like,

"I'm going to go ahead and fuck with the controls of this."

I'm like, "Okay, let's go ahead and make some rolls.

You figure out what you think is probably

where the ignition is

on this partially messed up giant auger-like machine."

Rolls well on it.

He goes and engages it forward and it burrows into it.

And I'm like, "Sure, now it topples the entire thing,

which pins one of your players

but also changes the dynamic of the battle,

ends up crushing a few other enemies."

Never anticipated that, but it made for a very cool thing,

which then allowed them, if I recall,

he then took his rope of, I can't remember what it's called,

Rope of Binding or whatever it is.

The rope that wraps around things.

Wraps it around the Shade Mother

and then throws the other end of the rope

into the engine of this mining machine.

So dope! Which then tethers her

into it and she's being dragged into the machine

and can't escape and chase them.

And you don't plan for that shit.

It was just things that were on there

that the players got creative with and you roll with it.

And those end up being some of the most memorable moments

of battle when you finish it with your players.

I love it. Yeah.

I think it literally just occurred to me in the moment

of you saying that, which is that

because I don't generally run theater of the mind combat,

but in hearing you talk about it,

I think what it is is that weirdly

even though theater of the mind expedites things,

one of the things you should be aware of when you're doing

theater of the mind, that I'm now realizing has happened

when I've been a player in theater of the mind stuff,

is sometimes that that expediency can come

to the detriment of texture.

Like that idea of, oh right,

like those inspirations of what's that machine,

what's that thing, what's that thing.

If I'm doing theater of the mind and I narrate quickly

and I'm like, okay, you're in some cave

and a fight breaks out, it actually raises the likelihood

of an encounter that's just hit point sinks

subtracting from each other.

So the idea of if you're doing theater of the mind

to remember don't just breeze past environment,

don't breeze past weather, don't breeze past mood.

I'll add onto that, as well.

One of the things I like about theater of mind that can

counter that is reminding your players

that they can ask questions about what's in the environment.

The downside of also having a battle map sometimes

is the players sometimes can just assume that they can

only utilize what's visible.

They're like, oh, if you just build a room

that's like a square dungeon room with a throne,

you're like, cool, this is an empty room with a throne.

And they won't ask what's in there,

they just assume it's an empty room with a throne.

If it's more of a theater of the mind game

or experienced players who are playing a miniature game

and know, they can be like,

are there lanterns hanging on the wall that are burning oil?

Like, yes, there are three of 'em.

You'd maybe not have considered that before,

but you can answer the question of the players.

Like, cool, I'm gonna grab one of the oil lanterns

and smash it against the throne to burn it.

That just comes with the prompting of questions.

And it helps to remind your players that they can

ask questions about the environment.

You may not have planned for that cool chandelier

that they want to hang from to swing past

like a pirate and slash the enemy across the back

of his armor, but unless the players ask that question,

that moment won't happen.

And sometimes the players just kind of get used

to the same things you do and you don't think

about raising those questions.

So just another cool little thing to consider

as you're going into battle to remind people

to ask questions about what's around 'em.

Again, communication is key.

To that same point of kind of improvising.

How much preparation goes into a session

for you guys comparatively?

Like I know for actual play, when you're being watched

by a lot of people, there's a little bit more pressure

to have your shit in line compared to a home game

where you can kind of wing it a little better.

But I'm just curious, like for an average session,

how much do you prepare?

Ooh.

I think generally speaking it is borne out that my amount

of prep time will be equivalent to the run time of the game.

But it's not always like, okay,

I know this is gonna be a four-hour session,

it's gonna take me four hours.

Sometimes it's just studying and reminding myself

of the things, like I do once I have my outline

kind of try to learn it and commit it to heart

so I can feel comfortable improvising on it

when you start to play

and once the cameras are rolling.

It feels bad because I do also do the GM,

just sitting on my couch pretending to watch "Moulin Rouge,"

but I'm just thinking about D&D,

just looking off into the middle distance and occasionally

I'll see my darling husband being like,

you thinking about swords again?

I'm like mmhmm.

Oh yeah, Iz does that.

Iz will be out of the peripheral vision

and then bend over to wave.

I think one time I came out and I was just standing

in the half-dark kitchen with a thing of half and half.

