Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford Go to Darrington Press

 Well, this is a pretty big shift.

Perkins and Crawford, who have served as the two "faces" of D&D across 5th Edition (and earlier - Perkins began the arguable creation of Actual Play with Penny Arcade's Acquisitions Incorporated, initially to promote 4th Edition) surprised everyone by both quitting WotC at more or less the same time, shortly after the launch of the 2024 5E rules revision.

Naturally, two people with arguably the most impressive resume items in the whole of the TTRPG industry, could be expected to have some future prominent role, but today it was announced that both of them are going to work at Darrington Press, Critical Role's publishing wing, and are serving as Creative Director (Perkins) and Game Director (Crawford,) similar roles to what they had at WotC.

Daggerheart's recent launch, which I believe has been a pretty successful one (though my source is generally "do my friends know about it?") as a competitor to D&D (though in the arts, including game design, "competition" is always kind of a weird term, at least for the people actually creating the stuff. Let the MBAs in the suits worry about competition) makes this something of a provocative move.

Perkins and Crawford have been arguably part of D&D's brand identity, and I think hiring these two could be a very shrewd move to draw in people who have grown to trust the duo's leadership. Getting not just one, but both of them, really sends a message that I think Daggerheart is truly aiming to get D&D players to view this new RPG as standing at an equal level to its storied forebear.

I don't know what this will mean for existing leaders at Darrington. But I do wonder how Perkins and Crawford will operate at a smaller company. WotC, of course, has always had the burden of being owned by Hasbro, which is a notoriously ill-managed megacorp. With Critical Role being a privately-owned company, there's less incentive to make decisions that please shareholders instead of customers, a tendency I generally think is the cancer rotting the core of our late-capitalist hellscape.

As Critical Role expands, there is, of course, some nervousness I feel about it becoming less of a "friends' group project" and more of a profit-driven machine, and capitalism corrupts all things, but I'm going to remain cautiously optimistic that they'll remain independent.

I have yet to actually play Daggerheart, and while there's always the "this is different and thus I feel uncomfortable" element, I think it might actually be very cool. In particular, I'm excited to look into its "Campaign Frames," which describes several "canon settings" to use for the game, but beyond just new settings, gives the various frames rules alterations, which is pretty cool to put right there in the core rulebook.