Impulse Control and the Pile of Shame

Just before Christmas I decided I should tidy up my Man Cave. I’ve been working from home for almost two years now, so it’s serving as my place of work as well as housing my game collection. Lately, the games have started to spill out into the rest of the house, drawing significant spouse aggro. So I started pulling all of the games out of the cupboards, off the shelves and up from the piles on the floor to determine exactly what I had and what to do about it.

Now, a week after Christmas, the audit is almost complete and the final details are still being worked out, but two things are crystal clear:

1. I have a significant Pile of Shame.
2. I have a problem with Impulse control.

I’ve been buying games a lot during the pandemic, and I’ve noticed that I’m barely reading them let alone playing them. Something has got to change.

Taking stock

The first step is to take stock – exactly what games do I have, what do I want to keep and what has to go? I logged into Board Game Geek and RPG Geek and started to add my collection. It was sobering. At the time of writing I have:

• Boardgames: 57 items including big box games and small card games.
• Role-Playing Games: 410 items including core rules, splat books, scenarios and GM screens.

I am sure there are bigger more shameful piles, but this is too big for the space I have to store it and as I said, I’m never going to play or even read some large part of this collection.

Kickstarter and pre-orders

It gets worse. There are games I’ve backed on Kickstarter or pre-ordered from the publisher that have not arrived yet. Here’s that list as it stands today:

• Vaesen RPG – Mythic Britain & Ireland source book Kickstarter.
• The Cthulhu Hack RPG Second Edition Kickstarter.
• The Droyne Coyns for the Traveller RPG Kickstarter.
• The Ironsworn: Starforged RPG Kickstarter.
• The Blue Planet: Recontact RPG kickstarter.
• The One Ring Roleplaying Game Second Edition Kickstarter.
• The Traveller: Mercenary Campaigns in the Far Future Kickstarter.
• Dune: Adventures in the Imperium core rules and the Dune: Sand and Dust sourcebook.

Seven of eight of these are Kickstarter projects, that’s a problem that will need it’s own solution.

Taking control

Solving this problem needs a three-part plan:

1. Impulse control – impose some discipline and a budget on what I buy.
2. Reducing the pile – get rid of the games I am never going to play or use.
3. Get Playing – make a plan to get these games to the table.

The last part this plan needs is to set some goals, track them and hold myself accountable to meeting them. So let’s use this post as the start of that process.

1. Impulse control:

• Quarterly Budget – set a budget for games for a quarter. Once that’s spent, I’m done. Better have a limit than a ban and this should include Kickstarter purchases.
• One game enters, two games leave – for every new game I add, I’ve got to get rid of two from the pile.

2. Reduce the existing pile:

There are two obvious solutions here, ebay and give-aways. I think ebay will work for some of the higher-value items in the collection, but a lot of what I have is probably not worth much more than the cost of the postage. Some of it, I’d be glad to get rid of just to have the space back, so I think I’ll post a list of games I’m prepared to part with for just the cost of the postage. Finally, of the games I do buy, PDF is an option I don’t consider enough.

3. Get Playing:

I’ve already made a good start on this, as I’ve assembled a group of players for a Symbaroum campaign that I will GM, starting early January 2022. We’ll be playing remotely on the Foundry VTT and I’ve already run a session zero just before Christmas. I’ve also set up my calendar to ensure I’m making best use of my Sundays for game time. In my calendar I’ve set up these events each month:

• RPG Campaign – This is for the Symbaroum campaign and whatever else we decide to play in future. This will run every two weeks, so that’s two days a month of play.
• Board Game Sunday – my brother comes over for dinner and boardgames the last Sunday in the month. This is quality family time for boardgaming and I have a few wargame ideas for this slot too.
• Solo Sundays – The remaining Sunday in the month I’m reserving for solo games, mini painting and that sort of thing.

If I stick to even half of this schedule, I should see the play-count on my collection go up significantly and I should have some fun, too.

Setting goals and tracking progress

This post (and starting this blog) is the first step in getting this habit under control and getting some actual playtime in too. I’ll commit to tracking the games I play, and posting a year in review for new year 2022-23 to check on the size of the pile and the amount of game time I’ve managed to fit in. I also plan to post some updates here on the Symbaroum game as well as the solo games I play during the coming year.