Post by: Grant Rodiek

There are things that you take for granted in your processes and don’t think to improve upon. But, when a solution emerges that makes your life better, one that’s so simple and so obvious, you can’t help but ask “why didn’t we do that a year ago?”

I have an obvious solution to share, one that is Josh’s idea for Hocus Poker.

Hocus Poker is and has always been a large Print and Play file. We have been pushing it aggressively because it’s honestly the best way to get new testers. Even if we get only one new tester every week, it’s huge. The print and play for Hocus involves 60 cards, which are the play deck, 18 cards for spells that players just read like references, 5 reference cards, and 10 cards to track the score.

Here is Josh’s insight: our print and play does not need to mimic the final version in components. We, locally, have already verified and tested the components as for how they will work in the end. Others don’t need to do that, especially if there’s no feedback to be gained. Where possible, we can, and should, make the PNP best as a PNP.

The 60 cards you use in the play deck? You’ll always need to cut these out as cards. There’s nothing we can do there. However, we can make everything else simpler.

Players don’t need to print and cut our 10 scoring cards. Instead, they can gather pennies, cubes, Netrunner tokens, anything from their home to keep score. You don’t need many of them, just a pile of things.

Our spells and reference cards are just references. You don’t play, shuffle, or deal them. They can just be on a single sheet, like this:

What you see above is normally 4 cards. Now it’s half a piece of paper. In a future version of Hocus, assuming this original one is successful and there is demand for such a product, it’d be cool to have a larger version in a box with big spell cards for every player and tokens to keep score. But, that isn’t the pocket change version we think is best for our current audience.

In summary, when making a PNP, your goal is to get people to download, cut, and assemble that PNP. Make it as easy as possible. Find places where you can merge, eliminate, or modify components to ease this task. The end result? More testers.

Hope this helps! Here’s the new PNP for Hocus Poker!