What can you do with one sheet of paper?

My rough measure of, well, how much work a PnP is going to be is the number of pages I print out. But, wow, can that be a wide range in reality. After making a copy of Raging Bulls (printing out and laminating a sheet of paper) and Robots of Creation (forty-two itty bitty cards, plus a couple of tiles) almost back-to-back, I really found myself wondering how useful a measure was :D

That said, I think those two examples represent the two extremes of how much cutting you can expect to do on one page.

I almost don’t count just laminating a sheet of paper. Ironically, I have had a lot of great experiences with Roll and Writes so the return on some of those builds has been great.

The real middle ground for me are sheets of eight or nine cards or boards with a couple columns of counters. Basically, if I can cut it in five minutes with a paper cutter, it is still an easy build.

However, when I have to get out the scissors and fussy cut for an half an hour, that’s when i cross over the threshold to it being ‘work’.

The first time I really experienced a fussy-cut build was Raiders in My Pocket. At first I was thrilled at a Zombie in My Pocket that fit on one page. However, I spent more time making it than I did making Tiny Epic Zombies :P And the bits were so tiny that I actually had real problems physically playing the game.

The last two fussy-cut builds I’ve made have been Robots of Creation and My Little Castle. It helped that I had a good idea what I was getting into, build-wise. I think these small bits will work better than Raiders.

Ironically, the actual intellectual-size of the game isn’t determined by the number of cuts. Utopia Engine, for instance, is fairly deep and cat fit on one page with no cuts.