Matthew Mercer On Critical Role's Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting Guide via Matthew Mercer’s critical role has been
going on for years now and because of
that there’s all of this story all of
this world building and for the first
time you can now play in his campaign
setting I have a book coming out in
August late August of the summer the
critical role Kaldor a campaign setting
published by Green Ronan and it’s it’s
the is a campaign setting book for
anyone who wants to run a game or a
campaign on the continent of Kaldor a an
egg’s andrea the world that I’ve created
with critical role and I’m super excited
I’m super nervous it’s been a very
unique and wonderful and scary and
difficult experience and I’m really
proud of it
and I hope I hope people end up enjoying
reading it and playing in that world as
much as I did creating it the DM notes
works really helpful
and going back through all my old
campaign notes and the different you
know sessions that I prepared I was able
to kind of mine things that I’d
forgotten about or things that I didn’t
fully flesh out or story threads that I
prepared but the players never uncovered
that I was unable to put into the guide
and as a possible plot thread that other
people can then explore so it was it was
kind of cool to go back and extrapolate
on and flesh out different ideas that I
never got the opportunity to we were
actually just playing through the
campaign but there’s also the challenge
of looking at a larger scale map and
being able to put out the beats in the
places as the players have been and
realize all the negative space that they
haven’t been in the places I didn’t have
to prepare because the story never took
them there and then realize I have to
flush all this out I have to make it a
living breathing world with social
elements and struggles and cities and
dynamic you know structures and and
historic or historical reasons for the
existence of certain locations and a
history for the Pantheon and the various
ages that brought the worlds where it is
now these are all things that I thought
about and developed slowly over time but
only for the purpose of telling my
players to be able to have to put in a
book where I can hand it to anybody and
go here now you have all the tools you
need to to live in this world was a very
daunting but a very rewarding experience
it is a very cathartic experience being
able to kind of show a lot of the things
that
ever had the opportunity to see the
light of day and to explain some
elements of the narrative that the
players never explored or never had the
opportunity to really discuss in the in
our game on the show so it’s also going
to be a cool lore book people that
follow the show to read through and
learn more about the history of tell
Dora the history of eggs Andrea how the
gods came about you know what actually
does is the calamity and the divergence
where the messages came from how is vast
behind the only city that’s existed
through this three main epochs of eggs
and rhea it’s just a it hopefully will
just be a fun resource for people to
read if they don’t play D&D but they
follow the show to learn more about the
world that our our players play in and
then for those who want to play in the
space and hopefully provided enough
tools where you can then create your own
adventuring bands to coexist in the same
time period or at least a parallel time
period to Vox mocking his adventures I
have created a few archetype variations
I didn’t create a new classes totally
because I had to create the world and
time into the limited resources to me
and I had a deadline but I do have four
new archetypes I have a new monk
archetype or a pathway a wave of the
cobalt soul which is based on the cobalt
reserve which is a monastery that
worshipped the knowing mistress the
goddess of knowledge and they keep the
libraries they seek out lost information
recover it and then keep it safe in
various repositories there’s that monk
path I have a barbarian path of the
juggernaut which is their like the
frontline warriors of any sort of
ransacking party of roving barbaric
hordes like the herd of storms and that
ilk where grog is from there is a
sorcerer bloodline called the rune child
in which the character in the show
Gilmore is one of and they’re beings
that are born with a certain essence of
magic in their body where the more they
expend their sorcery points it charges
up runes in their body that they can
then extend again for additional ability
so if I get to spend sorcerer points to
charge your runes and then you can
expend your charters runes to do other
things so it turns the sorcerer point
resource into a whole like a secondary
system which is kind of fun and then I
have a blood domain for clerics which is
tied into the blood hunter in the
history of the blood hunter order
is the match the power of divine blood
magic was gifted and wild not long ago
and was shunned because of the nature of
it’s more visceral magic energies and as
such these kind of hidden orders began
to branch off and so there the blood
clerics and then the kind of the lesser
warriors of those orders which became
the blood hunters so the blood the blood
domain is now something that I’ve added
to the book as well so I have those I
have a bunch of new feats that I’ve
created submitter tailored to the world
and some they’re just fun ideas that I
thought you might want to try
incorporate in your game I have some
cool campaign options I have a bunch of
