[FEATURE] Physical Storage Locations for Games and Expansions #410

Problem Statement

BoardGameTracker does an excellent job of tracking a board-game collection, including ownership, expansions, and play history. However, there doesn't appear to be a way to record where a game is physically stored.

The existing Locations feature is designed for tracking where games are played, which is a different concept from where they are stored.

For users with collections spread across multiple rooms, cabinets, shelves, or even buildings, knowing that a game is owned isn't always enough. We also need to know where to find it.

This becomes particularly relevant with expansions, which may be stored separately, in their original boxes, or consolidated into the base game's box.

Proposed Solution

Add an optional Storage Location field to games and expansions, independent of the existing play-session Locations feature.

Core functionality

• Manage storage locations: Allow users to create, rename, and delete reusable storage locations, such as "Living Room," "TV Cabinet," "Office," or "Trailer."
• Assign locations to games: Allow each owned game to be assigned a storage location using a dropdown or similar selector.
• Filter and search: Allow users to filter their collection by storage location, making it easy to see which games are stored in a particular area.
• Expansion support: Allow expansions to inherit the storage location of their base game by default, with the option to override it when stored elsewhere.
• Bulk editing: Ideally, allow users to select multiple games and assign them to a storage location in one operation.

Suggested expansion behaviour

Consider the following example:

Wingspan — Living Room

• European Expansion — Stored inside base game (inherits Living Room)
• Oceania Expansion — Office (override)

If Wingspan is subsequently moved to the Trailer, the European Expansion would automatically follow its location, while the Oceania Expansion would remain assigned to the Office.

A simple "Stored with base game" option could accomplish this without introducing unnecessary complexity.

Optional future enhancements

These aren't essential to the initial implementation but could be useful later:

• Hierarchical storage locations (e.g., Living Room → Cabinet → Shelf).
• An optional free-text note indicating where an item is stored within a location.
• Storage location information in collection exports and imports.
• An option to display storage locations directly on game cards or in the collection table.

Ideally, the initial implementation would remain lightweight, with a single selectable location per game and optional inheritance for expansions.

Alternatives Considered

1. Repurposing the existing Locations feature

BoardGameTracker already supports Locations, but these represent where games are played. Using them for storage would mix two unrelated concepts and potentially distort play statistics.

2. Recording storage locations in game descriptions

This would work as a basic workaround, but the information would be unstructured, difficult to filter, and tedious to maintain when games move.

3. Using BoardGameGeek collection comments

Storage information could be maintained externally in BGG collection comments. However, it would not be readily accessible or searchable within BoardGameTracker, and it introduces unnecessary dependence on another platform.

4. Maintaining a separate inventory spreadsheet or database

This would provide the necessary functionality but duplicate collection management and undermine the benefit of having a dedicated, self-hosted board-game catalogue.

A native, structured storage-location field seems like the simplest and most maintainable solution.

Use Case

As a board-game collector, I want to assign physical storage locations to my games and expansions so that I can quickly find any game I own without having to remember which room, shelf, or box contains it.

I currently have approximately 175 board-game collection entries, including expansions, imported from BoardGameGeek into my self-hosted BoardGameTracker instance.

The collection is distributed across four primary storage areas:

• Living Room
• TV Cabinet
• Office
• Trailer

When someone suggests playing a particular game, I'd like to open BoardGameTracker, find the game, and immediately see where it's stored.

Similarly, I'd like to filter my collection to answer questions such as:

• Which games are currently stored in the Trailer?
• What games are available in the Living Room?
• Where did I put a particular expansion?
• If I move a base game and its expansions together, can their storage locations update automatically?

This could benefit collectors with multiple gaming shelves, families storing games in different rooms, gaming clubs, and users who transport games between locations.

Additional Context

I appreciate that BoardGameTracker already has a Locations feature for play sessions, and I would suggest keeping physical storage conceptually separate.

This feature wouldn't need to involve a complicated inventory-management system. A few reusable location names, a per-game assignment, and basic collection filtering would already provide significant value.

Suggested priority:

1. Basic storage-location management and game assignments.
2. Collection filtering by storage location.
3. Expansion inheritance/overrides.
4. Bulk editing and optional advanced storage features.

I'm particularly interested in keeping the feature simple and compatible with the existing collection and expansion models.

Thanks for considering it, and for the work on BoardGameTracker!