GM's Portable Bookshelf: Design/Engineering

[Bront]

Several easy options.

1) Game at your place (No lugging)

2) Have players bring books so you don't have to (Hopefully don't need Eberron, XPH, and a few others often enough to need several copies, so use a players)

3) Buy extra copies and leave them at the game site.

Barring these options, unseen servant or floating disk work well So do large bins or dollies with milk crates.

 

[Gez]

Rather than PDF, if it were possible to buy game books as a bunch of HTML pages... Faster to load, more comfortable to read on screen, and easier to modify, they would be the perfect way to replace books by laptops.

Of course, this will never exist.

So I was looking to a sort of D&D "Wiki" that would let one enter standardized game information (monsters, feats, spells, classes, etc.) quickly. I've no idea where to start and thus save a lot of time compared to entering everything by hand.

 

[Red Viper]

Html versions of the book would be nice. I like the navigation of the srd. I have it downloaded and it works nice when i'm not on the net. It just needs a search option.

 

[Janx]

I use this version of the SRD:
http://www.d20srd.org/index.htm

It is well formatted and searchable.

I just had 4 friends visit for some gaming. Each brought a heavy backback with their books. That's ridiculous. WHen I travel, I need the PH and maybe one book if I got extra stuff from it.

For people borrowing source books, they need to get their own or photo-copy what they need. It's not your job to cart your books around for other people to use.

Walmart and Best Buy sell several printers with scanners built in for <$100. They act as OCR machines, and photo-copiers as well.

I'm always amazed by people who bring all that stuff. You don't really need it.

For my adventures, I transcribe any material I need into my adventure. Thus, my adventures will have stat blocks and such for things from books that aren't in PDF. I don't use a PC at the table even, but I still don't bring that much.

Janx

 

[bubbalin]

Something I have seen done is to take two identical small bookshelves, attach a hinge between them and a lock on the other side. Attach wheels on the bottom and you're ready to go. The contraption looks like two shelves on wheels side by side when opened up, and the shelves face each other and secure the contents when closed.
Now this may not satisfy your portability requirements, since it'll be awfully heavy with the 150 odd books it would fit, and will not be watertight either (unless you seel it somehow). But it's a fairly simple thing to do.

 

[Mage of Spellford]

I think that this has been mentioned before, but I would suggest that you check out a hardware store. There are many options for "rolling" toolkits. They are typically made of high-impact plastic and are definitely constructed to weather abuse and carry lots of weight.
The ones that I've seen are deep enough so that you could easily stack your books with the spines facing up for easy access. I would recommend that you put some foam on the floor of the case though.

 

[jmucchiello]

Well here's three lockers on wheels.
http://www.hardigg.com/hardigg_cases/portable_travel_cases.htm

This one is designed for 19" rack mount equipment: sound processing equipment for musicians mostly. It's probably not book friendly.

 

[Son_of_Thunder]

Now the trick is going to be actually finding some of those to take a look at....

I did find a web site for the "scrapbooking" totes... looks like about $100 each for the big ones if you can find 'em at less than retail.
http://www.cropinstyle.com/products/totes.html

Something like this was what I was going to suggest. The following is what I use as my wife is a scrapper.

http://www.joann.com/catalog.jhtml?CATID=85440&PRODID=77014

Or try this:

http://www.michaels.com/art/online/displayProductPage?productNum=sb0006&channelid=

My wife can usually find coupons up to 50% off for both of these stores.

Good luck.