(laughs) Yes.

That is terrifying. Yeah.

Oh, it's freaky. That's scary.

And I found someone who will forgive me it,

so yay, hooray, we did it.

But truly that vibe of just like,

I also can't always stop it.

Yeah. Does that make sense?

Where I'm just like, all right, time to go into the office

to work, and then it's like, well halfway

through the living room I'm gonna stop walking

and just stare 'cause we gotta be,

'cause maybe gnomes work different

than anyone's ever thought before.

That moment. I'm gonna have

a new thought right now.

The amount of times that I'll be thinking of an NPC

in the upcoming part of the campaign and start

in my head imagining how their physicality would be,

and that stuff, how they might sound,

and I'll start improvising dialogue

and finding their voice,

and then suddenly Marisha's like, you talking to yourself?

I'll be off in the hallway, I'll be like

of course, follow me down this path.

Yeah, no, I was just gonna put my shoes on

and I had an idea.

You heard nothing!

(group laughs)

If you're a dungeon master and you need some voices time,

just don't do it in the bathroom

because other people in the apartment

sometimes need to get in there

and if you're in there doing voices time,

then they might remind you that that's

not the right place for that

and they might be brusque about how the bathroom's

not the right place for that,

even though it's very quiet and kind of meditative in there.

And some good acoustics too. Some great acoustics.

Yo, mine's bathtub.

I get in the bathtub and I get weird in there.

Yeah!

This is the real shit!

We're finally saying it! All righty.

It's a Lush bath bomb and you're just being deeply weird

for an hour and a half in the tub.

I love it. (blows) Okay.

For me, it was driving was my time

and then the pandemic hit.

And then when I realized in the pandemic

how much driving was my time to think,

and prepare, and practice, and then not having that.

I had this weird, where do I put it,

where do I put this energy, where do I find this time?

And first it was in the backyard.

But then some of the neighbors would wonder

what was going on.

And then it was taking a walk and then I realized

how the person in the neighborhood that everyone

got on the other side of the street to go around.

Eventually, I just told Marisha,

I'm gonna be on the other side of the house.

Just leave me alone for like 30 minutes

and don't judge me, and she's like, it's fine.

Just straight up in a mirror with dental floss

between two fingers being like,

so you really thought that you could withstand

the brute force of my (laughs).

And I have, in my phone, I have dozens of voice memos

of once I find the voice of an NPC,

I'll record a couple lines of it so I can

refer to it back later, I make a little note on it.

It's super dumb.

Shout out to you GM spouses, y'all are some real ones.

Seriously.

And I get this question a lot, sometimes people are like,

how do you keep from telling your spouse or your partner

all the secrets of your thing or keep it secret from them?

Obsessively, like a red dragon and its hoard.

The minute she comes in my office, every tab is closed.

My chair turns, what can I do for you?

What you need, everything cool, everything cool?

I was looking at porn,

I was looking at porn actually is what I--

Don't look at me!

Just straight up, it's straight up.

Yep, yep, yep, it's good.

Oh my God, that's so funny.

We need a little GM GC, just a little group chat

to be like, we gotta be weird at each other

and leave these good people alone.

I had a bookmark on the knob, you know what that means!

Truly there is, and I'll be real,

there is no teenage coming of age, where you're like,

I'm in the bathroom figuring my body out,

that is as embarrassing as being a full-grown adult

and having a partner being like, you doing voices in there?

So much more embarrassing than any adolescent anything.

Recommendation, get a dog.

You can make weird mouth sounds at the dog.

And then it just sounds like you're having,

like you're doing just like a cute quirk,

'cause everyone talks weird at their dog.

And they don't think it's you being like,

maybe this is what my elf sounds like now.

No, I can't tell that story.

Turn the cameras off. Turn the cameras off.

(group laughs)

That's how we have it done.

To the same point of the awkwardness of voice time.

Make sure that you don't fall into voice time

when doing other things, like physical upkeep.

'Cause then when your partner walks in and is like,

what is happening here, can be worrying.

Oh, you don't try to do the voices when you're in bed?

Come on now.

Come on now.

You gotta bang it out as an NPC every now and then.

What, what, what?

Only me, you're gonna leave me out here?

