Shannon Appelcline

@shannonappelcline

Author of the DESIGNERS & DRAGONS series of RPG histories, including THIS IS FREE TRADER BEOWULF: A SYSTEM HISTORY OF TRAVELLER. Science-fiction, fantasy, comic, and RPG fan. Currently working on Traveller and Call of Cthulhu history projects.

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Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· 29d

These were our unnatural skies one of the years.

Intersection in Berkeley, with faded orange sun coloring dirty gray skies.

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· Jul 13

Congrats to Doctor Knizia on his kennerspiele win today. We played a game in his honor. The wife won.

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· Jul 10

Word from Phil Brucato is that Aaron Acevedo has passed. After serving in the Navy, he entered the industry as an intern at Obsidian Studios, then cofounded the artistic community of Talisman Studios with Jason Engle and went on to become a force-to-be-reckoned-with in the Savage Worlds community.

"Storm and a Prayer". For Seasons of the Abyss by Sigil Entertainment Group. https://www.deviantart.com/aaronace/art/Storm-and-a-Prayer-440712476

"Headcase". Aaron's Personal Collection. https://www.deviantart.com/aaronace/art/Headcase-88524941.

"Lord of Locusts." Kobold Quarterly #3. https://www.deviantart.com/aaronace/art/Lord-of-Locusts-77498762

"Rio." For Mummy the Curse by Onyx Path. https://www.deviantart.com/aaronace/art/Rio-440714266.

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· Jul 7

Recent arrivals. The #1-6 omnibus and #10 issue of Gary's Appendix by @rpg-ramblings.bsky.social for OSE/BX. They're gorgeous, full of practical articles for immediate use, and I have in article in #10. (It's been fun doing game design for recent issues!) www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher...

Covers of Gary's Appendix Omnibus One and Gary's Appendix issue 10.

Interior of Gary's Appendix Omnibus One: the Gold Dragon spread.

Interior of Gary's Appendix #10: "Tempters and Their Temptations" (by moi).

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· Jul 5

July 4 on Kauai. Walked on the levee. Saw goats, peacocks, and boaters. BBQed on our new grill. Weren't TOO disturbed by fireworks. (New Year's Eve is the terrible day on island; there's more conflicted feelings about July 4 because of the whole US-stealing-the-islands thing.)

Peahen walking up to the levee, entirely undisturbed by humans.

Chicken apple sausage, corn on the cob, and mushrooms on the grill.

Muddy picture with some goats and turkeys(?) seen in the background.

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· Jul 1

Evolution of a game.

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· Jun 29

The funny thing about the mind flayers is you'd think they were inspired by Cthulhu, but no, their inspiration was the Tim Kirk cover of the Burrowers Beneath.

The first edition of The Burrowers Beneath, with a cover by Tim Kirk, is the one that inspired Gary Gygax. It shows a bunch of tentacles bursting up from the ground near a quaint English town.

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· Jun 28

Got a second iteration of my Cthulhu RPG Evolution timeline, now more properly called "The Rise & Call of the Cthulhu Empire". Still for looking for comments ... timeline.designers-and-dragons.com/cthulhu.html

Partial view of chart, showing games of the 20s and their influence

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· Jun 27

To clarify: I'm looking for a cover image of Dave Nalle's Abyss #1, which was his Ragnarok Enterprises 'zine that ran for years, starting in 1979. Here's the cover to #7, which is the earliest I have. If anyone has Abyss #1, a scan of the cover or just a tight, clear photo would be great.

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· Jun 24

I was working on GitHub today, and for the first time noticed their new-ish Microsoft copilot logo, where you can use AI to erode your programming skills. But it was eerily familiar, and I thought: could you be any more blatant about wearing your fascism on your sleeve?

Pepe the Frog, who has been co-opted as the mascot of 21st century fascism.

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· Jun 22

I've completed a first draft of of Cthulhu timeline, meant to show the influences (and multiplicity) of the Cthulhu RPGs out there, centering on Call of Cthulhu. A few notes (in the next few messages) ... timeline.designers-and-dragons.com/cthulhu.html

The head of the graphical Rise & Fall of Cthulhu timeline shows many of the games that led into Call of Cthulhu.

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· Jun 17

I'm also not certain how much Call of Cthulhu's *influence* has shrunk in the modern day. Certainly, there's a plethora of systems nowadays that wasn't present in the 90s (see the snippet from the big chart I'm still working on).

Chart of modern-day Cthulhu systems & accessories, including Apocthulhu, Delta Green, Fall of Delta Green, The Yellow King RPG, Achtung! Cthulhu, Cthulhu Awakens, Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu, Fate of Cthulhu, and Cthulhu by Torchlight.

