Print And Play Gaming: My New Passion

Okay, passion may be a bit of a strong word, but I am certainly getting a kick out of it. It's not exactly new to me either.

I have been playing them in dribs and drabs for sometime, but the effort that it took to actually produce some of them didn't seem worth it in the return that you got from gameplay. Don't get me wrong, these are free print and play games that we are talking about but, free shouldn't mean poor quality.

For clarity though, I'm not using quality as a measure of a games aesthetics, but rather the quality of the game overall. Has it been well thought out? Do the mechanics work? Does the game still have bugs? These are all things I consider when weighing up whether or not to print out a print and play project.

As well as quality, design is also a big consideration when I'm looking at a print and play project. I don't think that anyone wants to be sitting there printing and trimming reams of paper / card and, preparing specialised components (I certainly don't).

So when designing a game, keeping it brief and the use of common components (such as standard D6 etc) are big pluses in the print and play arena. They are big considerations for me at least. Also as I plan to start reviewing the print and play games that I play, it seems only fair to have a set of common considerations to measure them by. Factors that I think matter to the player.