Next question, next question.

By myself?

So how would you say your GM styles differ?

Obviously not that much.

(group laughs)

We all do bathroom voices time.

Is this getting released, no, right,

this is just for us, right?

This is just for us. Oh boy.

(group laughs)

I love you, guys.

I feel so bad or something.

Well, well here, here,

to take the heat off of that one a little bit.

So, Aabria, Yeah.

Brennan,

for EXU, and an extension of that,

a lot of the other games that you've run

on your own channels and other channels,

how do you make sure that a self-contained story

doesn't go too far off the rails,

I guess to the point where it doesn't feel like one

that's railroaded, to what you were saying earlier,

but also ensuring that within a very set period of time

you have to tell that story, you can still bring it home

to that really successful and fulfilling conclusion?

You start.

I'm still thinking about dumb stuff from before.

For sure.

We'll come back to that, we'll come back to that.

We'll be coming back to that for a while.

I just can't believe I found bathroom buddies.

We could start bathroom buddy time.

The three of us can just get together and make voices.

Yeah! We all get

like a big Vegas hotel room with a huge bathroom

so we can all stalk around doing our various villains.

What if some Japan trip and you like some onsen somewhere

and just really freak out the people

that are taking care of it, that'd be amazing.

Perfect. Hi, is this the concierge?

An adjacent suite appears to have three

ancient deities of evil.

(group laughs)

Okay, how do you keep your story from going off the rails?

First of all, again, in a home game

you should never have as many rails as an actual play has.

And especially D20 is structured,

like Rick Perry has to pre-create all the sets

and there's a given number of them that have to be created

ahead of time, which means that something like a plot

has to go around the tent poles of those sets,

which means that character creation has to happen

eight weeks or more in advance of when we're gonna film

episode one, because that's the amount of lead time

that Rick needs, da, da, da, da, da, da.

And I don't want to make battle sets until I know

who the PCs are because I wanna tie their backstory into.

So I don't recommend that you run your home game

like Dimension 20, it's a lot.

And also the fact that cameras roll with us going,

you have four, or six, or 10, or 20 episodes

to get this done and the plane's gotta land, right.

It's very, it's just frankly very stressful.

So that's why I think I'll always have

a very different vantage point, like we were saying before,

all the sauce that I can on session zeros,

and character conversations, multiple check-ins,

let me understand where you're going,

'cause baby, when the cameras are rolling,

I'm already fucked at that point.

Like just straight up. It's the oven.

Yeah, like we're in the oven now,

hope you've remembered the flour,

(group laughs) 'cause we're in the oven now,

this is what the cake's gonna be.

So with all of that, I would say,

to put this in the context of a home game,

so that this is actually useful,

I would say, what the hell are rails, right.

And essentially what people in a home game refer to as rails

is they mean like,

what's my role as the storyteller here?

Because I know that all of us are great storytellers,

but I also know how much the three of us know

that we're really not the storyteller,

that you are that Greek chorus.

If you're not any of the protagonists,

to what degree are you the fucking storyteller

at all, right?

And I have an analogy that's been bopping around in my head

for a little bit that I think does explain rails,

at least as I like to think of them.

And I will do this in less than five minutes, I'm so sorry.

Run the clock. Go for it.

What I'm looking for when I'm a player is full immersion.

I don't want the experience of being a storyteller

when I'm a PC.

And that's a little bit of a different thing.

Like a lot of indie games want a flat hierarchy

around the table where everybody's typed as a storyteller.

I don't want that when I'm a player.

When I'm a player, I want to be living in a story,

immersed into a character that is not to their knowledge

living in a story.

Like Evan Kemp says in "Misfits of Magic,"

I'm not a character.

I don't wanna play a character that's thinking

about their fucking narrative arc.

I wanna play a character that wants to save the world

as quickly and efficiently as possible, right.

But I, the player, want the arc.

So me and my character exist at odds because I want

the deep immersion, I want the fucking Mount Doom,

Frodo's quest, all that shit,

but I wanna play a character that doesn't want that.

I wanna play a character that gets the ring as quickly

and safely as possible to Mount Doom,

'cause that's the immersion I'm looking for.

So what does that mean if I wanna provide

that experience to a player?

Players are like water.

