Shannon Appelcline Explained

Shannon Appelcline is a game designer and game historian.

Career

Shannon Appelcline writes columns for Skotos Tech.[1] Appelcline and Christopher Allen wrote articles on the subject of how game systems work at Christopher Allen's blog, Life with Alacrity.[2] Appelcline is a writer and technologist, and with Christopher Allen he wrote iPhone in Action: Introduction to Web and SDK Development, an introductory tutorial which teaches the basics of both native (SDK) and web programming for the iPhone, and which also introduces Objective-C.[3] Appelcline is the lead designer at Skotos, and he has written about emergent cultures within the games he designs (2000–2006).[4]

Appelcline wrote the book Designers & Dragons, published in 2011 by Mongoose Publishing. René Reinhold Schallegger wrote that for his 2018 book The Postmodern Joy of Role-Playing Games: Agency, Ritual and Meaning in the Medium, one of the central texts for the chapter "Generations: The Origins and Development of RPGs" was the original volume of Designers & Dragons, a "comprehensive chronological collection of major RPG publishing houses and their games [...] Appelcline takes a production-oriented approach, chronicling the development of the people who make RPGs and their companies" and that his "detailed content should provide a satisfactory insight into the evolution of the medium in form and content beyond D&D."[5]

Appelcline wrote an expanded four-volume version of Designers & Dragons: A History of the Roleplaying Game Industry, published in 2014 by Evil Hat Productions, with one volume dedicated to each decade from the 1970s to the 2000s. The 2018 book Role-Playing Game Studies: Transmedia Foundations posits that "independent authors like Jon Peterson (2012) and Shannon Appelcline (2015) have produced substantial historiographies of the emergence and evolution of TRPGs and RPGs more generally [...] Appelcline details the fortunes of the myriad TRPG publishers that emerged, decade by decade, in the wake of D&D's publication."[6] Curtis D. Carbonell in his 2019 book Dread Trident: Tabletop Role-Playing Games and the Modern Fantastic wrote that "Jon Peterson's Playing at the World (2012) and Shannon Appelcline's Designers and Dragons (2015) both offer expansive histories of TRPGs."[7] Matthew B. Caffrey, Jr. wrote in his 2019 book On Wargaming: How Wargames Have Shaped History and how They May Shape the Future that "For the most comprehensive history of not only the birth of Dungeons & Dragons but the role-playing industry itself see Shannon Appelcline's four-title Designers & Dragons series."[8] Matthew Ryan Williams for Wired wrote that "Shannon Appelcline's four-book series Designers and Dragons presents an incredibly detailed look at the history of tabletop roleplaying games, featuring profiles of more than a hundred companies [...] For each article, Appelcline gathered as much information as he could from magazines and websites, then ran his research past people who had actually worked at the companies in question. [...] Along the way he discovered that the history of tabletop gaming is full of confrontations, betrayals, and scandals, which makes Designers and Dragons a surprisingly lively read."[9] Gerald Nachtwey wrote in his 2021 book Strictly Fantasy: The Cultural Roots of Tabletop Role-Playing Games how "Appelcline's series relies on Peterson's book at many points [...] but expands on that prior work by focusing more intently on the business end of the early hobby [...] Both authors manage to present a mountain of information in a very accessible, engaging format, and anyone interested in particular stages of the development of the hobby [...] will find a rich trove of resources in either work."[10] Ben Riggs in his 2022 book Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons called the book "excellent" and wrote "Thanks to Shannon Appelcline, for his ambitious and clear-cutting work in RPG history."[11] Stu Horvath in his 2023 book Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground, Deluxe Edition: A Guide to Tabletop Roleplaying Games from D&D to Mothership wrote that Appelcline's four-volume Designers & Dragons books "were an invaluable resource for getting my facts straight and should be the first stop for anyone desiring to read about the history of the RPG hobby."[12]

Benjamin Joseph Munise in his 2023 PhD thesis "Roleplaying Games and Performance" that "Shannon Appelcline's four-volume Designers & Dragons series, published by the TTRPG publisher Evil Hat Productions [...] combined archival documents and interviews to assemble portraits of significant game designers and the shape of the TTRPG industry over four decades, from the 1970s through the 2000s."[13] Scott Michael Bruner in his 2023 PhD thesis "Agential Fantasy: A Copenhagen Approach to the Tabletop Role-Playing Game" wrote that compared to Jon Peterson's Playing at the World (2012), "Appelcline's Designers & Dragons series (2014- 2015) is an equally valuable record of the history of TRPG companies, creators, and philosophies of design."[14]

