We need a game library, here's a list of board and card games I have kickin' around. Feel free to borrow:
Board Games:
Carcassonne
Age of Mythology
Scrabble
Acquire
Runebound + Expansions
Lord of the Rings Risk
Twilight Struggle
Alhambra
Star Wars: Epic Duels
Pirates of the Caribbean Life
Card Games:
Settlers of Catan 2 player card version
Infernal Contraption
Legends of the 5 Rings (5-6 decks)
I guess we could do this for wargames armies too, but I'm lazy so that'll have to wait. Maybe we should sticky this to the sidebar or something.
CB
9 comments:
Hey now, libraries are my area of expertise. . .
One solution is to use a Web 2.0 organization app. This would be my first choice but none of the apps I know of are a perfect fit, unfortunately. Check out librarything.com to see what's possible, but that's only for books. iTaggit is another possibility, but this is geared toward money, which makes it distasteful.
Of course we could also use a database like Access or even a spreadsheet in google docs that is shared to all members. Any of these solutions would be a p.i.t.a. though.
I think the most obvious choice is to set up an opfor account in boardgamegeek.com and list our collection that way. The downside is you have none of the 2.0 functionality, and I'm not sure how we would distinguish ownership, but it may be the best solution until something better comes along.
Here's what I recommend, though. A final (unconventional) consideration though is to use Flickr. It would work this way. Set up a shared album called OPFOR Library or whatever. Take a picture of each game properly titled and described. Tag the game using the tag convention "ownedby:owner" i.e. "ownedby:CB." For long term loans, we could use the convention "borrowedby:borrower," removing the tag when returned.
The advantages are undeniable. You would have full search functionality along with being able to visually search the pics and visually search a tag cloud. Adding new items is a sinch and it allows us to label the games in any way we want, including adding the owner.
CR and I are talking about testing a WordPress version of the blog, and WP would let us integrate Flickr albums directly. We could have a page (as opposed to a post) dedicated to the library with a link in the right column. With our current blog we could still have a link at the right, but it would take you to the flickr album page, and you would have to search from there.
I volunteer to set up the Flickr Library if folks are into it. What do you think?
I forgot to mention that Flickr will shine even more if/when we decide to catalog our painted miniatures. One might be drawing up a scenario, wondering if someone has the perfect minions to bring for a killteam mission or what have you. And if/when I get my Narrative Battle Theater project off the ground, knowing who has what figs will be even more helpful/meaningful.
Not to mention that at a basic level we all just like to show off our figs.
Flickr sounds like a great way to go and would motivate me to organize the mini and game pics I have floating around.
Using it as a game cataloge also sounds like a pretty dope idea! I'm into that and can rip game pics from boardgamegeek for the library.
CB
Great, I'm glad you think it could work! So I'm thinking of creating a Group for us on Flickr. We need to figure out the best name for it. I still have no idea what the name of our group is. Is is Op-For, Opfor, OPFOR, and now to make things even more confusing our blog is Opposition Force? wtf. CR has a domain reserved for us--what is it CR?
Anyhow, for the Flickr group, should we call it just Op-For (or whatever)? Or something more specific like Op-For Miniatures Showcase and Games Library? Or should we open multiple groups, one for the library and one for in progress games (because I don't htink we can have multiple Sets in the same Group, or can you?). The main things we'll want in our group are the library, battle reports and figure showcase. Anything else?
If we can't have multiple Sets in the same Group, we can distinquish between library, showcase etc with tags, but this is less than ideal. Maybe we should open multiple groups? I tried to find out how many groups a free member can open, but I think the only limit is that any one picture can only belong to 10 groups. So it seems like we can open as many groups as we want (the downside being then we have to "administrate" these groups).
The weakest thing about Flickr I've run up against so far is that free members can only have 3 sets max. That's a little ridiculous, imo. I didn't know about that until yesterday.
Ok, let me know what you think.
Hmmm...multiple groups maybe with different admins? Can Wordpress serve up MS Access databases, I could create a library in there and we could serve it somehow.
A WIP section would be good for flickr.
multiple flickr groups with multiple admins could work, hmm.
I'm not sure about WordPress and access, but . . . and I didn't bring this up sooner because I didn't want to complicate things too much at first . . . but there's another promising option, an open source content management system called Drupal. I have a little experience with Drupal doing menial freelance data migration, but have been investigating it for some time as a new platform for nullhorizon.com (my site). Drupal has the power for a library proper, probably there's an appropriate module. Since we have this blog operational and thus can afford the time, maybe it would be worth it to invest the time in Drupal? Really don't know.
Back to Flickr, learning just the other day about the 3 set limit really left a bad taste in my mouth. I'm back to considering other gallery modules (for either WordPress or Drupal). At nullhorizon.com I use a hybrid of WordPress and Gallery2 (WPG2) but I'm not happy with Gallery2. There are a number of other options for both WordPress and Drupal that could be explored (and I think all of them can be used in combination with the Lightbox effect).
Oh, and speaking of wip Flickr sets, I started such a set recently (it's ready for implementation in our site at some point). Check it out!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/spooktalker/sets/72157607937501554/
I should have added that Drupal would likely be instead of WordPress, not in addition to it. I think Drupal can do Blogs as well as nearly any other use websites are put to.
And that link to my Flickr set is:
Spooktalker's Workbench WIP
Post a Comment