Building a Game: Print & Play the Easy Way

Read more...

Wade---this has been a big problem for me in the past and I bookmarked this post. I made some TRASH attempts at trying to create the Magic Realm remake and could have used a lot of this advice. Much appreciate the article, I will be using it if I PnP again.

I used to do quite a bit PnP back in my hometown. Printing stuff is pretty cheap in Indonesia. For about $1 I can print 2 sheets of A3+ in a printshop. Good cardstock. For about the same price I could get a sheet of doff-laminated sticker. Of course that means opening Photoshop and disassembling all those PDF into A3+ files. Great saving though.

The easy way on aligning cards if you're doing your own, is to use flat colored backs, and only have the symbols in the middle of the cards. Of course this depends on the file availability. When doing the cards for my Nexus Ops PnP, I simply make the cards backs like this so a little misalignment won't matter.



Also for the double sided exploration tokens, for the backside I made simple question mark with black background for the same reason.

I used to do quite a bit PnP back in my hometown. Printing stuff is pretty cheap in Indonesia.

I love these little autobiographical bits that leak out from F:ATTIES.

I want to stress that this will give you a durable game, but it won't win any awards for beauty.

Mounting board is great though. I decided that my Talisman 3e Tower wasn't super sturdy and would probably be the first thing to wear out. So I scanned in the Tower components (which were basically cardstock), then used the method here. Label paper and thicker mounting board. I also picked up some terrarium decorations and a $0.99 dragon at Michael's from a checkout bin. I made a base for the dragon to fit into the Tower top with: more mounting board, some glue, and those same terrarium decorations. Now I have a sturdy Tower.

Edit: That pic looks small. Hopefully This link or this one works and is bigger.

What's your planned solution for the Dune dials? That was the hardest problem to solve on my Dune PnP.

Wade, that 3rd talisman dragon tower looks incredible! Is the whole game pnp or just the tower?

The only thing that concerns me is the depth of those component bowls. Some look like they may be too steep and I'd hate for there to be any sort of liability or embarrassment at your table. Have you considered Board Game Bowls?
www.kickstarter.com/projects/698904772/board-game-bowls

stoic wrote: What's your planned solution for the Dune dials? That was the hardest problem to solve on my Dune PnP.

Ilya's Dune has combat cards as an option instead so I did those. I'll probably try my hand at the dials but I'm not expecting much; big circles are tough.

Mr. White wrote: Wade, that 3rd talisman dragon tower looks incredible! Is the whole game pnp or just the tower?

The only thing that concerns me is the depth of those component bowls. Some look like they may be too steep and I'd hate for there to be any sort of liability or embarrassment at your table. Have you considered Board Game Bowls?
www.kickstarter.com/projects/698904772/board-game-bowls

Just the Tower. Those bowls are flexible and have measurement marks; they were bought on clearance and just really aren't suitable for proper board gaming. If only I had known better.

I need to do this.

wadenels wrote:

stoic wrote: What's your planned solution for the Dune dials? That was the hardest problem to solve on my Dune PnP.

Ilya's Dune has combat cards as an option instead so I did those. I'll probably try my hand at the dials but I'm not expecting much; big circles are tough.

Agreed on the problem with big circles. Here's what I did. I used the Ilya dial graphics and color printed them on page-sized label paper. I then scavenged 4 of those clear DVD-R disk covers from those tower packs. I cutout the dial circles and pasted them onto the clear disks, cutting out a window for the top sticker so you can see the numbers. I bound the dials together with brass washers, screws and wing nuts from the hardware store.

Wade, can we get a closer look of your custom 3rd ed Reaper card? Maybe you've shared it here before, but it looks like you've made it a pretty seamless fit. Where'd you lift the art?

I do a LOT of prototyping and P&P stuff, and the one thing I want is a CriCut NC cutter. That makes perfect circles of any size for cutting chits and bits.

Great article. I stopped trying to do double sided printing because the offsets are always a bitch, so now I just print the front and back separately, cut, and sleeve back to back. Sometimes I get ~fancy~ and print on label paper, then stick to cheap playing cards.

wadenels wrote: Ilya's Dune has combat cards as an option instead so I did those. I'll probably try my hand at the dials but I'm not expecting much; big circles are tough.

I used chipboard for mine, and I think I cut out the rough shape of the circle with scissors and the then trimmed it closer to a circle, then used sandpaper to sand off any rough edges so it was a smooth circle. Then I printed the image on adhesive backed paper, stuck it on, and used a FFG black dial piece to attach them together.

SuperflyTNT wrote: I stopped trying to do double sided printing because the offsets are always a bitch, so now I just print the front and back separately, cut, and sleeve back to back. Sometimes I get ~fancy~ and print on label paper, then stick to cheap playing cards.

I have access to a pretty good color laser printer for my PnP projects and I can't get that thing to align front to back no matter what I do. I've fed through the bypass tray, tried two-sided printing from the internal tray (just to see if it was possible), used MS Word to add a manual offset to my margins to account for the variance, none of it worked. I only print two-sided if the cards are an odd size, like the Epic Duels decks I made for the homebrew Lando and Grievous factions.

I really like the label paper on playing cards method, but the printing on the card faces can be visible through the label if there's a lot of white or yellow so it might be worthwhile to keep some whiteout tape on hand if such a thing bothers you.

Also, for all you newbies out there, alway alway ALWAYS make a test print first on plain paper in black and white. Then you can measure to see if everything's printed at the correct size, etc., and in the long run you'll save a lot of ink and cardstock.

I've tried making game boards with matte board remnants but I had one board where the label paper peeled off. I don't know if that's a one time occurrence or not but I haven't had a chance to test it again. I prefer sticking label paper on old game boards; as long as your labels are smaller than the board you can paint the excess area a neutral color before affixing the labels. That's what I did for my mounted copy of the paper map from the old edition of Intruder and it turned out pretty well.