Print-and-Play Tabletop Gaming

Sometime in late 2019 i discovered the semi-underground phenomenon known as "print-and-play," a.k.a. PnP, tabletop games. In short, PnP games are distributed in electronic form, typically PDF, and are intended to be printed out and assembled oneself. Some require additional components which cannot be distributed electronically, e.g. dice and tokens with which to track things are common. As of late 2023 i've assembled well more than three dozen PnP games and have gotten reasonably proficient at it, though there are levels of professionalism i cannot possibly reach due to cost of the materials and my personal aversions to some materials (namely aerosol glues, which are excellent for homemade cards). (i exclusively use glue sticks and they work just fine, with one significant caveat noted below.)

Rather than print at home, i almost invariably send PnP titles off to an online printing service, posting them in batches of 200-400 pages or so to reduce the cost significantly (12-15 cents per page, including shipping, is typical). (Sidebar: "printing service," in this context, means a run-of-the-mill printing service, not one which specializes in gaming materials.) Though i prefer paper weights of around 220-230gsm, those are not always an option, and sometimes have to fall back to 170-200gsm. 250gsm is kinda nice, though i'm somewhat torn on whether its extra thickness is a blessing or a curse. Once the printouts arrive, the work of gluing together the fronts and backs of cards, and similar aspects of construction, begins.

Resources

• The obligatory photo album where pics of in-progress and completed PnP builds are posted.
• PnPArcade.com is the online source for obtaining PnP titles, many of which are free and the overwhelming majority of which cost 3 USD or less.

Lamination Tips

Laminating PnP components, in particular cards, is an alternative to sleeving them, but it's not a panacea to the problem of making durable cards. Laminating so that the lamination sticks well, instead of peeling off around the corners, requires a bit of practice. My tips on this topic include...

• If the laminator has adjustable thickness, set it to its maximum thickness even when using thinner lamination sheets. e.g. lamination often comes in 80-micron thickness and some laminators have a switch to set the thickness to 80 or 120 microns. Using the higher thickness, even for thinner lamination sheets reportedly (according to PnP experts) provides more heat, leading to a better seal. Whether or not this genuinely makes a difference is (in my experience) unclear, but it has never given me any grief.
• Check for stray dust, hairs, and similar crud before running each page through the laminator. Any single speck of dust between a card and the lamination will show up as rather unsightly bubble. These can be mostly fixed afterwards with careful application of a hobby knife, but tend to leave a slight scar on the end result.
• Laminate after gluing double-sided cards and allowing them to dry completely, but before cutting them. Laminating after cutting requires a great deal more cutting effort to free the cards of the lamination.
• When feeding a to-be-laminated sheet in for the first pass (see below), always feed the sealed end of the lamination sheet through first. Feeding the opened end may well lead to serious folds in the lamination, making the printout useless for many purposes (e.g. cards flawed this way will be effectively marked).
• Run each page of cards through the laminator at least two times, flipping and/or rotating the sheet each time. My own tendency is to feed each sheet through three to four times, depending entirely on my mood.
• After cutting the cards out, and after trimming the corners, run each individual card through the laminator again, at least twice (flipping and/or rotating the card each time). This will seal the edges better to help keep them from peeling, as they often do after they are cut out. My tendency is to run each card through the laminator three to four times.

The above method has worked out well for me on a number of PnP builds.

If the lamination of individual cards starts to peel around the edges of the cards, running them through the laminator again might help re-seal them. It's worked for me before but it may not be a general-purpose solution.

But Achtung: Splitting Cards

It has been my experience that cards which are glued front-to-back with glue sticks (as i do) will eventually split apart when laminated. This sometimes takes several months, but it happens more often than not. Whether this happens is partly dependent on the paper used: professionally-printed paper tends to be slicker than consumer-grade/home-printed cards, and will not hold glue stick well under the stress of lamination (the plastic warps ever so slightly over time and it breaks the glue apart). It seems very likely that spray glues do not suffer from this problem, but my personal aversions to aerosols keep me from validating that claim. Similarly, consumer-grade printing paper is more porous and holds glue stick better, so does not (in my experience) suffer from this problem.