Interviews by an Optimist # 13 -

Shannon Appelcline

Shannon has been involved in games since his dad got him his first D&D box when he was ten. During his youth he played many roleplaying games, from RuneQuest and Stormbringer to Traveller and Top Secret.

Board games were a bit less frequent, but early classics such as Othello, Twixt, and Sirocco graced his shelves. In college he started to play many leading American strategy games. Favorites included Dune, Divine Right, Riddle of the Ring, Cosmic Encounter, and Mystic War. However, after college, as recreation time dwindled, interest in strategy games began to fade too because, with a few exceptions, American games just weren't that well designed.

Following computer science studies at UC Berkeley, Shannon went into the computer field, but the gaming field was never too far away. He authored & edited a number of roleplaying books, including Tribunals of Hermes: Rome for Ars Magica and Tales of Chivalry & Romance for King Arthur Pendragon. Eventually he made the fulltime jump into the gaming field, working for roleplaying company Chaosium as an editor and graphic designer. Later he combined interests in computer science & gaming by going to work for online gaming company Skotos Tech, which produces online roleplaying & strategy games. He is now Vice President of Skotos.

Shannon's interest in the German boardgaming community, and renewed interest in board games overall, came via way of Skotos. In considering the design for a new online strategy game called Galactic Emperor: Merchant Kings, Shannon decided to try out a couple of tabletop trading games. The first was The Settlers of Catan. Many more followed. As Shannon played the games he started to review them for RPGnet, mainly as a way to help determine what was good and what was bad about any particular game. Somehow, these solely informative gaming sessions and the reviews took on a life of their own. Shannon now posts 1-3 analytical & illustrated reviews of games to RPGnet each week.

Shannon has dabbled in tabletop board game design, as he does in most creative interests that he takes part in. Oddly, these games have all centered around H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. In late collegiate days he designed a Cthulhu wargame called Doom of the Old Ones, which was never offered up to a publisher due to the release of the somewhat similar Cults Across America; it now looks too American to his eye. In the last year he brokered the republication of Arkham Horror, and also contributed to its revision. He's now working on codesigning a new game based on similar themes.

Shannon never writes about himself in the third person, especially not when writing biographies.

Tom Vasel: Shannon, I consider your reviews at www.rpg.net some of the best reviews of board games on the internet. Can you tell us a little about how you write a review, how much time goes into it, etc.?

Shannon Appelcline: First of all, thanks for the kind words.

For me, reviewing starts with the play of the game. Thursday nights are my regular review-game night where my group purposefully plays new games & review copies I've received. Besides having the games ready for Thursday nights I also always have my gaming notebook and my digital camera at the table. During the game I write notes on things I liked and didn't like about both the components and the gameplay, as well as things that seemed to be bugging or enthusing other players.

I also do my best to remember to snap a couple of pictures. After we're done with the game my group then talks for about 5 minutes about everyone's experience with the game; that goes into my notebook, and then we move on. I usually try to then write my review within the next week; if a review gets delayed too much, I sometimes need another play session to make sure it's still fresh in my mind.

I've developed a really standard format for the reviews, so a lot of the writing is really methodical at this point. I usually write it straight from top to bottom, though it sometimes takes me a couple of sessions. I'll often do a bit of research when I get to my "Relationships with Other Games" section; if there are designer notes, I'll usually read them over at this point, and sometimes I'll skim a bunch of similar games to make sure I understand the new game's place in the industry.

After I've got a complete first draft I'll usually edit my pictures. I've gotten really quick at this. Then, it's a final edit of the text, and I queue it up for posting on the next Wednesday.

The amount of time it takes me to write a review is largely dependent on the complexity of the game because I give thorough descriptions of the mechanics. (I feel that otherwise a lot of my analysis is context-free.) For a short game that I'm really familiar with I can knock out a full review in 30-45 minutes. For more complex games, it takes 1-2 hours.

Tom Vasel: How do you choose what games to review?

Shannon Appelcline: Some games come in as review copies, and those innately get reviewed, even if they're not the sorts of games I commonly play. However, which games I happen to get as review copies isn't entirely random; because if I particularly like a company's games, I'll mention to them that I'd be happy to regularly review what they put out. I've also sometimes said "no thanks" when offered a review copy of something that was well beyond my expertise, such as counter-based wargames.

