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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 · 1,374 ratings · 208 reviews · 32 distinct works • Similar authors

	Designers & Dragons: The '70s (Designers & Dragons, #1) 4.17 avg rating — 445 ratings — published 2014	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) 4.19 avg rating — 285 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) 4.20 avg rating — 217 ratings — published 2014 — 4 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) 4.14 avg rating — 174 ratings — published 2014 — 4 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 4.52 avg rating — 33 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 — 39 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) 3.82 avg rating — 34 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 4.07 avg rating — 30 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 — 8 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

More books by Shannon Appelcline…

Series by Shannon Appelcline

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

4.18 avg rating — 1,188 ratings

Designers & Dragons: Origins (4 books)
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Shannon Appelcline (Goodreads Author)

4.38 avg rating — 8 ratings

Shannon is Currently Reading

Shannon Appelcline is currently reading

Amazing Spider-Man Epic Collection, Vol. 23: The Hero Killers

by David Michelinie

bookshelves: currently-reading, comics, comics-marvel

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46 minutes ago

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The Fires of December (Hoid's Travails, #3)

by Brandon Sanderson (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading

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Harbinger Classic Omnibus

by Jim Shooter

bookshelves: currently-reading, comics, comics-valiant

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Oct 08, 2026 10:13PM

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Shannon Appelcline is currently reading Amazing Spider-Man Epic Collection, Vol. 23: The Hero Killers by David Michelinie	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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Shannon Appelcline is currently reading The Fires of December (Hoid's Travails, #3) by Brandon Sanderson (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
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Shannon Appelcline is currently reading Harbinger Classic Omnibus by Jim Shooter	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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Shannon Appelcline rated a book it was amazing Magnus, Robot Fighter: Invasion by Jim Shooter	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
Not only is this a great story, but it's so filled with ideas that it's the foundation of the whole Valiant universe that is still being published today (and sadly desecrated by the bigots at Alien Books, but that's a whole other story, decades remov ...more
Oct 08, 2026 10:01PM · like · see review
Shannon Appelcline made a comment on John’s review of Designers & Dragons: Origins: Volume 2: Advanced D&D 1E, 1983-1988 (Designers & Dragons: Origins, #2) " (And thanks for the review!) "
Oct 06, 2026 01:40PM · see review
Shannon Appelcline rated a book did not like it The New Avengers, Vol. 1: Killuminati by Sam Humphries	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
Absolute garbage. I only finished it out of some masochistic completist fetish. It's pure MacGuffin. Some clones get created solely to be the quest object for the next five issues. Paired with that? Very bad characterization. Laurel is totally off. I t ...more
Oct 05, 2026 09:27PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The New Avengers, Vol. 1 by Sam Humphries. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The New Avengers, Vol. 1 by Sam Humphries <iframe sandbox id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Shannon Appelcline rated a book it was ok X-O Manowar: Invictus by Becky Cloonan	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 took Alien Books' open support for transphobia for the blinders to come off most of our eyes, and for us to acknowledge that they'd been driving the Valiant (VH-E) into the ground from the day they got their dirty hands on it. (I'd say bigoted, bu ...more
Oct 05, 2026 01:41PM · 1 like · like · see review
Shannon Appelcline is currently reading Superman: The Triangle Era Omnibus Vol. 1 by Roger Stern	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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Shannon Appelcline is currently reading X-O Manowar: Invictus by Becky Cloonan	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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Shannon Appelcline rated a book really liked it Superman, Vol. 5: Love and Mercy by Joshua Williamson	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
A good conclusion to the Mercy/Lex/Supercorp arc. There's an inevitable heel turn or two, of course, but they actually turn out to be genuine surprises. Overall, a strong volume in part because of how much attention Williamson continues to give to th ...more
Oct 03, 2026 08:34PM · like · see review

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