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· Jun 16

There's a new update from @evilhat.bsky.social showing off the Designers & Dragons Origins work to date. V1-3 are printed, V4 is in progress. (Click through on the link, which has a few more pictures.) www.backerkit.com/c/projects/e...

First three Designers & Dragons: Origins books, in actual print.

V1 of Designers & Dragons Origins open to a chapter head for the chapter on Gygax's first seven AD&D adventures (on the left) and the article for G1: Steading of the Hill Giant Chief (on the right).

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· Jun 15

Mail call! And I'm thrilled that the Reaching Moon Megacorp is alive and well in the 21st century. (All three RuneQuest/Glorantha books have their origins in Tales of the Reaching Moon or related conventions.)

RuneQuest shelves, depicting Marsh Attacks, A Rough Guide to Boldhome, and Dark Side of the Moon

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· Jun 12

One of the nice things about playing around with HTML/JavaScript for my newest evolutionary timeline (of Call of Cthulhu) is that it's fairly easy to rearrange things. Realizing that I'd need BRP and RuneQuest open to link to future Cthulhu games (Laundry & Delta Green), I moved them to a side.

Evolutionary chart of Call of Cthulhu, showing five main entrants into CoC: The Lovecraft Variant (from Tunnels & Trolls), RuneQuest, BRP, The Gateway Bestiary, and American Gothic. The Dragon #12/Deities & Demigods is shown as a branch off of D&D that goes nowhere.

This one is rearranged from the former iteration. Where it was very neatly centered on D&D and Call of Cthulhu, this one sets RuneQuest and BRP off to a side, where it will be easier to draw arrows out of it in the future.

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· Jun 12

Presenting: The Evolution of Call of Cthulhu. (This is the first cut of a much larger chart, but I've found a JavaScript toolkit that I'm happy with for drawing arrows, and it's mostly doing what I want. Illustrator would be better, but this is easier.) And that's enough play for now :).

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· Jun 4

Post an album you’ve listened to 100 times. Not going to throw away my shot.

Hamilton: An American Musical: Original Broadway Cast Recording

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· May 31

I know of one other homage for Paranoia 2nd edition.

You are Deadpool #1 RPG variant. Deadpool (in red) walks down a yellow corridor.

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· May 31

I'll have to remember this is another entry for my RPG cover homage list.

Paranoia. A red troubleshooter walks down a yellow cover. That's not going to go well.

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· May 27

My little black cat was absolutely the best, but she's been gone a few years now.

Tiny black Lucy Cat, standing on my shelves.

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· May 19

More a man-to-man wargame than an RPG, but a fascinating piece nonetheless.

III: Put a Cork in It. TSR’s first major Lankhmar publication occurred almost a decade before the publication of Lankhmar: City of Adventure in the form of a board game called, simply, Lankhmar (1976). That game had a long and fascinating history: it was originally the creation of Leiber and Fischer, way back in the late 1930s, long predating Gary Gygax’s own fantasy wargaming and also predating the writing of any of the Fafhrd & Gray Mouser stories.

Leiber and Fischer’s original “Lankhmar” wasn’t a miniatures game, but instead a cork game: the heroes of the game were represented by large bottle corks and other units by small corks. Weapons were pins, toothpicks or other things that could easily be stuck into the corks! When the units had mounts or other animals, those were represented by checkers or buttons.

Clearly, the original Lankhmar game was from an era long before the slightly more codified wargaming of Gygax’s time. It could have kicked off the roleplaying field a generation earlier than Chainmail (1971) ... except it was only played by a few friends: Harry Fischer, Fritz Leiber, Martha Fischer, Lawrence Howe, and Franklin MacKnight.

The game was redeveloped at TSR by Rob Kuntz and others. Unfortunately, TSR’s Lankhmar wargame didn’t make much of a splash when it was published in 1976. A few years later, when TSR was pushing more heavily on fantasy board games with the release of Divine Right (1979), they also supported Lankhmar with a new series of articles by MacKnight that discussed the evolution of the game. They ran from The Dragon #30 (October 1979) to The Dragon #37 (May 1980). After that the Lankhmar game faded away, along with most of TSR’s early wargames.

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· May 14

I updated my magazine index of Carcass Crawler to include issues #4-6. Take a look. So much great OSE stuff there! zinedex.designers-and-dragons.com/osr/carcass-...

Cover to Carcass Crawler #4. A magnificent Otus-like piece of priests summoning a blobular horror.

Cover to Carcass Crawler #5. Cleric battles undead in yellow.

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· May 14

I was saddened to learn today of the passing of Dario Corralo, my unseen collaborator for any number of fanzine articles. (I think the following are all by him, but only the middle is signed.)

