Categories
parenting

My Experience with Parent & Toddler Swim Lessons

Author’s Note: If you’re wondering why I say “My,” my intent with this blog is not to go into too much detail about either my daughter (for the parenting parts) or my players (for the TTRPG parts). Neither have given their consent per se to be discussed in this blog, so it’s just my side […]

Categories
tabletop games

5 Player Rewards That Won’t Break Your Game

Players love to be rewarded just in the course of playing. I won’t wade into the argument between “participation trophy” versus ”90% of success is just showing up.” However, there is a narrow middle path that should make your player happy. I worry about giving players too much good stuff: that Potion of Invisibility sounds […]

Categories
food

3 Weeks With An Induction Cooktop

By the time we moved out of our last place, I had come to terms with the electric stove. I just needed to set a five minute timer for my pans to pre-heat. So when I moved into our current place about a year ago, I was very excited to get a gas cooktop. However, […]

Categories
parenting

Our First Overnight Trip

I wish our first trip away from home was for leisure, but it was not. We had some work on the house that meant we had to stay away for two nights. As such, we booked two nights at the hotel about a mile away and prepared ourselves for traveling with children.

Categories
D&D tabletop games

GMing Without… Anything

Recently, I proudly wrote about trying to run an analog campaign. After years of adding more and more digital tools, I dropped all of that for paper. I thought that restriction was good enough. However, last week, surprise constraints pushed me even further. On the day of my weekly game, I took my car in […]

Categories
parenting

The Ever-Changing Parenting Routines

The first few weeks of having a newborn were wild. Previously, I had gradually been moving my life to more routines and habits, and all of those instantly disappeared. My daughter’s schedule became my schedule, and she had no schedule–only needs to be addressed. Fortunately, things settled in surprisingly quickly. I occasionally skim through the […]

Categories
tabletop games

How to Start Without Session Zero

Common advice on the internet about starting a campaign is to hold a Session Zero. Rather than starting with the game itself, GMs instead are told to first gather information and set expectations about what will happen in the rest of the campaign. In principle, it sounds like a good idea. A playgroup can get […]

Categories
parenting

Should I “Old Enough!” My Toddler?

I promise I have more thoughts on parenting than just watching TV and movies, but Old Enough! is a big enough that I have to stay topical. Old Enough! has apparently been on Japanese TV for awhile, but it just made a big splash on Netflix a few weeks ago. Children go on errands all […]

Categories
D&D tabletop games

GMing Without Devices

When I was running games for my adult friends, I didn’t worry about phones or laptops at the table. Sure, they checked social media and texts during most sessions, but they were mostly attentive, and I didn’t want to be “that GM” with them. However, when I started this campaign with teens, I wanted to […]

Categories
parenting

3 Stages of Watching Family Movies

Like many others, I grew up on Disney movies. My family had an extensive collection of VHS tapes, from Snow White & the Seven Dwarves to The Lion King. And when we weren’t watching the movies themselves, we also had the singalong tapes to annoy my parents. My sisters and I loved those movies as […]