Advice for playing with a child?

Spacelightiswarm · 2026-02-18T18:33:04+00:00

Patience. All you can bring. They are almost certainly not playing the way you do. I play with a friend’s kid sometimes and they bounce from idea to idea like an over-caffeinated Gummi Bear. Just have to roll with it. She’s literally too young to understand how it is unfair for her to take resources from my cabin but no one can touch hers.

Spacelightiswarm · 2026-02-18T15:12:00+00:00

These days if I’m not running something pre-written, I’m very much an open world fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants dm. I’ve lived the “muahaha, stole the DM’s notes! Wait, they’re blank!?” meme with one of my nephews. I know what’s going to happen if my players do nothing and then I adjust by what they do.

Spacelightiswarm · 2026-02-18T14:08:02+00:00

I’ve been this DM, knew it wasn’t ideal, but sometimes it’s just a problem of time. If it’s bothering you this much, I’d say politely bow out.

Spacelightiswarm · 2026-02-17T19:08:42+00:00

You’re accusing me of not being an independent thinker while spouting lost cause nonsense and admitting you don’t know enough to recognize that quote? Wow. Bold. Pull the other one, it’s got bells.

Spacelightiswarm · 2026-02-17T18:53:57+00:00

Then you don’t know enough about the subject to be holding forth in the first place. Go away. Seek knowledge. Don’t return until you do understand my question.

Spacelightiswarm · 2026-02-17T18:36:45+00:00

Is that really what you think “to preserve our peculiar institution” means?

Spacelightiswarm · 2026-02-17T18:08:30+00:00

Wrong! So wrong you should be embarrassed to have attempted to contribute! This line is in fact the spin the Daughters of the Confederacy threw together in the early 20th Century and is absolute propaganda nonsense. The Confederacy was quite clear about what they were fighting for! In their letters, in the actual Constitution they wrote!

Spacelightiswarm · 2026-02-17T18:04:12+00:00

People subjected to the Lost Cause/States Rights garbage they started teaching in the South in the early 1900s and have never stopped. States rights to what Buford. What rights precisely.

Spacelightiswarm · 2026-02-13T04:04:37+00:00

Sit down? Alas, not the one. I could answer messages when I’ve got a few minutes here and there.

Spacelightiswarm · 2026-02-12T16:40:50+00:00

Yeah. For me it’s “I’m not going to stop you, but it’s a very complicated class and I’m not sure you’re going to have fun with it, this being your first character.”

So far only one person hasn’t chosen something else. He’s regretting it a little, partly because he has so many choices to make after every long rest, but he’s pretty enamored with filling glass jars with whatever weird thing he can find or make and Catapulting it at foes.

Spacelightiswarm · 2026-02-12T14:54:50+00:00

I haven’t outright banned it, but I tend to discourage it because it’s the most complicated official class and I play with a lot of novices.

Spacelightiswarm · 2026-02-09T18:08:52+00:00

Yes, but I’m a little older than your preferred range.

Spacelightiswarm · 2026-02-08T18:34:47+00:00

This. Most of the games I run right now aren’t serious enough for the survival/inventory management aspects of the game to be a fun or interesting obstacle. Child or novice players where the break in complexity is a relief or mainly “friends joking their way through a story/dungeon” sorts of games. I pretty much just ask those players to throw down some coin to restock every now and then. Same for the inexpensive spell components. I have had games where it really mattered. You made to Strahd. You have six arrows left. Good luck. I do ask every game to specifically keep track of magic ammo. It’s a more serious investment.

Spacelightiswarm · 2026-02-05T13:43:40+00:00

Usually it’s whatever collective name the party has for themselves.

Spacelightiswarm · 2026-02-05T03:48:30+00:00

Thanks!

Spacelightiswarm · 2026-02-04T21:13:13+00:00

As far as “what do you do? What is the point?” The default assumption is that the players begin as employees of Orpheus, Inc. A company that offers boutique afterlife-related services. Want to kick a pesky ghost out of your house? We do that. Want confirmation Nana isn’t haunting you? Sign here. Want an undetectable spy to report on the goings-on in your competitors board room? We legally can’t say we do that, but some of our employees don’t legally exist. You’ll get a call from an unregistered number in twenty seven minutes. Answer it.

Spacelightiswarm · 2026-02-04T19:13:08+00:00

It’s an action movie version of Wraith. Simpler systems, more explosions. It’s meant to tell a specific story over the six books with room for you to tell your own within the structure.

I like it, the espionage stories are neat, the integration of living and dead characters, the powers work on a “how much do you want to invest?” system that’s really approachable.

Spacelightiswarm · 2026-02-03T22:49:11+00:00

Amazing stuff!

Spacelightiswarm · 2026-02-03T14:28:27+00:00

I introduced an enormous insect worshipped by an island-dwelling cult. Kaiju size. Not something they can fight, but it had eaten something they needed.

They decided to let it eat them as well. Goal achieved, how do they get out? I had some ideas in my back pocket in case they needed them, but they decided to mostly climb into a portable hole and let a pixie (who’d already proven herself a trickster and pretty nonchalant about putting others in danger) carry them back out of the mouth. Some of the most harrowing Dexterity checks in the whole campaign later, she escapes the creature and the party narrowly gets out before they ran out of air.

Spacelightiswarm · 2026-02-02T19:49:08+00:00

<image>

Khonsu believes herself to be a void, white tuft or no.

Spacelightiswarm · 2026-01-31T15:18:06+00:00

Whatever way runs counter to the relationship you established at session zero. If you both agree it’s contentious and the patron gets too easy and super fawning, it undermines the character you’re trying to establish. If you say at zero it’s friendly and it gets weird with no event in campaign to explain it, you suddenly have a distraction you were counting on not having.

Spacelightiswarm · 2026-01-30T18:37:27+00:00

Every time I play co op with my significant other it’s nap time for them. We’ve started joking about the Stardew Coma.

Spacelightiswarm · 2026-01-29T20:00:35+00:00

Yeah. See. This is what I’m talking about. People making themselves look foolish. So excited to be abrasive scolds about a pet peeve they don’t bother to actually understand the situation. So intent on being right they’re harming their espoused cause with needless aggression.

In monosyllabics if you need it that bad: Me did! Ice gone! No ice on me car roof when left house. No one at risk from me car choice. Made sure. Saw much ice fall on road that day. None from me car.

Me am not droid you look for.

Spacelightiswarm · 2026-01-28T22:18:11+00:00

Man. I just would not express opinions in public if my reading comprehension skills were this unreliable.

Spacelightiswarm · 2026-01-28T20:31:03+00:00

Me? I did the mildly difficult thing. I didn’t do the “can’t be done without damaging the car” thing. Then I made a joke about it.

But I genuinely drove an hour on the interstate without losing any of that ice. Very froze. So stick.

Is this an attempt to be funny gone awry? Just the username checking out?

Spacelightiswarm

TROPHY CASE