Darrington Press is letting Daggerheart players turn into vampires mid-campaign. Daggerheart: Hope and Fear, the first expansion to Critical Role's duality-dice fantasy RPG, introduces a brand-new Transformations mechanic letting characters become Vampires, Werewolves, Reanimated, Shapeshifters, Ghosts or Demigods at character creation or part-way through a campaign. It hits Critical Role shops in the UK, US, Canada, Australia and Europe on 25 August 2026, with wider FLGS and online retail rolling out 22 September.
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Start organising for freeTransformations are the headline because they are the first proper rules surgery on the base game; the rest of the book is content. That includes four new classes (Witch, Warlock, Brawler and Assassin) each with two subclasses, plus a Dread Domain card set tied to the witchier classes. Existing groups can drop the expansion in mid-campaign without rebuilding characters, which is the question every Daggerheart GM will ask first.
GMs get the heavier load. There are 130-plus new adversaries, 28 environments, four campaign frames, and a rip pad of blank adversary sheets to homebrew with. The standard edition is $39.99 (around £32) for the rulebook and cards, while the deluxe edition jumps to $119.99 (around £95) for a gold-foil magnetic-clasp box, alternate art, GM screen with fear tokens, and an exclusive seven-piece dice set with an oversized d20 and ten rhombic d12s.
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See how it worksDaggerheart launched on 20 May 2025 to one of the strongest first-year tabletop runs in recent memory, hitting Amazon's number one spot for RPGs and selling out on day one. The dice are the gimmick, the Hope die and the Fear die, and the title here is no accident; Hope and Fear leans into the Fear half. If you want to run a witchy gothic one-shot before campaign season properly kicks off, find a group ready to roll into the dark and slot it in.
Sources: Daggerheart | Darrington Press | Bell of Lost Souls | The Gaming Gang
