Pencil and Paper Games are popular throughout every culture on this planet. Part of the reason lays in the simplicity of the material. Everyone with a pencil and some paper can play them. And some you can even play without pencil and paper - with a stick and a flat surface of sand you can play on it as well.
Pencil and paper games, perhaps not surprisingly, can be defined as those games for which one needs only a pencil and paper to play. To exclude oral games, one might wish to add the condition that pencil and paper are actually necessary.
I like to group these games in 3 or 4 categories:
| Calculation games | those games which have numbers as their main component |
| Geometrical games | those games which need drawings, even if it's only a simple grid |
| Simulation games | those games which simulate business, sports, or even war and can still be easily recorded by hand. |
| Word games | because the large number of games which fit in this category, see the Word Game Plaza. |
Calculation games deal with numbers, and that's not everybody's favourite. But for those who like some mental exercise, their are a fair number of games.
These three games are deduction games, which means that essentially one player makes up a puzzle, and the other tries to solve it.
Many of the childrens classic games are geometrical games:
Besides these traditionals, there are many, many modern pencil and paper games:
Stop Gate by John Conway
Black Box
White Box
Col is all about colouring. This too is by John Conway.
I welcome contributions to these lists.