I can’t quit Paper Pinball

I recently played Paper Pinball - Ski ‘93 for the first time. I can’t really say that I learned it because every game in the Paper Pinball series follows the same basic formula. Roll two to three dice and fill in a blank.

I actually own every board except the Advent Calendar set but I save learning new boards for when life is so crazy that I can’t fit in anything more complex. So I’m happy that it’s been a couple years since I’ve learned a new board.

 

Which isn’t to say I haven’t been playing Paper Pinball. It isn’t something that I play every day or even every week but the system does have a way of coming back out. And I play a lot of Roll and Write games so even doing that much counts as praise.

Paper Pinball is a very bare bones approach to both pinball and Roll and Write. As I already said, it’s really just roll dice and write down numbers. In fact, when I first played it, I really wasn’t impressed at all. 

However, there actually is some theming in the game, something I wasn’t convinced of to start with. The boards have artwork that definitely evokes pinball machine art. And some elements, like ramps requiring ascending numbers, are thematic.

As the series progressed, I feel that both the theming and mechanics tightened up. Every board has its own little touches and special gimmicks but the second season/set of boards made the final scoring less random and the mechanics reflected pinball more.

Wolf Hackers is marked as the earliest board and it really is little more than spaces for numbers. Ski ‘93 has inner areas that the ball has to jump to, creating an actual environment that reflects the pinball theme. 

I have found, while I don’t want to binge any individual board, grabbing a stack of them and playing one at a time. So, it’s more binging a tv show than binging a board game.

I have found Paper Pinball to be really solid brain fog games. The worse the brain fog, the earlier the board I reach for. (Yes, I’ve played Wolf Hackers the most) But Dice Fishing D6 is my reigning champion for brain fog gaming. I can tell how exhausting a month was by how much I played that particular game.

And I cannot express enough how, if you really want to play a game that _feels_ like a pinball machine, play WhizKids’ Super-Skill Pinball. Super-Skill Pinball does an excellent job recreating pinball. Paper Pinball is a dice game with a pinball theme. Super-Skill Pinball is a pinball game that uses dice. 

I came across Robin Gibson early in my PnP exploration in the form of Paper Pinball and Legends of Dsyx. While I think the Legends of Dsyx games are more innovative, experimental and ambitious, Paper Pinball is more solid and reliable. I know what I am getting into when I get a Paper Pinball board out. Paper Pinball has kept going for me for over five years.