On July 16, the world of tabletop role-playing video games (TTRPG) was shocked to be taught that former senior Dungeons & Dragons designers, Christopher Perkins and Jeremy Crawford, had joined the ranks of Darrington Press. The information arrived simply weeks after Important Position Productions’ tabletop video games imprint launched its first in-house recreation, Daggerheart.
Again in April, Perkins and Crawford unexpectedly left Wizards of the Coast, the place they have been integral to the design and success of D&D’s fifth version iteration. However it wasn’t clear which path they’d forage subsequent.
Now, Important Position CCO Matt Mercer will mix their twenty years of game-design expertise with the momentum of the actual-play empire. It’s simple to think about the duo contributing to Daggerheart, which, mere weeks after its praise-filled launch, threatens D&D’s place on the prime of the TTRPG mountain. As somebody who has adopted the TTRPG for years, the artistic power and impulse at Darrington Press/Important Position feels palpable whereas, on the opposite facet, Wizards appears to be struggling to maintain up.
From an outsider’s perspective, there appear to be two totally different tales right here. One is the official model of an amicable relationship between “mom” Wizards and the poster baby, Important Position, sealed by a congratulatory put up on X. By all official accounts, Perkins, after reaching the place of artistic director for D&D in 2024, amicably retired in April 2025, on the age of 57. Crawford, who had additionally maxed out his stage in 2024 as recreation director, left shortly after Perkins, as a result of he was glad with the product and wished to pursue totally different artistic avenues.
On the time, Wizards of the Coast’s VP of franchise and product (Dungeons & Dragons) Jess Lanzillo advised Display screen Rant that Perkins and Crawford’s departures had “been some extent of dialogue for a while and one thing that we’ve been coaching up everybody for.“ In keeping with Lanzillo, their substitutes would come from the present ranks, because the crew is robust and there’s a clear roadmap in place for the subsequent 5 years of D&D.
However there is likely to be a much less savory story to the transition and Darrington’s recruitment of the legendary designers. Two months after Perkins and Crawford left the corporate, Wizards of the Coast shared two job openings for senior Dungeons & Dragons designers, one listed as “Head of Recreation Ecosystem” and one as “Principal Recreation Designer”, that are, primarily, the roles that Perkins and Crawford coated. If Wizards’ hope was to actually promote from inside, plans, in some unspecified time in the future, clearly modified.
In one other shocking information, shortly after the announcement that Perkins and Crawford had joined Darrington Press, Lanzillo introduced her personal departure from Wizards of the Coast. (No particulars have been shared about her subsequent function). Lastly, on the identical day, Todd Kenreck, a screenwriter, producer, and Dungeon Grasp who was the top of content material for D&D since 2022, introduced he had been laid off from Wizards. Kenreck was an in depth collaborator with Perkins and Crawford, showing in interviews any time the corporate launched a brand new product, and his sudden departure raised its personal eyebrows.
Have been Perkins and Crawford’s exits motivated by dissent quite than “retirement”? It’s pure hypothesis, after all, nevertheless it’s simple that dropping a artistic director, a recreation director, a VP of Franchise and Product, and the top of content material within the span of a few months doesn’t bode properly for “the world’s biggest role-playing recreation”. (Polygon reached out to Perkins and Crawford to conduct a follow-up interview, however representatives for Darrington stated they weren’t out there for additional remark presently.) It’s notable that the opposite particular person accountable for the inception of D&D’s fifth version, Mike Mearls, was laid off in 2023 and later joined rival writer Chaosium (of Name of Cthulhu fame). If two clues make a case, 5 clues spell bother for Wizards and Dungeons & Dragons, usually thought of the most well-liked TTRPG on this planet — which is, right this moment, a tough declare to make.
It’s simple that the sport’s fifth version is a beacon of success within the historical past of D&D. Due to its simplified guidelines, newfound concentrate on storytelling, the success of Important Position’s precise play present, and sudden mainstream publicity (Stranger Issues be blessed), D&D went from a well-known however nonetheless area of interest product to an enormous media icon. Baldur’s Gate 3 and the primary (virtually) respectable Dungeons & Dragons film, Honor Amongst Thieves, sealed the deal (simply take a look at the earnings experiences) and it appeared that there was nowhere to go however up for the sport. Enter D&D 2024, an up to date and revised model of fifth version that was presupposed to be the jewel of the crown, the cherry on prime of a powerful cake. However from a participant standpoint, it wasn’t.
