Postmark Games

 Designers Matthew Dunstan and Rory Muldoon founded new publisher Postmark Games in November 2021 with a Kickstarter campaign for Voyages, a roll-and-write game that would only be available as a print-at-home game.

All of Postmark Games' products, in general, will be designed to be printed at home, as Dunstan and Muldoon explain here. (If you missed the Kickstarter campaign, Voyages is available for purchase on the Postmark Games website.)

I'm not sure if I missed earlier releases in this vein or if Dunstan and Muldoon were just riding the crest of a wave, but I've now seen a slew of games — virtually all of them roll-and-write concepts — released in the same way. Many Kickstarter campaigns previously included a print-and-play version of a game as a reward, but now some are going all-in – print-and-play or bust.

For example, Meeplechase Games' Colleen Williams has her roll-and-write design Waterline on Kickstarter (KS link) with an incredibly low goal of $150. The rules of the game are as follows:

Quote: In Waterline, you and the other players are trying to connect openings in the player grid with a single pipeline, but you want to accomplish more than that to maximize your score.

Board Game: Waterline

The active player rolls the two six-sided dice once per round, and then each player uses the die results to create pipe segments in their grid as they see fit. For simple pipe, you can use the die numbers separately, or add their values to utilize one of the special connectors. If you roll doubles, you'll obtain a rock, which you'll need to place someplace in your grid.

If a 7 appears, you have the option of choosing between two basic pipes or one special pipe. Some places on your player sheet have already been filled in, so you can use them or ignore them as you see fit. You want to stay away from rocks.

The game finishes after a specific number of dice rolls, and if you have not completed your goal, you will receive 0 points and will lose. If you have, your score is determined by how well you used existing pipes, the number of rows and columns you filled with objects (including rocks and unused pipe), the number of starred spaces you included in your pipeline, the total number of pipes used, and whether you used more corner pieces than the other players.

Matt Parkinson of Empee Games is another first-timer, with his roll-and-write game Wine Management (KS link), which was motivated by his passion for viticulture.

Wine Management is a board game.

Here's a quick rundown of the game:

Players in Wine Management compete to run vineyards. Each round, players choose an action and a multiplier based on the values of two out of three thrown dice. The actions are as follows:

—Plant vines

—Harvest vines for grapes 

—Process grapes to make wines

—Fulfillment of wine orders 

—Hire employees to earn one-time bonuses

—To increase your popularity, give tours of your vineyard.

To maximize their points, players must balance all available actions.

• Other well-known game designers have followed suit, with Steve Finn of Dr. Finn's Games adapting his 2021 tile-laying game Mining Colony to a print-and-play format under the name Mining Colony Duel, which was Kickstarted at the start of 2022. Here's a rundown of the gameplay:

Mining Colony Duel is a 1-2 person "BYOP" (bring your own pencil) variation of Mining Colony, a print-and-play game that only requires printed sheets and pencils.

In the game, you are tasked with establishing a mining colony on a distant planet. Players bid for resources such as polyomino tiles, domes, landing pads, and science stations at the start of each round. Players arrange (draw) the resources onto their sheets after revealing their bids, attempting to achieve various goals such as having numerous objects of the same sort in a row or column.

Board Game: Mining Colony Duel

Players earn points based on the growth of their colonies after eight rounds.

Hermagor Market, an adaption of Emanuelle Ornella's 2006 game Hermagor, has been launched through a short-run Kickstarter effort, and the game is currently available for purchase on his website.

Ornella says, "Because it reduces costs and time, the print-at-home approach is a wonderful idea for a new method to manufacture and deliver games. Of course, you won't be able to create every potential game, but having fun while spending minimal money is a win-win situation."

In terms of gameplay, it's as follows:

Players strive to be the wealthiest merchant in Hermagor Market. They'll collect items from the well-known market and travel from town to town to sell them for a profit, taking the shortest route possible while also choosing the best town to sell in. The game lasts 32 turns, with three different types of turns:

—A collection turn in which each player uses the identical die roll to determine which good they can acquire from the market and how many of that good they can gather.

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Each player can move their merchant and sell products in a bundle during this move-and-sell turn.

—

A shift in which warehouses must be paid for maintenance.

The goal is to make the most money and become the wealthiest merchant in Hermagor.

Hermagor Market is a print-and-play game that can be played by one to an unlimited number of people. As long as one person has three dice to roll, you're ready to play! Print a page for each participant, give them one pawn, and a pen, and you're ready to go!

When collecting products from the market, you use two of the dice to determine which stall in the market you want to go to, and the third die determines how many goods you acquire, depending on the stall's capacity. "The decision may be easy at the start of the game because all the stalls are 'empty,' but because you cannot return to the same space later on," Ornella explains.

Later on, the market will be congested, making decision-making difficult. There are certain die modifiers, but they are limited during the game and are worth points if they aren't used, so it's a tough call whether you use them or not."

When it comes to selling commodities, Ornella points out that the website for each map generates the combination of goods desired by a town at random, so while the game is print-and-play, you don't have a fixed PDF to print each time you play — unless you want to, of course.