Beyond that, I review what I think is deserving & will be of general interest to readers. This means that I tend to review games that I think: are classic or pivotal in the board game industry; are above average and under appreciated; are new, particularly if they're innovative or generating lots of interest; are by an author who's either pivotal or one of my personal favorites; or extend games that I've already reviewed. So, lots of different reasons. If you pointed to 10 different reviews I could probably tell you 10 different reasons that I decided to review those games.

What I don't tend to do is review games that I'm not very excited by (except in the case of review copies); beyond the fact that I find writing bad reviews a little nerve-wracking, I'd much rather tell folks online about the new games that I'm excited about than the new games that have already been tossed on the trade pile. I do make an occasional exception to this, such as when I reviewed St. Petersburg last year. It was getting so much positive feedback on the 'net, which I largely disagreed with, that I felt like another voice was needed.

Tom Vasel: What do you do when you get a review copy, and it turns out that you tremendously dislike the game? Do you feel that it's better to write a negative review, or none at all? Or the hardest question - just how much pressure does a review copy put on your writing a review?

Shannon Appelcline: If I get a review copy and I play the game, I *will* write a review. I feel like that's a covenant that I've made with both the publisher & with my readers. For the publishers, it's why they've sent me the game, and in almost all the cases I've either asked for the game, or at least OKed it being sent to me. For the readers, it's a question of ethics, and my being clear that comped games will always receive fair reviews, good or bad, and that a comped review is most definitely not a puff piece.

I used to dilly-dally a bit before writing up a negative review. For example, I think Nautilus literally sat around for months, long enough that I had to play it again before I finally wrote about my unhappy experience with the game. I've gotten much better as I've written more negative reviews, and I almost always write them up within 1-2 weeks of the play experience now.

Professional companies are much easier to work with in this regard than amateur or young companies. I've gotten very polite & totally professional letters back from Mayfair and Days of Wonder when I gave notably less than full marks for one of their games. On the other hand I've gotten long or angry diatribes from certain amateur companies that will remain nameless. I even got one note describing how my play experience was "wrong"--no, not my understanding of the rules, but my personal experience of the game. I haven't let those couple of bad apples keep me from reviewing more amateur products, however, because they can sometimes produce innovative designs.

Tom Vasel: How many times do you think a reviewer should play a game before reviewing the game?

Shannon Appelcline: Though I know this is heresy to some folks, I'm happy to review with as low as one play of a game. I can definitely tell when a game is entirely broken after one play, and beyond that I can usually make out the good and bad points of a game's design, and thus figure out where it fits into the overall hierarchy of interesting game designs. I should actually revise that and say I'm happy to review after one analytical play where I was thinking about the game the whole time, writing notes, and then discussed it with the play group. If I play a game casually, I only have a general sense of it; in fact, if I play an interesting game elsewhere I'll sometimes bring it back to my review group to get a better idea of it so that I can write a review.

I can also tell after one play if I don't know enough about a game to review it, and in those cases I play again before I do. Sometimes we play a second game immediately, and sometimes it gets set to the side for a future week. Quo Vadis? is a good example of a game that I set aside after the first play because I just didn't understand its intricacies enough to really see how shallow or deep it was. Usually I'm very comfortable with a game after that second analytical play.

On occasion I've also gone to a computer version when I really wanted to see how mechanics play out over repeated play. Clearly a computer version doesn't have the human interaction, nor does it have the same variability of play as us crazy humans, but it's a great way to see if certain flaws (usually false strategic play or required strategies) do keep cropping up. St. Petersburg and Verrater were two games in the last six months where I turned to a computer version (after a half-dozen plays in the case of St. Petersburg and after one in the case of Verrater) and pushed through another half-dozen computer plays before I wrote about them.

I also make one other exception; which is that when I play a multiplayer game that also supports 2-player play, I try and play in both configurations when it's possible; so those games tend to rack up more plays before they're reviewed. I think that's pretty important, as 2-player play is very different for most games.
Anyway, your initial question was how many times do you think *a* reviewer should play a game before reviewing, as opposed to just me. My general answer would be: until he's comfortable with his conclusions. I feel comfortable in 1-2 truly analytical plays followed by group discussion, and history's born that out.

