I've been collecting a fair amount of non-D&D TSR stuff over the past 18 months or so, and think it's time to start considering a new subweb.

I envision the content to break down along the following lines:

• Boxed and unboxed RPGs (Tekumel, MA, GW, TS, GB, SF, MSH, etc.)
• Boxed board/war games (Tractics, Dungeon!, Divine Right, Snit's Revenge, etc.)
• Non-boxed board/wargames (Bio One!, Tricolor, Warriors of Mars, Star Probe, War of the Wizards, etc.; Chainmail is the obvious exception here, since it's already covered on the main site)

For each listing, I think the following template's a good start for contents break down, which would be done both with text and images:

• Box
• Board (whether a true board or a plastic-coated paper like Dungeon!, Lankhmar, William the Conqueror, etc.)
• Rules
• Counters (number of sheets, number of counters per sheet, position of counters per sheet perhaps, counters broken down by color/type/etc.)
• Cards (broken down by type/number, sheets, etc. as above)
• Components (dice, chits, minis, and other stuff used in play not covered above already)
• Inserts (ads for Dragon, RPGA memberships, survey response cards, etc.)
• Text about the game

I think each variant/printing should have an entry like the above.  So, for example, the Fourth Dimension listings would be very similar, although the board entries would differ.  These could also be broken down within the text description and/or within the template by adding printing details.  

Links out to boardgamegeek.com, rules databases/scans, and external resources (fan sites for example) are probably in order as well, and would appear last in a listing, likely not in the main game template above:  instead, they'd be the final part of an article, along the lines of "For additional reading on GAME X see these other fine web sites" or somesuch.  

I'm not in a position to begin serious work on this yet, but as I continue to collate and organize material for my auctions, I'll take pictures, and refine this idea further.

In the meanwhile, if anyone has suggestions/critiques on anything above, please chime in

zhowar wrote:You could compartmentalize the work by choosing a cut-off end-date, say 1980, and just work on stuff available before that date. Once it's up and running, you could set a new date and work on a new section.

I had given some thought to that, figuring that perhaps up through 1979 would be good, so that I could include Divine Right in the first batch.

zhowar wrote:Were you considering including non-gaming material, such as TSR catalogs?

Actually, no  In my mind at least, that would be an Ephemera subweb which would include all of the TSR kitsch, various promotional materials (perhaps including GenCon, perhaps not if we could convince Randy Porter or Frank or some such someone to do an entire GenCon subweb on his own), catalogs, belt buckles, chess sets, ad infinitum.

Plus, I don't have much of that stuff, so I can't realistically even consider including it

Thanks Brian.  I'll see about starting to compile lists, and then posting them for others to fill in the blanks.  Telling printings apart may be trickier, though.  We'll see:  Dungeon! and Fourth Dimension both have obvious printing differences, as does Battle of Five Armies (but I don't own that one at all).  Others I'm just not so sure on.  It'll be fun, regardless

zhowar wrote:You could compartmentalize the work by choosing a cut-off end-date, say 1980, and just work on stuff available before that date.

why don't you choose as a limit the adoption of the TSR angle logo? ...in this case all the stuff could be split between "early logos" (GK, lizardman and wizard) and "modern logos" (angled, golden, silver anniv.)...

ah, unfortunaltey i have no lists complete to send you!  

Still on my to-do list, I've just been so busy with work that I haven't had a chance to do anything on it.  

I will, however, be spending some time over the next 6 weeks getting sorted and organized, so hopefully I'll be able to start the outlines for a non-D&D TSR list, too.

Back to an old Q:  anyone have a TSR stocklist in Excel?

FoulFoot wrote:... but I imagine it could be imported to Excel without too much trouble.

Oh, yeah; piece of cake. One easy method: Copy from Word, then Paste Special (Plain Text) into Excel. You'll end up with a very long document with two columns, but it will be ready for immediate use after some minor clean-up.

Wow!

Still any interest in this ?