I love D&D and have an on-going game that occurs twice a month on the first and third Saturday evenings of the month. The game has been going for a little over two years and I love it so much.
I am a father and husband too. Unfortunately, my wife is frustrated with having those Saturdays taken up on the schedule where she has to schedule things around them or go without me (vacations, family outings, etc). Admittedly she has done well at scheduling and should be given credit for her tolerance thus far.
Those of you who are successfully managing family schedules and gaming, what is your secret?
I’ve been playing on Wednesday nights with my regular group for multiple years now. It helps that we have a regular time and it’s not a high activity day. However, it took a little while for my spouse to get used to it. Also it helps that we’re flexible as a group. We play if 1 player is missing and will cancel / reschedule for vacations. Some of these cancels are non cannon play or other games.
So flexibility really helps.
This is how we do it. We’re all busy adults with families to attend to. But we can all afford to shut ourselves in and let the spouses handle the kids after 8 on a Wednesday night.
We don’t get 8 hours of adventure at a time, but we’re also not in high school anymore.
We have a good time from 7pm - 11pm weekly. It’s great. If we have time we do one long weekend day. Once or twice a year
My group plays on one Friday evening each month. It’s not much, but as we are all grown ups with families it’s just about what we can spare in out lives.
So I would probably move the game to a non-weekend evening and maybe just have 1 per month. If your wife can’t accept that she might as well be telling you to stop playing all together.
I don’t play on weekends. There’s always something that gets in the way. Fridays are okish, but Saturdays are murder.
Yeah, it seems that way. I know I am lucky to have gotten away with it so far. Changing the night it runs would be tough at this point as it works for so many other people’s schedules.
Which is more important, the game or your family?
Well I mean if you put it that way the choice is obvious but I don’t think there’s any ultimatums being leveled here. She would think quitting the table to be an extreme and overreacting choice.
I’m not saying you have to quit, just see if you can figure out a better time. Have everyone take a look at their calendars.
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Well I just lost the game. Thanks a lot.
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Oh, you probably aren’t familiar with The Game then.
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Don’t play on Saturdays.
I’m sensing a consensus
I’ve played with the same group for 7 years, almost every Friday, but we do take some weeks off here and there for family/work/etc. My wife is accommodating, but it was taking a toll since we do love hanging out with each other. Then, a couple of years ago, we invited her to play again, and she actually did. Now she’s part of the group, and we are all having a blast on Friday nights. Lucky situation, I grant you that, but achievable.
I envy you haha. I have tried to get her to the table but it just isn’t her thing. A different less crunchy system would probably appeal to her better. That said, maybe I can ask her to try it again.
I definitely think it’s worth trying. My wife is similar, I believe, as the rules and general way of playing were daunting, and made it not necessarily seem like something she would enjoy. We assured her that we would take it slow while she got the hang of it. She is still getting ideas for what’s possible, but she has her own character’s mechanics down, which is great. Best of luck to you!
Our group plays Sunday evening twice a week and thats worked out pretty well since its the end of the weekend. Grant it only two of us are married and the other married guy is the only one with kids though. Maybe the end of the weekend would be a better time?
We also just keep playing if someone has a vacation planed. Their character earns half xp and is basically in town or at the tavern in game. Would something like that work for your group? That might help eliminate some of her frustration when trying to plan family events.
Yeah moving it off of Saturday seems to be a good idea. I just don’t know how the group is going to take to that. Worth asking though.
Family vacations should definitely take priority. I know it’s hard when you have a whole group depending on you, but it sounds like you’re being inflexible in a way that is putting a burden on your partner.
Rereading the post I see how you can think that. I am not generally inflexible on these dates and am willing to cancel if it’s important. I make that clear and have definitely missed more than a few for vacations. Vacations take priority, in that we agree. She does try her best to avoid game days as she knows it’s important to me.
Vacations are also easier as they are known well in advance. More of the frustration comes, I think, when a one off event happens. For example on Monday, we got invited to a Christmas party for this weekend. This is also a D&D weekend thus conflict.
My partner is in my group. That’s the best solution
I have dreams. This is one of them.
My group is almost exclusively dads with fulltime jobs. We play remote (FoundryVTT), run one game a week that runs between 2 and 4 hours.
Full disclosure I’ll say that remote is about 85% as good as playing in person, but I’ll take 80% and easy scheduling over 100% but constant missed games or conflicts
I like that idea but my DM is pretty solid on the in person thing. If I do end up leaving the table (hopefully not) I’ll pursue replacing with a virtual game I think.
My group is all parents, aside from one who’s a very paternal uncle. We’ve always played mostly Monday or Tuesday nights, starting after bedtimes for ages where that requires active involvement (often going later than we probably should).
We switch nights up when needed, like when a spouse takes a class or has some other recurring activity.
It helps that we’re mostly all parents and spouses so we have very similar concerns and no one gets fussy when someone needs accommodations.
