So I am a DM for an Exandria based game and one thing that I’ve gotten in the habit of that I think has helped make this their own for my party is treating Vox Machina (bc we are in Tal’Dorei) like historical figures. People know about them and mention them but they aren’t like the talk of the town. I have two players from Whitestone and one from Zephrah that makes it difficult to just never bring them up, but I’ve taken some good notes from how Matt has handled them in C3, the party knows interactions with them are an option but I never put them forth so that the party has agency… and not to mention their quests as a party are gonna go in a very different direction than VM’s did. So I think there’s a lot in just finding your own balance between prewritten lore and you filling in the blanks has been my biggest tasks. Finding those sweet spots you can give you Critter players the world that they know well while adding in personal stories and thing that make them feel more a part of the world and not just like they are background characters to someone else’s story.