Fantasy worldbuilding is tough to pull off on the page and can be even more daunting on the small screen, but one iconic Prime Video franchise took the expansive worlds of Dungeons & Dragons and made them feel not just accessible, but fun. Even if HBO’s iconic fantasy mega hit Game of Thrones might have stumbled in its final seasons, one thing that no one can take away from the series is its masterful world building.
In its early seasons, HBO’s ambitious adaptation of author George R.R. Martin’s epic saga A Song of Ice & Fire managed to juggle dozens of main characters sprinkled across various locations while also drip-feeding complex in-universe lore and backstory in each episode. Newcomers could easily have felt overwhelmed by the show’s scope, but both Game of Thrones and its spinoff House of the Dragon made these epic, expansive stories feel intimate and personal.
In the years before and since, many TV creators have tried to bring fantasy worlds to life on the small screen, but this can be tough precisely because so much fantasy literature lives and dies based on its worldbuilding. Even though Terry Pratchett’s The Color of Magic is an admirably faithful adaptation, the show’s runtime alone means the miniseries barely scraped the surface of the Discworld universe. Luckily, Prime Video’s Critical Role show The Legend Of Vox Machina avoided this common problem with its graceful worldbuilding.
The Legend Of Vox Machina’s Worldbuilding Is So Good, It Appeals To Non-D&D Fans
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Based on the first campaign of the popular actual play podcast Critical Role, The Legend Of Vox Machina brings Dungeon Master Matthew Mercer’s world to life in vivid animation. Set in the world of Exandria, The Legend Of Vox Machina follows the titular Vox Machina crew, Vex, Pike, Trinket, Vax, Scanlan, Grog, Keyleth, and Percy, as the mercenary group undertakes a perilous quest to get revenge after a brutal massacre in the town of Whitestone.
Initially working to kill the blue dragon Brimscythe, the Vox Machina crew soon find themselves getting mired in increasingly complex in-universe power struggles as the show’s multi-season story continues. However, where shows like Game of Thrones, The Wheel of Time, the Lord of the Rings prequel The Rings of Power, or Mike Flanagan’s upcoming The Dark Tower adaptation for Prime Video can often make a point of expanding their fictional world’s stable of main characters with each new season, The Legend Of Vox Machina wisely takes an alternative approach.
Even though the world of The Legend Of Vox Machina‘s Exandria feels massive, lived-in, and immersive, viewers only glimpse the setting through the eyes of the show’s main characters. The later Critical Role spinoff show The Mighty Nein goes on to expand the history of Exandria further, but both series are sure to remain focused on their small band of protagonists rather than consistently opening up their outlook to focus on more and more main characters.
The Legend Of Vox Machina’s Worldbuilding Works Because Of Its Source Material
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This proves to be an ingenious choice, as it means The Legend Of Vox Machina feels big in its worldbuilding but recognizably human in its stakes. Like the Critical Role campaign that the series is based on, The Legend Of Vox Machina has characters that viewers can truly get invested in and care about, rather than a gigantic, sprawling lineup that requires a who’s who for the uninitiated viewer.
In this regard, The Legend Of Vox Machina feels as much like a high fantasy, Dungeons and Dragons-inspired spin on the space western Firefly as it does a love letter to epic sagas like A Song of Ice & Fire. The Critical Role show’s world is huge and rich with imagined history, but The Legend Of Vox Machina‘s reliable group of memorable main characters makes the Prime Video fantasy show’s worldbuilding feel real instead of merely massive.
The Legend of Vox Machina
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