PNP Friday for February 20, 2026 - Can You Sell PNPs At Game Conventions? Plus PNP news.
Is it actually possible to sell PNPs at conventions? We share our thoughts and look forward to hearing yours.
Welcome to Print & Play Friday! It’s February 20th and we’ve got a fresh batch of print and play news and games for your reading (and playing) pleasure.
Table of Contents
Main Feature: Can You Sell PNPs At Game Conventions?
New Games This Week
Community Spotlight: The Board Game Garden Makes a PNP Book
Crowdfunding News (PNP Previews & Campaigns)
In Case You Missed It
Where Are They Now?
Can You Sell PNPs At Game Conventions?
For the last few years, PNP Arcade (the store) had considered selling print and play games at game conventions in a few different ways… and each time it ended without us selling at those conventions. Why? It just became super complicated, pretty quickly. I wanted to go through some of the issues here, and see if others have similar experiences.
Idea: We can print games at the booth.
Year after year PNP Arcade (the store) would consider setting up at a convention with printers, paper, scissors, card sleeves, and have an area for customers to buy a game, we’d print it out, and they would sit down and build the game right at the booth.
We considered even making an arcade machine where you would choose your games, and hit print, and the paper came out the bottom of the arcade machine. This was actually one of the easier parts, with it just being a computer and printer behind the facade of an arcade cabinet.
I always felt like this would feel like a mini event, which is a great way to spend time at game con. I’ve personally sat down in the make-your-own Warhammer mini tables for quite a while. It’s quiet and relaxing amidst all of the chaos. Plus you challenge yourself creatively. I feel like this would be similar, but you are going home with a game.
The Problems With Printing Games Right At The Con
I think there are so many concerns here, but let’s go through them one by one.
We need to make sure we have a ton of paper and ink.
We have no idea if this will be successful. It’s not the end of the world, but a hard thing to predict for the first time.
Not all games can be made.
Basically anything that requires additional components wouldn’t be able to be played right away, so the catalog would be limited. It would probably be anything that’s cards only, and roll and write style games. Also not the end of the world.
Scissors and other cutters introduce safety concerns.
I’d hate to be the booth where someone cuts themselves trying make a game. I know this can be prevented, but conventions can get very chaotic.
And probably the biggest question is….
How much to charge for a printed PNP?
If a game is normally $3 for a digital file, and we are printing the pages, what is the cost? $1 per color single sided page is comparable to local printers, but a small PNP could be $7 in printing. At that point we’re inching closer to the price of a small physical game... AND you still have to do all of the work. I think the pricing of printing for the customer starts to get quite problematic, especially when we haven’t even considered the publisher portion of the sale price yet. This is what stopped almost all of the discussions.
Aside from that, it’s just hard to know if people would look at it as work or want to partake in some crafting. We were never able to tell, so it never happened.
Idea: We can print games ahead of time and bring them with us.
This is something we considered for Pax Unplugged last year. Not for PNP Arcade the webstore, but instead for PNP Arcade Publishing (the publisher of Dungeon Pages, Dangerous Space, etc).
We thought about taking our Dungeon Pages series. If you don’t know anything about it, it’s a series of single page roll and write games. We thought about professionally printing a selection of gamesheets and finding a reasonable price for them. It’s a lot easier to budge on the price when you are the publisher and know your limits. So we came up with a reasonable price and looked at printing some sheets.
But then it came time to figure out the rules. Each game is one sheet, but the rules are like 5-6 pages. So the cost for one game went from say $1 for one game sheet to $6-7 for one game sheet and all of the necessary rules.
We thought about a QR code as a rules solution, but that complicates the initial plays that might happen naturally at the convention. Phone service is notoriously bad at conventions. So, you’d have a game that is complicated, but technically playable. That’s not the best way to go into something like this.
Another issue with a roll and write specifically is that a paper version is one time use. Players would get a link to redownload the sheet, but if you are playing for the first time on a one time use sheet, you will probably make a mistake.
A final issue is that you need pens/pencils and dice. But there are so many dice dealers at every convention, so it would help push people their way.
Overall it just was a bit weird, probably a hard sell, and has a rules issue that was unresolved.
In the end, we never moved forward with selling PNPs at conventions, getting hung up on the fact that it’s a complicated product for in person sales. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. So this brings up a question: Have you ever seen a publisher with print and play games at a convention? Do you have any thoughts on how you’d sell PNPs at a conventions? We couldn’t really find a great way to do it, but we’re curious if you or someone else ever has. Let us know in the comments here or on social media.
Each week we share the new releases in the world of Print and Play. Here’s what’s new this week.
PnP PDF Creator: This one isn’t a game, but it’s a tool for the PNP community that converts card images into clean, print-ready Print & Play PDF sheets. It is designed for game designers, prototypers, and players who want fast and reliable PDF generation for home or professional printing. Link.
Lands of Amazement: Skyways and Ultraparks: The two latest expansions to Scott Almes and Button Shy’s recent Simply Solo game are now available at The Game Crafter / PNP Hero, and will be at itch.io shortly. Link, Link
Dungeon Pages: Underboss - Corrupt Dragon: The year-long set has been updated with the newest boss and dungeon. Corrupt Drago’s Plunder effect is just wild, damaging a hero, all hero’s in the boss’s battle grid, and all heroes holding a coin, whether they are in the Dungeon or not. So much fun. Link.
