I started up a new campaign with some friends who have an 8 year old kid (let’s say AJ). I’ve played with the parents before, but not him, and he’s been dying to play, so I said why not. After the first session, he was hooked, and told his little friend (let’s call him Ollie), also 8, who he knows has been wanting to play too. So now after a few more sessions, AJ asked me if Ollie could join. We all agreed, and now have myself (DM), three adults, and two 8 year olds. Ollie’s parents are not playing.
Ollie is having the time of his life. And typical kid silliness aside, he’s mostly a good player. The one thing I’m struggling with, is he keeps asking for specific items and magic powers. “Can I do a roll to see if I find something that lets me fly? Or breathe underwater forever? Oh! Are there any bears? Can I roll to find a bear and tame it?”
Most of the time, I just tell him something like: “no, your character wouldn’t know where to find something like that. You can always ask around, it’s not likely to be something these bandits would know about.” And he’s gotten a bit better realizing you can’t expect the DM to just give you overpowered items in the middle of a fight, or just “decide” that his character remembered a spell that insta-kills any creature.
But now he’s started trying to get “free” stuff in more clever ways. “I want to get some sticks and make them into javelins.” Sure. Next time you rest you can make some improvised weapons. “Can I forage for food?” Sure. “Can I try to find any healing herbs?” Uh… Sure… but it will only heal one hit point.
Now it’s gotten to the point where every time the party tries to move to the next location, he tries to jump in and grab some small free item. Even in the middle of social interactions with the king, last night: “hey, are there any sticks around the castle? Or pieces of leather? Do you think that frog guy would trade me his clothes if I went out and caught him a bunch of flies? Can I get some rocks to throw at people?”
I’m not so worried about him getting little freebie items, but more that his constant interruptions are heavily slowing down the game and distracting everyone. The adults have approached me out of game about this, as the game is “no longer fun”, and Ollie’s behavior is becoming especially bothersome to AJ who was really enjoying the story and now is getting vocally annoyed that it takes 10 minutes to do anything now.
I don’t want to discourage Ollie from being creative or sour his experience with DnD, but I also don’t know how to explain to this happy little kid that he can’t keep interrupting every 3 minutes to see if he can find some rocks. Any tips on how to handle this type of player, especially being a kid?
Edit: added clarification that I am posting this due to complaints from the adults and the other kid. Everyone is helping where they can, but as the DM everyone is kind of looking to me for some solution.
Don’t worry about it.
If you are playing with adults and an 8 year old, it’s normal for the focus to be mostly on the 8 year old. Especially if the other people involved are his parents, they knew what they signed up for. In fact They probably are having a grand old time. Just let the kid play and try to steer him gently toward more generally acceptable behavior.
Double check with the adult players, but this doesn’t sound like a situation that needs handling.
Also 8 years olds interrupt you to see if they can find rocks IRL all the time. It’s wired into them in some weird way!
Ollie’s parents are unfortunately not joining us. Ollie is just the friend of the kid (let’s say AJ) whose parents started the campaign with me. I agree with you, if it were just me and Ollie and his parents that would be different. (Edited the original post for clarity)
However this case all three adults (both parents and a third adult) and the other kid (AJ) are becoming visibly more annoyed in each session, as the campaign was going smoothly until Ollie joined in a couple weeks ago. The three adults have gone as far as (in-game) tying him up so he can’t grab things and (out of game) asking me if there’s a way to handle this in the game because now that he’s in, they feel bad kicking him out, but the game is no longer fun for AJ in particular who really just wants to explore the story. Hence my post.
Would talking to Ollie’s parents in private and saying something like "We all love playing with Ollie, he is having a lot of fun and he is really creative, but he has a tendency to become a bit to hyper and than he interrupts a lot. This is especially affecting AJ, who finds it difficult to play and enjoy the story with the constant interruptions. So do you guys have any idea of how to best approach this problem with Ollie, so that we all can have fun together when playing. "
He’s parents will most likely have a better understanding of how he works and has probably a way of handling this problem as its most likely have shown in other context. At the very least they should know better about how to talk to him than the friend of the parents of their child’s friend, absolutely no offence to you.
First thing that comes to mind is consequences (not serious ones… More like “yes and” fun outcomes) - if he’s off digging up magic bugs or trying to find sticks in a castle, hey, that’s a raised eyebrow and a storytelling opportunity. Wants to dig up rocks? He’s gotta put it somewhere. Bag full of rocks? Someone’s gonna notice.
Honestly it just sounds to me like this kid is really good at DnD lol
Too many players imo don’t utilize resources. Constantly hunting for resources and then using them is actually quite clever, and I wonder if your other players have taken to also trying to bolster their resources.
Only thing is I would keep an eye on the characters maximum carrying capacity. If he is trying to carry too much, of course that will be a limiter.
But other than that, taking downtime to fashion makeshift additional weapons and equipment and foraging for supplies sounds like Grade A tactics, more players should leverage that.