The Only Old Ones looms over the Kingdom of Night

An elf and a troll walk into a valley of giant flowers.

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· May 9

Me too!

Students: The Hobbit Habit
Friday, July 15, 1966, Time Magazine

Holden Caulfield is a moldy fig; the Lord of the Flies has been swatted. This year, the unquestioned literary god on college campuses is a three-foot-high creature with long curly hair on his feet, a passion for six vast meals a day, and the improbable name of Frodo Baggins. And would you believe that Frodo is a hobbit?

Hairy feet and all, Frodo Baggins is the reluctant hero of this year's "In" book—a three-volume fantasy called The Lord of the Rings. Written by J.R.R. Tolkien, 74, a retired Oxford philologist, the Rings trilogy was first published in the U.S. twelve years ago, had a small but dedicated coterie of admirers, including Poet W. H. Auden and Critic C. S. Lewis, but languished largely unread until it was reprinted last year in two paperback editions.* Since then, campus booksellers have been hard put to keep up with the demand. At the Princeton bookstore, says one salesman, it is the "biggest seller since Lord of the Flies."

Orcs & Ringwraiths. A fairytale for adults blown up to epic proportions, The Lord of the Rings tells how Frodo becomes heir to a magic ring that would, in the hands of Sauron the Dark Lord, give him domination over Middle-earth. A clever old wizard called Gandalf the Grey persuades Frodo to destroy the ring by carrying it to Sauron's domain of Mordor and then dropping it into the impenetrable Cracks of Doom. On his long journey, Frodo is aided by a variety of elves and dwarves, set upon by horrid, yellow-toothed Orcs, nine Ringwraiths riding dark horses, a giant spider, and other henchmen of Sauron. His quest is over when the Dark Lord is finally destroyed during the bloody War of the Ring.

The hobbit habit seems to be almost as catching as LSD. On many U.S. campuses, buttons declaring FRODO LIVES and GO GO GANDALF—frequently written in Elvish script—are almost as common as football letters. Tolkien fans customarily greet each other with a hobbity kind of greeting ("…

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· May 5

Wayne Shaw has you covered in Alarums & Excursions #9:

[Alarums & Excursions #9]: ROBOTS: 1-5 appear; armor -12. Move 72'. 100 HP. In lair 80%. Treasure type G. While all robots are under the control of some person, they are often left in a place with specific orders. They have the same strength, dexterity and speed as Cyborgs but are ordinarily only armed with their fists (as maces). They fight as 10th level fighters. Both Robots and Cyborgs are -4 vs. Lightning.

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· May 5

Twilight's Peak is the Night's Dark Terror of Traveller.

Cover to Traveller Adventure 3: Twilight's Peak. A Little Black Book (with cyan highlights).

Cover to BD&D B10: Night's Dark Terror.

Orc on wolf chases archer on horse.

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· May 4

I'm working my way through The Unspeakable Oath, but I don't have TUO #1, so I'm depending on the Annotated Unspeakable Oath for the contents, and it's missing a two-page article by Kevin Ross called "The Ponape Predators". Can anyone give me the specifics? Monsters? Names? CoC classification? Thx!

Spread of the contents page and the first page of the Dread Page of Azathoth for TUO #1, obviously a second or later printing, since it's the orange-colored verison.

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· May 2

I've currently got them flagged for Chapter 16, and I need to wait and see if there's space. Right now I've got 35k words written for the first four chapters and feel like I'm running long, but we'll see. PS: Travel Hazard (A14) came out today for Mayday.

Content list for prospective Chapter 16 for Free Trader Beowulf Origins.

16. Classic Traveller — After the Golden Age (2000-Present) [tentative]
a. Far Future Reprints (2000-2010)
b. Double Adventure 7: A Plague of Perruques / Stranded on Arden (2001)
c. Short Adventure 8: Memory Alpha (2001)
d. Special Supplement 4: The Lost Rules of Traveller (2010)
e. Atlas of the Imperium Second Survey (2016)
f. Book 9: Pirates (2025)
g. Adventure 14: Travel Hazard (2026)

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· Apr 30

My high school Spanish teacher, Mrs. Garsh, won my admiration when she told me that CJ Cherryh had been one of her teachers. I remembered she showed me a copy of _Visible Light_, an anthology, and said, "That's her on the cover!"

A woman in a space spacesuit on the cover of _Visible Light_ is actually the author, CJ Cherryh.

Shannon Appelcline@shannonappelcline· Apr 27

I'm starting to work my way through them as research for LOSING SANITY: A System History of Call of Cthulhu, looking for news and other items. I hope to index most of them and write mini-histories as I do. Just two so far! zinedex.designers-and-dragons.com/chaosium/#coc