Retroactively I've felt like 5-10% of my reviews weren't quite dead on after further plays (and I've tended to revise those); however the revisions were typically niggling things like "this was a little more fun than I thought" (Mammoth Hunters) or "this worked much better in a 3-player configuration I hadn't tried" (San Marco) or "playing more games I can see this one is actually really rudimentary for the genre" (Res Publica) as opposed to something big like "this flaw I saw didn't really exist".

Tom Vasel: I know that occasionally, I'll play a game that I've reviewed a few years ago, and realize that my opinion on the game has drastically changed. Are there any games that you've made a 360 degree turn on over a lengthy period of time?

Shannon Appelcline: Well, I've certainly had a 360 on some of the American games I used to play. 10+ years ago I found Illuminati or Hacker long but playable, while today they're just impossible. But as for games I've actually reviewed, yes, occasionally. As I said, there's that 5-10% of my reviews that I inevitably go back and revise, though few of those I'd call a 360.

Res Publica, however, is a good example. It was one of the earlier German games I played; and when I first played it I thought, "Wow! This is an absolutely unique and amazing trading game!" Then I played something else and I thought, "Huh, this is much more colorful than Res Publica and has a more intricate game system". Then I played Bohnanza and I thought, "This one's even better." When I originally reviewed Res Publica I gave it a 5: top of its class. After plays of more games in the category it slowly moved down to a 3: pretty average, with simple mechanics, and a little dry.

Tom Vasel: What games are currently your favorites, and why?

Shannon Appelcline: My top game is definitely El Grande. It's a superb strategic game that has a lot of room for tough decisions, and I think that its game length is just right for its variety of gameplay. I also like the fact that it's a little chaotic, because of the variety implicit in the different cards. El Grande also stays at the top of my list because it's a bit long, and so I don't get to play it that often, and thus I'm always eager for another game. (Generally the "new and exciting" factor influences my enjoyment of games a lot, and so it's not unusual for those games that I don't get to play much to be among my top.)

Ticket to Ride remains one of my favorites because it's such a simple and elegant game design, yet allows for a fair amount of strategy. I'm afraid that I've now been spoiled for it a little bit by the online play, because in-person players are *so* much slower, just due to the physicalities of having to pick up and put down cards. Nonetheless, I'm really looking forward to Ticket to Ride Europe.

The new game I've played the most recently that really excites me is Der Untergang von Pompeji. I liked it enough that I'm going to go ahead and pay the premium for a German copy of it, which I rarely do. This game's main good point is that it's colorful and fun, with all those poor meeples fleeing for their lives from the encroaching lava. I don't have any illusion that it's a deep game, or that it's going to be infinitely replayable (as El Grande and Ticket to Ride have been), but it's just got a combination of good theming and fair mechanics that you don't tend to see a lot.

That pretty much encompasses my favorite designers too: Kramer, Moon, and Wrede.

Tom Vasel: It's interesting that you enjoy Der Untergang von Pompeji, as it seems to have gotten a lot of negative press from other reviewers. Are there other games that you think have been unfairly maligned?

Shannon Appelcline: Definitely.

I think a lot of people, reviewers and gamers alike, go into games with a raft of preconceptions, and that they then unjustly criticize a game if it doesn't meet those preconceptions. Anything by Alea fits into this category as does anything produced by Reiner Knizia, and anything produced by anyone who ever had a hit. Subsequent games will rarely live up to a company or an author's best of the best, but that doesn't mean that they're not great games on their own. I also think it's quite unfair when a serious designer puts out a family game and then gets criticized because it's so light. Sometimes you're just not the audience for a game, and as long as the manufacturer is upfront about that, there shouldn't be much room for complaint.

Der Untergang von Pompeji was unfairly criticized because it didn't have the replayability of Carcassonne. Mammoth Hunters and Fifth Avenue both got a bad rap because they're not Puerto Rico. (I've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of Mammoth Hunters despite its chaos, though Fifth Avenue still needs more plays before I can understand it, because the gameplay is a little fragile.) I think the whole series of Kosmos/Uberplay games was unfairly criticized, and I won't be surprised if the Mayfair/daVinci games face a similar problem.

