Gaming with Baby

Originally published September 3, 2014

So as I've mentioned I am now the proud parent of a small boy. This has meant a lot of changes in my life from having to wake up two (or more) times a night to change diapers to every trip taking an extra hour to a general loss of free time. In what I hope will be a continuing series, I plan to chronicle the obstacles and issues in my return to active gaming (both board games and roleplaying games) and how I overcome them.

Month 1

Shh, he's sleeping.

Writing two months into my son's life, I'd say the first month is the hardest. It took me a couple of weeks to get something like a good night of (interrupted) sleep and I'm still not so sure if my wife has managed it.

So for that first month the two of us did no gaming at all. In fact I took the first two weeks off work to help out around the house and I'm glad I did. Even now, I'm still covering most of the chores from cleaning and meal preparation.

But I still wanted to game.

With time we learned to get enough sleep, to cook and clean more efficiently. I went back to work while my wife began her job search. We had friends over, first just to see the baby, then later to visit us.

Month 2

Power to the baby!

The second month is when my wife and I got back into gaming. It happened far quicker than I expected. I scheduled the first session of my new game over Google Hangouts just over a month after his birth. We started our weekly board game/second role-playing group back up the week before. Then as I was preparing for my game, my wife decided she wanted to go back to the Vampire game we were involved with, starting the day after my online game started.

So now we are almost back at the same level of gaming as we were prior to my son's birth.

Lessons Learned

Having Sebastian has made it harder to play and run games but we seem to be handling it well. It helps that with each of gaming groups we've managed to balance our son's needs with our desire for gaming.

The Online Game (The Climbers)

The online game was perhaps the easiest for us. For a long time, I have played roughly alternating Sunday nights with a collection of my favorite players that I've encountered in my life. Currently we are using Google Hangouts. Most of my players live on the East Coast so while they are playing in the late evening, for us here in California it is only 5 PM to 9 PM.

Online gaming gives me the option of controlling what my players see which is very helpful with a newborn. For example I can adjust the camera angle so that only my wife's face can be seen and thus make sure that she can still can nurse in privacy.

This works pretty well. My son gets fed and taken care of on time, thus remaining quiet and non-disruptive. The time period also allows us to maintain a good sleep schedule for all of us so that my son goes to bed at his usual time and my wife and I can be ready for work the next day. For my players, keeping Sebastian happy means that they can focus on the game.

Games at Our House (board games)

Our weekly board gaming group meets at our house which also helps with dealing with Sebastian. Again we are playing with good friends so there is an extra level of comfort. We keep the games short and friendly, usually playing for 2 hours.

We've established with our friends that my wife will be breastfeeding which she does with a simple covering. It does make it a little harder for her to deal with games involving many cards or tokens. Sebastian can also be a bit more disruptive when dealt with in person.

We can't play games until 10 PM like before because it wrecks our sleep schedule. We like to keep Sebastian sleeping regularly which means getting him to bed by 9. This limits what games we can play (no more playing History of the World), but there are still many modern board games that can be completed in that time period.

The Away Game (Vampire 20th Anniversary Edition)

This was probably the one I was most concerned about. There is a half hour of driving both ways possibly longer with rush hour on the inbound direction. We are playing at a friend's apartment from 6 PM to about 9:30 PM.

Personally I would not have jumped back into this game as fast we did. But I think she appreciates playing alongside me as well as getting to play Vampire, a game I've yet to run. It helps that the group is really good. The game master is a lactation consultant and another of the players is the mother of two young children, so everyone understands what we are going through.

Still it is a bit of a struggle and we devote more work in order to make it to each session. Given that it is a high intrigue game, it makes me feel more guilty whenever Sebastian begins to yell and generally makes changing his diapers more nerve-wracking.

Not Gaming Stuff

I think the biggest "negative" effect of this change in my life is the not unexpected loss of free time for writing. I'm working hard to keep up with my blog posts and other work though. I want to do more fiction writing, rebuilt my buffer for the blog (which has depleted down to mere 2 weeks as of this writing), and possibly give a try at nanowrimo.

Of course I've also committed myself to doing an Actual Play thread and am seriously considering running a second campaign (possibly using Night's Black Agents). Maybe Sebastian isn't the problem here.