D&D General Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford Join Darrington Press

Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford have a new home, joining Critical Role’s Darrington Press. The LA Times was the first to report on the news of the pair joining Darrington in undisclosed roles. [UPDATE: Per Darrington Press, Perkins is Creative Director and Crawford is Game Director, matching their roles at Wizards.] According to the article, Perkins and Crawford were approached by Critical Role shortly after news broke that the pair were departing Wizards of the Coast.

I was committed to staying with Wizards until after D&D’s 50th anniversary, which gave me lots of time to work on succession planning and exit strategies,” Perkins told the LA Times. “What brought me out of retirement was the chance to work with Jeremy and the brilliant folks at Critical Role on things that have a lasting, positive impact on the world.”

“Chris and I talked about his retirement plan for years, so his approaching departure was long on my mind. When we sent the new D&D rule books to the printer last year, I felt it was time to explore a new chapter for myself,” Crawford added. “I love the game and its team, but 18 years is a long time. I was ready for a new adventure. The chapter that we’ve now opened feels like coming home — resuming work with Chris and returning to Southern California.”

Darrington Press just launched Daggerheart, a fantasy TTRPG that’s more narrative focused than D&D, but also has significant rules-crunch. Many have described Daggerheart as a rival to D&D, a comparison that will likely be made even more now that Darrington has snatched away two of D&D’s primary architects for the last 10+ years.

 

[doctorhook]

Once upon a time (pre-OGL debacle) I opined that Critical Role was a strategic threat to WotC: they were a huge driver of new fans to D&D even before COVID hit. My logic was that there seemed to be a large contingent of players who like Critical Role more-so than actually D&D, so the risk was that if Critical Role transitioned to an alternative system (for any number plausible reasons), then perhaps that whole subset of customers leaves WotC for Critical Role and takes that market share with them.

My prediction didn’t really come to pass despite a few different Critical Role products, and WotC putting 5E into Creative Commons definitely undermined the plausibility of the scenario I envisioned.

But two of the biggest names in 5E joining the Critical Role game development team at a different company?? Well suddenly my prediction almost seems possible again!

 

[The Soloist]

I immediately thought of Star Wars Saga Edition. A pretty big release in 2007, but ended abruptly in 2010 and lost a lot of players very quickly.

I am guessing licensed games probably aren't the kind of examples you intended, but are probably the biggest real cases of this. When a property gets big, it gets an RPG; when it gets stale, any interest in the RPG dies. I don't have numbers, but I'm guessing the Battlestar Galactica RPG, the Firefly RPG, and the My Little Pony RPG all had a decent following upon their release but suffered fast losses as the franchises fell out of view to the general public.

More to the meat of your earlier point, though, is that I'm suspicious most of these "fair weather fans" who pick up and drop RPGs quickly or who actively hate on other RPGs aren't as fickle as their outward appearance would suggest. The issue isn't that they're not loyal to new RPGs. The issue is that they're overly loyal to one specific RPG (often, but not always, their first), and never really wanted to move away from it in the first place. This is, of course, complete speculation. But the only people I've ever seen hate on 5e and want D&D/WotC/something to fail always have another RPG that they want to herald instead of it.

The uphill battle for any RPG, including D&D, is to get new players in faster than acquired players leaving for another system. Shadowdark needs to go mainstream in hobby shops and on Amazon to sustain growth.

 

[aiouh]

This move makes me think Daggerheart has a real shot of pulling some real market share in the coming years. I am personally not a big fan of "Mercer D&D" but the bones of DH are good (it does borrow from a great lineage of games that are proven to have staying power).

If they keep putting out good product I can see this have some genuine cultural pull in a few years.

 

[Afroconan]

So is he going to CR too? Not a fan of his and getting sacked sucks, so I hope he finds a good alternative.
WoTC fires Makenzie De Armas and I'll riot!!!!!!

I was actually thinking that it wouldn't surprise me if part of the remaining D&D team gets "poached" by Darrington now that Jeremy and Chris are over there.

 

[Chaltab]

As far as I'm aware, Daggerheart doesn't have an open license and thus any additional content will be relegated to what Darrington Press makes themselves and licenses. I'm sure they'll have success and that having Perkins and Crawford will be a boon, but I'm skeptical anything will truly threaten D&D.

Edit: Unless of course Hasbro/WOTC mismanagement on the level of late 80s Gygax or late 90s Williams.

 

[Weiley31]

Plot Twist!

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Oh, I don't think many except the terminally online care about corporate positions. But both are significant social media-wise for 5e/5.24; Crawford was Sage Advice for years and Perkins was all over the D&D YouTube channel for the launch of 2024 (as for that matter was Crawford).

One thought is that TTRPG is niche enough on the whole that the terminally online are still really important to the overall market-- even when they aren't most of the sales (and sometimes they are), they're most of the people promoting games to their groups of normie friends.

 

[Afroconan]

As far as I'm aware, Daggerheart doesn't have an open license and thus any additional content will be relegated to what Darrington Press makes themselves and licenses. I'm sure they'll have success and that having Perkins and Crawford will be a boon, but I'm skeptical anything will truly threaten D&D.

Daggerheart has a third party license but from what I've read it's more restrictive and have a clause where it says they just have to publish a new one to make the old one invalid, although it seems you can still sell under the old license, just not publish anything new.

Also it seems to be very restrictive on adjacent products like character builders... But don't take my word for that last one...

 

[Borius]

This is so weird. It's like when Kevin Nash and Scott Hall started showing up on WCW Nitro.

Hey YO! Perfect analogy.

 

[Weiley31]

Unexpected. But so many find it hard to retire.

I plan on working till I'm dust. Or the bus hits and kills me instantly.

Whichever one happens first.