Battle Pages - Kingdom of Skilo Marching Order 4: The final sheet for Skill has been added to the year-long set for Battle Pages. Each month introduces a new sheet, but each week changes up the enemy’s marching order to push you to try out new strategies. Link.
Publishers / designers submit your new PNP releases here: PNP Arcade Submission Form.
The Board Game Garden Makes A PNP Book
Jenna at The Board Game Garden gets crafty by making a super cool and portable PNP book filled with games like Voyages, Aquamarine, A Wayfarer’s Tale, Dungeon Pages, and many more.
Here are a few PNP-related crowdfunding campaigns that we thought you might find interesting:
Forage + Honeypot: A pair of fast and fun games for everyone with a $10 two-game PNP pledge level, from the team that brought you the smash hits Point Salad, Calico, and Cascadia! Link.
Essence: The Grim Expeditions: A PNP-only tactical legacy dice-crawler for 1-4 players where time is your enemy and combat is your fuel. Link.
Almighty: The Godliest God Game: A 1-4 player game with a $5 PNP level, in which you are a moody ancient god - of the Sun, the Dead, Love, or Storms - competing for belief and glory by performing various acts upon the inhabitants of the mortal plane. Link.
Button Shy Wallet Games: Spring 2026 Collection: Button Shy’s campaigns always feature a PNP level, and they are switching to a multi-game bundle campaign for their next 4 wallet games. This one features the latest in the ROVE series - Astro ROVE, Jarl from Joe Klipfel, Everything Machine, and Shaper. Launching on April 7th. Link.
Submit your PNP crowdfunding projects here: PNP Arcade Submission Form.
In this section, we’ll look at some older releases that you may have missed.
Krig: Roll your polyhedral dice to attack, defend, charge, and parry in fast-paced combat from Alejandro Díaz. Link.
Are you looking for your favorite publishers from PNP Arcade? Check out this list.
Just added:
Kealf Games: The new location for all things from Kelvin Soong of Kealf Games. PNP Stash Link.
Previously added:
Alexander Shen: If you’ve never played Quests Over Coffee or any of Alexander’s other fun games, be sure to check out his stuff on Itch.io. Link.
Button Shy Games: With hundreds of games on PNP Button Shy started uploading games on Itch.io and The Game Crafter. Expect regular releases of the older library of games as well as new content to come. Itch.io Link. The Game Crafter Link.
Cezar Capacle: Brazilian game designer, graphic designer, architect and musician. He’s been creating unique games for the past five years, on a variety of genres. Link
Clearly Sharp: Home page for Daniel Young, the designer of Gem Getter and Forest Floor. Link
Daws of Darkness: The Lost Village and its mini-expansion are now available at itch.io. The thick line art style of these co-op games really makes them stand out. Link
Epic Endeavor Games (Jason Greeno): The independent games by JG can be found on his Patreon page. Link.
Grimscribe: If you are looking for the year-long Grimlore series, you can find those here. Link.
Jack Neal Games: Jack’s games about power, value, and systems (Rust and Revenue and Charters: Profit Through Public Works) are now available at JackNealGames.com. Link.
PNP Arcade Publishing: For everything Dungeon Pages (and more to come) check out the PNP Arcade page at Itch.io. Link
Shiny Pigeon Games: PNP Arcade previously hosted Around The World In 15 Minutes, but at their site you can pick up Starfront Scouting Academy and the Packing Party series of games. Link.
We Heart Games: The Itch store for Mike Berg’s games (Crownfell, Exobase, Exoship) has the entire catalog of games. Link.
Would you like to submit a PNP Game?
With the help of publishers, designers and the community we will continue to share PNPs with all of you.
Click this link to submit information about a game
Games featured in these posts are not sponsored.
You could charge a slightly larger amount for pnp events at the booth, limiting the quantity needed and making it feel more exclusive. X number of people per time slot but maybe include special card backs for that convention as a promo. If you assist in creating the game and include a pnp kit (corner cutter for cards, small cutting mat, a few blank dice, etc.) for people to take home you could possibly draw a wider audience into pnp.
I love the idea of PNP at game conventions, but I agree you would probably want a limited inventory of easier to build games. As far as printing, I use an ECO-Tank printer and based on the ink and paper prices in Canada, I pay a few cents max per coloured page. I believe I'm at over 1000 coloured pages printed and not even halfway through my ink (which a set is only $12ish USD) so it would be an (almost) insubstantial cost if a customer is buying the PNP before printing it. That being said, maybe these printers have lower quality or other issues? Love mine for PNP so far!
Or hear me out... You have lots of pre-printed copies of Dungeon Pages and adjaecent games. You get a plinko machine and charge a light amount for a go. The result gives them a certain combo of boss/location and hero. And then have a table where they can learn and play, along with links to buy the full PNP (or have pre printed versions to fully sell for a higher amount). If you want a fun factor to draw attention, plinko is always hype in my opinion, haha!