Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins Have Jumped Ship From ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ to ‘Critical Role’

Critical Role may have built its years of blockbuster success out of Dungeons & Dragons, but at this point the actual-play streamer’s success has grown well beyond the game, from animated series to its own tabletop games. But now it’s taken an even bigger step: by recruiting two of the biggest names of contemporary D&D design.

This morning Critical Role confirmed that Jeremy Crawford, Wizards of the Coasts’ former D&D principle rules designer, and Chris Perkins, former D&D senior story designer, had both joined the company’s in-house gaming publisher, Darrington Press, to “to help further its mission to create shared experiences through rich and imaginative storytelling.”

Up until earlier this year, Crawford and Perkins had been two of the most prominent public faces at Wizards of the Coast when it came to D&D. They were stalwarts at the company for decades, and major creative figures who charted the game’s design through creation of its 5th edition in 2014, D&D‘s monumental surge in popularity in the last decade, and then the release of the revised core ruleset for the game to mark its 50th anniversary. Perkins announced his departure from Wizards back in April, with Crawford announcing his own departure shortly after.

“Jeremy and Chris are visionaries,” Travis Willingham, Critical Role co-founder and CEO, said in a statement to press. “They’ve guided much of this golden age of TTRPG design and philosophy, helping shape the way we play, connect, and imagine together. Their creativity, passion, and heart will only elevate everything we do at Darrington Press, and we couldn’t be more excited for what this means for the Critters and the stories we continue to tell.”

There’s no details about Crawford and Perkins’ current duties at Darrington Press, whether it involves management of the host of current games from the publisher or development of an entirely new one, but it’s a wild changing of the guard that will see one of the biggest examples of D&D‘s massive growth over the past decade take on Wizards of the Coast so directly by taking on two of its most prominent contemporary architects.

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