@sgtnasty I am not a fan of how 'swingy' d20 can be. For things like combat when there will be lots of rolls, it's fine. It averages out. But if you get to use your one skill only once per session, it really sucks.
It's apropos that you talk about software meant for academia. Nothing says academia like asking for help creating a comprehensive taxonomic classification system for your gaming hobby, haha
Being able to distinguish settings and systems may be useful. Forgotten Realms is a D&D setting, but it's for several D&D systems (versions). D&D can generally be played without regard to the Forgotten Realms and still work. But playing 40k as a system without being in the 40k setting is pretty much impossible. Some systems (GURPS, FATE, d20 modern) are super generic and divorced from settings entirely. Others share an underlying base system (PbtA, or Mork Borg) but the setting layers its own systems on top of that base.
In the end, you're going to have a hard time sorting things into a hierarchy, so it's good you're using tags.
Yeah, systems will be tags as well, since there's some games that have had multiple versions put out in different universal systems or across editions. I've also been leaning on RPGGeek for getting individual RPG mechanics for another set of tags (dice pool, cards, attribute-based, class-based, etc). It's going to be quite a bit of work to actually go through everything, but til now I've just been using alphabetical folders and that's just been tedious and feels too limiting. It's been interesting researching some of the different RPG lines that I don't get as much exposure to and seeing some of the history of RPG games in general and how the hobby has developed over time.
I would have the top level tag "Rulebook" and put "Core Rulebook" as a sub-tag. Under Rulebook also have "Player Handbook", "GM handbook" and "Splatbook". Keep the rules together.
Also tags for your dominant systems (ex DnD, PbtA) including "System Agnostic". Perhaps add subtags "Pre-made" and "Generators" under "Setting". Publisher tags? Language? Decade/year of release? Have played?
Have you considered keeping (or tweaking) your current folder system and putting it in an Obsidian vault?
The advantages are that you’d still be able to keep your pdfs as they but also tag and link them. (And if you doing like Obsidian you keep your files untouched.) Obsidian has lots of plugins that would help. Plus the Obsidian community has lots of TTRPG-ers who do some amazing things in Obsidian. And it’s all free.
I actually did try doing it through Obsidian for awhile, but the add-ons I tried using with it somehow made it slow to a crawl (literally +10 minutes on start-up) and I couldn't get it to work well.
TagSpaces is a cross-platform file browser that operates very similarly to a regular file browser except it supports tags
If you're just using Windows files.community does something similar with a tighter integration with Windows
The benefit of both is that all their organization features sit on top of the regular file system so you can continue using the organization you have already
I use Leap (https://ironicsoftware.com/leap/). One of its better features is that it works great on top of any “folder system”, or even multiple folder systems. Also uses the metadata/tagging system of the OS, so plays nice with other tools.
Unless I'm seeing it wrong, it appears to only work on macOS? It looks nice and I use a mac for work, but all my personal stuff is on a PC. That's one other stipulation I probably should've mentioned.
Depending on your technical know how, a personal cloud storage solution like nextcloud or own cloud might be a good option. I run nextcloud in a docker container with the storage mounted in my home directory and it lets me easily search, organize, and store hundreds of Ttrpg PDFs and I can give players access to books when needed.
This reminds me a lot of the conflict between dwarves and trolls on the Discworld. Essentially dwarves like to mine and follow seams of valuable minerals. Trolls are silicon based lifeforms that are essentially walking, talking mineral seams. A troll will be very annoyed to wake up to a pickaxe in the ear, and a dwarf will be very annoyed that the seam they found decided to stand up and kick them in the rocks. Do this for a few generations and all of the sudden you have the Battle of Koom Valley brewing. Again.
I have a fun headcanon about dwarves: Their bones contain a toxic substance they call Stone-Marrow. Dwarves take pride in a potent Stone-Marrow, as any achievements a dwarf has are even more impressive if they were under the effects of a powerful poison at the time. This also ties into dwarven drinking culture, as alcohol resistance is a sign of strong marrow.
Stone-Marrow is even tied into dwarven funerals. When a dwarf dies, their bones are used to forge metal tools that are handed down to their descendants. The Stone-Marrow causes the metal to grow strong in ways other races can't recreate, no matter how hard they try. Because the objects made from a dwarf are decided by the dwarf, they are said to carry the will of that dwarf with them. All of this combines to mean that when a dwarf fights with a steel axe left to them by their grandfather, they are literally fighting with their grandfather in their hand.
The only restriction on metals used for dwarven funerals is gold, as only royalty can be turned into dwarven gold. The throne and crown is made of dwarven gold, giving the current king a feeling for the support given by the kings of the past, and the weight of responsibility their position comes with.
So if you ever need an insult to give to an elf, call them "marrow-less!" But never insult a dwarf's weapons in front of them.
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