Shannon Appelcline returns with a product-by-product history of the first decades of D&D

Shannon Appelcline has a cataloger’s mind. He likes ordering, organizing, and categorizing. Even in his free time, he makes indexes of magazines. In his not-free time, he puts that careful sensibility into writing books of history. His best-known series is Designers & Dragons, which in its second edition is a four volume set chronicling the various publishing houses that constitute the RPG industry. Each volume corresponds to a decade — ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, and ‘00s — and is broken up into chapters, each dedicated to a separate company. These chapters usually don’t get into the subjective qualities of the games. They’re more focused on painting a picture of the companies as businesses — sometimes successful, often not. 

For journalists like us at Rascal, these books have been an invaluable reference. Need to prep for an interview with the man who sold Wizards of the Coast? Time to read Appelcline. Looking to talk about the overflowing number of D&D starter sets in the ‘90s? Hit the books. Want to know the history of Shadowrun quickly? Look up FASA.

Last year, Appelcline published This is Free Trader Beowulf, a full-length book about legendary sci-fi game, Traveller. It’s a loving exploration of a game that’s clearly close to the historian's heart. The book captures how the system and world changed and transformed as the result of a hundred different pairs of hands, and how despite various ups and downs, it continues to thrive. 

And now, he’s publishing his next major project with Evil Hat Productions called Designers & Dragons: Origins. This is another four volume set that focuses on the products that made up the first few incarnations of D&D. It’s a chronological guide through the creation of settings like Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Lankhmar, Forgotten Realms and the iconic adventures that populated these places. Appelcline finds fascinating lesser-known details about each of the releases and also puts them in context, showcasing where they stand in the grander landscape of the game we simply know as D&D.

Rascal sat down with Appelcline for an interview to understand how he approaches writing history, what to expect from these mammoth books, and what he’s working on next.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.