Playing in the World of Exandria: Critting with Critters

With two sourcebooks, thousands of hours of content, comics, books, and a module, there are countless stories to explore in Exandria. Coming into a game set in Exandria is a different challenge, as players will know Critical Role in varying capacities. While playing in this rich world, finding a balance between your unique flair and the enthralling lore some of us have grown to love is essential. These adventures should take you through known locations such as Emon and Whitestone (both heavily featured in Critical Role), and unknown areas that have seldom been seen before like the Dreamseap Marshlands (a former forest that turned into a marshlands due to the unending rain from the Stormcrest Mountains) or the Gray Valley (a land so distorted by dark rituals that it has never healed again, making all flora seem grayish).

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The Known and the Unknown

A key element in telling stories in Exandria is to bring the unknown and known together and make a pastiche of your world that lives and breathes. Take elements that were featured in the live plays of Critical Role and sprinkle them into your original story. This keeps hardcore Critters excited to visit things that they’ve imagined before, like a city, a magical weapon, or an NPC. It also helps create a more unique atmosphere for the particular game you’re running. Perhaps you’re dealing with Myriad (an organized crime syndicate) operatives in the city of Kymal. The Myriad has been featured in several campaigns of Critical Role, so a known enemy can be an ideal hook to catch the attention of Critters. As The Myriad functions as an organized crime syndicate, they are an easy hook to explain to a player without prior knowledge of the different campaigns. Kymal itself has been featured in the supplement campaigns (Exandria Unlimited), so it may be a more obscure reference, which is a great starting point in campaigns. 

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Exandria’s Rich Lore

The Game Master should be keenly aware that most Critters have imagined these iconic locations and items on their own. Each table should use the tools accessible to them to ensure they find a good rhythm in keeping true to the lore vision at the table. Set the ground rules for what this looks like at your session zero, what the players' expectations are about the lore in general, and what everyone prefers when there is an inevitable lore contradiction. Keep the conversation as open and honest as possible, as media means different things to different people. Let’s look at the All-Hammer, the Dwarven deity of smithing and creating, an often-overlooked deity amongst the Prime Gods of Exandria. There is little information about him throughout the campaigns and sourcebooks, so one can use the few tidbits of lore that we have as a base and expand as needed for your campaign. Expand on the existing lore by delving into the information we have, and fill in the blanks as you need.  You can use this to create questlines and backstories for your character.  As a Game Master, you can create a pilgrimage in his honor on the continent of Wildemount (Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount).  As a backstory element, you could include him as your character's main deity, as you hail from the city of Terah (where the Earth Ashari lives).  Seeing as we’re playing in a setting that is currently being expanded, the Game Master should be able to do some research and see if they want to include anything that has been recently released. In the most recent episode of Exandria Unlimited, we learned about the All-Hammer’s Vestige of Divergence, a previous item that had never appeared in any of the Critical Role media. 

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Lore at Your Table

While running Exandrian campaigns, there is always the possibility of having a nagging feeling of contradicting the already expansive lore. This is normal, and you should feel confident in the time you spent with the source material. You should never feel down on yourself if you say something wrong or contradictory. Remember that there is so much lore that it is nearly impossible for everyone to know everything, so remember to set ground rules when these situations arise. Should the party address this as it’s happening? Perhaps they should wait until the scene is done? The Game Master would prefer this to be brought to their attention after the session. Spend some time asking the players what they know of the lore in a general sense.  This will let the Game Master know how to word their descriptions and how in-depth they need to go. They should invest time in explaining things that may be known to some but not others, as information plays a key role in running a successful game. Not everyone has the time to watch hours of live plays, but they may have some knowledge based on the research they did in their character's backstory.

Communication is key to ensuring everyone knows what to expect. Retconning or fixing these issues should not be frowned upon, as everyone is here to play a game and enjoy their time. There is the possibility that when the Game Master was describing the fabled Sun Tree of Whitestone, you had always pictured it differently than the words they used. Immerse yourself in your creativity and visualize it as you’d like; it doesn’t hurt anyone at the table to appreciate these grand locations in different manners.