They are going down the hill as fast as they can,

seeking the path of least resistance.

That's the character is like water.

But the player wants anything other than a straight line.

So my job as rails is irrigating a path down that

that lets the water always have taken the fastest route

towards its goal, but at the end of it,

the shape is the most convoluted and pleasing.

You achieved the shape of a story while you were trying

your hardest to go in a straight line,

if that makes sense. I love that.

Yeah, yeah, that's really cool.

Aabria: That's really good.

I'm different now.

(group laughs)

You should do this for a living.

Yeah, oh man.

(group laughs)

To me, that's what rails are.

My job when I'm telling a story is not to have

a story in mind for you to go on,

I really think about myself as improvising in reaction

to the players with a bag full

of lots and lots of storytelling tropes.

That is literally like, I'm in reaction to you,

you're driving, but I have a double helix,

I have a weird S, I have this roundabout

and this cloverleaf, I have these shapes

that I'm gonna throw in front of you

'cause I know you're trying to go straight,

but I know you'll be sad if you do.

So that's what a DM's rails are to me.

It's reactions to that desire of the PCs,

knowing that the player wants one thing

and the character wants another and they'll be most pleased

if they both get their way, which you can do

with cleverly improvised rails.

And to that point, part of the preparation,

to kinda what you were saying earlier,

is getting to know enough about the world

and the kind of story that you're hoping to tell

and you're hoping the players will enjoy

so that when you do start,

you can kinda let all that preparation go

and just ride with the player,

actions and agency, and have that bag at the ready.

And at that point a lot of your preparation

should be modular.

You should know which things are important

to tell the story, what bits of information you feel

would be the most impactful for the players to discover,

to uncover, to take to heart and use,

to drive them towards a goal, to fulfill that heroic fantasy

or that horror narrative, whatever it is

you're using to tell.

You want to make sure that anything that's important

to that story can be shifted.

If in order for them to discover

the really important information about the mystery

of the murders, they have to go to the police station

to talk to this one guy,

but they never go to the police station, what do you do?

So you have to think of this information might be held

by a number of people and whoever they encountered

on the way, they might have the opportunity

to gather it there.

And then at the same point, I would also caution

against locking necessary information behind die rolls.

You never want the opportunity of a player getting

to a point where they're about to uncover something

that's really important and they roll poorly

and in your head you're like,

well, I guess you don't know it now.

Shit, now we're all kind of stuck at an impasse

and the story has come to a complete halt.

To that point, even if they roll low,

just give them a piece of it and consider

where you can lead them to find the next part

of that tether and unravel it.

You always want the momentum to be going forward.

Unless it's like things that really don't matter

and it's just for fun,

still give something even on low rolls

at least to guide them in the direction that you think

would be most fun for everybody at that table.

So that's just my little input on that one.

Oh, good.

How about you?

Oh, shoot.

I like my answer less than yours, so I don't wanna say it.

You can ask a question if you want.

No, I'm gonna answer,

I like to sort of, okay,

I think I get described as thinks in movies a lot

and I rely on that a lot with my players too,

'cause every player ostensibly grew up watching movies

and everyone just has written in their heart

understands three-act structure really well.

So if you start queuing them for it,

they will sort of fall in line and begin to complete

on themes, and ideas, and plots for you and help you,

especially when it comes into getting towards,

like you don't want them to get too off the rails

'cause we have to come in for a landing

in a short-form thing, if you start setting it up

like an act three, it's fun to watch good players

that are also storytellers sort of line up their shot.

They're like, got it, I understand

sort of in my heart what the act structure of a movie is,

of a heroic journey is,

and I gotta start lining myself up for the end of that.

And I think there's something inside good players

that will say, okay, I understand this is where the end game

is headed and will kind of turn towards the sun

like a little flower

and land that, that was all.

That's great. Yeah.

What are you nervous about? I'm nervous always.

I will also say

Aabria is a great GM,

even in a player's seat.

If you don't know what I'm talking about,

Laerryn blighting that tree,

in 24 years of playing this game,

I do not remember a PC doing something

that literally made weight disappear off my back

to that degree.

You know what I'm saying?

For real.

