Evernote for Board Games

[Blake Burch 60]

There's two things about me that you should know first. I'm an avid board game enthusiast (I collect and play mainly euro-style games and frequent BoardGameGeek) and I have a terrible memory (I'm lucky to remember events that happened >1 year ago). I'm trying to find ways to simplify my board gaming experience.

As I amass a collection of games, I have more and more rules that my mind is trying to keep up with. Reading a rulebook is fun the first time - not the fourth. I can always remember the overall gist of how each game was played but when it came to specifics, I'd always have to consult the rulebook which usually led to a lot of hunting/reading for the relevant information. At first, I tried making notecards that contained the specifics that I was most likely to forget, but now, I've transitioned myself into having a note in Evernote for every game. After all, the search function is a godsend and the best information can be easily copy/pasted from BGG (to avoid the eyesore and the deep links).

Here's the format I'm using currently.

Note Content:

• Name of the Game (title)
  
• Picture of the box
  

Note Links:

• Setup
  
• Rules (summarized)
  
• Variants
  
• Detailed Card/Term Info
  
• Official Rule Book (pdf)
  

Tags: (So I can narrow down which games I own will best fit an occasion)

• Number of players
  
• Length of game
  
• Game Type
  
• Theme
  

Check out the first note I made for one of my favorites, Cosmic Encounter. I had to share it as a notebook so you could see how the linked notes interacted. My normal notebook entitled "Board Games" will just show the main game page with all the linked notes found in a different notebook (this makes for much easier browsing). I don't need a listed hierarchy in the notes because I'll be viewing them primarily from my phone (which has a nifty back button ).

Let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions. I'd love to hear them!

[jbenson2 2,147]

I enjoy World of Warcraft. There is tons of information out there. I often capture the appropriate information into Evernote for future reference.

[Blake Burch 60]

I enjoy World of Warcraft. There is tons of information out there. I often capture the appropriate information into Evernote for future reference.

How does Evernote benefit you when it comes to World of Warcraft? I feel like having limited information collected on a game so expansive would end up being counter-intuitive.

When I played WoW, the de facto standard for info was Wowhead. From the looks of it, it's still incredibly intuitive to get the info you need quickly and with certain mods, you can access the information in-game. I wish getting relevant information from BGG was as easy...

P.S. Check out Guild Wars 2 - especially the World vs World combat. It looks to be an incredible new MMO.

[jbenson2 2,147]

No question - Wowhead is a powerful source. Maybe a bit too powerful - almost bordering on a spoiler.

I prefer to try to slog my way through a problem first.

Plus I am more comfortable with Evernote's search capability, especially when it applies to my own notes on skills specific to my characters.

[gbarry 2,658]

I think I may snag this idea and pull in rule book pdfs to Evernote, so I can use the search function--I've lost count of the number of times a game is derailed over a rules argument and you have to flip through a book to get to settle things. Search would fix that nicely.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Back in the D&D days, what wouldn't I have given to have everything in PDF form in an Evernote account? The only problem I could see with note links (a feature in Evernote that I use a lot) is when you share the notebook. The notelinks in shared notebooks are not currently supported in Evernote. If you plan to share these resources, you'll run into issues there. I use random character codes (I've written too much about them on these forums alread), and that is probably what I would use to make the notes editable on iOS (no note link creation) and usable when shared.