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Tabletop QOTD 2020-07-07


Borrowing from the idea of the Pluspora Check-in get some tabletop conversation going. If you have any questions that you want to get on the list to be asked, let me know. Also, if you'd like to be added or taken off the list of participants, let me know.

Sorry it's been a pretty hectic couple of weeks, so I haven't been able to keep up with the questions.

How do you store your games?

#BoardGames

I actually don't have a good way to store my boardgames. They're in boxes and bags in the storage room, and I keep a few out on the shelf. But I don't have a dedicated place to showcase them.

#RPGs

I have several shelves in my office that have all of my books and boxes on them. In the house that I'm purchasing, there are several built-ins for bookshelves which is something I've always wanted. I never realized that would make me switch up how I store my books though.

Because I'm reconsidering how I store things, I figured this a perfect question, and for selfish reasons I'll be very interested in the responses!

#Tabletop #QOTD

@Eric Franklin
@frasersimons
@Board Games Forum
@Curt Thompson
@Douglas Bailey
@Jesse Butler
@Keith Davies
@Martin Ralya
@Martijn Vos
@Nathan V
@Marsha B
@Stuntman
@Moe Tousignant
@PresGas (OSR) Aspect
@Craig Maloney
@Patrick Marchiodi
@Nathan Norway
@silverwizard
@Stephen Gunnell
@Joseph Teller
@Charles M
@UnclePirate (Stan McCann)
in reply to Chuck Dee

Bookshelves
I had to buy the gamestore's bookshelves when I bought the gamestore!
in reply to Chuck Dee

At the game store where I worked, we had some bookshelves which were like standard ones, but others that faced the product outward. I hated those because they tended to damage the books, even though they did display the covers.
in reply to Chuck Dee

Oh yeah - my gamestore just had billies from Ikea. But yeah, the outward facing bookshelves are not as good.
in reply to Chuck Dee

I don't even know where most of my stuff is. I don't even know what I have since moving from my house to an apartment. I got rid of a lot of things. I know that I gave away some.
in reply to Chuck Dee

I have roughly 3 Cube Towers (6 cubes tall) shelving of RPG books in our tiny study. Another three feet of board games are on top of those. There is also a foot or so of card and envelope stored games in a bookcase nearby (nearly all the original run of Cheap Ass Games share a basket storage in that shelf, along with things like FLuxx, etc that are basically just one card box in size filling out that shelf). The Books and boxed games are all spine facing out, organized by system (so all the CoC stuff together, all the GURPS, etc)

Game supplies are mostly stored in an 'under the bed' box beneath our living room Futon couch (this is stuff that is primarily for rpgs that get reused at various times).

Banker storage file boxes (clear plastic) are used for what is older and doesn't fit in all that. One in the upstairs storeroom, and 5 are down in our basement storage space. These are about 18" long and one full sized RPG book wide. We have one for old board games, and the rest are much older roleplaying games (1990s stuff mostly, but also 1st & 2nd ed D&D materials). These each have an inventory sheet showing forward for quick knowing what is in what.

Everything else is pretty much in electronic form... about 30 GIG of files, mostly PDFs but some as Word Docs, stored on my laptops and my Google Storage.

All of this was after a purge some 8 years ago when our housemate moved out, since we had to go thru stuff and separate out what was "hers" which went with her (this removed some duplicate RPGs and some board games we had no interest in), and we got rid of some things that we decided none of us had interest in holding on to (demo copies and items that we got for review back when we ran our APA and a few 'prize' items that she'd won at conventions but had no interest in etc).

We've reduced the number of physical copies of games we buy considerably since the purge (since my eyesight has become impaired) so since then only 1 or 2 shelf copies of game books have been added each year and may 3 or 4 card games I got to play with my client when I was working as a PCA. I haven't bought anything that was non-electronic in almost two years now, since we reduced our cash spending footprint to save up for my surgery earlier this year etc.
in reply to Chuck Dee

Shelves. Lots and lots of shelves. Part of the reason we bought this house was a 25-foot wall backed onto the foundation, in a 'wide hallway': all we really could do with it is line it with shelves, and so we did. I call this the 'back library'.

Technical library is mostly in my office, with the stuff-I-don't-do-now in boxes in the storage room. RPG library is split between the back library, my office, and shelves in the bedroom (books move around depending what I'm currently reading or working on). Board games are mostly in the back library, with a bunch of 'look at this soon' in my office, latest-played probably still on the game table, and family favorites on a shelf upstairs.

... I really need to tidy this mess up.
in reply to Chuck Dee

RPG books are on a shelf in the office. Nearly all of our boardgames and card games are stacked (in a rather inelegant arrangement) onto one big bookcase in the den. (Exceptions are the games that have been moved to Broken Token boxes, which are on the partner bookcase to this one.)

We used to keep our games stored in a more space-efficient manner on shelves in the basement, but we found that "out of sight, out of mind" really held true for us, and we kept forgetting what we had. So we moved everything upstairs where we can see it.
in reply to Chuck Dee

Lots and lots of bookshelves. Like 15 of them in my game room.

I've got an article about how to sort your collection that people may enjoy. In it, I talk about how my shelves are organized

https://tabletopbellhop.com/gaming-advice/boardgame-organization/
in reply to Chuck Dee

I don't own many boardgames and they all fit into the (i think it's called) cabinet under my TV in the living room.

As for RPGs, the ones I often take out and bring to conventions I have stored in a small briefcase together with pencils and erasers, dice and cards. The others I have in a bag in a closet. I used to keep them on my bookshelf, but last year we reorganized it and put away a lot of stuff to make room for books and comics.