P.S. In the US at least, carpet in dining areas is really common in apartments because they don’t have to maintain a more expensive flooring option and can rip it up and bill it to your security deposit no matter how well you treat it to start fresh with each occupant. I associate carpet in a space where you absolutely do not want a plush, hard-to-clean surface with the opposite of luxury. 
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I had not considered that for apartments and rentals! Devious landlords!
I’ve very much been neck deep in looking at “fancy” houses and essentially every single “Formal Dining Room” I’ve looked at in the last year while house hunting had carpet in it. To me, I feel as though it’s for bragging rights; i.e. “we’re so fancy, we can afford to put expensive carpet in our dining room because we never drop food on the floor and, even if we do, we can afford to replace it”
EDIT: we (my family and I) are definitely in the camp of “we have a 1 year old and a 2.5 year old. We are not fancy and there will be food on the floor… and that’s not even exclusive to the dining room”
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Mine lives in a corner, so there’s no meaningfully lost space. When I have people over, I pull it out a ways and move some things into a less livable but more company-friendly arrangement. To get the advantage, the space doesn’t need to be larger than a squeeze-by-the-chair width. Here at least, even a lot of pretty small apartments have an area that’s sort of separated from the main space as a designated dining area–it’s a horribly inefficient floor plan, but if you do actually put a table there instead of a desk or what-have-you, the floor-and-wall space difference between round and not round is minimal in that sort of setup.
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The former owners of this place put a creamy white carpet in the main room, a room with six entrances of which two lead fairly directly outside. So. Well.
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That wasn’t something I encountered much while living in San Diego. In most of our two-bedroom apartments, the space for a dining table was in the kitchen, which might or might not be large enough to hold one comfortably. Our last apartment, a one-bedroom, had an L-shaped room part of which was next to the kitchen, but that part was also next to the only large window, so we made it the main conversation area and ate off trays. In our one-bedroom place in Riverside, we did the same; we had the sort of dining room you describe (happily with no carpet, which helped out the time the kitchen drain backed up!), but I used it for my home office. Now we’re in a two-bedroom with a dining nook next to the kitchen, but it currently holds two sets of shelves, one with cookbooks and one with oversized books and natural curiosities; we haven’t thought yet about whether to get a table, as we don’t expect to entertain guests any time soon, and there are only the two of us. A loveseat, a desk, and more shelves are higher priorities.
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How are you reckoning “bigger”? To get a circular area as large as a square area, you need a diameter that’s 13% greater than the side of the square. If you need to fit in four people, you put each one at the middle of one side, and they can sit closer in than if they were sitting around a circular table. So that will work in a narrower room. It doesn’t work as well if you have more than four, of course.
I like the idea of an expanding round table, but with the expansion being taken out and changing its shape to something more like an oval-ish shape. This is the shape of my parents house table, and I think it is great that for occasions like Christmas and so on, you could separate it in two halves, and include an expanding folding rectangle in the middle. No legs to deal with (just the central pedestal like structure), and great for accumulating relatives brushing elbows with each other, so the Christmas arguments could be even better 
I remember having plenty of games of cards, monopoly or Hero Quest on it, and I think it is the perfect solution. The problem is that table must be at least 50 years old in design (I believe we inherited somehow) and I have never seen it again anywhere. I can imagine I could get something custom designed, but it would probably cost me and arm and a leg here in NZ…
That’s the kind of table I’ve got–rectangular leaf in a round one-footed table. Here’s Ikea’s take on the concept:
Show-offs made the leaf fold inside the table instead of lurk awkwardly in a cupboard. 
How are you reckoning “bigger”? To get a circular area as large as a square area, you need a diameter that’s 13% greater than the side of the square. If you need to fit in four people, you put each one at the middle of one side, and they can sit closer in than if they were sitting around a circular table. So that will work in a narrower room. It doesn’t work as well if you have more than four, of course.
I guess it depends on how much your games rely on raw square footage. Most of my games aren’t much of a problem to fit on various tables of various sizes–it’s more getting everyone comfortable around the game I run into trouble with. Squares are great. The issue I run into with squares is just leg placement–as I said, I’ve found rounded tables (my table, coffee tables, cafe tables, whatever) to work better with more variable group sizes.
