Darrington Press snag veteran D&D talent in surprise double hiring

For much of recent memory, Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford have been working on Dungeons & Dragons. Perkins was one of the most visible faces for the brand, especially due to his run as the DM of Acquisitions Incorporated, while Crawford spoke as the voice of God for the many players clamoring for rules clarifications on Twitter. Perkins clocked nearly 30 years at Wizards of the Coast, and Crawford landed somewhere north of 15. Notably, both of them were around with Fifth Edition released in 2014. With the updated 2024 edition of D&D seemingly complete after the recent publication of the Monster Manual, both Perkins and Crawford hung up their helmets and bade farewell to Wizards of the Coast. 

But they didn’t leave the industry. They didn’t even go that far from Bellevue, Washington. They both took a trip down the west coast, and now, Perkins and Crawford have announced their arrival at Critical Role’s publishing company, Los Angeles-based Darrington Press. They even kept their titles: Perkins is now the Creative Director of Darrington Press and Crawford will be their Game Director. 

Travis Willingham, Critical Role’s CEO and co-founder, explained to the LA Times why he was interested in bringing Perkins and Crawford onto the Darrington Press team.  “When you look at the opportunity to bring in 15, 17 years of experience, pedigree, pipeline, timeline, management, all of those things from really the granddaddy system of them all, that is always extremely interesting. It’s a chance to level up everyone around here as well.”

These two veteran hires to Darrington Press seem to suggest that  the company is serious about ensuring Daggerheart becomes a well-supported product line. Earlier this year, CBR and ICv2 reported that Macmillan (one of the big five English language publishers and well known for their genre imprints under the Tor Publishing Group) had signed a deal with Darrington Press to distribute not only their new fantasy heartbreaker, Daggerheart, in spring of 2025, but their backlist as well. This includes Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn and Candela Obscura. An interesting tidbit gleaned from this announcement — Macmillian has planned for the release and distribution of Darrington Press books into 2026 and 2027. But as yet, no titles have been revealed.

Darrington Press has always had ambition, and now they have real, tried-and-true experience to support their Critical Role-backed momentum. But what about D&D? Over the last two years, the tabletop titan has lost much of its veteran talent pool. Besides Perkins and Crawford, people like Mike Mearls (now at Asmodee), Chris Cao (formerly of the MTG Arena/Sigil/D&D Beyond teams), Greg Tito (formerly the communications manager, now the director of communications at Ravensburger, working on Lorcana), and now, as first reported by ENWorld on June 16, Jess Lanzillo, D&D’s vice president of franchise and product, have all departed. 

While writing this article, another major departure dropped. Wizards of the Coast’s senior content marketing strategist, Todd Kenreck, announced June 16 that he was out of a job. Kenreck appeared opposite Perkins, Crawford, and several other key WotC creatives in videos and livestreams, notably (again) during the massive promotional push for D&D 2024. “I have been laid off from D&D,” Kenreck wrote on Twitter. “Thank you to Chris Perkins, Jeremy Crawford and the entire D&D team for being some of the kindest, most talented and passionate people I've ever known.  This was my dream job. The tabletop community has given me everything.”

According to an interview with Lanzillo on ScreenRant earlier this year, “James Wyatt and Wes Schneider, principal designers who have been part of the D&D team for years, will both have a "bigger place at the table."” According to his LinkedIn, Wyatt has 25 years of experience at Wizards of the Coast and remains a Principal Game Designer. Schneider has been working in games since the early 2000s and was most notably one of the co-leads on the 2022 D&D supplement, Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel.

D&D doesn’t seem to harbor any hard feelings. The company’s Bluesky account posted later the same day: “Congratulations to Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins joining Darrington Press! Their creativity helped shape D&D as we know it today and the team they nurtured continues to shape its future.” Their follow-up was more cryptic:, “The worlds we build are always connected—and sometimes, the best stories come from unexpected reunions…”, which suggests that collaborations might already be in the works.

Rascal has reached out to Darrington Press for a comment but was told they weren’t doing interviews at this time. Wizards of the Coast did not reply before publication.