Bookshelves are fabulous things. Not only do they act as an easy-to-access repository of knowledge, but they’re also a great way to get to know someone. A quick glance at someone’s bookshelf can teach you lots about a person, from their passions to their concerns. Because of this, the bookshelf makes an excellent canvas for storytelling, allowing storytellers to explore many facets of a character in a short amount of time. This is something The Unshelved Shelf capitalizes on, using the idea of an unsorted library and its put-upon librarian as the basis for an excellent solo-storytelling TTRPG.
While playing this TTRPG, players take the role of a volunteer librarian. The library they’re volunteering for has a massive problem: people keep returning books that don’t belong to the library. Sometimes, these books are ones borrowed from other, similarly named libraries. However, often these books are totally random ones that the owner didn’t want, but didn’t know what to do with.
Finding A Book’s Forever Home
This problem has become so overwhelming that the library has created the Unshelved Shelf, a space where the new books can be kept until someone can decide where they belong. Unfortunately, this has only exacerbated the problem. Now, even more people are leaving their unwanted books of dubious origins at the library.
To play the game, the player will need a deck of cards, some physical books (though e-books would work just as well), and three dice: a D6, D8, and D10. The game’s flow is pretty simple. Every time the player wants to approach the shelf, they roll the D6 to find how many books are waiting for them on the unshelved shelf.
Then, the player picks one of their physical books and opens it to a random page. The player then chooses a word or phrase from this page, and that becomes the title of the book they found on the Unshelved Shelf.
With the name of the book decided, the player then begins their quest to work out where in the library it belongs. First, the player rolls a D10 and consults the accompanying table to see if the book has a clue that can help them identify what the book is about.
After this, the player draws a card from the deck and uses its rank to discover who owns the book or where it originally came from. Finally, the player checks the drawn card’s suit to learn how to return the book to its rightful home.
If a previous prompt informed the player that the book needs to be rehomed, then there is a final stage to the process. During this stage, the player rolls their D8 to find who the book should be gifted to.
Once this is all done, the player spends some time creating a write-up about the book and the process of rehoming it, adding any elements they came up with while playing through the process.
Using A Librarian To Expand Your TTRPG World
The Unshelved Shelf is a fun solo TTRPG experience. While the game flow might seem a little complex when written down (especially having to use different dice for different tables), once you’ve gone through the process one or two times, it quickly becomes second nature, meaning you’ll be able to tackle six to ten books in the space of a single hour without it feeling like a chore.
The game’s prompts are really well-written, walking the fine line between being descriptive enough to give players a firm direction (and thus prevent decision paralysis) without being so firm that they cut off all creativity. Each table also features plenty of variety, with the clue table featuring everything from your librarian finding a hidden note within the book to a local person recognizing it and giving your librarian a hint. Because of this, the game never gets repetitive, no matter how many books you end up sorting.
If you plan on playing The Unshelved Shelf, I would suggest making sure your physical book selection is varied, as this will mean each of your in-game books will have a unique title, leading to a much better overall storytelling experience. In fact, if you’re willing to put in the time collecting them, I would fully suggest using e-books for this part of the game and mixing some public domain titles from Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive in with your normal books as this will lead to your in-game books getting some unexpected titles, which in turn will help push you out of your writing comfort zone.
The idea of a TTRPG where you play as an overworked librarian is such a natural fit that I’m surprised I’ve not seen more games in this vein. However, The Unshelved Shelf pulls the idea off perfectly, capturing the intoxicating charm and mystery of stumbling on an unknown book. While the lack of a failure condition may upset some players, I think it works thematically. Much like in real life, it isn’t the end of the world if a book remains on the wrong shelf for a while, so naturally, your librarian won’t suffer any ill effects from failing to return a book, even in a fantastical TTRPG world. Because of this, The Unshelved Shelf is an excellent worldbuilding game that can help GMs come up with locations and characters for their other games. In fact, I could imagine The Unshelved Shelf being a fantastic companion and follow-up to The Quiet Year, allowing the players to flesh out the people who live in their region after they’ve finished creating it.
