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.

  • Kraivo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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 game 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.