About Shannon Appelcline

Shannon Appelcline is the Vice President of Skotos Tech. He manages the day-to-day operations of the company, and also directs marketing and business development. He's also a writer and game designer with credits in multiple industries.

Writing

Shannon writes on a variety of topics related to gaming of all types and computers. He is the author of two current game design journals as well as one which is currently on hiatus:

Trials, Triumphs & Trivialities. 9/21/00-Present.
A biweekly column discussing online games & a multitude of issues related to them.

A Brief History of Game. 8/3/06-Present.
A history of the RPG industry, one company at a time.

Gone Gaming. 8/13/05-Present.
A biweekly blog discussing board games, including reviews, designs, and rants. Part of a shared journal.

RPGnet Reviews. 12/22/01-Present.
Besides his regular game design columns, Shannon also investigates the design of games through regular reviews.

Thinking Virtually. 2/26/01-6/6/03.
A weekly column covering tabletop RPGs (and board games) and their relations to online games. Featured some new articles and some reprints.

He is also the author of two comic books here at Skotos:

Castle Marrach: Awakenings.
A fantasy comic set in Skotos' fantasy gameworld, telling the story of the awakening of Victor Savary.

Lovecraft Country: The Comic.
A period horror comic, telling the story of one man searching for his brother, in Arkham, 1933.

Shannon has additionally written many offline works:

Strategic Game Discussions.
Shannon has recently begun writing for Knucklebones magazine. His first article was "Professor of Chaos" in November 2006.

Tabletop RPG Work.
Shannon has done authorial and editorial work for tabletop roleplaying companies since 1992. His clients include Avalon Hill, Atlas Games, Chaosium, Green Knight, Issaries, White Wolf, and Wizards of the Coast. He is currently working on Oak and Thorn, a new book for Moon Design.

Game Design Articles.
Shannon's article, "Telling Stories in Online Games", was published by Charles River Media in Massively Multiplayer Game Development 2.

Fiction Writing.
Shannon's short story, "Keystones", was published as the lead story of the collection Legends of the Pendragon.

Game Design

Shannon has done design & development work on a number of games over the years. This includes roleplaying development (Hero Wars), board game development (Arkham Horror), card game development (Mythos), and computer game development (Galactic Emperor: Hegemony). He also has designs for a few unpublished board and cards games that have not yet found a publisher.

Because of his interest in design, much of Shannon's writing, linked to above, centers on the intricacies of design as well.