How to Audit Your Group's Game Shelf (With a Template)

Most play groups have never seen their own library. Each person knows their own shelf, and maybe the three games their friends always bring, but nobody has written the whole thing down in one place. The fastest way to start a Shared Shelf is to audit your group’s game shelf once, in one evening, with one table.

This is the eighth and final article in The Shared Shelf series from The Ludarium, and it is the practical one. You will get a step-by-step audit, a markdown template you can paste into a doc or a group chat, a way to count how much money is tied up in duplicates, and a short process for assigning lanes with the games you already own.

If you want the reasoning behind all this, The One Copy Rule is the place to start. If you just want to do the thing, keep reading.

Why audit a shared board game collection at all?

Three reasons, and they build on each other.

First, you cannot follow the One Copy Rule without knowing what the group already has. “Check the shelf before you buy” only works if there is a shelf to check.

Second, the audit makes the cost of duplicates visible. A group that hears “we own three spare copies of Catan” reacts differently than a group that vaguely knows a couple of people have it. Counting the dollars is what turns a nice idea into a habit.

Third, the audit is the raw material for Claim a Lane. Once every game is in a table with its owner and its lane, you can see at a glance which lanes are crowded, which are empty, and who should buy next.

Step 1: Pool every collection into one table

Pick one place for the list: a shared doc, a spreadsheet, a pinned message in the group chat. It does not matter which, as long as everyone can see it and one person can edit it.

Then everyone adds every game they own. Not just the ones they bring to game night. Every game. Here is the template.

A few notes on the columns:

• Owner and Stored at are separate on purpose. On a Shared Shelf, big games often live at the host’s place even when someone else paid for them. Track both. The Shared Shelf Social Contract explains why.
• Lane uses the six from Claim a Lane: strategy, party, co-op, 2-player, campaign, filler. If a game straddles two, pick the one it gets used for most.
• Approx. price is a rough number. $40 for a typical strategy game, $20 for a party game, $12 for a filler. You are not doing taxes.
• Plays is a guess for the first audit. Nobody expects you to have counted. Round numbers are fine; zero is the important one.
• Duplicate? gets a “Yes” on every copy after the first. Three copies of Catan means two rows marked Yes.

Sort the table by game name when you are done, so duplicates land next to each other.

Step 2: Count the duplicate dollars

Now add up the Approx. price column for every row marked Duplicate. That is the amount your group has spent on copies that did not add a single play. Write it at the top of the doc.

Using the illustration above, two spare copies of Catan at $40 is $80. In a real group of four, the number is usually higher, because the games that get duplicated are the hits, and the hits are the ones everyone bought. Three extra copies of Catan alone is about $120 to $150. Add a spare Codenames and a spare Ticket to Ride and a group can be past $200 without trying.

Then do one more count: the Plays column for every duplicate. If it says 0, that copy is on the Shelf of Shame with an infinite cost per hour. If it says 1, close enough. These are the copies to trade or sell, and Trading and Selling Board Games You Don’t Play covers how to do that without losing much.

Say the number out loud at the next game night. That sentence has started more Shared Shelves than any argument.

Step 3: Find the gaps

The audit is not only about what you have too much of. Sort the table by lane and look for what is missing.

• Is any lane empty? A group of strategy fans often has no party game and no two-player game. That is the next purchase.
• Does the group have a game for every player count? Two players, three, four, five, six, eight-plus. Mark the player counts next to each game if the table is getting long.
• Is there a filler? Something under twenty minutes for while people arrive. If not, that is a cheap fix.
• Is there a co-op? For the night nobody wants to compete.
• Is there a stretch game? One step up in complexity from the group’s usual, for when the group is ready.

Write the gaps at the top of the doc, under the duplicate dollars. That is your group wishlist, and it is the list that Gifting as Library Strategy turns into birthday presents.

Step 4: Assign lanes with what you already own

You do not need to buy anything to assign lanes. Look at who already owns the most of each lane and who hosts most often, and assign from there.

1. Count games per lane per owner. Whoever has the most strategy games is the obvious strategy owner, and so on.
2. Where two people tie, the more frequent host takes the lane with the bigger boxes.
3. Pair the small lanes (2-player and filler) and give them to the person who hosts least and travels lightest.
4. Treat campaign and legacy games as a group buy or a rotating lane.
5. Add a “Lane owner” line to the top of the doc so it is visible without scrolling.

If a lane has no owner because nobody owns anything in it, assign it anyway, to whoever is most interested. That person buys the group’s first game in that lane. Empty lanes with an owner get filled; empty lanes without one stay empty.

Step 5: Agree on the rule and the charter

With the table done, the duplicates counted, the gaps listed, and the lanes assigned, the last step is to say the One Copy Rule out loud and agree to it. One sentence: “From now on we buy one copy per group, we check this table first, and the lane owner buys.”

If your group wants a bit more structure, paste a short charter at the top of the same doc. The sample in The Shared Shelf Social Contract is eight lines and covers storage, lost pieces, damage, and what happens when someone moves. Most groups do not need more than that.

Step 6: Keep it current

Two habits keep the audit alive:

• Add a row when you buy. Whoever buys a game adds it before the first play. Ten seconds.
• Re-sort twice a year. Re-sort by lane, update the Plays column with a guess, and look again for empty lanes and zero-play games.

That is all the upkeep a Shared Shelf needs.

What about doing this in an app?

The table above is deliberately low-tech, because a markdown table in a group chat is something every group can start tonight. But a shared library is also exactly the kind of thing that wants a proper tool: one shelf, several owners, plays tracked over time, lanes visible at a glance.

The Ludarium app is in development and will include a group shelf for exactly this, built on a library-style classification system so your group’s games sort by role rather than by box size. It is coming soon, and we are writing about what it will do in The Group Shelf: Tracking a Shared Library With Your Friends. Until then, the table works, and a group that has run the audit once will be ready the day the app arrives.

The game is the reason. The people are the point.

FAQ

How do I make an inventory of my board game group’s collection?

Put one table in a shared doc or pinned chat message with columns for game, owner, where it is stored, lane (strategy, party, co-op, two-player, campaign, filler), rough price, plays last year, and whether it is a duplicate. Everyone adds every game they own, then sort by name so duplicates sit together. It takes about an hour the first time.

How do I find out how much money my group wasted on duplicate board games?

Mark every copy of a game after the first as a duplicate, then add up a rough price for each duplicate row. Three spare copies of Catan at about $40 is $120 to $150 on its own. Check the plays column too: duplicates with zero plays are the ones worth trading or selling.

What should a shared board game collection include?

At minimum, one game in each lane: a strategy game, a party game for six or more, a co-op, a two-player game, and a filler under twenty minutes. Add a stretch game one step up in complexity and, if the group wants it, a campaign game. Cover every player count from two to eight-plus. Five or six well-chosen games handle most nights.

How often should a play group update its game list?

Add a row every time someone buys a game, before its first play. Then do a fuller pass twice a year: re-sort by lane, update play counts with a rough guess, and look for empty lanes and games with zero plays. Ten minutes twice a year keeps the list useful for years.

More from The Shared Shelf

• The One Copy Rule: Why Your Play Group Only Needs One Catan
• Claim a Lane: How Four Friends Build a 20-Game Library
• The Shared Shelf Social Contract: Storage, Spills, and Splits
• Two Groups, Two Years, Same Money: A Shared Shelf Case Study
• The Group Shelf: Tracking a Shared Library With Your Friends

This wraps up The Shared Shelf series. Subscribe to The Ludarium newsletter and you will get the next series, on building your library on purpose, as it publishes.