All the News from PAX Unplugged 2025: Daggerheart, Roll For Combat

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This week is our roundup of the big news coming out of PAX Unplugged, the board game/TTRPG conference in Philadelphia. Hundreds of vendors and thousands of attendees came out to play games, buy books and have a lovely time. TTRPG Insider was also there too, covering some of the most interesting stuff. At the center of it all was DAGGERHEART, Critical Role’s fantasy alternative.

Daggerheart: Hope and Fear Expansion Unveiled

The biggest TTRPG reveal so far was Daggerheart: Hope and Fear; the first expansion for the popular fantasy-themed TTRPG from Critical Role-affiliated Darrington Press.

Hopes and Fears will offer four new classes, 130+ new enemies, more than 100+ items and four additional campaign frames, according to a blog post on DP’s website. These include the new “Dread Domain” set of cards, which are used by Daggerheart’s Witch and Warlock subclasses. The book is also adding mechanics that allow players to transform themselves into monsters like vampires or spiritual entities like gods as well as new communities and ancestries (which are used to create the game’s equivalent to ‘race’ within the game.)

A lot of what’s in this book has been teased through Daggerheart’s playtest section, also known as the “Void.”

The company later previewed its plans for 2026 during a Saturday panel at PAX Unplugged. These include:

• Releasing the Daggerheart class packs in friendly local game stores

• Negotiating deals with a “secret list of VTTs” (The company has already made its core products available on Roll20, Demiplane and unofficially on Fantasy Grounds and Foundry. There were reported negotiations to add the game on Alchemy, but they have not panned out yet.)

• New accessory products, including a deck of adversaries for DMs to reference, a stand-along DM screen, a holder for a player’s cards and dice and much more.

• We also got new art that you can check out in my BlueSky thread here.

The big news from the panel involved the campaign frames, the settings that the books themselves provide for DMs to run their campaigns in. These include:

• A Dark Fantasy setting penned by former D&D designers Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins titled “Reign of the Weredragon.” It tells the tale of a kingdom ruled by a dark villain. Players will help to define that dark villain in a mini-game played during Session 0 that is based on “For the Queen.”

• Second is “Journey to Horizon”, a classic fantasy setting that is a bit more complex and built for a hexcrawl campaign. The players will emerge from a sanctuary after a thousand years with an old map and must navigate a world that they' don’t understand. This project reportedly involved a lot of writers to be made.

• “Dark Heart of Andeluria”, a Bloodborne/Castlevania setting designed specifically as a gothic horror adventure with hints of Spanish influence. It’s intended to be the perfect setting for Hope and Fear's transformation mechanics to be implemented. Players will have plenty of opportunities to embrace their inner werewolf or vampire with this. This was designed by TTRPG designer Carlos Cisco

• Finally is CASTLE HIGH, a hopepunk/stickerpunk-inspired setting about a flying magical boarding school. It clearly draws a lot of inspiration from teen fiction, Harry Potter, Strixhaven and other settings. This was developed in tandem with the team over at Mythworks who made Slugblaster (A representative from Mythworks confirmed that Darrington Press and Mythworks’ designers have collaborated on this project, and have dones so in the past.)

The panel was closed out with a one-shot set in Castle High. They also announced th Acquisitions Incorporated, the AP that’s regularly featured at PAX events and DMed by Crawford, will now play Daggerheart instead of D&D 5e. Most notably, Acq. Inc.’s Jim Darkmantle is a Ribbit, aka an anthro frog.

Daggerheart: Hope and Fear is expected to release in Summer 2026 and will come in a standard and deluxe edition. Both versions are currently available for preorder now. Players who back it will also get PDF copies two weeks early.

Roll for Combat Expands its Pokemon 5e Clone with “Legends”

Roll for Combat is a 5e/Pathfinder 2e supplement creator best known for releasing yearly collections of ancestries, monsters and more. The publisher previewed its plans for the first half of 2026.