Many of the backlash in opposition to the 2024 guidelines is confined to on-line areas, comparable to X and Instagram, the place criticism and factionalism usually take a lifetime of their very own, unrelated to the deserves of a selected product. Nevertheless, that’s not solely true within the case of the 2024 guidelines. I’ve been an energetic Dungeon Grasp for the previous eight years, working weekly classes virtually continuous. I personal many of the fifth version books, all the 2024 ones, and I interact with the D&D neighborhood day by day on totally different platforms. So, I can say, humbly however knowledgeably, that the most recent iteration of the principles is way from what it might have been, and it actually doesn’t really feel like an enchancment of the product.
As Derek Garcia wrote on this good evaluate, the issue with the 2024 guidelines is that these fail to repair the largest subject with D&D’s fifth version — a free guidelines system that deliberately offloads recreation design onto the DM — and so they really make it worse, too. It’s nonetheless solely as much as interpretation what occurs to Druids in the event that they put on steel armor, however that’s simply essentially the most generally cited instance. After I purchased the brand new core rulebooks, I used to be genuinely shocked by the dearth of issues I discovered. Swayed by the advertising and marketing and the hype, I used to be anticipating these to be an enlargement of their earlier variations, which got here out 10 years in the past, the place issues can be added, not subtracted. As a substitute, I used to be welcomed by fewer customization choices for characters, extra imprecise wording about motion economic system and spells, and even the removing of iconic monsters, forcing me to return to the outdated variations of the e-book continuously throughout my video games.
Nowhere are these points extra evident than within the new Dungeon Grasp’s Information. Whereas the unique fifth version put plenty of inventory within the DM’s function and skill to bend the principles, the 2014 Dungeon Grasp’s Information did what it stated on the quilt, and guided you considerably successfully in navigating these harmful waters. The 2024 model, as a substitute, presents a plethora of imprecise and common instructions that solely exacerbate the “free guidelines” subject. I really like that they included a complete Greyhawk setting within the e-book, however how a lot helpful rules-related content material was minimize to accommodate that? In distinction, character lessons within the 2024 Participant’s Handbook have been made much more highly effective, each now loaded with skills that make it even tougher for DMs to steadiness encounter issue – one other large subject with the sport.
Past participant points with the sport, which has its personal tradition battle occurring that additional alienates elements of the gamers’ base, Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast have struggled to evolve because the overlords of the D&D model. Their reputations as corporations have come underneath fireplace repeatedly over the previous few years for layoffs and the usage of AI.The mountaintop the place Dungeons & Dragons doesn’t appear so stable now because it did a couple of years in the past.
The panorama is shifting, however is Daggerheart actually poised to take D&D’s crown as “the world’s biggest role-playing recreation”? Personally, I don’t suppose so, or no less than, it’s not taking place quickly. Many of the gamers who’ve points with the “woke” tones of the present iteration of D&D can have the identical points with Daggerheart, a recreation the place you possibly can trip indestructible wheelchairs. These gamers usually tend to hold enjoying older editions of D&D, together with the always-popular AD&D ruleset, or its fashionable equivalents, one of many many video games underneath the Previous College Renaissance (OSR) umbrella, comparable to Dungeon Crawl Classics, Previous College Necessities, or their 5e port, Shadowdark. And whereas Daggerheart has a totally totally different guidelines system that may be deceptively complicated, it nonetheless leaves too many holes to be crammed by the DMs (for instance, gear, loot, and downtime actions), thus dealing with a few of the identical points as D&D’s fifth version and the 2024 guidelines.
Nevertheless, there is no such thing as a denying that Daggerheart has a working begin proper now, and the hiring of Perkins and Crawford provides to the momentum. In the meantime, D&D has misplaced its prime artistic heads and has but to switch them after two months, and is caught with a far-from-optimized product and a five-year roadmap that received’t be simple to implement in these circumstances. What occurs when an increasing number of streamers (together with the Important Position crew, after all) determine to play and showcase Daggerheart quite than D&D? Will the latter’s mainstream reputation final for for much longer?
Just one factor appears sure: Perkins and Crawford will play a decisive function on this (for now, nonetheless chilly) battle. Free from the restraints of a large company and of a system they’ve been sure to for the previous 20 years, these two, together with the opposite creatives at Darrington Press, might actually make one thing unbelievable, ending 5 many years of Dungeons & Dragons domination on this planet of TTRPG.
