Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Paper-and-pencil game


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep‎__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__. No agreement with the nomination has been indicated. (non-admin closure) Rcsprinter123   (speak)  17:26, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Paper-and-pencil game

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

Appears to fail WP:GNG, with sources being unreliable. The games in "paper-and-pencil game" do not actually require papers or pencils, and it seems to be an arbitrary grouping of games associated together by some manner of writing. Given that tabletop games also involve writing, the title is overly vague and doesn't particularly mean anything. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 17:44, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Language, Games,  and Mathematics.  ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 17:44, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 *  Weak keep. I don't find the nomination convincing.  Putting "paper and pencil game" or "pen and paper game" into my favorite search engine indicates the phrases are in wide use, with coherent meaning.  This meaning is consistent with our article, with the associated Category:Paper-and-pencil games, and with the numerous books devoted to listing such games (e.g., , ).  To be sure, most of what turns up is of poor quality, but some things are clearly usable: there's this short article in the NY Times, this blog post by a subject-matter expert (and author of this book), this piece at howstuffworks.  Do I think any of these sources is of top-notch quality?  No.  (And that's why my vote is weak.)  But do I think they meet the bar to demonstrate that this is a real thing, about which there exists a substantial body of commentary of sufficient quality to support an encyclopedia article?  Yes.  --JBL (talk) 19:24, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Keep. The subject of entire books, such as Koch's Pencil & Paper Games (Sterling, 1992), Angiolo's Super Sharp Pencil & Paper Games (Sterling, 1995), and Orlin's Math Games with Bad Drawings: 75 1/4 Simple, Challenging, Go-Anywhere Games—And Why They Matter (Black Dog 2022), and published articles, such as Harries "Tic-tac-toe, here we go!" (Early Years Educator 2017,, and despite the title about paper and pencil games in general not just tic-tac-toe). The article is badly sourced but deletion nominators are expected to perform WP:BEFORE and look for sources outside the article as nominated. This fully deserves its place alongside board game and video game as a widely known and widely studied category of games. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:27, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I think your later addition (Dormans) is really on a different subject, namely tabletop role-playing games. As the article under consideration here says, The term is unrelated to the use in role-playing games to differentiate tabletop games from role-playing video games.  --JBL (talk) 19:39, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Ok, removed. I don't think that affects my argument. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:06, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree. Actually combining the sources you found with the ones I found, I am upgrading my !vote from weak to "regular" keep.  --JBL (talk) 20:52, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * One more book: Solomon, Games with Pencil and Paper, Thomas Nelson & Sons 1973, and Dover 1993. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:07, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I feel like this is a situation like if a book had a title called "100 Video Games About Fighting Demons". Does it mean that there should be a Wikipedia article about "Demon-fighting game"? Probably not. It's conflating a title with evidence of an actual genre.
 * All I've seen here is a large amount of unreliable sources and one really short NY Times article, as well as books that share the same title but don't necessarily discuss it as an actual genre. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 01:11, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * If that's all you've seen, all I can conclude is that you are deliberately not seeing. But here, have another source to somehow discount as not discussing it in exactly the way you think it should be discussed: Elsom & Trilling, Social Games and Group Dances, Lippincott 1919, Chapter IV: "Games with pencil and paper". (This one involves parlor games rather than strategy games, so maybe you can use that as your excuse for why this source also does not count.) —David Eppstein (talk) 02:27, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Keep this is a discrete and sensible genre, and the sources appear to be fine. Jclemens (talk) 06:37, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Keep per David Eppstein. AryKun (talk) 09:03, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Keep. this is a legitimate grouping of games. Bensci54 (talk) 06:07, 10 February 2024 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.