This past game day, my wife was planning on taking both of the kids out of the house to the store.

w00t! A game day without my 2-year-old climbing in my lap and trying to eat my dice! A game day without my 6-year-old needing help with the tough parts of a PS2 or Gamecube game!

Then my wife started to feel ill. She told me not to send everyone home, but she was going to take a nap. I had to take care of the kids. Dang.

Don't get me wrong, I love my children. They are simply not conducive to gaming. I don't blame my wife at all. She was sick. She takes care of things when I am sick and I do the same for her. Everyone in my group knows who comes first. When my daughter comes in crying or needs a diaper change, the game goes on hold until the crisis is resolved. No questions asked. They all know the way to the door if they don't like it. There would be no hard feelings. They are my friends. If they are not enjoying themselves because of my family dramas, I would not begrudge them the chance to find a non-child environment in which to game. They knew what to expect coming in. They are pretty cool about it, too.

We have missed a lot of gaming sessions due to family illnesses. There are eight people in our gaming group. Half of us have kids, half of us don't. Kids get sick. It's a fact of life. They also have this nasty tendency to pass it to their parents. For the last three months we have missed almost all of our sessions. We have three game masters, two of whom have kids. Our Werewolf: the Apocalypse GM had sick kids, so she couldn't run her game. The Amber Diceless GM was supposed to fill in for her with his game when this happened, but the games are hosted at my house. My kids were sick, too. I run the Buffy the Vampire Slayer game, so we had a lot of off days there, too. Needless to say, we spent a lot of time jonsing for our gaming fix.

I am very fortunate to have a group who understands the situation. I wouldn't say that our non-parents are happy to let a game or four slide, but they are not angry about it either. When they are sick, we don't jump down their throats. When our kids are sick, they understand that we have our priorities: children, spouses, jobs, and gaming. I have played with groups where this was not the case. I have seen people thrown out of gaming groups for having too many family-related issues. If they couldn't devote the time to play, they were out.

My advice? Chill out.

If you have someone in your group who has a family, accept the fact that what you are doing is playing a game. It is not real life. If you know that the player is not going to be around all the time, design the story so that it is not reliant on that character. I have become quite inventive with removing and replacing characters. I almost always have an NPC or two who could be set up to need medical attention or safeguarding. The missing character has the responsibility of babysitting. If they take extra time to reintroduce, they understand the need for it.

Set up ground rules before a game starts. Here are some of ours:

• If you are out for any reason, you might need to wait next session while we get you back into the story. No complaining or you will breed bad mojo with the people who were there. We respect the fact that you had to be out, you need to respect the fact that we were there.
• If you are out, it had better be a good reason. Going to a movie is not a good reason. People are relying on you to be a part of an ongoing story. Show a little respect by making it a priority. Illness, family issues, visiting relatives, work, etc. are all good excuses. Flaking out is not.
• If a person is out for several sessions for a good reason, deal with it. Don't give them grief because they had sick children. If this is an issue with your group and you knew that this person had children, you should not have invited that person in the first place. I respect groups who do not admit people with children. It's better than kicking them out later.
• Unless authorized by the GM and the people under his/her roof, do not bring your children to a game session. We had this happen a few times and my wife had to baby-sit and keep the children from destroying the house while we played. It was not fair to her or to the kids. They were not used to the rules of our house and headed straight to my wife's doll shelf. You know, the one with expensive porcelain dolls? Our kids know better, but the newbies didn't. Much chaos ensued. There has since been an understanding amongst all of us that the kids need to stay at home. YMMV.
• If you drop a die, find it immediately. Two-year-olds and dogs like the way that they taste. Do not bring tiny dice into a house with a young child or a dog. You are just asking for trouble.
• If you bring canned drinks, don't pull the pop-tops off. The two-year-old likes those, too. The dog isn't so crazy about them, but she is more discriminating that way.

Those are just a few. Feel free to add more to the list. I would like to see how different groups handle family issues in their groups. For those of you who do not have kids yet, it's coming sooner or later. As we get older, some of us do settle down, have kids, and find safe places to hide our dice.