DM Academy

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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!

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!)