new ones I’ve made like one or two new
creatures and I have a lot of various
stat locks for different factions in the
world you know in create the humans or
other races that you might encounter
there are different factions of what
their abilities would be and then a
whole bunch of information about the
world locations and plot points and plot
hooks that you can use to kind of
kickstart any sort of story really
quickly if you wanted to run a game in
that location no new spells for this one
because I feel like adding adding a
handful of small spells is it doesn’t
feel as robust if I’m going to create
like a new spell area I want to have a
sizeable amount of new spells to add and
for the amount of work I do on this
campaign setting I kind of had to choose
one of the others so maybe in the future
if I feels necessary or I feel it’s
enough spells that I feel inspired to
create I can add those either on DM
skills or put into a future book but for
this one I didn’t feel that an addition
of new spells was something I could
really provide in a satisfying way to
the audience I created backgrounds for
your characters can take that tie you
into either training or of the various
Lyceum’s or universities of magic
practitioners in the world or higher
knowledge I have backgrounds for being
member of the class with a myriad some
of the specific kind of roguish criminal
organizations the world I’ve one
background that’s specifically for
bringing recovering cultists somebody
who was pulled into a cult and
eventually got out of it then I
a couple other fun things I don’t wanna
spoil too much we may have already over
showed my hand a little bit but it’s
okay it’s coming up soon enough so I
think people who are unfamiliar with the
show necessarily could read this as a
primer to get into the series or to help
answer questions as they go along
to some elements of the story and things
the players are discovering if they go
along see I can definitely access that
at any of the viewers or anybody who
wants to find out more about the lore
and the world around Vox machina yeah
I’m hoping my goal for this has been a
lot of campaign settings the past that I
loved but they read very excited PD
alike they were very much of just
information you know there wasn’t a
narrative layer to the presentation in
some ways and I tried to inject a little
bit more of that into it because it’s
the nature of the game that I run and I
wanted to be something that wasn’t so
dense that a person that wasn’t as
familiar was the indie or is deep cut
into it it’s like me and you are
wouldn’t feel kind of that first two
chapters into some rule Ian you know
daunting oh I don’t know if this is my
kind of book type thing so I tried to
give it a little more of that that
welcoming narrative flair to anybody who
tries to take a crack at reading it I’ve
been working on the book off and on for
about a year that involves both just the
process of bringing all my notes
together trying to flesh out the world
coming up with ideas that worked and
didn’t and scrapping the ones that
didn’t and coming up with newer ones
that replace those that didn’t quite
work out a lot of trial and error a lot
of trying to design places that fit
together and then also leaving enough
parts of the world open that you can
create in those spaces as well there are
a couple of areas in the continent that
I specifically left a little open-minded
a little open-ended so that the Indian
wants to run that game can create other
locations in there specific to their
campaign so she’s been learning a lot of
lessons a lot of failure a lot of
success a lot of trying to put as much
of my heart into this book as I can and
hope that people appreciate it and it’s
been a spinet endeavors hasn’t been a
very new experience you don’t create it
and go good job it’s done it’s a
learning process and it always it and
even the guys who professionally create
classes in D&D for each addition they’re
learning new things each time they
develop something that’s the purpose of
the unearth or cannon
the idea of opening things up to the
community to add their feedback and tell
them what they the official designers
might not have figured out
so it’s you know acknowledging that even
the people that do this for a living
still need that feedback and that
resource of people helping them
fine-tune their ideas same goes for you
you just don’t have that experience yet
so when you’re creating your own
individual class or collapse archetype
or feed or any custom elements of the
game one be open to constructive
criticism and thankfully because of the
internet nowadays which we didn’t have
we were younger we had small forum
boards if but you have red and all these
great communities that can give you
feedback sometimes blunt feedback but
feedback nevertheless that will help you
learn why this ability works in this
rule set why this one doesn’t why this
one could be overpowered if it’s
combined with this other multi class
ability or why this seems to be a kind
of a lackluster you know capstone
ability at level 20 you know these are
all things that you can learn through
that failure and and my first class I
ever made the blood hunter
I made an alert because I kind of made
up something on the side for the the Vin
Diesel one-shot we did and I was like
people are asking what he played I’ll
throw something together and put it up
online it was fun and then immediately
had the internet telling me okay here’s
why it’s broken and doesn’t work I was