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Exandria’s Unique Monsters

A nice tip for all Game Masters trying to navigate this world is to search any monster found in the Monster Manual and add the word Exandria. This will give you a sense of how some of the monsters have been previously featured in Exandria. A great example is the Cyclope Stormcaller, a great monster to run for a thrilling encounter and a different take than we know of the Cyclopes. 

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Modules and Custom Campaigns

There are several places where you can find the right game for you. One of the first things that may help is playing in the official module published by Critical Role, Call of the Netherdeep. This helps set the tone of what to expect from an Exandrian adventure, and it has ties to known and unknown aspects of the world we have all grown to love. From elements that have been featured in the campaign as the city of Ank-Harel, to an unknown Vestige of Divergence (an ancient, powerful relic), The Jewel of the Three Prayers. If you’ve already played in this module, reading up on the sourcebooks and supplemental material is both a fun activity and a way to learn more about the lore. Thankfully, the internet is vast, and several wiki pages on Critical Role are updated on an ongoing basis, where you can always reference back to. Startplaying has a plethora of Game Masters that are running homebrew games that tie into Exandria, as well as modules, to allow you to test the water and find the right Game Master for you.

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Udah The Undying 

One of the best examples we can give you is running a campaign that deals with Udah the Undying. Deep in the Dreamseap Marshlands, there is a powerful lich that has a Necropolis filled with forgotten treasure. One of these treasures, an ancient relic, perhaps homebrewed to be a Vestige of Divergence, is of a golden skull with wish-granting rubies in each socket. This is a great plot hook that can be explored, as none of this has ever appeared in Critical Role. You can tie it to a character’s backstory, saying that one of the character's siblings has traveled to the Tomb of Udah in the Dreamseap Marshlands in search of the skull, and has gone missing. The party must now try to uncover the location of the Tomb, and their only lead is a member of the Golden Grin (a group of mostly Bards that stand against tyranny) located in the city of Whitestone. The Grinner can be a new character or one of the famous NPCs that were revealed to be grinners in the sourcebooks.

The Grinner may need the party to travel to the Gray Valley with or for them, to locate a Vestige of Divergence they’re searching for. They are doing this job for an unknown benefactor, which can open the door to plenty of options. This questline may also bring us to one of the most controversial questions: What to do with the playable characters of Critical Role? The Grinner could be working for the famous De Rollos or be tied directly to Scanlan Shorthalt (who is not a member of the Golden Grin but has ties directly to the group). There are two main opinions on this topic. On one hand, the playable characters from the campaign should exist outside of your game to avoid your campaign feeling like a cameo fest fan fiction. On the other hand, pepper them into the story in a logical sense as they are part of Exandria. If you’re a mid-level adventuring group dealing with big stakes in your current adventure, the rulers of Zeprah (Keyleth) or Whitestone (de Rollos) would probably get involved to help stop whatever calamity the party is trying to prevent. Try making it as organic as possible, and never add them in for the sake of adding in a cameo. These characters are cornerstones in this universe, and their appearance should always be something special. Another option you may try is not featuring the characters heavily, but perhaps any number of characters affiliated with them. An interesting take is to feature their children, some of whom have been slightly featured in Critical Role. A campaign set 30 years after the first Campaign of Critical Role can feature the children of Vox Machina, already in their late teens or early twenties, depending on the character. This allows the Game Master a lot of leeway in using contacts to the famous characters without needing to feature them heavily.

In the end, you have to find your voice through this lore-filled world. The table should set their expectations on what they want included from the live plays, and the Game Master should carry out that vision. Remember to have fun when visiting such a beloved world, and if the players and Game Master are having fun, then none of the possible errors in canon will matter. You have the tools to sort through the excess and tell the story that deserves to be told at your table. 

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DM Joe is a Professional Game Master that lives in the tropics, and dreams about Exandria.