Exandria

Exandria

Originally created by Matthew Mercer for his personal campaigns in 2012, Exandria is the world where the Critical Role web series is set and is a high fantasy setting, which moves away from the "harmful tropes in D&D" around monstrous races. In 2017, Green Ronin Publishing released a setting book written by Mercer and James Haeck, Critical Role: Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting, which focused on the continent of Tal'Dorei in Exandria, where the first Critical Role campaign with the adventuring group Vox Machina took place. One critic highlighted that this campaign has the "specific flavor of high fantasy drama" akin to the "Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms books". An updated edition, titled Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn (2022) from publisher Darrington Press, moves the timeline 20 years forward to the era of the second Critical Role campaign. Academic Emily Friedman, writing for Los Angeles Review of Books, noted designer and critic Alyssa Visscher's 2021 argument that Exandria "is this D&D gen's Forgotten Realms. It's so many folks' intro setting; a large section of the newer player base *knows* and is emotionally invested in it". Friedman commented, "if Visscher is right (and I believe she is), then Critical Role and other major actual plays are the primary sources today for D&D's narrative and world-building intellectual properties".