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Just because Critical Role now boasts two wildly successful animated TV shows does not mean it's moving away from its TTRPG roots. If anything, those roots grow ever deeper with Daggerheart, the D&D competitor from CR's Darrington Press. Recently, we got a window into the d12-centric fantasy RPG from one of the minds behind both it and Critical Role in general - voice actor and founder Matt Mercer.

Our conversation with Mercer happened at Emerald City Comic Con 2026, where we sat down for an exclusive chat with him and fellow CR stars Travis Willingham and Sam Riegel. On the subject of Daggerheart specifically, we wanted to know about the upcoming romantasy-inspired campaign frame, With Love and Magic, which you'll probably recall Popverse reporting on during PAX Unplugged last year. Specifically, what we wanted to know amounted to one question:

Why is With Love and Magic getting a digital-first release, while other Daggerheart campaign frames are being published physically, in Daggerheart's first expansion book, Hope & Fear?

"A lot of it," said Mercer, "Comes down to the appetite for physically published work. Hope and Fear is a massive book that that offers a lot of new options and definitely facilitates a collector's interest in having a physical tome in your hand. For campaign frames and things that are more of a condensed narrative aspect, especially things that people are very hungry for, going digital first means that we can get it to people immediately without having to wait for the entire process of publishing. Also, it helps us gauge the interest for that particular product before we can consider taking it to other forms of publication.

"There's a lot of factors that go into it," he continued, "Hope & Fear is definitely one of the larger expanded pipelines for Daggerheart's continued development and growth. And with our romantasy campaign, we're going to try things out and see what the appetite is there. We think it's already been pretty freaking strong for it. So we'll see."

"Pretty freaking strong," is putting it mildly. As we brought up to the show's first and most frequent GM, the Critical Role inspired romantasy novel, Tusk Love, has been an absolute phenomenon.

"Yeah, exactly," he agreed. "That blew up. Absolutely. So yeah, it's a good testing ground and uh we see where it goes from there. But this way at least we don't have to wait for the long process of physical publication before we can just get it into the hands of our community to have fun with it."

Daggerheart: Hope & Fear is expected sometime in summer 2026. You can pre-order it here. 

Watch Popverse's full interview with Critical Role's Matthew Mercer, Travis Willingham, and Sam Riegel from Emerald City Comic Con 2026 right here.

With two animated series on Prime Video, Campaign 4 in full swing, and so much more Exandrian lore to come, Critical Role is showing no signs of slowing down. That's why the adventuring party at Popverse are here to bring you everything we can from those nerdy-ass voice actors & Bo., including:

• Critical Role release schedule
• Critical Role's Campaign 4 characters ranked
• How to watch Critical Role in order
• Ways for you to relive the Critical Role panel from ECCC '26
• Taliesin Jaffe on playing Mollymauk Tealeaf for Campaign 2 vs. playing him for Prime Video
• Matt Mercer's homebrew warrior class (created originally for Vin Diesel)

...and much, much more. Roll initiative, player. Magic awaits.