They're almost all light or family games, and not necessarily the sort of thing I'd play regularly, but some of them are pretty good in their own right. I also continue to boggle at the disdain directed toward Tongiaki; yes, it has a large random element, but I think it was one of the most innovative and original games of 2004. If I wanted to continue on with Reiner Knizia games, I'm sure I could list a lot that are good games, just not super-serious strategy. I think Marco Polo Expedition fits clearly on this list.

Tom Vasel: Hmmm, I've been accused of liking too many games, and even I dislike the last two games you've mentioned. Let's talk about companies now. You mentioned that some companies, such as Alea, have produced such lofty expectations that when they produce a game that isn't quite as good, people tend to have a negative review of it.
What companies, in your opinion, have constantly churned out winner after winner?

Shannon Appelcline: That's funny, because my like of Marco Polo Expedition and Tongiaki isn't even guarded, or of the sort where I say, "It's good for its genre". I think they're both good games that most people will like. I've played Tongiaki a half-dozen times, and it continues to be fun even when I get totally left out of the migrations. Granted, I've only played Marco Polo Expedition once, and that casually, so my opinion there could change if I did a deeper analysis.

Anyway, about game companies. I've been pleased by every Alea game I've played, with Puerto Rico, San Juan, and Ra being the cream of the crop. Hans im Gluck is another strong development house, with El Grande, Carcassonne, and Tigris & Euphrates all being favorites. Those are the two companies from whom I'll buy just about sight unseen, as their games tend to be pretty universally of high quality and very strategic.

Days of Wonder is the only non-German company that I'd put into the same category. I've already listed Ticket to Ride as one of my favorites, and I also think that Memoir '44, Gang of Four, and Mystery of the Abbey are all quite good games, and of course entirely beautifully produced. Days of Wonder's games are a little lighter than the average Alea or Hans im Gluck release, and so they don't all have quite the same gamer's game appeal; but for their demographic, which is a slightly more casual one, they're the best of the best.

Into a second tier, I'd put Amigo Spiele, primarily for their card games like Bohnanza, 6 Nimmt!, and Geschenkt and Kosmos, who has interesting big-square games like The Settlers of Catan and Through the Desert as well as good small-square games like Lost Cities and Blue Moon. These companies' games don't tend to fly as high as the first companies that I mentioned, and there tends to be more variety among their releases, but still, pretty much anything they put out catches my eye and deserves at least a second look.

Tom Vasel: Are there any small, independent companies whose games you think show promise?

Shannon Appelcline: I'm sure I won't be surprising anyone when I say that 2F-Spiele (Friedemann Friese), Bewitched Spiele (Andrea Meyer), and R&D Games (Richard Breese) are all doing good work. They're cases of individuals who clearly have some great ideas and a proven track record and are doing innovative things in the hobby--though I personally wish they were getting some outside development by a Hans im Gluck or Alea, since their games (at least those I've played) tend to have rough edges. That's no criticism of their work, I just feel like an outside set of eyes without the same emotional investment can often do a lot to improve a game. I feel like Warfrog fits into that same category, though I'm not sure I'd call them "small" in the same manner.

I think the fact that two of the most lauded games from Essen (Ys and Oltremare) came from indy companies says a lot for what they add to the hobby.

On the pure publication side of things I'd single out Face2Face Games. Their decision to republish out-of-print Sid Sackson and Reiner Knizia games earns them a lot of respect in my book.

Tom Vasel: I play hundreds of different titles a year, yet still feel that I'm missing a lot of games. There seems to be an enormous glut of titles out there. Do you think that this huge amount of games being released each year will last? Or, otherwise, what do you foresee as the future of the board gaming hobby?

Shannon Appelcline: My general experience is that the only way that a "glut" in an industry comes to an end is due to a crash. I've seen that in a lot of related industries, including collectible card games, comic books, and roleplaying games; but in each of those cases there was a really obvious bubble which couldn't be supported by normal buying patterns (respectively: the collectibility of CCGs; two different collector-oriented pushes in comics; and the d20 license in RPGs).

