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Shannon Appelcline

Goodreads Author

Born

The United States

Genre

Nonfiction, Comics

Member Since

June 2012

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/shannon_appelcline

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Popular Answered Questions

What is your favorite RPG rules system?

Shannon Appelcline Chaosium's classic RuneQuest. Most people loved RQ2, but my best experiences were with RQ3.

I'm actually a fan of most of the BRP family of games. Mos…moreChaosium's classic RuneQuest. Most people loved RQ2, but my best experiences were with RQ3.

I'm actually a fan of most of the BRP family of games. Most of my roleplaying writing experience before Designers & Dragons was in that category, with publications for Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon, Nephilim, and some scattered, small stuff for RuneQuest itself as well as Elric. (less)

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Maybe this answer is featured later in the books (only 16% through the first one). Are you playing an RPG currently? What was your longest running campaign, and character?

Shannon Appelcline The Platinum Appendix for Designers & Dragons contains a history article on my own roleplaying group, the RuneQuest Mafia. You can also find it on RPG…moreThe Platinum Appendix for Designers & Dragons contains a history article on my own roleplaying group, the RuneQuest Mafia. You can also find it on RPGnet in my Advanced Designers & Dragons column.

For the last decade or so, I've mostly been running games. There have been notable campaigns for AD&D 1e, Elric, D&D 3.5e, Mongoose Traveller, and Pathfinder. I most recently ran a short game of Mouse Guard that was warm up for a Burning Wheel game that I'm hoping to debut in the near future. You can find Actual Play (AP) writeups of all of those at RPGnet. I believe the Pathfinder was the longest of those, at 71 sessions over four and a half years.

The longest-running games that I've run in have been Ars Magica and RuneQuest. The Ars Magica games ran as four different campaigns from 1991-1999. The first two were connected and ran somewhere over 100 sessions and led to my writing _The Roman Tribunal_ book for Ars Magica, which was my first RPG supplement. The RuneQuest campaigns were all set in the same world, my friend's Erzo, and also ran as a number of different campaigns: 3 or 4, depending on how you count it. They also ran sporadically, with the earliest beginning in 1989 and the last ending in 2004. I have no idea of the count of those games, but I'm sure they exceeded 100 together as they ran weekly for a couple of years at a time for each campaign.

My longest running character in Ars Magica was probably Rupes, an annoying and manipulative elementalist. (My own web site, erzo.org, has write-ups of many of those Ars Magica games.) My longest running character in RuneQuest was probably Kidzen Teko, an annoying giant rabbit fighter. Generally, my characters are troublemakers. Those guys both fit the giant-lug-who-gets-into-trouble-because-he-doesn't-better archetype, as opposed to the mischevious-troublemaker archetype.
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Shannon Appelcline’s books

Average rating: 4.11 · 1,311 ratings · 197 reviews · 30 distinct works • Similar authors

	Designers & Dragons: The '70s (Designers & Dragons, #1) 4.17 avg rating — 430 ratings — published 2014 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Designers & Dragons: The '80s (Designers & Dragons, #2) 4.21 avg rating — 272 ratings — published 2014 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Designers & Dragons: The '90s (Designers & Dragons, #3) 4.21 avg rating — 209 ratings — published 2014 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Designers & Dragons: The '00s (Designers & Dragons, #4) 4.15 avg rating — 172 ratings — published 2014 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Designers & Dragons 4.50 avg rating — 32 ratings — published 2011	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Science Fiction In Traveller: A Reader’s Guide to Traveller Role-Playing Fiction 3.54 avg rating — 35 ratings — published 2016 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Designers & Dragons: Platinum Appendix (Designers & Dragons, #5) 3.84 avg rating — 32 ratings — published 2015 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	This is Free Trader Beowulf: a System History of Traveller 4.14 avg rating — 21 ratings — published 2024 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Nephilim Gamemaster's Companion by Shannon Appelcline (Goodreads Author), Kenneth Hite, Ross A. Isaacs really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 9 ratings — published 1996 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Chronicle of the Awakenings by Shannon Appelcline (Goodreads Author), John Tuckey, Kenneth Hite 3.88 avg rating — 8 ratings — published 1995 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Series by Shannon Appelcline

Designers & Dragons (6 books)
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Shannon Appelcline (Goodreads Author)

4.18 avg rating — 1,147 ratings

Shannon is Currently Reading

Shannon Appelcline is currently reading

Fantastic Four, Vol. 2: Four Stories About Hope

by Ryan North (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading, comics, comics-marvel

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Nov 22, 2025 03:06PM

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Star Wars: Doctor Aphra, Vol. 1: Aphra

by Kieron Gillen

bookshelves: currently-reading, comics, comics-licensed, star-wars, comics-sf

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Nov 22, 2025 12:52AM

Shannon Appelcline is currently reading

Secret Warriors Omnibus

by Jonathan Hickman

bookshelves: currently-reading, comics, comics-marvel

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Nov 21, 2025 12:09AM

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Shannon Appelcline is now friends with Jessica Lori
Nov 22, 2025 03:07PM · like
Shannon Appelcline is currently reading Fantastic Four, Vol. 2: Four Stories About Hope by Ryan North (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Nov 22, 2025 03:06PM · like
Shannon Appelcline is currently reading Star Wars: Doctor Aphra, Vol. 1: Aphra by Kieron Gillen	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Nov 22, 2025 12:52AM · like
Shannon Appelcline is currently reading Secret Warriors Omnibus by Jonathan Hickman	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Nov 21, 2025 12:09AM · 1 like · like
Shannon Appelcline rated a book really liked it Wonder Woman by Gail Simone Omnibus by Gail Simone	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Gail Simone's run is wonderful in many ways. It creates a great cast of characters and really makes them into real, living human beings, whether they be Diana herself or a group of super apes. And when it focuses on mythology such as the amazing, ext ...more
Nov 19, 2025 10:24PM · 2 likes · like · see review
Shannon Appelcline rated a book really liked it Supergirl: Book One by Peter David	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Post-crisis, Superman was decreed to be the last Kryptonian. So when the Superman team brought Supergirl back, it was a bit bizarre: she was a protoplasmic shape-changing beaing from another world. PAD corrected that with his Supergirl series, which w ...more
Nov 19, 2025 01:00AM · 1 like · like · see review
Shannon Appelcline is currently reading The Citadel of Forgotten Myths by Michael Moorcock	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Nov 15, 2025 12:20AM · like
Shannon Appelcline rated a book it was amazing Ledge of Darkness by Bob Walker	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Butterworth's two Hawklords novels are just OK. This comic-book follow-up, replacing the third book in the trilogy, is amazing. That's partly because of the timey-wimey reality-bending plot. It's all over the place in the best way. But the artwork is am ...more
Nov 14, 2025 12:34AM · 1 like · like · see review
Shannon Appelcline rated a book really liked it We Called Them Giants by Kieron Gillen	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
It's the end of the world. It's never explained why. By Gillen uses it to tell a story of communication, friendship, and comraderie, and Hans illustrates it gorgeously. A haunting little tale. ...more
Nov 09, 2025 12:54AM · 1 like · like · see review
Shannon Appelcline rated a book liked it Grommets by Rick Remender	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
An ode to 80s skater culture. I'm not a skater, but I am an 80s kid, so there's a lot of nice nostalgia in here, and the skating is very nicely portrayed. I love the group of friends who come together, but the plotting gets a little over-the-top towa ...more
Nov 09, 2025 12:32AM · like · see review

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