If I had a player who foraged for berries or something, then proceeded to use them to heal someone, or perhaps poison some enemy, or etc… I would hella encourage those tactical skills lol
Yeah, hes a surprisingly good player, getting really into the roleplay and trying to find creative solutions. He even has his own PHB he bought with his own money when he was 5.
I’ll talk to him about moving his crafting into a downtime period to try keeping the distraction down to a less distracting level.
This is an educational opportunity.
I once had a player, adult mind you, who absolutely could not accept that there was no ring of feather fall for sale in town. I had rolled for it, I had rolled for it again, and I was starting to get annoyed.
So is the day was winding down, she found a shady drow merchant and immediately bought the ring of feather fall. Then she went up to the top of somewhere tall and stepped off. Roll for fall damage. Her new character did not make a similar mistake in judgment.
Is he playing a Kinder? You can always have a convo about the habit and pre-plan some little things he picks up to speed up the game. I also agree with the above about using it as an out of game interaction.
You can also always use this habit to further the story, and lead to some interesting consequences, good or ill.
Yeah, if he’s foraging for sticks during an audience with a king, someone in the court will have something to say about that. The King might get offended that he doesn’t have his full attention, or that he’s stealing royal property. Or a coutier might feel that way. And since he’s young, to avoid discouraging him from doing that at all, you could have an NPC survivalist act as a mentor to teach him about the time and place for this and help him improve his survivalist skills.
On that note, btw, I don’t think you should be allowing “find healing herbs” without some kind of skill check to identify them instead of administering poison or something that won’t have any effect at all.
Or maybe the nobles admire the heroes and start mimicking the gathering of sticks, making it harder to find sticks because a new stick bounty has started and peasants are spending all day searching the forest. This could even lead to a famine as gathering sticks becomes more worthwhile than growing food and crops suffer, leading to an increase in banditry as people fight over the remaining scraps (and sticks!). Could even add in a rebellion/revolution.
Heh. A stick gathering phenomenon that destroys the world.
I don’t think you should be allowing “find healing herbs” without some kind of skill check
Yeah, it’s all by the book as much as I can. He’s a Druid with like +6 in Nature and proficiency with Herbalist Kit and he passes most of the checks I give him.
If the problem is more the time-wasting and less about him doing anything unfair, perhaps the best way to handle this is the way some DMs handle shopping: do it offline.
First, explain to him that this is a collaborative/group game, and unfortunately we can’t spend all of our game time on one character’s individual adventure. If necessary, explain to him that he is not the main character, and that is not fair to everyone else who is trying to play if their game gets constantly stalled when they have things they want to do, too.
Next, tell him to keep notes of all the things he is hoping to gather and craft as the adventure goes on. He can then bring these to you at the end of the session, and you two can work it out retroactively. Or alternatively, you can set aside designated time in-game for him to negotiate this with you (maybe once an hour instead of every 3 minutes).
I’m impressed with how patient and understanding you’ve been about this. You recognize that he is embracing the free-form nature of the game, and you don’t want to smother that. It’s a hard thing to balance with the rest of the table, especially when his parents aren’t present. Good luck!
Yeah, hes a surprisingly good player, getting really into the roleplay and trying to find creative solutions. He even has his own PHB he bought with his own money when he was 5.
I’ll talk to him about lumping some of his crafting into a downtime period to try keeping the distraction down to a less distracting level. I like that idea, a lot.
How about some small encounter with a curse for someone who wants to take every opportunity they have to get an item. My master noticed that i like to rob people every possible opportunity even if it actually dangerous and can be super blant. So he gave enemies some magic that hits robbers, gave me cursed sword and made quest where robbing someone showed that they are actually victims who needs help.
Use players behaviour as a key to move plot and via story let them learn that their actions might be harmful.
Lets say, you can give him some herbs and he eats it, but turns out he ate something that was corrupted so now he has diarrhea in the middle of the fight, or he grabbed a sword out of the stone and now suddenly everyone wants him to fight some dude who is bigger, stronger and calls himself Arthur The Cursed King. Or it might be that by interrupting someone, they decide to not give party some presents they supposed to give or give him not exactly what he wanted or just change topic of discussion into something stupidly long and boring like “frog guy starts a long story from two decades ago about some hidden treasure here in the swamps” but that actually leads to nowhere and just spends time
Gosh, you can even make a quest to get a bear but talk about it like “i heard, there might be a bear seller in next town” and say in the next town something like “oh, he was here yesterday but you came too late, he is already left”. Encourage him thinking he might be loosing some great experience and fun because of spending time on things.
Btw, you can actually give him a bear. A small one. That needs protection and help. And make him spend his actions on care for his pet.
Sounds to me like it’s time to introduce this player to encumbrance rules. :) Inventory management is not fun, but this could cancels out the not fun part of constantly hoarding and haggling.
Also, I totally blame RPG videogames with their magical loots everywhere you look (sure there is a Ring of Protection in that dead trunk near the sea!)