If so what games do you play? And how do you find people to play with?
I play Catan sometimes, I have family members and my partner to play with c:
I play some Magic, mainly just Commander because a local game store has free Commander nights every Thursday and everyone there is fine with proxies, I do miss competitive 1v1 formats but shit's waaay too expensive
I did meet someone there who does cube draft, but that doesn't happen often
I'd like to play more KeyForge (I picked up a cheap box of Age of Ascension online last month), but locally it's completely nonexistent, and I don't really have friends outside of those Commander nights to play games casually with, also I'm not a huge fan of playing card games online
I'd also like to try some kind of tabletop RPG sometime since I've never played them, but that would require having a group of friends I'm comfortable with who would also want to do so, and that's a no-go right now
Damn, I didn't know they had a card game. How does it compare with PokémonTCG?
Prefer it over the Pokémon tcg, it has a really cool mana system called memory that allows for a lot of back and forward gameplay
My partner and I have a bunch of board games and just so happen to have people in our families and friends circles who like to play as well.
We like a bunch of different tiles of games. Worker placement games like Everdell and Viticulture, engine building like Terraforming Mars and Brass, deck building games like Great Western Trail, hand management like Septima or Res Arcana, and cooperative strategy like Pandemic. To name just a few in the ever-growing collection.
I used to play yugioh, although I admit it was a bit difficult even meeting people and asking for a game at the start, but once I got used to the same people being there it got a lot easier.
I found where people went to play on facebook, of all things. For this sort of thing it's actually useful still.
Sometimes, I like to play Rummikub and Ticket to ride, but I don't play as often as I used to
A lot of various TTRPG's, i thing the longest run was the old D6 Star Wars, currently experimenting with various systems to fit 40k universe, Wrath & Glory is good and also Genesys fits right in.
No trading/collectible card games ever again, those are nightmare, expensive as fuck and in Poland you basically have a choice to either overspend on MTG or Pokemon or get into some niche crap nobody plays and it get scrapped after a year or two.
Normal card games are ok, but gets old after some time. Boardgames are fun but also can be very very expensive for what they offer. Here my definite favourite is Dune: Imperium, noting else even come close.
Original Imperium or Uprising? I have heard really good things about both, but wasn't sure how it would fare as a solo title.
Both! Uprising is a standalone game and upgraded version of vanilla Imperium, but it is in fact completely compatible with both the vanilla Imperium and both its expansions, you can just take Uprising and add nearly all the cards and mechanics from both vanilla and both expansions for a huge card stacks and more randomised play (unlike vanilla imperium where there were some key OP cards that routinelly popped up like Lady Jessica or Kwisatz Haderach, you can compare with computer version where it is still unbalancing the game). This of course led to dilution of new Uprising mechanics, but interestingly enough the authors thought about that and put a lot of it not on the cards but on the board so the effect is minimal (in case of playing all together the board from Uprising is used).
I started fairly recently, both TTRPG and Board games. Before picking up the hobby I actually moved to a much more rural area, so don't have too many people to play with unless I want to head into town, but there are still some options.
TTRPG:
I play Call of Cthulu online via discord/foundry with a group I found on a paid TTRPG site. I pay $10 per session. Little bit expensive when factoring in exchange rates to my local currency, but not that big a deal.
I used to run a Monster of the Week series online, but between groups at the moment. If we ever start a lemmy group or something, I am happy to run it again.
Board Games:
Mostly I play solo stuff. My partner will play some things with me, but we have pretty different tastes in what we like. Many games have great solo modes now though. Final Girl is one of my favourites, but I played through all of Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion solo as well.
What are you paying for, access to proprietary tools for handling characters, rolls etc?
Keeper's time basically, though they do provide all the materials (not that a copy of the investigator's handbook is all that expensive).
I am not really the biggest straight up D&D fan, and outside that there are extremely limited online options that work given my timezone/work schedule. It's a pretty good group as it turns out though.
There are some other stuff I would like to try, Blades in the Dark is high on that list, but again...availability.
Edit: Notably when I started with this group a while back, I had almost no TTRPG experience, so it was nice to have a pretty experienced group willing to work with me.Well if the choice is either D&D or Cthulhu i would probably resign altogether. I'm not a fan of D&D because dungeon crawlers, and i have hate bone for specifically Cthulhu ttrpg because the convention is not interesting for me and more importantly, Polish publishers incredibly love it and ever since 90's a lot of cool rpg's got stillborn or aborted after just one or two manuals in order to PUBLISH MORE FUCKING VERSIONS OF CTHULHU.
Though i must say i like the mythos in itself and somtimes i use it in other settings.
That's fair, not a huge TTRPG in my country so CoC is not nearly as common (we have a big warhammer community though, go figure). I can imagine anything gets a bit tiresome when you are exposed to it that much.
I don't get as much time these days, because we mostly play D&D or other role-playing games, but my RPG group, which is just my family and in-laws, is also my board game group. My spouse and I also play a lot of two-player games.
Games that we played a decent amount of include Viticulture, Concordia, Jaipur, Ticket to Ride, Seven Wonders, Sentinels of the Multiverse, Spirit Island, Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, Coup, The Resistance and Takenoko.
EDIT: if you're looking for a group, and your family is not inclined, it occurs to me that hearing "oh I just play with my wife, my sister and her husband" I'd unhelpful.
I haven't done much of this, but I do recall that a local game store that I used to go to had a regular board game meetups that were open to the public. If you have a local game store that stocks boardgames and has tables/play space I'd check with the owner/staff and see if they have a weekly or monthly meetup. Probably so if they don't have a hopping magic the gathering scene and still have the tables, somebody's using them or they wouldn't have them up.
Yeah we have a local game store that does this sort of thing too. I don't personally avail myself of it because I have other social things I do that connect me to people but it's a nice resource to have I imagine.
If you're interested in card games check the events of your local game shops (LGS). They'll probably have weekly meets for at least one TCG.
I play some MtG and highly recommend it. The community has shifted in the last years and is mostly supportive of proxies, meaning printing your own cards instead of buying them. Most people are ok with them in Commander, the 4-player free for all casual format which has become the most popular one.
Competitive 1v1 formats can get expensive quickly, and I haven't bothered with them. There's however Pauper, playing only with cards of common rarity. Meta decks cost 50$ there. From what I've heard from my LGS, its community is also welcoming, with players bringing in extra decks to loan to newbies.
Yes! There's a free online board game player called Tabletopia where you can play board games for free, if you ever want to play, post a thread and I'm sure you'll get lots of players!
Pathfinder with friends from the area, I host a couple ttrpgs with relatives/college buds too. Partner and I also play a few board games together when we have time and go to a local board game night about once a month.
For two people, Splendor and Sagrada are great games that don't take very long, good for when you get a little bit of time. Obviously ttrpgs are hours long commitments, not the sort of thing you can easily do on a whim, and planning often falls through.
