5 MORE Pen & Paper Games Better Than Tic-Tac-Toe
When you’re stuck at home with nothing but office supplies, don’t lose hope! There’s plenty of games you can play with just a pen and paper.
Over a year ago, we discussed a few games you can play with just a pen and paper. Considering the state of the world, I thought it was time to expand upon that list with a few more. These games require nothing but a sheet of paper and a pencil. We also recently discussed a bunch of games from Asmodee that you can print for free. And on this list of games with a small foot print are a few more print and play games.
Sprouts
This game is something of an off-shoot of Dots-and-Boxes, but was developed by the late and great John Conway.
On your turn, connect 2 dots and draw a new dot somewhere on that line. Dots can only have 3 lines sprouting from it (although some play with 4). If you can’t connect 2 dots in this way, you lose.
That’s the whole game! It’s harder than it sounds. Until you learn the secret, that is.
Have you realized noticed how most paper games are broken by being a mathematician?
Obstruction
Obstruction is also something like Dots-and-Boxes.
Make a grid as large as you’d like. You’re either X or O. Players alternate placing their marks on the grid. The catch is that no player may place their mark adjacent to any other mark. The goal is to prevent your opponent from being able to make a move. If they can’t, you win!
The larger the grid, the longer the game will take, so size it to your liking!
Gomoku
This is just Tic-Tac-Toe cranked up to 11. Or maybe just cranked up to 5. Because, the goal here is to connect 5 in a row.
Players alternate making their mark anywhere they like, the first player to connect 5 of their marks in a row (horizontally, vertically, or diagonally) wins!
However, the first player has a huge advantage, so some additional rules have been added to prevent this:
- Overlines rule: Only a row of exactly five squares wins; rows of six of more, called overlines, do not count.
- Three and Three rule: A move must not simultaneously create two open rows of three squares (rows not blocked at either end by an opponent’s square).
- Four and Four rule: A move must not simultaneously create two rows of four squares, whether blocked or not.
Battleship
Didn’t think of this as a pen-and-paper game, did you? But it totally is!
I’ll take any opportunity to post this biggest of yikes.
The setup is just like you’d expect. Each player draws out a grid for their own ships and one for keeping track of their attacks. Granted, you can do both on the one grid, but it does get a little cluttered. If you plan on playing a couple games, this would be a nice time saver, though.
Racetrack
I’ll be honest, this is my favorite pen-and-paper game we’ve covered, but it does require grid paper.
The objective here should be pretty obvious, win the race. This game also has the benefit of not really having a player limit.
Each car starts at 0 movement. Each round, every car moves. Each time a car moves, it moves as far as it did last turn, plus 1 space in any direction of the driver’s choosing.
In an example turn, the car moves along the blue vector (4 across, 2 up). In the next turn, the red vector matches the blue, so the driver can choose to move to any of the 9 spaces pointed at by the red and green vectors. Some rules give cars have a top speed of around 6. This is done simply by adding the horizontal and vertical components of the vector together. It’s not very math, but it works.
If a car drives outside the boundary of the track, they crash. Rules vary wildly for how this is handled. Either, that cars speed immediately becomes 0 or they crash as per the rules listed below.
The first player to complete the race wins!
Bonus rules:
- Car stats: Players can choose a bonus for their car.
- Acceleration: Can move forward an additional space each move.
- Handling: Can move sideways an additional space each move.
- Top Speed: Can move up to 8 spaces forward each move.
- Unlooped Track: The track does not have to be a loop. Get creative!
- Crashes: There are multiple ways to handle crashes
- Multiple cars occupying the same space in the same round crash.
- A car crossing a path which was drawn this round crashes.
- Cars which crash can either:
- Lose a turn.
- Take a point of damage. 3 points of damage and they are out.
- Are immediately out.
All these games are great fun in their own right, so give them a try and let us know what you think!
Thanks for reading!
