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