Gaming With Baby: Gearing up for GenCon 2015!

Has it been three months? Time for another Gaming with Baby report. And GenCon 2015!

Vacation Time

Next week we take our first vacation without my son. With GenCon being much earlier than normal, my wife (a school teacher) can finally attend again. It has been several years since that has worked out.

I seem to have lucked into almost every game I registered for (though my wife had a much different experience which I'll discuss in two weeks). Lots of indie games to explore and some classics to try. Urban Shadows, Trail of Cthulhu, Spark, Time Watch, Night's Black Agents and something called Headspace. Expect an update after the convention ends with impressions and reviews.

While I've been looking forward to this for some time, the con will be a bit bittersweet. My friends from back home, who do the podcast for No Ordinary Obsession, had been attending for the past few years. But not this year (and perhaps the next few). Since GenCon tends to fall on the start of school, my wife will probably be unable to go for a long while. I don't expect to attend a convention with the others for quite some time.

At least I'll be able to attend more local (and cheaper) cons. I'll talk more about that this autumn.

We got a preview of how to handle Sebastian when we had to attend a wedding without him in May. It worked out well that time. My in-laws will be taking care of him using stockpiled milk. It helps that he's slowly being weaned and eating a lot more solids. Still I expect to be a bit nervous about how he is doing throughout the convention.

Settling In

I had so many plans when we moved into our new house. Everything would be organized and displayed. We'd commission a gaming table and have morning tea in the sun room every weekend.

Instead we found our insurance cancelled for mysterious reasons (they gave reasons but no one, including other insurance companies, understood why that would lead to a cancellation), had the upstairs bathroom become mostly unusable, got a sick cat, got fleas, and I still don't have a comfy chair for myself in the sun room.

It hasn't all been bad. The yard looks good. Our flowers and ferns are surviving the drought. Someday when the temperature drops out of the 100s and 90s maybe I'll even be able to enjoy it. Inside most things are where they need to be with only a half-dozen boxes to unpack, mostly my wife's. Plus once she starts working full-time this fall we should have money to spare for the remaining home improvements.

Sebastian's birthday added to the toy sprawl but it remains fairly contained. He's begun to unshelve books but hasn't been too hard on them yet. I arranged it so it is mostly romance novels and D&D 3rd edition books to be in reach. Nothing valuable in other words.

Baby Update

My son is very small. Very very small. He's under the 1st percentile for size and weight. We always get asked if he was born premature (he wasn't). He also (perhaps because of the size issue) failed to meet a lot of gross motor milestones on time.

When he was 10 months, he wasn't crawling. Even by 11 months he couldn't pull himself up on things. The doctors worried and referred us to physical therapists. They evaluated him, gave us some hints and recommended some treatment. Meanwhile we engaged in our own crash course of forceful tummy time.

He's made a lot of progress in a short time. After a few weeks of forced tummy time, he remembered how to roll over, worked out scooting backwards then forwards, and became much more mobile. Since the beginning of June (when he had his first physical therapist visit), he's begun pulling himself on his own, climbing stairs, clambering over legs and into laps. He's working on cruising along furniture, standing unassisted and walking with help. I expect him to start walking on his own any day now.

So a bit of scare that he's fallen behind but now it looks like he's going to be right on track or even ahead of the curve.

Gaming Update

Lack of sleep continues to be an issue as does getting Sebastian to sleep before the game (or for the online group, mid session). For awhile we could get him to sleep at 7 but he would wake up several times until 9. We are moving his bed time to later. We'll see how that works out.

The Online Game (The Climbers & String Theory)

Teething has hit this game hard. I get to hear it twice (since I transcribe the recordings for our actual play). Keeping my son occupied in a major challenge and has made keeping up tension difficult.

The other difficulty is the continuing gaps between game sessions due to life and the month of weddings among our friends (I thought June was supposed to be prime wedding time).

We fixed that issue however by starting a backup game. I started GMing a game of Night's Black Agents for the players who could attend. We've been working our way through the introductory adventure and veering way off course. The gang is currently in Beirut, hiding from werewolves and trying to figure out if they want to track down the Serbian mob, double-crossing Anton, or the mystery woman who killed their contact.

The Climbers is nearing the end. White is dead(ish). The gods are in the crosshairs. Most of the drama now lies between the players themselves. The Skinner/Battlebabe and the Touchstone/Scholar still need to talk about how they shot each other. The Touchstone also needs to adjust her plans now that the Gunlugger turned Hardholder has undone her vision of a democratic Miami. Our Savvyhead is just hiding the fact that he might be resurrecting White. He has his reasons.

Games at Our House (board games and RPGs)

The Fate game I mentioned last time went well. Our imperialist British merchants dealt with the rakshasa problem in 17th century India despite some infighting. I felt blowing up the enemy was more important than the survival of "the help". Others felt differently.

My wife just began an interesting Dungeon World game. We've set it in a blasted wasteland inhabited by dwindling numbers of dinosaurs, halfling aboriginals, atheistic elves, and humans who believe that the meteor was sent by their god. Oh and hyper evolved saurians who probably are more advanced than any of us. Currently we are questing to learn the truth of a halfling artifact (made from metal!) and then to track down the fallen star that forged this land.

I continue to plan a social heavy game for this group. Probably it will be a version of the Trail of Cthulhu game I'm planning for next DunDraCon.

Another Game!? Vampire Elders Play By Post

I have a final game in the works. Mike (a.k.a. salientmind) is running a game of influential vampires in NYC in Vampire: the Requiem 2nd edition. Using the Primacy rules from Damnation city, we are feuding over who controls what parts of the city and perhaps vying for the title of Prince (once we remove him from power first).

I'm pretty excited and have been working overtime on my character. This at least shouldn't suffer as much from cranky babies.