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.

 

[Scribe]

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.

The casual-hardcore.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

https://bsky.app/profile/dndbeyond.com%2Fpost%2F3lrqh6lyth22l

Yeah I imagine this was part of why they left wotc, tbh. I doubt the folks at wotc were unaware of it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Despite what one might see in the news, especially this month, Southern California is great. I moved here in the 1990s and have never looked back. I suspect after decades of rain and gray skies, "come work with us in Pasadena" sounded amazing.

As much as I hate being in the sun for any longer than absolutely necessary….California really is a beautiful place to live. I’ve never seen anything anywhere that made me want to leave.

And it’s nice living in a state with the economy of a major nation, and multiple of the world’s great cities, not to mention all the natural beauty, from deserts to mountains and coastline and islands to giant redwoods, and I live in the Central Valley where ALL THE PRODUCE is grown, so I have farmers with roadside stands all over, and can get honey for cheap that is raw and local, strawberries picked that day, almonds and pistachios for half what they cost in a store, I mean, California can’t be beat.

I wouldn’t live in Pasadena unless it was for a dream job, though. I like getting to work from my affordable 3 bedroom house in 15 minutes.

 

[aiouh]

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...

Yeah it feels a lot like they wanted the "fanart" crowd to make and publish stuff freely, while keeping out professional 3rd party publishers (at least using the COMMUNITY license, they could probably negotiate something else directly). Which is fine, really. Because they did it Day 1 without trying to pull anyone's rug.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I wouldn’t live in Pasadena unless it was for a dream job, though. I like getting to work from my affordable 3 bedroom house in 15 minutes.

Pasadena is many things, but "affordable" hasn't been on that list in a long time.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Todd Kenreck just announced he has been laid off...

https://xcancel.com/ToddKenreck/status/1934697867710746686

Is there another round of layoffs incoming?

At first I was wondering what that site was, and then I saw the right wing politics at the end and the lightbulb went off.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

They are both old and not necessarely in their prime. But they have name recognition, and that is certainly what Darrington paid for.

Before Darrington Press hired them, they had to each fight a young indie creator to the death in a steel cage match.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Huh. In Jess's post, she sounds like she left voluntarily ("I have made the totally reasonable decision to leave a job"), but Todd says he was laid off. That's a bit of an odd koinkidink to happen simultaneously. Unless it's one of those situations where they start by asking around if anyone was considering leaving anyway and they put those on the layoff list first.

I would assume she's part of the initial buy-out round that precedes many layoffs.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Pasadena is many things, but "affordable" hasn't been on that list in a long time.

Yeah and if I was gonna live in an expensive part of Cali, it would Goleta where my family is all from. God i miss Goleta…

 

[Neonchameleon]

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.

Yup. If something is published under an old license it's legit in perpetuity - you just need to check before anything new. The other part the outrage machine objects to is that if you publish something you can't sue Darrington for something similar they publish unless it's a blatant lift, and you can't drag them into your lawsuits. This license came from people on the fringes of the Hollywood machine...