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Daggerheart Creative Director Chris Perkins says Darrington Press can't be "vanity press" for Critical Role

The games and expansions that come out of Daggerheart can't just be for the enjoyment of the Critical Role crew

PAX East 2026 Daggerheart Scholar — Image credit: Darrington Press / Popverse

News by Trent Cannon, Senior Contributing writer

Published on Fri Apr 03 2026

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The past year has been a big one for Critical Role and Darrington Press. Their Daggerheart tabletop system, which was officially launched in 2025, got off to a roaring success and welcomed two iconic D&D designers into the Darrington Press staff. But Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford are just two of the new faces at the publisher, which shouldn’t be mistaken for a vanity press for the Critical Role team.

That’s the message we got when we sat down with Chris Perkins, Creative Director at Darrington Press, at PAX East 2026. While Critical Role’s influence is a big part of the Daggerheart system, he assures fans that the company is focused on more than just the pet projects of the cast and crew.

“We’re at a scale now where, and I don’t think this was ever true, but Darrington Press can’t be a vanity press,” Chris Perkins told us. “We can’t just make the game because we want it. We have to, in order to grow and be successful, we have to make the game everybody else wants and sort of what the tastes are and how far can we go in a particular direction and is this product more desirable than that product?”

The question isn’t just about the legitimacy of Darrington Press; as the staff grows, they depend on the company to make good decisions to ensure their livelihoods.

“I think we have to be responsible about that because we have a lot of staff and we have to make sure that they are not being... I don’t know a good way to say this, but I’m very protective of the game, and the people who work on it, and I want them to, you know, be successful and to be able to stick around,” Perkins argued.

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