Area is area–it comes down to the shape of the room and where you put all the other stuff that isn’t a table and chairs. Sometimes that sharp corner jutting out is just as much of a problem as 13% extra diameter or 13% less area. Rectangles are the ones I tend to run into a wider variety of problems with. You’ve got leg placement issues and even with four reach can be awkward.
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Speaking of IKEA, one of my friends has this thing which is pretty rad from a gaming perspective or a variable-size-dining-party perspective:
Three different sizes–.9m, 1.3m and 1.7m. They’ve got a proper house for it though–it lived in a small apartment for a bit but I only saw it used at the small and medium size there. A bit less of a leg issue, since the extensions overhang the legs.
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I was just talking to my wife about woodworking being something of a long-term goal for me. I’m not exactly what you’d call handy, but the ability to make tables and shelves to fit my exact needs really does it for me.
I think a fancy gaming table is probably worth it, if it’s one of the ones that can also double as a nice dinner table, and you’re in the market for a dinner table. At that point, they’re probably worth the extra money.
Other than that, though, they seem to lack flexibility and are either too large, or too small. Right now my favorite gaming “table” is actually just the basic Ikea Linnmon (the second to largest one). I have two of them, they’re easy enough to take down when not gaming, and with two, can mostly fit a 6-player TI:4 game, or other large games. They’re also pretty cheap.
They are a bit wobbly, and I wish the legs folded instead of having to unscrew, but you can add supports to stop the wobble.
I’ve been really tempted to just get a basic piece of wood (or MDF) covered in felt to lay on top of both of them when playing bigger games to create a flat surface. Maybe something fits snugly over the edges to add some stability too.
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I know this life. My floors are all food/liquid, food/liquid stains and toys right now.
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This is the table I just got. Nothing fancy, but it folds up nice and small so it doesn’t take up space when it’s not being used.
I tried getting a similar table from IKEA that had drawers in the central bit, but it wasn’t available for delivery.
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Yes, that’s the idea, but with a central pedestal like thick post with a four point star shape without the support pillars that Roger’s example has. Those legs on the “corners” of the Ikea model do get in the way.
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That’s the exact table I have. The nice thing about the leaves is they can be extended partway to provide a space for drinks, etc. without going to the full length of the table.
Wish I could say I’d played any games on mine since I bought it, but the current situation has scuppered those plans. It’s worked as a home office pretty nicely though.
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But not like the first one I posted? The white one? The second one wasn’t supposed to be related to your description.
Oh, yes, sorry, the legs from the chairs gave me the impression of having legs on the corners, I just saw the central structure. Yes, very similar to that, but ours was in a darker wood colour, and probably slightly bigger. 
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I was recently pointed to Game Toppers (https://www.gametoppersllc.com/). I game on a cheapo folding table from Menard’s I have due to its ability to collapse and get shifted out of the way if the limited space in my apartment is needed for something else. A full on gaming table or even proper dining table would not do that and would not really work in my space. But these (and I’m sure there’s other people that make something of the sort) break down pretty fast and can be carried to other people’s houses and such even, while ostensibly making a gaming-table-like space on top of surfaces like ottomans and folding tables. They’re still very expensive in my book and I’m not entirely sure that I have storage for both the table and the topper bits, and there won’t be anyone coming to game til next year at the earliest…but I confess to being tempted. And it seems like a possibly interesting midpoint for people who aren’t up for the Real Deal gaming table thing so I figured I’d pass it on.
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I’m trying to buy a length of green or red baize to convert my dining table into a gaming surface. I am quite certain that I want napped baize (snooker baize) and not felt, because felt is susceptible to stretching.
But Google is certain that anyone looking for “baize” actually means that they want felt.
If I were in your position, I’d find a nearby locally owned (not chain) craft store and see if they have it or can get some in.
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My position is more remote than you seem to think!
We used to have an excellent family-owned department store in town. It had the reputation for being the best between Newcastle and Grafton. And it did really well to stay in business for 110 years.
Part of the building is now occupied by a chain pharmacy. The nearest draper would be about an hour’s drive on the freeway.
I used an online market to find a supplier only 16,859 km away, who will post it to me.
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