Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Pinterest for Gamers

Ever since I needed to keep track of equipment on a character sheet, I've been an organizational whore. Manilla folders, binders, spreadsheets, floppy disks,and jump drives have been part of my gaming experience over the years.

Now I have never said that I was GOOD at organizing things. Most of my previous projects are half-finished in a box somewhere in my garage. Even my current Call of Cthulhu game, where I control the character sheets and handouts, has had numerous moments of panic. The character creation software is great, but when it's on two laptops and two jump drives, I've spent considerable time confirming and merging files. We're current now, but said drive hidden underneath my antique radio on my dresser caused heart palpitations this week.

The blog (and some docs on my Google drive,) have allowed to post my RPG Actual Plays, wargaming after action reports, and a haphazard way of remembering things that interest me.

And this leads us to Pinterest.

Just because the social media website is haven for recipes, decorations, and motivational posters, doesn't mean it has no value for a male gamer.

My initial knowledge of the site was simply that people posted pics of stuff they liked. When I heard people posting recipes, I realized that there's a sizable "description" area. So what does one use this for?

  • Want lists: especially for out of print minis
  • Game tables - when the maps just won't do.
  • Random thoughts and idea - considering my daughter just wiped out all of my wife's pictures on her phone, AND all of my random ponderings on my iPhone notepad, I need something accessible and simpler than a blog.  Which leads me to my point about this whole shebang:
My viscounteric Pinterest page, has the beginnings of one project, all the pictures I've discovered for my Second Samoan Civil War game.  Once painting finally begins, checking a snap on Pinterest is easier than pulling up the jpg on the laptop, or hunting it down on a website via my smartphone. 

Also included in my list are the colonial scenarios that piqued my interest, like Station Ridge 1915, from the Lead Adventures forums:

Of course I've barely made any physical headway into the project, I've already looked into Gnomish Space Marines, but I'm already pondering some alt-history Great War games using a similar board and some German-on-Kiwi action.

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