Musing about Zendo and spare change

 Many years ago, when I first discovered Zendo, I remember reading that someone writing that you don't need fancy pyramids or stones to play, that you could play with whatever you had in your pockets. Pocket change was specifically mentioned. And that got me thinking.

Couple of provisions, first. No one I know, including myself, carries nearly enough change around with them to actually play a good game of Zendo. You're going to have to shake coins out of the piggy bank specifically to put together a Zendo kit. Second, you don't have to have white and black stones, you can designate which Koens have the Buddhist nature by having a space on the playing surface for each type. A Koen that has the Buddhist nature goes on the east side of the table, those that don't go on the west side. That sort of thing. And unused coins could work as guessing stones if you don't want to keep track in your head.

What I felt was the biggest question was what is the actual configuration of your coin Zendo kit? Your mileage may vary but I felt that, at least as a general guideline, just sticking to pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. Half dollars and dollar coins can definitely add some more variables but not everyone has them lying around. Then there's the question of just how many you need to have of each coin. I can see, for an emergency, very limited game, making due with five of each. (And I want to live in a world where an emergency Zendo game is something that could actually happen) However, I think fifteen of each type of coin (just like there were fifteen pyramids in the old school staches) is actually ideal. Enough to make a wide variety of Koens while still being manageable. So, $6.90 in change.

And I think coins would make a versatile tool for making Koens. They have distinct types (quarters, dimes, nickels, pennies) They have distinct values (25, 10, 5,1) They have facing (heads, tails) Most importantly, all of that is common knowledge. And, while I'm talking about US currency, I'm sure the basic principles can be applied to almost any other coinage. (The Rai stones of the Yap islands are an obvious exception)

All of that said, this is all an intellectual exercise for me. If I was going to play Zendo (which I do enjoy doing), I'd get out my first edition copy. People respond well to the pyramids. And I wouldn't mind getting a copy of the second edition either. While I think it's neat that you could play a completely home brew, no frills Zendo, I don't know when I would do it.

I do like the thought of putting the idea out into the world.

Douglas Adams’ most important book?

 Last Chance to See is arguably Douglas Adams most important book. (A solid argument can be made for the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in either radio or book form, since that’s what gave him the license to ignore deadlines) It is definitely his most serious work.

Last Chance to See is a non-fiction book, adapted from a radio series of the same name. It describes how Adams, photographer Mark Carwadine and whatever producer the BBC dragged in went on a series of trips to see critically endangered species.

The irony of using entertainment to try and help species that are only endangered because of the human race is not lost on Adams.

In fact, the book is less any kind of scientific documentation than it is a travelogue. Scratch that. It is totally a travelogue. Adams spends many more pages describing what it took for them to get to the animals than the animals than themselves.

This is not a critique. This is not a flaw. By writing the book this way, Adams shifts the discussion away from the animals endangered with extinction and focuses on what is endangering them. You know, us.

The writing alternates between talking about the silly things people do and ‘my God, look what we’ve done’ Which makes the book alternate between rather funny and breathtakingly bleak. And the last chapter, on the island of Mauritius where the dodo lived until they didn’t and quite a few other species are highly endangered, it gets quite bleak.

Last Chance to See was published in 1990. It would be nice to think that it is a time capsule and things have gotten better for endangered species. Sadly, when the BBC did a follow-up TV series to the radio series twenty years later, some of the species had become extinct in that time. Most of the others aren’t doing that great either.

Last Chance to See isn’t a look at the world thirty years ago. It remains a sadly timely as ever mirror to look at ourselves.

My January Gaming

 January was not much of a month for learning new games for me. Life stuff was a higher priority. (To be fair, they should be and I’m pretty sure February will be the same way) All the games I learned were little, simple games.

I learned:

Paper Pinball - Comb Clash

The Fractured Flat

Formula 1cm

The Farmer and the Deal

One thing I did do was play a variety of games. A roll-and-write, an abstract, an In Hand card game and a game about freehand drawing.

What I initially think is the strongest game of the lot is The Farmer and the Deal, although I think Formula 1cm has a lot of potential if players are willing to go that low tech. The Fractured Flat is easily the weak one of the bunch. 

However, as I noted when writing about making PnP projects in January, I’ve been focusing on games I already know and like. Which is, let’s face it, more important than learning new games.

That said, I have a stack of Roll and Writes I’d like to try out so, even though life is going to be crazy, I’ll probably be learning more games in February.

My January PnP

 January ended up being a busier month than I expected for Print and Play crafting. With that said, I made almost no games that I hadn’t played before, instead making expansions or final versions of games I’d already played in playtesting.

I made:

Palm Laboratory (final version & last playtest model)

Downtown Las Palmas (final version)

Koala Rescue Club Map 4

Rallytaire map 3

Handful O’ Hazards

Chateau (low inks maps 1-8)

Th Daily Weather (demo version)

Jarl (2nd playtest)

I’d have to say that my ‘big’ project was Palm Laboratory. I realized that I hadn’t actually made a copy of final version of th game. And then, when I realized that I liked some of the elements that had been in the prototypes that didn’t make the final cut, I made a copy of the last prototype. Now I can play Palm Laboratory however I want lol.

With the exception of Chateau, none of the games I made were ‘new to me’. However, they are almost all improvements or expansions to stuff I’ve enjoyed. So I wasn’t making spare copies, I was refining. It wasn’t intentional but I do think it’s neat.

I didn’t plan my crafting that way and I’m sure February will be its own thing.

An elegy for PnP Arcade

 This was not a blog that I had been planning on working on. I had been thinking about working on something about Looney Lab’s Pyramid Arcade.

Then I saw that PnP Arcade was shutting down on January 29, 2026. 

