Roblem

I am personally leaning on the easier option of just using the filesystem. If it turns out to degrade performance too much i think i can always add the database after the fact.

That works and it might be a good idea to get something like this up and running quickly so your friend can see it. As long as you seperate out concerns via a business layer, you should be ok. If you need to change storage later, you can do that easily. For now the file system sounds like the way to go.