like oh oh you’re right oh that’s really
bad I’m really embarrassed now okay back
to the drawing board and I saw I renamed
it and I redesigned it kind of from them
from the ground up and even that went
through many revisions as I learned a
lot about what the core balance of the
game system is how the intended
designers did it and what makes the
classes work against each other so yeah
it’s not an easy process if you’re
looking into doing any of your custom
homebrew content for like as far as
class design goes just acknowledge that
it’s going to be a process it’s going to
take a while it’s going to get
frustrated two times I’m working on one
homebrew class right now that has been
toying around with for a couple months
and it’s been just a lot of
back-and-forth and me going back to my
computer getting frustrated and walking
away for a week and came back to with
fresh eyes and then I’ll have a
breakthrough and it’s a lot of comparing
contrasting with other existing classes
to and what they’re comparable level
abilities are like the damage they deal
the you know how if a DC is required
it’s an attack based thing and keeping a
balance between combat and role play
based abilities to now everything has to
do damage or be like on
Orion said ability you have to consider
things that can be creatively used in a
social environment or an investigatory
environments or something that isn’t
combat focus so the players have an
opportunity to watch that class shine at
all points in the game and you just
learn these through trial and error the
blunder isn’t like an official in the
indie books classes but for me it’s
officially in the in the toddler world
it’s officially a class and then be the
overall narrative of the universe so if
you’re going to run a game in eggs and
Ria’s 100 ‘s do exist the the order of
the clairee which is actually the blood
header orders that exist in the world as
hidden as they are they are part of the
universe so I consider them official in
Canon with in eggs and RIA a blood
hunter is being inserted like a fighters
in all-around tough disease and damage
most weapons and armor can kind of
customize their combat abilities
barbarian is heavy damage dealing
resisting but high-risk high-reward in a
lot of cases a rogue is very kind of a
little frail but could do bursts of high
damage stealthy a blood hunter is kind
of a glass cannon melee character they
they they can do bursts and high amounts
of damage in the frontline without
having to rely on stealth and trickery
like a rogue does they can you know rely
on some magic abilities and they they
can ultimately use bonus actions pretty
pretty well using blood curses and
things that can do minor alterations to
how to control elements of the
battlefield but they’re also they
sacrifice some of their own vitality to
do some of their own abilities and there
they have some variation in your utility
based on how they can research creatures
that they’re going after and try and
tailor what they’re preparing towards
that specific encounter so they’re
they’re kind of like a monster hunting
type class or at least a class that is
designed to find the the unn unn the
impure darkness and evil that exist in
the world and wipe it and give up a part
of themself to do so as much as the pout
and that’s like I will distort evil with
righteousness the 100 says I will
destroy evil by embracing a little bit
of it
and fighting fire with fire that was
kind of my why I wanted to make stand
out with blood hunter was to be a
frontline with some survivability but
ultimately it needs to be careful or
else it can go down pretty bad we played
for two years before we even started
streaming you know in our own private
home game and I mean a lot of the
players backstories informed some really
key areas in the world
Percival’s whole back story in
Whitestone was part of a one-page
write-up that he sent me and then I just
took that and extrapolated and created a
whole you know region of the continents
an entire social structure over the city
that he just put a name to and I created
a historical history of this location
and the eventual overtaking and
slaughter of the people that were in
power and is you know barely escaping
the last supposed remaining of the
bloodline and that gave birth to an
entire mountainside and entire
surrounding forests and an entire
society that exists on the outskirts of
it when it’s when Beck’s and Beck’s told
us that they were both half elves and
their father was a elven diplomat from
Melbourne city that came to the idea to
create sing Lorne then sing born then
began to give me the idea of creating
the variant expanse and everything that
exists in that space around it so the
players had a they weren’t directly
involved in the creation of the world
but a lot of the seeds of their original
backstory ideas and suggestions that
they made in the early game definitely
helped inform the overall kind of build
and structure of the world they now play
it I owe a lot to them honestly and as
much as I would have created on my own I
could see kind of a bit of a variation
between what I would have done in a
vacuum versus what I did with their
influence I could say that I’m very
happy and much more excited about what
I’ve created thanks to their influence
as much as you can create as a person
communal creation which is kind of the
magic of role-playing games anyway can
only make it better in my face
you
@forbes https://t.co/FfWflFd3MT

— Todd Kenreck (@ToddKenreck) June 6, 2017