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.
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.
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.