Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford spent years as the architects of Dungeons & Dragons. They now work for the other side of the tabletop war. In an interview with Polygon, the two former D&D head designers described their main contribution to Daggerheart: Hope & Fear, the first expansion for Critical Role’s fantasy RPG, as a homage to D&D’s most successful adventure. That adventure is Curse of Strahd, and both of them worked on it.
Wizards of the Coast published Curse of Strahd on March 15, 2016. Its credits list Jeremy Crawford, Laura Hickman, Tracy Hickman, Adam Lee, Christopher Perkins and Richard Whitters. It updated the Hickmans’ 1983 Ravenloft module. One of its best-known tricks was a tarokka card reading that the Dungeon Master could use to randomize key parts of the story, including the location of important magic items and where Strahd waits inside Castle Ravenloft. No two groups played quite the same campaign.
From Barovia to a fairy-tale kingdom
Perkins wrote a campaign frame for Hope & Fear. Critical Role describes it as an eerie world straight out of classic fairy tales like Sleeping Beauty. It is built around a single villain, and Perkins developed it with Jeremy Crawford, Spenser Starke and Rowan Hall. The frame is called Reign of the Weredragon. Its antagonist is Forlorn, a mystical dragon queen, and the whole table creates her rather than the GM alone. At session zero, players answer questions such as how their characters first met the villain and what she did to their community. The group also defines the events in her life that set her on her path.
“One of the key things about a Daggerheart villain is that it will be built in such a way that the GM and the players can customize it,” Perkins said at PAX East 2026. Curse of Strahd shuffled where things were. Reign of the Weredragon lets the players help decide who the villain is.
From book to broadcast
The frame also leaves the page. At the Daggerheart NEXT panel at Gen Con 2026, Darrington Press announced Reign of the Weredragon as a live actual play miniseries from Critical Role, with Perkins as GM. As of September 2026, the cast and air date have not been announced. Crawford is involved in the publisher’s Acquisitions Incorporated plans and is set to kick off a new season of storytelling at PAX Unplugged.
What’s in the box
Hope & Fear went on sale on August 25, 2026. Darrington Press says the expansion kicks off a three-year rollout of content. The standard edition pairs a book of around 200 pages with a box of cards and blank adversary sheets. It includes:
- 4 new classes: the Witch, Warlock, Brawler and Assassin, each with 2 unique subclasses
- 130+ new adversaries and 28 environments
- 100+ weapons, armor, item and consumable options
- 4 new Campaign Frames
- a new Dread Domain card set, plus 6 Transformation Cards: Vampire, Werewolf, Reanimated, Shapeshifter, Ghost and Demigod
- 6 new Ancestry Cards: Skykin, Tidekin, Earthkin, Emberkin, Gnome and Aetheris
The Critical Role shop lists the Physical Edition at $39.99, the PDF Edition at $19.99, the Digital Nexus Edition for Demiplane at $24.99 and the Physical + Digital Nexus Bundle at $59.99. With two of the people behind D&D’s best-loved horror adventure now writing for Daggerheart, the rivalry between the two games has become a lot more personal.
