How to Find Time for Role-Playing Games as a Parent

Let's see if this sounds familiar: You used to play role-playing games with your friends all the times. You had regular games which lasted hours, you had sprawling campaigns, you had friendships forged in the shared experience of make believe dice-rolling. But then along came a family, and while your world has expanded in so many ways, in some ways it's gotten smaller. Role-playing games are one of the casualties.

Or maybe this: You never played role-playing games before you had children, and now you've discovered them and you think you're too late, because being a parent is just so time-consuming. Can you afford a babysitter every week? Do you even want to stay up late playing Dungeons & Dragons when you have to wake up at 5am? You'd love nothing more than to escape into a world of heroism and adventure, but the idea of committing to anything seems impossible.

Thankfully, there's a middle ground. Taleblank is an asynchronous role-playing game. It was actually created by parents, who wanted to continue their role-playing adventures in a post-baby world. Because it's asynchronous, it adapts perfectly to the challenges of parent life:

• Limited sleep schedule overlap. Your kids wake at 5am. Your friend's kids don't go down until 10pm. When can you squeeze in a game of Dungeons & Dragons? The short answer is you can't, which is why Taleblank lets you take your turn when it suits you. You don't need to be on the same schedule as your friends – let alone their children! One person can take their turn at 8pm, the next can take their turn the following morning.
• Limited leave passes. Your brother's wedding is a few months away. An old friend is in town for a weekend. Your football team has made the finals. There are so many things that want to be done in person, and so few opportunities to do them now you're a parent. Can you really justify a weekly or monthly night out to play Dungeons & Dragons? With Taleblank, you don't have to. Because it's an online game, everyone can play without leaving baby-monitor range. (Or while waiting for the bus, or sitting on the train... you know what “online” means!)
• Limited windows of time. If you're lucky, you have half an hour each day between looking after your kids, preparing healthy meals, doing your paid job, attending to everything else that needs to be done, and washing dirty clothes. If you're unlucky, you're washing more than just dirt off those clothes. Either way, do you have a four-hour window to journey into the Lost Mine of Phandelver? Didn't think so. But with Taleblank, you can satisfy your RPG cravings in ten to fifteen minutes.

Is Taleblank a perfect substitute for a traditional, in-person, tabletop role-playing game experience? No, of course not. It scratches a similar itch, in a different way. Most importantly, though, Taleblank games actually happen. Now that you have kids, can you say the same for your traditional, in-person, tabletop role-playing game?