If you're prioritizing for you, that makes it somewhat easier, I'd come up with something that does what you need to do and then think about add-ons that might add flexibility for other people. One thing I've found when trying to come up with personal cataloging systems is that taking some of the things I'm organizing and actually shuffling them between piles can really help me figure out my priorities (whether that's actual index cards or using software that's designed for visualizing that or whatever. Making it physical helps my brain spin it a different way and can also help you figure out how the size of the various categories matters to you.)
But yeah a lot of those are more database architecture questions than cataloging questions, and I don't really remember enough about Access to help (I do remember that the "link this to another table that has the options listed" part was where I decided screw it I'll just use a spreadsheet the last time I tried :P )
But I vote for Option 1: main table with everything unless there's a good logistics reason why not; it will make things much more flexible later if you change your mind about what you want your top-level categories to be or where individual items go in them. The only reason I might not would be if I want to go way more fine-grained on on other fields for some things, but even then I might be tempted to load everything into a main table first and then pull out those special categories into separate databases just for them (if the software will let you do that easily!) But as someone who extensively uses library databases, I can tell you that most of them have a lot of fields that are blank on most records because they only apply to certain media types.
For the other: I think it's important to have "video game, playable"; "video game assets, not playable", "ttrpg, playable" and "ttrpg, not playable" as very top-level filters, but I don't know the best way to do that. (I don't think I would ever actually be interested in "All tabletop related, playable or not" or "all game assets, video or tabletop". The only big-bucket one of the four I might want is "all playable games".)
I probably would separate out the game assets from the other-other stuff; 'game devs' is a very specific category of users and non-game-devs probably won't care about most of those, ever, but they might want to browse comics or soundtracks. Whether I did any other top-level divisions on the Other category would depend on if there was one kind of content that was heavily dominating it, probably.
no subject
But yeah a lot of those are more database architecture questions than cataloging questions, and I don't really remember enough about Access to help (I do remember that the "link this to another table that has the options listed" part was where I decided screw it I'll just use a spreadsheet the last time I tried :P )
But I vote for Option 1: main table with everything unless there's a good logistics reason why not; it will make things much more flexible later if you change your mind about what you want your top-level categories to be or where individual items go in them. The only reason I might not would be if I want to go way more fine-grained on on other fields for some things, but even then I might be tempted to load everything into a main table first and then pull out those special categories into separate databases just for them (if the software will let you do that easily!) But as someone who extensively uses library databases, I can tell you that most of them have a lot of fields that are blank on most records because they only apply to certain media types.
For the other: I think it's important to have "video game, playable"; "video game assets, not playable", "ttrpg, playable" and "ttrpg, not playable" as very top-level filters, but I don't know the best way to do that. (I don't think I would ever actually be interested in "All tabletop related, playable or not" or "all game assets, video or tabletop". The only big-bucket one of the four I might want is "all playable games".)
I probably would separate out the game assets from the other-other stuff; 'game devs' is a very specific category of users and non-game-devs probably won't care about most of those, ever, but they might want to browse comics or soundtracks. Whether I did any other top-level divisions on the Other category would depend on if there was one kind of content that was heavily dominating it, probably.