Saturday, November 29, 2014

Gaming With Baby II


So its only been 4 weeks, but technically my son is now 3 months old and so I think it is time for another update on how caring for him is impacting my wife's and my gaming schedule.
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When do I get to play?

Gaming Update

Wow what a difference a month makes!

The Online Game (The Climbers)

Due to GenCon, we were unable to play for much of August, something we made up for in September by getting three sessions in back to back.

All was not good however as life constraints forced one of the players to bow out. We've since found a replacement but due to another player's wedding (which I'm also attending) we now have another month-long break from play.

So lots of ups and downs, none of it baby related. That's the theme for much of our gaming lately.

Games at Our House (board games)

The board game night continues to go strong though we might need to adjust the normal day once life settles down for the couple we play with. Again there are a few breaks in playing due to trips, conferences and the like. The couple we game with recently moved to what was theoretically a closer place (though not in practice) and both are having some interesting job changes.

All in all it's working out well. We've taken to putting Sebastian to bed around 7 PM, which when we typically start, so it's just a matter of getting him settled, turning on the baby monitor and starting the game. This certainly makes things easier on my wife.

Both one of the other players and I have begun discussing running a roleplaying game at some point. I'd really like to run a second game again.

I also sort of wish that the move had brought them closer. The husband also works from home and it would be nice to have someone to have lunch and hang out with time to time. I really need to work on expanding my non-gaming social life.

The Away Game (Vampire 20th Anniversary Edition)

This game has suffered Final Death in my opinion. The game fell apart for many reasons. The storyteller had to move farther away, players began drifting from the game and dropping out, the plot was dragging and might have decreased interest. For us the long commute was a killer. With traffic we were spending about an hour travelling to and from the game. Both of us had work the next day and the trip tended to disrupt Sebastian's sleep schedule.

We had warned the storyteller we might bow out but she ended calling the game quits first.

A New Game?

We are trying to get a new online game going with a friend in the Bay area. He wants to playtest Vincent Baker's Apocalypse World: Dark Age game. We've settled on Thursday nights and I've recruited a fourth person from my other online group to join us. I'm pretty excited and hopefully we can get that started soon.

Baby Report

As far as Sebastian is concerned as I mentioned above we've gotten into the routine of putting him to bed by 7 to 7:30. This is making our lives a bit easier, giving us some time to do grownup stuff and catch up on our chores. He has also gotten in the habit of sleeping till 1 AM or later for his first stretch of the night which is also helping both of us get enough sleep. His second sleep cycle is less regular but usually gets us within sight of dawn.

Since I tend to work early hours anyway, I've been trying to get to sleep earlier, start work sooner, and get my writing done in the early afternoons before he gets back from my in-laws who have been graciously helping us with the childcare since my wife returned to work.

Handling the Time Crunch

That feeds into my efforts to get my gaming/blogging workload balanced.

Since I am running Apocalypse World, my gaming preparation is pretty low, but the actual play reports I have been doing take 4 to 6 hours just to transcribe from the audio file. Then, since it is so dialog dense, it takes me another 3 to 6 hours to write-up. I've started breaking up the reports into 2 parts, both to keep the length down and to space out my work. Hopefully in this month between sessions I can get caught up.

The actual play reports were displacing my progress on the blog, so much that I've started to fall behind. Again I'm hoping this break will let me rectify that and get back to my 2+ week buffer. I'll be aided by the fact that I seeded a six-week buffer for the end of October through to December. I'm still not sure if I will try nanowrimo this year. Probably not but I have a few other ideas of what to spend that time on.

Three months in I've come to the conclusion that a baby doesn't suck up your free time so much as displaces the time you allocated for chores into your free time. Time with the baby is not time lost, not by a long shot.

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