Awards

Designers & Dragons won a Judges' Spotlight award at the 2012 ENnie Awards,[15] and won the Gold Ennie for Best RPG Related Product in 2015.[16]

Notes and References

  1. Book: Bartle, Richard . Richard Bartle . 2004 . Designing Virtual Worlds . Berkeley, California . . . 607 . 0-131-01816-7 . 2024-03-24 .
  2. Book: Davis, Steven B. . 2008 . Protecting Games: A Security Handbook for Game Developers and Publishers . Boston . . . 192 . 978-1-58450-670-6 . 2024-03-24 .
  3. December 2009 . iPhone in action; introduction to Web and SDK development. . Scitech Book News . . 33 . 4 . .
  4. Book: Pearce, Celia . 2009 . Communities of Play: Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds . Cambridge . MIT Press] . . 156 . 978-0-262-16257-9 . 2024-03-24 .
  5. Book: Schallegger, René Reinhold . 2018 . The Postmodern Joy of Role-Playing Games: Agency, Ritual and Meaning in the Medium . Jefferson, North Carolina . . . 978-1-4766-3146-2 . 2024-03-24 .
  6. Book: Zagal . José P. . Deterding . Sebastian . 2018 . Role-Playing Game Studies: Transmedia Foundations . New York . . . 978-1-138-63890-7 . 2024-03-24 .
  7. Book: Carbonell, Curtis D. . 2019 . Dread Trident: Tabletop Role-Playing Games and the Modern Fantastic . Liverpool . . 2 . 978-1-78962-057-3 . 2024-03-24 .
  8. Book: Caffrey, Jr., Matthew B. . 2019 . On Wargaming: How Wargames Have Shaped History and how They May Shape the Future . Newport, Rhode Island . Naval War College Press . 126 . 978-1-935352-65-5 . 2024-03-24 .
  9. Williams . Matthew Ryan . 2019-07-13 . Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Tabletop RPGs . . 2024-03-24 . https://web.archive.org/web/20240324011652/https://www.wired.com/2019/07/geeks-guide-tabletop-rpgs/ . 2024-03-24 .
  10. Book: Nachtwey, Gerald . 2021 . Strictly Fantasy: The Cultural Roots of Tabletop Role-Playing Games . Jefferson, North Carolina . . . 12–13 . 978-1-4766-7571-8 . 2024-03-24 .
  11. Book: Riggs, Ben . 2022 . Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons . New York . . . 978-1-250-27804-3 . 2024-03-24 .
  12. Book: Horvath, Stu . 2023 . Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground, Deluxe Edition: A Guide to Tabletop Roleplaying Games from D&D to Mothership . Cambridge . . . 978-0-262-04822-4 . 2024-03-24 .
  13. Munise . Benjamin Joseph . 2023-05-24 . Roleplaying Games and Performance . PhD . . 16 . 2024-03-24 . https://web.archive.org/web/20240324004809/https://repository.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7280&context=gradschool_dissertations . 2024-03-24 .
  14. Bruner . Scott Michael . May 2023 . Agential Fantasy: A Copenhagen Approach to the Tabletop Role-Playing Game . PhD . . 66, 88, 99, 164–166 . 2024-03-24 . https://web.archive.org/web/20231023035829/https://dc.uwm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4131&context=etd . 2023-10-23 .
  15. Web site: 2012 Noms and Winners | ENnie Awards . www.ennie-awards.com . 15 May 2022 . https://web.archive.org/web/20190829103719/http://www.ennie-awards.com/blog/about-us/2012-noms-and-winners . 29 August 2019 . dead.
  16. Web site: 2015 ENnie Award Winners | ENnie Awards . www.ennie-awards.com . 15 May 2022 . https://web.archive.org/web/20190831054410/http://www.ennie-awards.com/blog/about-us/2015-ennie-award-winners/ . 31 August 2019 . dead.