Print and Play and Re-Play

 

The one that started it all.

It feels like a lifetime ago, but it probably was only about eight months ago, that I first dove into Print and Play games. I remember delving into the subgenre because of the "Solo-Tober" challenge when I had just started logging my plays here on BGG and I was astounded with how much was available in the subgenre.

I initially started with a few things like Mini Rogue: A 9-Card Print-and-Play Game and Utopia Engine to start my journey into the world of PNP games and found that they incorporated an interesting mechanic: roll and write. I will be completely honest in saying that I never really pulled out Mini Rogue to play until recently, despite having it printed off and available for close to eight months.

But I digress and I should return to the meat of the post: roll and writes. I found that my favorite PNP games were ones that allowed me to play with a simple set of six sided dice and of those I had plenty due to my many days of playing D&D. I'm not like a super hoarder with my dice collection and actually only have three basic sets of dice with a metal set to round everything out (well the sides are actually quite sharp, but that's another digression). Still, it's enough to allow me to play these games easily and use my own dice rather than an online roller (which is totally workable, I just like physical dice).

I spent most of October of 2023 looking for various solo games to play and that was what really jumpstarted my look for solo games, but I also ran into an issue of replayability for those games. Maybe this is just because of the "reduce, reuse, recycle" mentality of how I grew up, but it bugged me that there were so many games that I could print off, yet I would only use it one time only. I experimented with the idea of laminating pages, but that also seemed like a far too expensive way to really get around the issue of reusability.

A recently completed game of "Wolf Hackers."

I had picked up quite a few games during the month, after my dive into roll and write games, including Polyhedral Park Planner, Paper Pinball: Laser Sisters, and Paper Pinball: Sorcery School Sleuths, which really opened my eyes to the diversity of the PNP Roll and Write subgenre. There was so much to play and I wanted to play it all again and again since it was such a fun way to experience games.

But I floundered in the idea of reusing games with a dry erase marker. I knew that there had to be something that I could do that would allow me to replay these games without having to print and reprint the games because that was such a waste of paper and ink. It drove me up the wall since I knew that it could be possible, but there would be a price and I wasn't that interested in paying $20 per 20 pack of laminate sheets for something that may or may not work.

There were quite a few more PNP games that I picked up over the last year like Gem Getter Pro and Yard Builder, which I've added to my collection of games, as well as some randomly generated map tiles for Cartographers. However, I was still stumped at the thought of having to use and then get rid of the sheets that I had used after a few plays since ink doesn't stand up well to multiple erases. It bugged me that I had such cool looking PNP Roll and Writes, but I had to get rid of them.

I had some old cheap card sleeves I used for this.

It was while I was playing a game of Mini Rogue, using some old card sleeves that I had a brilliant idea. I had a bunch of paper sleeves from an old job of mine that were sitting with old chord music that I had sitting on my ground floor that were going unused. I got the idea from using old card sleeves that I wasn't using for anything specific to sleeve the printed cards for Mini Rogue in order to be able to shuffle them better.

I quickly ran down to my basement and pulled out the sleeves, eagerly pulling out the old pages that I had stored in them and then sleeving the PNP games into the sleeves that I had in the binder. I found to my excitement that the pages fit easily into the sleeves and then came the real test: I had to attempt to play the game with the sleeves on and using a white board erase marker. I first tried with a round of Yard Builder and to my utter joy, I found that the dry erase marker worked extremely well on the sleeve, only leaving some slight residue when wiped which was easily cleaned off.

As I attempted game after game, I found that I had found my solution to my problem of reusability of old pages. I was no longer stuck printing a page, using it and then throwing it away because the sheet was full. I could now use a dry erase marker to play and replay the games with a simple cleanup after I had finished and I was ecstatic! I quickly printed off a few more PNP games (Utopia Engine: Beast Hunter, Rallytaire, and Snakey Dice) to play and I have since sleeved all my pages to allow for me to replay them again and again.

I think had I not had the extra sleeves from years ago that were sitting in my basement, I wouldn't have gone out to get some since although cheap, it would be an extra cost beyond printing the pages. However, since I had the sleeves already in my house, and they were not being used at all, I decided to use them for a better cause: playing games over and over again.

Give your thoughts: What are some of your favorite Print and Play games here on BGG? Are there any that I mentioned on this post that you've had the opportunity to play? Do you print off extra components or rules for games that are already in your collection?


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*Originally posted on BoardGameGeek on 26/6/2024*