It’s the end of an era.

PnP Arcade was an online store that sold print and play game files. I’m not sure how many different publishers used the site but I’m sure I wouldn’t have heard of a lot of them if it wasn’t for PnP Arcade.

The store started in 2018 and I know I was actively following it and using it by 2019. So I got a good six years of out it, checking every Friday for new games to see if there were any that interested me. Their Black Friday sale became a tradition for me.

I don’t think I can overstate the impact PnP Arcade had on my gaming life. By 2019, Print and Play had become a major focus for my gaming. I was actively looking at design contests and Kickstarters that had PnP options. However, PnP Arcade took me to the next level, looking at products that were intentionally created for home creation. So much of what I had been looking at were prototypes with the intent of being eventually physically published. In theory, the games at PnP Arcade were the finished product.

Frankly, the site let me explore whole new worlds of gaming. And between the backlog of games that I haven’t made and tried yet and the games that I want to keep on playing, even with the site closing down, I have years of entertainment ahead of me.

The notice that went up stated that life had just gotten too busy to keep on running the store. Which I can easily believe and completely accept. PnP Arcade had to have been passion project and a lot of work to keep it going, and I find it hard to believe that it generated a ton of profit, although I would be delighted to be wrong. If Jason Tagmire and Jason Greeno decide that they are burnt out on publishing games and want to sell aluminum siding door-to-door, they have already made a positive impact on my life.

Now, I do understand that PnP Arcade is going to continue in some form on Substack. Which means I have to figure out what the heck Substack is. However, it’s clearly going to be different.

Thank you to both Jasons for keeping it going as long as you did.

Man, I can’t stop writing about Maigret

 You know, I really hadn’t planned on doing any more writing about the Maigret series by Georges Simenon. Not until I had read a decent selection from different points in the series. Definitely not after I read a second book.

But Maigret and the Headless Corpse just ended up being so much more interesting than I expected. I had accidentally gotten it out because I mixed it up with Maigret and his Dead Man. (An easy mistake I think) And, from what I can tell, it is considered a middle-of-the-road book in the series. 

Which I entirely believe.

But what was so striking for me was the structure of the book.

A dismembered corpse, sans head which would make for easy identification, is found in a Paris canal. Maigret, a police detective, takes on the case, needing to figure out who the dead guy is and who killed him.

And here’s the thing. Pretty early in the book, Maigret figures those things out. However, he has to understand the motive so that he can put all the pieces together in a way that will actually land a confession and conviction.

In other words, it is not a who done it. It is who is this person that has done it and why did they do it in the first place? The book isn’t a mystery. It is a character study.

And, while there are some revelations by the end, there aren’t any sudden twists that change everything. Instead, we learn just enough to understand why the murder happened.

Maigret spends time around the neighborhood where the body parts are found and much of the book deals with everyday life. And Simenon makes the immersive, not tedious or boring. We also get to see plenty of Maigret’s own personality. One of my favorite touches is that he makes sure a suspect in custody’s cat is taken care of and is irked when it’s implied he shouldn’t have bothered.

Maigret and the Headless Corpse wasn’t on my short list of books to read, which makes my enjoyment even better. I’m not planning on an exhaustive exploration of the series but I am hoping to read at least ten Maigret books this year.

Racing by centimeters and other Formula 1 thoughts

 I recently tried out a PnP racing game called Formula 1cm. And it pretty much is just what it says on the tin. A game about Formula 1 racing and measures. 

Here’s the core concept: you are playing a race as a dot-to-dot game where you supply the dots. You have an inventory of line segments of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 centimeters. You need to use each measure at least once but no more than three times.

Here’s where the actual game part is: you have to draw the lines freehand, not with a helpful ruler. And each player has three free challenges to accuse the other player of getting the measure wrong. They can accuse people after that but if they’re false accusations, the accuser has a penalty, being forced to use the shortest measure they have available.

And you can wear out your car by cutting corners and getting caught getting measures wrong. And you have to change lanes every move. There is some race car crunch mixed in.

The game comes with a lot of content. Twelve F1 tracks. Three kid-friendly tracks. Two more special tracks. A bunch of variant rules, including solitaire. Having so many tracks and variations is crucial to any kind of replay value because if you only had one or two maps, muscle memory would make them too easy.

I have tried it solitaire, which was perfectly pleasant. However, I am positive that the game sings at two-player. Having someone to mess with and who will mess with you will really add a lot to the gameplay.

I think there’s a very distinct dividing line for potential responses to Formula 1cm. If players don’t mind a no-frills pencil and paper game, I think they’ll enjoy it. If you need even a little bit of chrome, Formula 1cm is a hard no. 

Which is absolutely fine. We play games for fun and escapism and mental stimulation and social interaction. You shouldn’t be asked to play games that don’t work for you.

Of course, any Formula 1-themed game is going to be in the shadow of the Formula De/Formula D family of games. The gear dice system is both single and utterly brilliant. For me, that remains the gold standard. 

Sadly, for many reasons, I haven’t played Formula D in many years. (For one thing, the guy I know who has a bunch of tracks lives in another state lol) Almost every version of the game takes up some decent table space (Formula De Mini being the exception) and is a serious evening’s play. Is it worth the time and the space? Yes. But you have to have that time and space.

I think it’s a crying shame that it’s out of

print.

And Formula 1cm also brought me back to Rallytaire, a PnP that clearly was inspired by Formula D and is an absolute example of a shoestring game. It does a really good job giving me a ten-minute Formula D fix and I’m glad Formula 1cm made me go back to it.

I think the need for budget gaming, which has always been out there, has only become more important. And I think Formula 1cm is a valuable potential addition to that library.