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Who's the more foolish? The fool or fool that plays after the fool?
United States
DURHAM
North Carolina
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Welcome to the next blog on overcoming the energy barrier to trying out some print and play games.
Last time, I talked about games where you just need the sheet that you print out, a pencil and usually some dice. I got some great suggestions for more games and I have printed a half dozen or so to try out. So thanks for those.
The more involved print and play games (as with the published versions) involve more than just a sheet of paper printed out. They have things like special cards or tiles to draw from and this represents a significant increase in the effort required to get to the actual game. Yes, a lot of them you can throw at Artscow. But that involves some effort too, not to mention credit cards, so we will see if we like them first before getting all fancy.
A typical example of a print and play using such things is Zombie in my Pocket. It is a fun little 15 minute game about finding the evil Totem in the house then heading out to bury it in the Graveyard, all the time dodging and fighting zombies. The cards used are quite ingenious, so first we need some of those. Plus there are all those locations, all represented by square tiles.
First thing to remember when putting together a prototype PnP like this is that it does not have to be perfect. Especially for a solo game - if some of the tiles don't quite match, then it is no big deal. You can't cheat at a solo game - who are you cheating? So I just printed out the tiles on paper, then stuck them onto some plain brown card using a glue stick (a spray glue would likely be better if you have one). Once they were glued, I cut them out and there you have it.
For the cards, you could do the same - either print them directly on plain card or stick them onto some. But my preference, especially for something that needs to be shuffled, is to use some card sleeves, filled with an old card then the paper from the print-out slid in over the top. Simple but effective.
I did a very similar thing for another popular PnP called Free Trader. In this one, you fly around from planet to planet, buying and selling goods and avoiding Pirates (and Police if you deal in the Illegal goods). Again, the planets are tiles drawn from a stack and the trading and fighting part is done through the cards, which also form the timer on the game as each time the deck is finished you have to make your monthly payment on the ship.
You can see in my photo the tiles all spread out. The ship board and money counter were worked the same way as I did for ZimP. The cards you can see just to the right of the picture.
Part of the fun of this one was finding the right tokens to use to represent the cargo, the markers for various things like engines and cargo hold size and the ship to indicate which planet you are on. The glass beads are always a straightforward way - I like the pale blue ones I found for the markers as I can read the number underneath easily. The ship is a mini Millennium Falcon from Star Wars Monopoly. A much better use for it.
I was going to talk about my minimalist Pocket Civ too, but I will leave that for the next blog.
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