And that ability, like you're saying,

'cause I think your style is incredibly cinematic

where knowing how to get to the beats,

knowing the act structure,

knowing, "And here's the thing that comes next,"

and what higher commandment

in storytelling is there than make it matter?

And that's what I felt like with that,

with the blight on the tree and Calamity

or anything else like that.

That instinct for storytelling and to drive things.

Oh, another moment that I've never gotten a shout out yet

was even the fucking gold bow in Calamity

where you popped off and were like,

"That's the last piece of the machine I needed."

For you at home,

I didn't show it on screen,

but in my head, when Aabria was like,

"That's the last thing I needed for the machine."

I went, "It is?" in my head.

I didn't know it was 'cause this is a master story teller!

Aw!

And that GM-ing instinct of make it matter,

make it count, hit the beat,

keep it moving is, I feel, your style to a T.

Yeah. And that,

more than any,

honestly, maybe rather than saying rails of rhythm,

act structure, beats, what's the next thing coming in?

That idea and using that

as your rail structure

are the moments that you know.

You ever never not complete a musical couplet,

where there's that hanging thing?

Yeah.

I feel like, in your GM-ing style,

there's a lot of that, of like, "How am I gonna keep you

on the rails?"

Because I know that you want this note to resolve.

I know there's this thing that you want there.

You said that cool!

Thanks!

I'm that! (guys laughs)

I'm what he said, is the cool way.

(Brennan laughs)

Wild.

Wild.

Thanks. (Brennan laughs)

(Matthew chuckles)

Brennan: It's true.

It's true.

I have not had the opportunity yet

to properly GM for you yet.

I've played under you.

I'm gonna count that ESO game 'cause I-

True that.

And then a proper...

The ESO game was a lot of fun.

It was a one shot, it was for Brandon, one shot.

It was very chaotic and a lot of fun.

But a a proper session.

I look forward to doing that.

Yes! Playing under you is amazing

and to the points you said,

it's experienced players and people who have GM'd

that know that taking the biggest swings

and following that instinct when it happens

is so much better than the safe decision,

more often than not.

There is something to be said about survival

and not pushing the button,

if it's to the detriment of everyone's fun at the table,

but understanding when it makes sense,

not just for your character and the story,

but will elevate the stakes in a way that everyone

around you trusts and appreciates.

And that is something that is, I wish, more common

and only comes with experience and trust,

and you do it every time,

and it's so much fun to watch.

Thank you. Yeah. I love it.

I do wanna say I feel I learned,

if I have cool things from this,

learning from watching you guys last summer,

'cause getting a GM for both of you

and watching forever GMs, untethered,

from having to be an entire world

and focusing all of that creative might

and the trust

and freedom of, thank you for trusting me

in those moments and just being extraordinarily joyful

and still having the full weight of your very good brains

focused to the single point of a character.

I remember going home

from every one of those sessions for MisMag

and for EXU and being like, "Oh man!

That's everything!

That's why we do it."

You guys were just,

it blew me away every time

and it was so cool to come back

and try to do a little bit of that back at you

and be like, "This is what you looked like a little bit,

maybe a 10th of it, and it's very cool."

Hey, the very first episode you ever GM'd for me,

you immediately did something

and I was like, "I'm stealing that and using it forever."

(Aabria laughs)

The fucking Aabria signature of,

"And here's what you don't see."

And I went, and my head popped off my body

and spun around in a little circle and went,

"You can do that?"

And then settled back onto my shoulders.

Talk about cinematic.

I feel that was an incredible moment of, "Oh my god.

Talk about inviting the audience in.

And of course, acknowledging the degree

to which we are living in a story

and to even frame it in that way of,

"Here's what you don't see."

That shit is still rocking my world a year later!

What's so cool about this era of actual play,

being people that grew up,

and some of us pre-internet with the older folks,

or playing in spaces where the only experiences

you had gaming were the people that you met in person

through social groups or work environments.

And so your exposure to different styles of GM-ing

was extremely limited.

And so, for me, up until I began running Critical Role

and other people started,

I began following their other streams

and seeing people like you play,

I only knew my style from the other friends

who ran for me and me trying to improve myself in a vacuum.

And I've learned so much

in this short time from each of you,

and I just continue to take notes and learn.

