Top D&D designers join Critical Role after quitting Wizards of the Coast
Christopher Perkins and Jeremy Crawford, previously the creative director and the game director respectively for Dungeons & Dragons, have joined forces with Critical Role, the company announced Monday. Perkins and Crawford are joining Critical Role’s tabletop games-publishing arm Darrington Press to develop new game concepts, innovative mechanics, and future iterations of expansions across the publisher’s product line, which includes the recently launched Daggerheart.
Perkins and Crawford left D&D and Magic: The Gathering publisher Wizards of the Coast in April, after decades of shared experience at the tabletop game maker. Together, they helped create stories and rules for beloved tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) experiences across multiple games, including Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars role-playing, and Warhammer fantasy role-play.
At Darrington Press, they’ll work in similar roles: Perkins, is now creative director of Darrington Press, while Crawford will serve as game director.
“Storytelling has always been at the heart of everything I do, and joining Darrington Press feels a bit like coming home,” Perkins said in a news release. “I’ve loved being a part of the extended Critical Role family as a regular guest over the years and I’m beyond excited to help create new worlds full of adventure.”
“I’ve always believed that great games invite everyone to the table, and that’s exactly what excites me about joining Darrington Press,” said Crawford in a statement. “This team is passionate, wildly creative, and committed to building welcoming, connected, amazing story-driven experiences—I can’t wait to expand on what Critical Role has already created to develop some really fun and unique games.”
Critical Role’s Darrington Press officially launched Daggerheart, an alternative to Wizards’ D&D franchise, earlier this month after years of development and testing. While Critical Role built its actual play empire on Dungeons & Dragons’ fifth-edition rules, it has since moved on to become a competitor to publisher Wizards of the Coast, writing its own rulesets and creating new fantasy worlds to inhabit.
The Critical Role team is currently in the midst of an actual play series called Age of Umbra, described as a “dark, survival fantasy” Daggerheart miniseries, featuring game master Matthew Mercer and players Ashley Johnson, Laura Bailey, Liam O’Brien, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, Taliesin Jaffe, and Travis Willingham.
