Exandrian GMs Matthew Mercer, Aabria Iyengar, and Brennan Lee Mulligan sit down for a roundtable discussion of their experiences and best practices for game mastering in Critical Role’s world of Exandria!
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The real rails were the friends we made along the way
I’m legit stealing Biggityburg
I'm at work toiling away thinking about my home game. I could listen to another 6 hours of this.
I love love love listening to GMs talk. This is so much fun to just hear artists talk about the process and appreciating each other. Matt talked about how much he loved the interpretation of Byroden in ExU and it made him want to explore it more and it reminds me of different artists who are reinvigorated after discussing techniques with other artists.
I'm and Aabria fan first, human being second
@1:01:10 Brennan is so f*cking funny
“This is not done? I’m just gonna go home”
So this video convinced me to go to Tony Pepperoni. Turns out, they make really good pizza. Would recommend if you happen to get into an accident in Henrietta and your shock response is hunger
If you're a DM, you can have a railroad design for your players, put you only need to put down one section of track at a time. You don't need thousands of miles in a straight line, sometimes you need to go left or right to get around a mountain or lake. It's nice that you have destination in mind, but be ready to enjoy the scenery as they roll on.
I'll be honest. my voices time is when I'm busing tables at my job. I still wear a mask so no one can see my mouth moving, I just gotta remember to whisper or else I get weird looks. it's crazy how voices time can just take over your brain.
i always thought i was a freak for practicing my voices in weird places. i always felt ashamed for getting caught doing voices or quoting potential lines of my NPC's and Played characters.
Really soothing to know im not alone.
43:45 is such a real moment for me. my grandfather died and yes during the funeral i cried, but afterwards i had a great day meeting family and just thinking abt the absurdness of life
So, I'm watching this in fits and spurts while doing other things, and something struck me that I thought was a bit profound and happy. I've paused this video over a dozen times, and every single pause is on smiling faces.
Maybe…maybe…maybe this isn't the darkest timeline?
Some of the best DMs in the world, awesome! And I don't even play DnD anymore
The big TLDR for Matt here is: Death of the author babyyyy
When Matt talks about how great it was to get to talk with other GMs (Brennan and Aabria) because usually with world building he's just on his own:, Ooof do I ever feel that! I'm running an old school WEG Star Wars campaign for a small group of friends, and I have spent so much time on world building, but literally everyone I would normally bounce my ideas off of are playing in the game. I am dying to talk about that stuff I'm doing, especially knowing it will be ages, or possibly never, that my players even get to the stuff I've been working on :p
I could watch these 3 have "GM time" every week. This is absolutely hilarious.
So… it’s easy enough to bring one protagonist’s arc to a conclusion, but how do you orchestrate four or five protagonist arcs coming to a close at the same time?
I am just jumping into this from exclusively watching Dimension 20, so I have a question:
Matt Mercer is this generation's Ed Greenwood, yes?
"don't develop gods, underline" hahaha bro has me rolling
Oh we can curse? BALLS
I think these are my three favourite people on the internet xD
With Brennan's comments about Tolkien and the lack of advancement, I saw a post not long ago that essentially said Middle Earth at the time of the 3rd Age makes much more sense if you read it as a post-apocalyptic setting
TIL about safety tools! So awesome, and I'm going to make sure I incorporate those into my game!
I feel like backstories can help the rest of the party get the push to do something the characters would never do, but the players would love. Like, I'm running a post-apocalyptic world and there's a city on the map that I have labelled "No one who enters this ever leaves." The players are excited by the prospect of the spooky place, but know the characters want to get safe and would avoid that place like the plague.
Then one player tells me that her character is looking for her parents, having got separated when their city fell. So I introduce a character who knew her and her parents and is like "Oh last time I saw them they were heading to really bad place as refugees." So now the characters have a reason to do what the players would like to do.
A conversation between these three could be a weekly thing and the ttrpg world would be down. Almonds forever, y'all.
Watching this as a GM us like taking a class in running games. So much talent in one room. I love them.
"You have no attachments, no desires, no friends or enemies? Who are you?"
"Monk"
"you said that cool!" Is all I want to hear as a dm
We need another one of these!
When the weight of my mortal shell seems to heavy to bear, I come back to this video and pray so hard for another round table that I shit myself
no timestamps for thus?
This world is crap and needs more work than Mercer can do… Mercer fails as a DM!
i think dungeons and dragons is gay, but I have come here to see if my mind can be changed
I don't have ADHD but Brennan's constant tangents make me feel like I do
The greatest world of all time. Yeah right.
I'm greatful for podcasts such as this. I can smile and laugh at these crazy talented and smart individuals but also know that I do not have the time or skill to ever venture into D&D.
Seriously, Brennan is full of bs. He knew it was gonna be a 13 years campaign so they had time to discover everything? Man, this guy is so full of himself.
the Rant starts at a hour in
Therapy is expensive and temporary, Game Masters of Exandria Roundtable is free and eternal
I've rewatched this 3 times in the past 7 months. I hope we have another GM sitdown like this about theorycrafting, world building and character development
The talk of a DM's role (cook in a small kitchen) reminded me of descriptions of the two political parties in the US. The party of the rope (D) vs party of the ladder (R).
For the ladder, the government just stands at the bottom and holds the ladder. Climbing is solely dependent on you. It's way more work for you, but there's no limit to how high you can go. That's the good DM.
For the rope, the government stands at the top and pulls you up with a rope. They'll do all the heavy lifting, but that also means they choose how high you go. That's the bad DM.
1:41:35
I absolutely ADORE this trio. I'm not a hardcore critter and don't follow everything Critical Role does (I know, OFF WITH HIS HEAD) and I don't really understand most of what they're talking about BUT I could listen to them all week, nevertheless …
16:24
I'm glad I'm not the only one who skulks around their house doing character voices and mannerisms.
1:29:00 1:39:00 1:39:29
I would watch hours of these 3 talking like that
ah brennan i feel the food monster feeling that comes with that anxiety.
I want a shirt that says "Some of us will poop on the day of death"