How Do You Keep Track of All Your RPG Books?

[amethal]

Another Librarything user - yet I still managed to buy a duplicate copy of d20 Past recently.

I've got about 3,700 RPG products listed there; no way I could remember all of those.

 

[Morrus]

Yikes. All I do is put ‘em on the shelves and look at them!

 

[dulsi]

I use Calibre for my pdfs. For physical products, I don't have a list. Which is why I have two copies of the Dragonlance book for 3.5.

 

[TiQuinn]

I’ve gotten into the curation phase - I don’t keep stuff that either I don’t actively use, or really liked. Buying stuff I already have isn’t a big worry. I can just look at my bookshelf and know what I’ve got.

 

[Voadam]

I have a file listing gaming books I have, organized by type and noting whether it is PDF or physical. Fairly easy to check. I have still occasionally bought PDFs on Drivethru that I had bought on other sites previously (D&D ones I got on Paizo or WotC's store previously usually).

My physical books are on multiple book shelves loosely organized by game and type of book. So all my 4e D&D books are on one shelf with the monster manuals together for example.

My PDFs are nested in folders in different subcategories usually by game system as the top header, sometimes with subsections for setting or 3rd party or such.

 

[S'mon]

I’m sure some of you have whole bookshelves of gaming materials that put my collection to shame, so… How do you manage it?

I just kinda ...look at my bookshelf?

 

[theredrobedwizard]

Another Librarything user - yet I still managed to buy a duplicate copy of d20 Past recently.

I've got about 3,700 RPG products listed there; no way I could remember all of those.

I cannot imagine your patience. I came to this thread after banging my head against the wall about how ridiculously difficult it was cataloging with LibraryThing, looking for an alternative that let me, I dunno, use the inbuilt site search and click "Add+" without having to manually rebuild the entire listing every time.

The books are there! I found them. Other people have already done the work! Why do I have to re-enter all this information again?!

So if anybody knows a site that works like LibraryThing (where I can just scan a barcode and it'll populate the info), but doesn't - for some unknowable reason - prevent you from using the site itself as a source, I would be eternally greatful.

 

[the Jester]

I use a bookshelf. And I'm pretty familiar with what I have, as well as with what I don't have but want. I'm a collector, but not a completist, if that makes sense.

 

[amethal]

I use a bookshelf. And I'm pretty familiar with what I have, as well as with what I don't have but want. I'm a collector, but not a completist, if that makes sense.

That makes perfect sense, except for when my collection gets close to complete, and I end up paying more than I want to for the last few items.

Still not paying $200+ for hardback Book of the Damned, even though it's the only PF1e product I don't have.

 

[MNblockhead]

I don't and make an effort not to. My personality can make me pretty compulsive about organization and I try to resist that outside of work. I don't succeed very well with digital material as I save and folder everything in Google Drive. But I don't put too much time into that other than creating directories when I first save PDFs or VTT assets and I keep my directories pretty high level. But Google Drive search and Gemini make much easier to find things without lots of organization. So I don't feel compelled to apply multiple labels to each game file.

For books and physical assets, I've welcomed the chaos. I throw them on a shelf and don't worry much about organization, which is hopeless with two teenage sons into gaming.

I have friends who log every board game game they own, and even the games they play, on Board Game Geek. I don't find that fun at all and don't have time for that in any event. Even the record keeping for Adventurers League, which I played for a bit shortly after 5e came out felt like accounting to me.