And I love that we have this space now

where we all can make each other better

by playing together

and by watching other people out there

with all the other amazing actual plays that exist out there

and just kind of seeing what resonates

and taking inspiration from that and incorporating it.

I see people, we all talk about game masters,

top of the game.

We're all still learning too.

And we all have skills

that lend very well to a lot of this

and we're all constantly learning from each other,

And I think that excites me more than anything,

is the fact that, even at this stage,

I'm constantly taking notes.

Yeah.

It's a virtuous cycle.

You're the best!

Yeah!

Oh, now we're all bathroom buddies.

Before we finish this up though,

we do have the important question.

Ooh.

What are your favorite GM snacks?

Yeah! Brennan?

Let me be clear.

This was put into this fucking questionnaire

to come for me.

And I'm gonna explain something.

If you're at home and you're afraid

to tell your gaming group that you're a snacker,

I've got your back, okay?

Because it's okay to fucking snack, all right?

When you're out there,

let some of us sweat from the moment we wake up

to the moment we go to sleep.

Some of our bodies are betraying us constantly.

(Aabria laughs)

Would I have chosen this paper white,

fur covered, constantly sweating body?

No, I wouldn't have!

Does it require constant almonds?

Yes! (other two laugh)

Almonds all the time!

Okay?

And I'm not gonna apologize

because these two fucking elevated beings,

these two hovering,

what are the pre-Skeksis, pre-mystic light beings

from The Dark Crystal?

Oh god!

You two!

Some of us are pod people, okay?

I'm a little poddling

and I need to snack!

If I could have another mouth in my back...

(other two laugh)

The biggest obstacle in my GM-ing, all right,

is that the same place I talk from

is where the food needs to go!

(other two laugh)

We know what to get him for Christmas.

Yeah.

Brennan: A mouth in my back!

A mouth back!

So that I can have a friend

shoveling salami into an open furnace in my torso

while I narrate!

And I'm not sorry!

I like to snack!

To answer your question, almonds.

(both laugh)

Calamity was the least I've seen you snack,

and that's how I knew that you knew it was real.

I was like, "This dude is not even

eating almonds right now."

'Cause I always ask for my almond tithe when we hang out.

I'm like, "If you're eating an almond, I'm eating one."

Yes. For sure.

Well, but I would say there's something

about the time of day we were shooting those,

and also, d20,

'cause we'll do two talk backs

and two episodes in a day,

which is nuts!

That's a lot. That's great.

We'll talk about that later.

That's wild.

That's a lot.

That's a lot.

But yeah.

But I will say, in that last episode,

there is the wall,

there's a moment of caffeine need.

Yeah! And blood sugar

and whatever needle in that last thing,

we hit the five hour mark

and everything in my body was like, "Hey.

(other two laugh)

I know that you the feeling of being on keto.

It evens you out.

You wake up in the morning,

I get really hangry when I'm not on keto.

I get very affected by my appetite moods.

And my body went, "Hey, check it out.

If you don't slam a Coca-Cola

in the next 30 seconds, you're gonna pass out.

You're gonna go to sleep.

You're gonna go sleep on your feet,

and that's not a good place to do that."

Thank you to whoever blurred that in the thing.

And I remembered, I was like, "Drink it!

Drink it! "

And I went and threw it in the thing and threw it.

You had so many banger lines.

Your villain lines, incredible.

Nothing put the fear of fucking God in me

more than, "We're off keto."

(Brennan laughs)

This is how we die!

This is how we die!

I thought we could win the Calamity

until you came in and went, "I have sugar in my body.

You're fucked!"

Popeye, spinach, arcs up in the air

into my mouth.

(Aabria laughs)

Yes!

(Aabria laughs)

Oh my god!

Oh man!

I was slamming, I think, Nutter Butters back there.

It was bad.

The scene behind the screen was not good.

My favorite is there's one damned bag

of Funyuns back there,

and every time I walked past it, I was like,

"I wanna eat them 'cause I love Funyuns,

but now we sit next to each other."

My YouTube season, we were all 48 feet apart

and I was like, "I can eat all the funky ass snacks I want

'cause no one will ever smell my breath.

'cause they're in a different time zone."

Now we're sitting next to each other

and I can't have a romantic moment with Sam

and just be like, onion.

