It’s a good time to be a tabletop role-playing video games fan — even perhaps one of the best time in additional than a decade. I’m not simply speaking concerning the flourishing TTRPG market, with indie initiatives getting virtually $4 million in funding on their first marketing campaign day, or concerning the thrilling barrage of Dungeons & Dragons products introduced at this yr’s Gen Con. The true MVP of this TTRPG Renaissance age is one which, paradoxically, is commonly absent from the information cycle: Daggerheart.
Essential Function’s in-house TTRPG launched in Could 2025 and instantly offered out. The sport has an unlimited, tight-knit group of gamers, however except you’re already a part of it or watch Essential Function frequently, it may possibly really feel comparatively obscure. However that’s by design: Daggerheart lacks D&D’s cross-media promotional energy, and it doesn’t care. Quietly, the sport is setting out not simply to promote out its books, however to revolutionize fantasy TTRPGs as we all know them.
One merchandise that did make the information: Again in June 2025, the 2 designers who formed D&D’s fifth version, Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford, left Wizards of the Coast to hitch Essential Function’s publishing arm, Darrington Press. In layperson’s phrases, this was the equal of Shigeru Miyamoto leaving Nintendo for Sony. Within the yr since, nevertheless, each designers have been comparatively quiet, aside from a handful of interviews and public appearances. It’s an enormous distinction from once they had been popping up day by day in D&D’s Instagram video.
Former D&D head designers present their first Daggerheart contribution in Hope & Concern
Perkins and Crawford have actually not been idle. They’ve been engaged on a spread of Daggerheart merchandise, which had been lastly revealed throughout Gen Con 2026. They had been additionally concerned with Hope & Concern, the primary Daggerheart growth, launched final month.
“Each Jeremy and I arrived at Essential Function on the again finish of Hope and Concern‘s improvement,” Perkins tells Polygon in a video interview. “We jumped in instantly to help. A lot of the e book was written at that time, however there have been nonetheless some gaps. One of many issues that we had been provided was an opportunity to put in writing one of many marketing campaign frames.”
In Daggerheart, a marketing campaign body is, as Perkins describes it, “a neatly packaged story that has a story connected to some sort of setting, and that setting normally has a vibe or a style or a temper.” A Recreation Grasp (GM) can choose up a body and use it to construct their very own marketing campaign by increasing the offered themes, guidelines, characters, and places.
Hope & Concern consists of 4 new marketing campaign frames, a plethora of latest character choices and over 100 new adversaries, and new tools and loot choices. “Along with creating one of many marketing campaign frames, Reign of the Weredragon, Chris and I actually rolled up our sleeves and engaged in guidelines improvement in each a part of Hope & Concern,” Jeremy Crawford says. ”We had been in a position to help the crew with each facet of bringing Hope & Concern to the market, all led by the very succesful and gifted leads of the e book, Rob Hebert, Rowan Corridor, and Spencer Starke.”
Reign of the Weredragon attracts inspiration from Curse of Strahd
Reign of the Weredragon wears its inspiration on its sleeve, and it’s none apart from the best-selling D&D journey in historical past: Curse of Strahd.
“Once we began engaged on Reign of the Weredragon, one in every of my first ideas was that it could be cool to have a marketing campaign body revolving round a singular villain,” Perkins says. “Strahd is a good instance of that, but it surely was Jeremy who impressed me for our villain, Forlorne Lykona, primarily based on our mutual appreciation for Disney villains.” The evil sorceress ruler of Whelvia, Forlorne is, certainly, fairly near Maleficent, full with a dragon transformation, however she additionally brings a nasty set of curses to unleash on unwary gamers.
That is one other similarity with Curse of Strahd: the gamers should not presupposed to confront the villain instantly, lest they find yourself turned to stone or remodeled into cursed weredrakes. An oracle referred to as the Astromancer will give the characters 5 “revelations,” clues to seek out objects and allies that can assist them within the last battle, thus enjoying a task just like Madame Eva’s in Curse of Strahd.
“One of many issues that we wished to discover in Reign of the Weredragon that’s completely different from Curse of Strahd is that the characters are all from this land,” Crawford says. “Not like in Barovia, the place they arrive from the skin and are trapped, they’ve private stakes in Whelvia. And the gamers additionally assist the GM create the villain.”
Throughout session zero of a Reign of the Weredragon marketing campaign, the GM and the gamers will construct Forlorne collaboratively by defining some key character traits or occasions from her previous. The GM selects numerous prompts from the 40 supplied and goes across the desk asking gamers to reply the query. It’s a way impressed by the sport For the Queen by Alex Roberts, additionally printed by Darrington Press.
“This course of unlocks what we’re trying to find in Daggerheart,” Crawford says, “the way to join the gamers with the world, the setting, and the journey, at all times making the gamers really feel like they’re narrators within the play expertise.”
Daggerheart marketing campaign frames may broaden into full settings
Revealed adventures are a elementary piece of TTRPG tradition, however throughout their time at D&D, Perkins and Crawford additionally shook up that formulation considerably by giving us merchandise like Curse of Strahd or Rime of the Frostmaiden: giant adventures that may operate as lengthy campaigns and, on the identical time, present many of the info a marketing campaign setting would. A few of Daggerheart marketing campaign frames, together with Reign of the Weredragon, might be simply developed into one thing comparable.
“The thought of taking a marketing campaign body and blowing it out into an precise campaign-sized journey has actually been on the forefront of Jeremy’s thoughts and mine,” Perkins says. “We’ve to determine what’s the finest time and story with which to do this, however we have not introduced something formally but.”
In the meantime, followers can get a style of what a Reign of the Weredragon marketing campaign appears like within the upcoming Essential Function reside precise play miniseries, which shall be GM’d by Perkins himself.