The only potential danger sign I see for strategy games is the faltering American economy; if the German publishers are depending too heavily on the co-productions by Rio Grande, Uberplay, Mayfair, and others there could be a problem if the dollar keeps plunging. However, just on the economics of the industry itself--as opposed to the international economics--I don't see any evidence of an obvious bubble in the strategy game industry that would predict a crash, thus I'd expect the current number of games to continue (and increase).

I do foresee two changes in the sort of games that are released.

First, I think we're going to see more American publishers publishing well-designed games. We're already seeing the start of this trend. Mayfair Games & Avalon Hill were two of the first publishers of traditional American games to start publishing German games. Rio Grande Games has, of course, made that their whole business. Now we've got Fantasy Flight, Jolly Roger, Face2Face, Z-Man, Uberplay, and lots of others that I'm missing, all jumping in to publish German designs. The natural extension of this trend is for American game designers to start designing mechanic-solid German-style games for American publishers rather than most of these games being imported from Germany.

Second, I expect to see an increase in amateur publications. You're going to see more web releases, more print-on-demand releases, and more self-publications. But, I don't think this is going to change the industry much. The amateur publishers right now are some of the most bright & inventive in the field, and lowering the barriers of entry is just going to allow for an increase in mediocrity, and perhaps even obscure the good amateur publications that are available now.

Beyond that, I'm going to be really boring and predict that the industry is not going to change a lot. We've now seen the future of networked strategy games, and I think it's obvious that they're not going to replace their tabletop brethren; networked strategy games are great, and a nice option if you're sitting at home at 10pm at night with nothing to do, but they don't provide the human action and interactivity that a lot of us crave from tabletop play. Likewise, I don't expect these games of ours to go much more mass-market. I definitely believe that companies like Days of Wonder and Uberplay can grow this niche if they really push, but as far forward as I can imagine the average family is still going to be playing Monopoly, Cranium, and Scrabble, not Puerto Rico and Tigris & Euphrates.

So, if I were going to give you a prediction for 10 years from now, I'd say that people will be preparing for Nurnberg '15, and they'll be putting out traditional board games that look a lot like today's traditional boardgames, and you'll see a lot of the same authors and a lot of the same companies.

There will eventually be some technological advances that change our sort of board games, but I don't think any of those technologies exist today.

Tom Vasel: You said that the average family won't play Tigris and Euphrates and Puerto Rico, and I agree. But why not Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, and Settlers of Catan?

Shannon Appelcline: I did indeed pick some of the more complex German games, so I should be clear and say that I don't think they'll be playing Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, or Settlers of Catan either.

Here's some of my specific reasoning:

First, our games are too complex. Ticket to Ride is the best of the bunch with its clean & simple 4 pages of rules, and I could be wrong on that one; Ticket to Ride might break out. But, the rest are just too fiddly by the standards of the American public. If you can't explain it in two minutes, I don't think it has a chance (and, again, that's why Ticket to Ride might). This is going to come off as snobbery, but I don't think the average American is used to engaging in entertainments that require thought.

This is partially due to my second point, which is that most Americans are happy to indulge in entirely passive entertainments, like movies and television. The last (2003) Nielsen report I saw said that the average American household watches 8 hours of television a day. 56 hours a week. Germany and France run about 25% lower and not surprisingly they have better acceptance of more complex games.

Thirdly, games are generally categorized as a juvenile entertainment by the American public. Kids play games, and families play games when they have kids; but after the children leave the nest, the games are sold off at yard sales, and the adults return to "adult" entertainments. There are exceptions, of course. Card games, some abstracts, and word games are all seen as sufficiently "serious" that adults are allowed to play them. Party games are a definite breakout, but I think that's because they piggy-back on another acceptable adult entertainment (the party). However, given that party games tend to start at 4 or 5 players, the same numbers where most of our games stop, I can't see that being a big help for pushing *our* games into the mass-market. Beyond these acceptable games, I'm sure you can find some subcultures within America where all games are more accepted. I understand they're more welcomed in the Mormon communities, for example, and I know they're accepted in the double-income-no-kids demographic that I tend to hang out with (but, you see, that's because we don't have to grow up, and so we can shrug our shoulders at the juvenile label).

