Gaming with Baby: Choking Hazards

Another update on how my infant son is impacting my gaming life. The big item this time involves baby proofing the house.

Choking Hazards

So as you might expect, all of the dice, chips, miniatures and the like are getting packed up. This includes a lot of board games that we'd otherwise play. Anything with small parts is bound for the closet until Sebastian (and the as yet unconceived Baby 2.0) can be trusted not to swallow anything he (or she) gets his (or her) hands on. That leaves us with mostly card games out like Cards Against Humanity, Dominion and Smash Up.

The other fun bit is assembling the baby gates and gradually restricting how we can get around the house. I think we leave the upstairs gate open half the time. That will need to change. By contrast plugging up all the outlets was easy.

Baby Report

As for Sebastian, he has moved from grandparent daycare to the Montessori school down the street. Thus he has been in a state of almost continual sickness. And with illness came many many sleepless nights for us parents. We finally broke down and bought a humidifier in the hopes it would help him sleep (the jury is still out). He's on the mend (again) but it is trying both on a daily basis and on our gaming schedule (playing with a sick baby is no fun).

When he's not coughing, dripping, or desperately trying to sleep (and giving me those horrible pleading eyes) he's continuing to grow and progress. Over the holidays he learned to scoot backwards and seemed like he might work out forward as well. Then he lost interest in movement.

Instead he enjoys sitting for hours and manipulating objects. His manual dexterity has advanced considerably. He drops things when he wants to and he can generally manage even large objects by using both hands. Thus motivating our efforts on removing choking hazards.

Babbling went from a furtive thing we would hear on the baby monitor late at night to a daily activity as "da", "ma", "ba', "be", and other syllables get strung together in endless combinations. Also on the communication front, he's learned to wave goodbye.

Gaming Update

Following the holidays, we've had a few changes in our gaming schedule.

The Online Game (The Climbers)

This continues to press forward. The holidays and Sebastian's sickness delayed the game but we are fast approaching session 13. We still need to work out how to get him to bed such that my wife doesn't lose too much playtime or enjoyment of the game. Hopefully it will become easier as he gets over his latest bout of illness.

In game, we've reach the point in Apocalypse World where characters must change playbooks or retire, Some interesting choices are surfacing. The Skinner became a Battlebabe, beautiful and dangerous as she accepts an offer of power from blood thirsty gods in the Psychic Maelstrom. The Gunlugger looks for something more peaceful instead. Meanwhile though they win every battle the PCs seem to be losing the war with White's forces.

Games at Our House (board games and RPGs!)

Our local group has decided to mix in some short roleplaying games with our usual board game fun. They requested an Apocalypse World based game and after some discussion I decided to run a short game of Worlds in Peril, a superhero theme game I backed last autumn. It is turning out really well with complex party dynamics, intriguing villains and fun little plot.

We probably won't go back to full-time playing of RPGs as one of the players wants to reduce her RPG intake but I think we might get to play some shorter games interspersed with board games (subject to the choking hazard issue above). One of my players has been discussing a Fate game set after some sort of apocalypse. I look forward to playing again.

A Future Game?

Talking about playing again, another of my friends has begun talking about possibly running a play by post game of Vampire: the Masquerade. I've been burned by play by post before so I'm a little hesitant. Generally I find everyone flakes out before an initial story can even be resolved. This particular friend is perhaps the last who has enough trust with me to get me to go along with it. Let's hope it works out.

Musings on the Future

I've gotten some great comments on this blog for this series of articles. I keep hearing how toddlers are even more time-consuming and limit gaming even more. I'm somewhat dubious that this is true given how Sebastian occupies 75 to 95% of our time when he's awake (while my wife takes care of him, I mostly deal with chores). Perhaps it is because he's never been a good sleeper (for a long while he only slept 9 hours a night with short half hour naps during the day). Also I've already boil down my gaming to maximize enjoyment time (by removing travel and getting good sessions done in 3 hours or less). I suppose only time will tell.

Oh and in other news I got older.