What is Gaming Paper?

The name says it all. Gaming Paper is designed and produced specifically for our three G’s: games, gamers, and gaming. It is a paper play surface that is useful in roleplaying games, tabletop wargames, board game design, and more.

It’s such a simple idea that some people initially meet it with skepticism. At Gen Con Indy in 2015, a young man (maybe 15 years old) approached our booth. I was giving him my usual sales pitch. “Gaming Paper is permanent so you can draw the map once and use it again and again. If your heroes need to go back to the same inn or dungeon you are ready to go. Gaming Paper is 30” wide and 12’ long! That’s 30 square feet of playing surface for only $4!” Then he hit me with an objection I had yet to hear since starting Gaming Paper six years ago.

Before I tell you what he said, let me tell you the two most common objections I hear:

1. “I have a dry erase mat.”

Me too! I use it in almost every game session, either for random encounters or when my stubborn players go off-script and decide to explore that abandoned (and unmapped) farmstead alongside the road. The reason I started producing Gaming Paper was because Jeremy, my GM, would waste five to fifteen minutes drawing each of the encounters during our gaming sessions. Since we only play every other week for about five hours, this was valuable time wasted. If only Jeremy could draw those encounters beforehand and bring them to the session, we would have much more time to play. Thus, my dream of putting squares on paper was born!

Gaming Paper allows you to pre-draw your “known” encounters beforehand. You can even add a little artistic flair if that is your thing. Do your 7th-level heroes need to return to the Spire of Doom in search of a relic they think might still be hidden there? No problem. You still have the map you made for them when they were only 4th level. Just unroll it and go!

2. “Markers will soak through the paper.”

Gaming Paper is clay coated to help absorb permanent marker. In fact, I find Sharpies to be the best for drawing on Gaming Paper. Sharpies are available in so many colors and styles you can get as creative as your time and imagination allow.

Anyway, back to the Gen Con story. The young man interrupted my sales pitch, said flatly, “sounds like a scam”, turned, and walked away! I was so dumbfounded that I stood there, speechless (and that rarely happens!).

Well, how do I overcome that objection?

Here’s how. If you or any of your customers are not satisfied with Gaming Paper for any reason, send it back to me with a receipt, contact information, and the unused Gaming Paper and I will refund the purchase price. Sound good?

I am a gamer, just like you. I have been playing Dungeons and Dragons since I was a kid and I still play today (as a much older kid). That is why I started producing Gaming Paper; I wanted a helpful and easy time saver to add to my GM toolkit. My GM is a persnickety guy so I made it as high quality and resilient as I could while keeping the cost low.

He loved it then, and he still loves it now. In fact, he likes it so much he started sharing it with other gamers and they shared it with even more gamers. In 2010, I contacted a large paper converter about manufacturing a big batch of Gaming Paper, booked a table at Gen Con, made some dorky YouTube videos, and we were off and running.

As long as you made it this far, let me tell you about a few other products we offer.

Gamers kept asking me if they could cut Gaming Paper rolls down to 8.5” x 11” sheets and run them through their printer. I still have no idea, and I’m not going to try it on my printer. Instead, we developed Gaming Paper Singles. These are packages of printer friendly paper with preprinted 1” squares or hexes. They come in several different colors.

Rolls of Gaming Paper are offered in white, blue, green, gray, and the “classic” tan color.

One of my favorite additions to the Gaming Paper brand is our line of Mega Dungeon products. We teamed up with Christopher West, cartographer extraordinaire, to make massive prepackaged dungeons. They come in packs of either 50 sheets or 100 unique 8.5” x 11” sheets, and are printed to the 1” = 5’ scale used in most RPGs. The unique sheets typically have the entrances and exits at the same spot, so they are geomorphic and can be used in thousands of different layouts. We have released three Mega Dungeons thus far. All the sets are game agnostic, meaning they can be used for any system. Gaming Paper has also published several Pathfinder adventures to accompany our Mega Dungeons.

That is my story. I know you will enjoy my products. Please feel free to contact me anytime at ebauer@gamingpaper.com. In fact, drop me a line and let me know you received this letter and our catalog! If you are a Gaming Paper customer already, please let me know - I will add you to our online retailer finder.