All of my 2025 was consumed by consumer tech. Gizmodo’s consumer tech team and I reviewed so many products and spent so much time traveling for various gadget-filled conferences our brains are stenciled with images of the latest hardware. I needed a break from technology. I think you do, too.
Today’s amalgamations of books, wood, and cardboard are ingenious—even if you’re forced to play them digitally. The board games and role-playing games I’ve played this past year may offer a richer experience than any AAA video game demanding your attention. I spent three days at this year’s PAX Unplugged convention trying as many games as I could. I have such rare time for board games and even less opportunity to sit down for a TTRPG (tabletop role-playing game) session with just my friends and me. Holding physical dice in my hand is the best catharsis I can offer from today’s screen-obsessed landscape.
While Dungeons & Dragons usually sucks up most of the oxygen in the realm of RPGs, the indie tabletop scene is sometimes so niche, there are some games I can recommend that may be hard or impossible to buy if you just wanted to hop on Amazon and send the warehouse workers scrambling. As a gift, you could buy the PDF for the small indie RPG GrimoirePunk—an anarcho-esotric game about using random nouns and verbs to dethrone oligarchal wizards—print it out, and hand it to your friend or loved one, but that may not feel like a gift to some. And why shouldn’t you just go out and get a Dungeons & Dragons book or one of the many branded toys or plushies? Because you’re looking for something substantive, a gift that says you know the person and what they will enjoy, even if they don’t know it yet.
