Monday, April 6, 2020

A couple of handy PnP sites for folks under lockdown

I have already written about a few games that, particularly if you are new to Print and Play, are worth making of you are under lockdown and can’t get out to game. Next, I want to write about a couple of web sites where you can find some nice print and play files.

Just like before, these are not the only place where you can find files but I really like these ones. 

PnP Arcade is the big one for me. Like the name implies, it’s a one-stop shopping grind for a lot of different kinds of PnP games. (Not war games, though. I’m not really into war games but I know there are sites like Wargame Vault out there) Jason Tagmire of Buttonshy Games helped create the site and I’ve been making PnP Buttonshy games for years.

In addition to games from Buttonshy, PnP Arcade has stuff from other publishers who do a lot of PnP. Jellybean, Good Little Games, Grey Gnome and Heavy Metal Snail are all companies I used to check regularly and I can now find out users they are up to through PnP Arcade.

PnP Arcade is chock full of free games so you can test the waters without having to pay anything. Although, if you’re like me, you will eventually spend some money there.


The other site I want to mention is Cheapass Games. For years, they have had free games on their site, including some really good games like Button Men, Agora, Lightspeed and Kill Doctor Lucky. However, when they were promoting the retrospective ‘Cheapass Games in Black and White’, they added a proverbial ton of their older games.

(And, at least for a little bit, Greater Than Games is offering the digital version of that book for free)

What is great about the Cheapass Collection, from a lockdown/limited resource standpoint, is that most of them are black and white, as well as ink light. And some of them just involve making a board. The old Cheapass mantra of using dice and cards and pawns from other games has a whole new life under these circumstances.

Cheapass, particularly in their early days, made some pretty kooky games and not all of them hold up. But they can be a lot of fun and there are enough gems to make the site worth exploring.


As I’ve already written, there are actually a _lot_ of places to look for PnP tiles, free and otherwise. Boardgame Geek is probably the biggest single site, in actuality. And PnP Arcade and Cheapass Games do lean on the casual game side of things. But I still think they are great resources. And, if you are only just now exploring PnP as a gaming option, I think they are even better.


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