D&D games and distractions

[Bendris Noulg]

Is Northern Virginia north enough for you? There are a TON of jobs that would suit you with goverment contractors in the Washington DC area. Not to toot my own company's horn but Lockheed Martin has been hiring quite a few DBAs and probably won't be letting up anytime soon. Your best bet is to hit one of the "Tech Expo" job fairs. Even if they say that they only want people with security clearances don't you pay attention. They'll get you the clearance if you are hired.

Just in time for the upcoming Game Day? Heh...

Seriously, though, I'm looking for something more northern (i.e., pine trees and deep winters). I've got about a dozen "we'll hook you up when you get here" offers, but I'm hoping to have something before I relocate. I'll look into the expos, though. Thanks for the heads-up.

Back on-topic, my own experience with kids is, generally, to host the game myself and do it late enough that at least 2 out of 3 are asleep, with the 3rd knowing enough to stay in his room and play nice while we game. When we've gamed with other parents, they generally bring their kids to spend the night, camped out in the living room with sleeping bags and Sesame Street DVDs. Overall, the biggest crunch is on when we can game; once we get together to game, the interuptions are often minimum (we get interupted more by my disapproving mother who calls on nights that she knows we're gaming in order to complain about her swollen arches and sore back...).

 

[Painfully]

Sounds like all the parents want to have their cake and eat it too. It reminds me of people that go to see R-rated movies with their kids, just so THEY can see the film. Hire a babysitter!

Parents aren't allowed to stop being parents until the kids are 18--usually a lot older than that. That's life. If the interruptions are occassional, then address them as needed. But, if it becomes so regular that the game is disrupted constantly, find a better solution. A babysitter, or rotating parents to watch over the kids (preferably in another room, or house) seems quite fair. It's definitely unfair to the non-parent gamers to have to pause constantly for the kids.

Most single adults won't mind the occassional interruption. Kids are, after all, more important than games, but don't think they go unnoticed. As much as I would not want the distraction of kids in the gameroom, I would also be upset at a parent that I thought was shirking their responsibilities. Parenting should never come second, IMO.

The best solution is a babysitter. Don't deal with the kids unless there is a true emergency, and just keep them entirely seperate from the gaming environment. If that means one of the parents miss a session to hang out with the kids, then it's still better than being a half-parent/half-gamer for the entire evening, and possibly dragging the group along to suffer it with you, even if only in spirit.

 

[der_kluge]

I guess it really depends on the make-up of the group. Our group doesn't really have an issue with it, but I'll explain our situation:

We game at a guy's house who has three kids (ages 4 to about 10). His wife does not game, so while we play in the basement, his wife is more or less watching them. Occasionally, his kids will come into the basement and observe, but they understand that they are to be quiet. His kids are well-behaved, so it's usually not an issue.

Another guy has kids, but his wife stays home with them when he games. He has, on a few occasions, brought his kids with him because his wife had to work. Usually not a big deal - the kids play together, until they go to sleep. He play at night, so the kids are all asleep by the time we really get into it.

I have a 1 year old daughter, and my wife stays home with her.

My friend has two kids, and again, his wife stays home with them.

Now, we do have a couple that plays with us, and they had a kid at the beginning of the year. At first, the wife thought that she could continue to play, and bring the kid. It was pretty awful for her, because she was having to stop and feed the kid, and change the diapers, and her husband was helping her constantly as well. So, she bowed out eventually. Only recently she has expressed interest in playing again, so we'll try it again. Only this time, the baby is old enough that she's sleeping through the night, so it might not be as much of an issue. It will probably be a bigger problem if the kid was say, 10 or 12, and they had more than one, but we're not there, so we don't have to worry about that.

But, I'm sure that whole explanation didn't help you in the least, did it.

 

[DM_Jeff]

Rotating

Thanks for the suggestions and fellow tales of woe.

Rotating watching them is an idea, although we play a very detailed game and even postpone our session if 1 or 2 players can't make it, I doubt it would do our game much good.

Something I hadn't considered, honestly, was the "play late so they fall asleep" plan, because up until now the few times we have the parents are tired out first! But gathering them for a sleepover, getting them 'ready for bed' and then having them camp out in the TV room might work.

It's actually kinda funny if my one daughter comes in during a terrible combat, acts cute, and I suddenly go all washy and make mention that "all the foes instaly die and the PC's win". As a joke, of course.

-DM Jeff

 

[Psion]

Something I hadn't considered, honestly, was the "play late so they fall asleep" plan, because up until now the few times we have the parents are tired out first! But gathering them for a sleepover, getting them 'ready for bed' and then having them camp out in the TV room might work.

Our group has three parents or parent couples in it, and we normally gather at my house to play specifically because we have a basement and we can gather on different floors, and my non-gaming wife helps control the general destruction and chaos (though she admits to getting tired of it and demands we game elsewhere or not game one night a month.) Really, the kids aren't that destructive except for one who is autistic and gets into everything.

But man they leave a mess.

At any rate, the kids getting together with the other kids makes them hyper and wound enough that they could easily outlast old parents who are used to getting up to work 5 days a week.

To help control this, we have an enforced "calm down and watch a movie" time at 8:30 to get them to relax a bit and hopefully fall asleep.

 

[DonaldRumsfeldsTofu]

Let me just say that you're lucky to only be interrupted every hour. The one game I play comes to a halt every ten minutes when my shrieking friends' attention spans get lost and they go onto another subject and the DM has to yell at them. So be grateful.

Or I don’t know, have everyone spring for a babysitter.

 

[nocanes]

Gamer distractions

I have a problem with players being distracted by each other. I have a maturity issue to some extent, not to mention that infrequent sessions lends itself to 'catching up time'. This can cause sessions to drag and something is needed to fill-in the possible distraction time. I'd propose (knock it down, if you like) a puzzle for them to solve in their 'offtime' at the table. The solution of this grants them a clue or personal bonus or access to greater use of a weapon. Let me know and realize that the puzzle should be time-consuming to allow a great deal of time to be filled AT THE TABLE ONLY. If they use 'between-session' (BS) time, that will present an unfair advantage to the busiest of us. Any ideas, let me know.

As for the spirit of the thread, I'd have to say that an unincluded spouse is the biggest distraction. No other entertainment in our lives can't be paused (with Tivo, PS2, DVDs, PCs, et cetera) so this entertainment becomes difficult to translate. I can't tell my wife that her plans for the weekend are 'unimportant' compared to the 'bugs' that don't exist and those of which she doesn't even see an illustraction.

I still love her more than anything, but I'm stating an example.

-nocanes

 

[DaveStebbins]

I'm afraid I don't have any good advice to give. In my group, every member is a parent and we rotate hosting duties each game night, so there's almost always kids around. The thing that makes us not very helpful is, well, us. Due to schedule conflicts and only one gaming spouse among the six of us, we only game once a month. That makes game night as much of a social occasion as a gaming occasion. Off-topic conversations waste way more time than kids do.

Once in a while I would get upset at how far off topic we wander, but then if someone gets me going, I lead the conversation away from the game as well. In the end, we're sort of self-stabilizing. Probably some people would like to be more game-focused than we are and others would like to be more socializing-focused but, on balance, everyone has a good enough time that we all show up every month.

So I guess my not-very-helpful advice is to try and realize that distractions are a part of life, especially for what most people see as entertainment or a hobby, and try not to get too hung up by them. If the atmosphere isn't conducive to a deep serious game, maybe lightening it up a little isn't a bad idea.