The standout item was Eldamon Legends, which is an expansion that will add 13 types of the “Eldamon” Pokemon types to the 5e conversion. This will include Legendary-level Eldamon, and will offer a variety of monsters released throughout the year. The book has proven to be a regular way to help bring younger players into the hobby space, according to RFC game director Mark Seifter.

Deathbringer was the item that drew the most excitement among panel attendees. The game is an old-school dungeon crawl game written in partnership with Professor DM, the owner of the popular Dungeoncraft YouTube channel. The game is scheduled to crowdfund in May 2026. It’s a game that is designed to minimize waiting and to help maximize the ability for players to get involved in gameplay and not worry about losing PCs by being very careful. The game is based on its own individual rules but is compatible with the OSR-inspired Shadowdark.

There are also plans to release a Kraken-themed adventure in early 2026, according to RFC owner Steven Glicker.

The company is currently crowdfunding its Years of Mysteries campaign, which will send players a new ancestry every month for the year of 2026.

Discworld Expansions Planned for 2026

While the game wasn’t featured too much at PAX Unplugged, Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork publisher Modiphius did announce that it is releasing four new products themed around Terry Gilliam’s comedy/fantasy-oriented series.

• Discworld: Readers Digested is a board game where Blue Moon City by Reiner Knizia is reimagined with Discworld vibes.

• Adventures in Ankh-Morpork will hit retail shelves in Q2 2026

• Kill Sam Vines: A card game about assassins trying to kill the Duke of Ankh

• Discworld: Adventures in Lancre and Uberwald is a campaign set in the world and will expand Lancre (and its Witches), Uberwald, and the Chalk, all settings from the world. The game will crowdfund in late 2026.

We’re still waiting on the retail release of Adventures in Ankh-Morpork. Cohors Cthulhu, the Rome-themed zombie TTRPG and wargame was the newest product at the con, although we were also told that Fallout’s TTRPG sold exceptionally well (which should surprise no one considering the new show is coming out next month, we have Royal Flush available as well as the 10-year anniversary of Fallout 4 AND 15-year anniversary of Fallout: New Vegas.)

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My Time at PAX Unplugged

As fun as the news is to cover at events like PAX Unplugged, I wanted to add a short blurb about my own time. It was my second time at PAX Unplugged and still an absolute delight. There’s something about the energy at conventions that I find a nice change of pace.

The majority of my time was spent talking to creators, learning about new products and trying to understand what was cool and what was trending. A lot of those interviews will trickle out over the next couple of weeks as I have time to finally write them up. But I did want to highlight the two games I got to play.

JUBENSHA: This is a bit unconventional, but it’s an East Asian murder mystery genre that has grown increasingly popular in China and is slowly making its way over here. It’s hard to explain why it works, but it is leaps and bounds above your normal murder mystery due to how it handles character revelations and storytelling. You roleplay as someone witih a very complicated backstory and have to figure out if you were the one who did it. It’s not always clear that you did it or not, and everyone in my little adventure had their own trouble. It’s a subject I am deeply fascinated by and hope to speak with some of the folks bring it over to the U.S. in the future.

GODZILLA: IDW Games hosted playtests for Godzilla the TTRPG. While you would assume the game is about RPing as Godzilla, it’s more about the survivors and fighters with a weird twist involving people getting powers via a mystical energy connected to the kaiju. It’s played with a card deck. I got to speak with the team leading the project and play-test the game (something that we’ll publisher later.) Long-time fans of the property should expect the game to resemble more of IDW’s recent comic line, although IDW Games Ellen Boener did confirm that players can adapt it to fit their favorite version of the iconic kaiju.

If I missed you, I apologize as I had a lot of folks to speak with. Maybe next year? My inbox is also eternally open if you got cool projects coming down the line.

That’s all for this week. A QUICK LOGISTICS NOTE: I (Chris) am taking off the rest of this week to rest up, write up some of the interviews we had and celebrate Thanksgiving with family. Our next issue will be scheduled for Nov. 30, 2025.

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