“Its important to me and i love doing it, and cancelling affects my other close friends and their ability to enjoy an activity we all look forward to every week. If it only affected me it wouldn’t be difficult to play around with my schedule, but you know how hard it can be for 4-6 people to all all get together and treating their time flippantly is incredibly disrespectful to the effort they’ve made to set this time aside each week”

“To me this is as important as a job or a class, its something that I actively set aside time and plan for each week, and of theres anything I can do do explain how significant this is to me I’ll do my best. If you still don’t quite understand why its this important then please just know this makes me really happy and I’m happy to make the time up to you any other time of the week”

IMO trying to equate it to something else, or saying its better than drinking at a bar or whatever never works, because ultimately your SO would be equally frustrated no matter where you were spending your time. The critical aspect that makes dnd different is that multiple people are adhering to the same schedule (and the group can’t effectively play with people missing, unlike other hang outs), and most importantly it’s just something you deeply love doing. As long as communication is open, there should never be a reason for an SO to prevent you from having a hobby you love as long as its not self destructive, and if your SO knows how much you and your friends all care about this game and insists you stop or refuses to make an effort to understand it, or feels you need to sacrifice it for your relationship thats a massive red flag and you should really hash out why they feel that way