The second and third points in particular are *very* strong cultural biases against serious games being played by adults for entertainment. These sorts of cultural biases can change, and in fact I think the Internet has some possibility of encouraging more gameplaying in a very non-confrontational way and also of encouraging less passive entertainment, but still these changes can take generations. In 10 or 25 years I might give a different answer about designer games really penetrating the mass market, but right now I don't see the cultural changes that would allow it.

Tom Vasel: What about crossovers from other gaming groups? You yourself post your reviews exclusively at www.rpg.net, so I assume you act almost as a "missionary" to RPG gamers.

Shannon Appelcline: Well, one of the reasons I post exclusively to RPGnet is because I want to promote the site, and another is that I have total editorial control there, so that I can go back and edit a review if need be. But, yes, I do also hope to tell roleplayers about games that they wouldn't otherwise be aware of. (And, I think that's been successful, because other roleplayers are now posting more reviews of board games at RPGnet.)

Overall, I think that this type of gaming crossover is pretty natural.

We should see more roleplayers trying out German-style games, especially as traditional roleplaying companies put out more of them. Fantasy Flight Games is really the leader in this area. Mayfair used to be, except they don't do RPGs any more. I'm surprised that Wizards of the Coast, Atlas Games, Steve Jackson Games, and some of the other roleplaying companies that also put out board & card games haven't looked more seriously at German design. (But, as I predicted earlier, I think they will.)

I also think you'll see some traditional online game players try out tabletop games, via the intermediary of online translations of board & card games. Over at Skotos, where we have tabletop strategy games, online strategy games, and online roleplaying games, all under one umbrella, this is the exact type of cross-pollination that we hope to promote. I know that we've brought in some new Days of Wonder gamers from our roleplaying crowd.

However, those are niche markets too. The roleplaying market is probably even smaller than the German game market. The MMORPG/online-gaming market is conversely bigger, but by no more than an order of magnitude--at least not for the "serious" gamers, as opposed to casual players of Bingo and Bridge.

I entirely believe that the board game market will grow in the United States. Uberplay, Days of Wonder, and maybe Mayfair with their new daVinci games all will be pushing our games out to new players. Some of these will be families and other totally new players, while others will be roleplayers, online gamers, and other people from parallel markets. However, that's just not the same thing as mass-market acceptance. At best our niche might be a fair amount bigger through this type of expansion and gaming crossover.

Of course the manufacturers should still shoot for the stars, but I find most speculation about out hitting the mass-market any day now to be vastly over-optimistic.

Tom Vasel: Shannon, I've really appreciated your insights about the industry. Do you have any last words for our readers?

Shannon Appelcline: It's been a pleasure talking to you, Tom. Let me know any time you want to chat more about board gaming, interview or not!

I do have a few closing things to say.

First, even though I said a couple of times that I don't expect the industry to hit the mass market, I want to be clear and say that I'm nonetheless really positive about the future of strategy gaming. We may be a niche market, but I think it's a healthy niche that'll continue to grow. A company like Days of Wonder coming in and doing very well from just about day one, thanks to a good business plan, shows that pretty clearly to me.

Second, and more self-servingly, I want to let people know that I don't just write reviews. I also do a lot of writing about strategic game design. My specific thrust is toward online games, but a lot of the designs that I consider are universal. My game design column is called Trials, Triumphs, and Trivialities, and you can find the complete index online at Skotos Tech ( http://www.skotos.net/articles/TTnT.shtml ). Searching for the word "strategy" will give you a listing of all of my strategy articles. They've included articles on the underpinnings of strategy games and also intense looks at some specific sub-genres like auctions, connection games, and card games. There's also a more cohesive listing of my earlier strategy articles at RPGnet (http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/collists/virtually.html , articles #56-70), but I've never gotten around to reprinting the more recent strategy articles there.

Finally, as a reviewer I sometimes criticize and sometimes compliment, but no matter how good or bad a game is, every one of them adds something to the industry, so a big thanks to everyone who's ever designed, developed, or published a strategy game!

Tom Vasel
"Real men play board games"
February 24th, 2005