That's exactly what you do when you're next to Sam though.

Next time. Now I know that!

Next time.

You guys actually do that though.

For real. Anxiety.

It's just anxiety?

It's partially anxiety.

I don't think about it.

I'm so here

because if I'm not here, I'm deep inside here,

which is never where I wanna be during that.

And I think ,honestly, 'cause I snack at home a little bit

when I used to run games.

I think being online very early in,

this is just the sad reality of being on the internet,

I remember we used to snack more in the early days

and someone made a comment

about me eating on a stream or something.

I don't even remember what it was,

but it was enough to be like, "Oh,

I'm not gonna eat anymore on stream."

So that's just a little subconscious moment.

Internet does that to you.

Aabria: A little bit.

But mostly anxiety.

Mostly, it's just the initial five minutes of,

"Okay, we're about to go live."

Every single time we go

to now recording,

the appetite just vanishes.

I remember the look that, I think it was Max, gave me

when, three weeks into doing stuff here for long days,

I was like, "Hey, sorry.

I gotta run.

Where's the bathroom?"

And you went, "You've been here for eight hour days

for three weeks.

What have you been doing?"

And I went, "Oh, holding it,"

'cause I don't acknowledge,

nothing exists except for my weird little brain.

Yeah, it's a tank.

Aabria: Until we're done

Storage facility until the story's done.

Aabria: Exactly.

I think it's so funny because,

if you were to ask me, "Why do you snack?"

full thread, I'd be like, "Anxiety."

(all laugh)

It's a blood sugar.

But, well also,

but this is the weird thing of the flow state you get into

as a GM is so bizarre

because I feel like,

I think I've told this story before,

but I got in a bad car accident

with a bunch of friends.

We had to rent a car.

We got dropped off by the tow truck at a pizza place,

Tony Pepperoni, and-

Shout out to Tony.

Shout out Tony Pepperoni. That can't be real.

Yeah. Tony Pepperoni, Henrietta, New York.

Shout out. Thanks for the pizza, Tony.

I have one of their staff shirts

that inexplicably is the words "Tony Pepperoni"

in a Batman symbol.

No. (both laugh)

There's no business relationship to DC at all.

It's just literally, it's just a pizza place

that likes Batman,

and that's literally it.

But we got there and I-

Now they're getting a cease and desist.

Yeah. Now they're getting a cease.

Wait!

Cut it! No!

I made it up!

Don't, please!

Tony, I'm sorry!

But the thing was,

I got there and I was the only one old enough to rent a car.

We were younger, we were in our 20s,

and I ordered four pies.

There were five of us.

I already got four full size pies

and I'm renting the car across the street

and I'm like, "They've eaten all the pizza.

They've eaten all of it.

They didn't leave me any."

And I got back and no one had touched a slice

and I was like, "Guys, the pizza.

Aren't you guys hungry?"

And my friend Molly was like, "We just got in a car crash!

(other two laugh)

We're not hungry, man!"

And I was like, "You and I process shock differently.

Mangia!"

And I fucking put one and a half to bed in the booth.

Incredible!

One and a half full pies. Wow!

Oh my goodness!

The machine needs fuel.

I respect that.

That's probably healthier.

Yeah.

Much healthier.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

We'll learn from a distance

and not actually do anything

to work in that positive direction.

One glorious moment, like, "You're doing it.

I'm proud of you." It's elves and hobbits.

You guys have your Lembas bread

and I'm over here with elevenses and second breakfast

and it's all different strokes.

(Matthew laughs)

Yeah. I love it.

Well, I think that was a fantastic note to-

We did it!

This epic GM roundtable.

We're all gonna head into the bathroom for voices time

right after this wraps. Oh, voices time!

Goddam right.

I can't wait.

(Aabria laughs)

Thank you all for watching

(all laugh)

this delightfully chaotic discussion.

I love it so much.

Thank you both so much for coming

and being a part of this

and building off of this.

And speaking of this,

Tal'Dorei Reborn campaign setting Reborn is available now.

So you can bring the magic of Exandria

to your own table.

But yeah, love you guys.

Aabria: Love you.

Thank you so much, and love you guys.

Good night.

(both smooch)

Bye! Later!