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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 8160805" data-attributes="member: 20323">I've only been DMing a little for a pair of 9 year olds, thanks to the pandemic and a recent move. However, playing with my nephew and his friend is really opening my eyes to the co-creative aspect of role-playing.I never gave them the "I'm the DM so I'm the one who plays all the NPCs and tells the story" spiel at the beginning. We just dove into character creation and I've winged it.One of the incredible things about playing with them is how unfiltered their ideas are about what cool thing might happen next. It's certainly keeping me on my toes! Some of the examples you gave as conflicts were just another session with the kids, and pretty much everything was up for grabs...<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Homebrew Design: "Can I make up my own feat? It lets me charge past other monsters, attack with my axe, then with my shield which I throw, and then breathe acid (for a black dragonborn) which does extra damage, then my shield boomerangs back to me..." (I thought about it for a moment, asked some clarifying questions – and naturally insisted he act out what he wanted to be able to do – then said<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> "OK!"</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Pacing Control: "Then we go back to the wizard and he gives us--" "But the wizard is mysteriously gone. Everyone at the inn says he left in the dead of night." "OK, OK, OK, so we convince the townspeople to take care of our giant spider pets, then we tell the frost giant lady to carry us to the edge of the hills. We're going to find my castle! Do you have those cards for exploration that we used before?" "Yeah, we're going to find his castle!"</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Story Hooks / Usable Options: "OK, Uncle Aaron, we talked and we were doing these drawings and we decided you need to put these dragons we drew in the game. There's a yellow one, a green and red one, a rainbow one, and this red one is the leader..." "Yeah, and we each are going to make friends with a dragon, like we did with the giant spiders, and even ride them..."</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">NPC Control: "And then the mayor says--" "Oh! And then the mayor says 'I think I have just the thing, and pulls out a....um..." "It's a map of the nearby lands, with the Troll Hills marked out, a castle keep in the middle, and a circle of standing stones at the edge." "Oh, that's my castle, the one I found the piece of paper for!" "He says: You can have this map if you promise to find the wizard. And I say: We will find the wizard, but I cannot promise that he won't answer for what he did."</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Treasure Placement: "And when you climb down the ladder into the cellar..." (They go into an incredibly detailed description, drawing out the room on our white erase board, with treasures everywhere) "Uh...so...ok, that's what you think is in the room..." (I narrate as they discover half the chests are actually mimics in a 'yes, but' move, then let them puzzle out how to get the treasures in the others, and then list the treasures they find)...</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Backstory Revelation: "Did you draw a spear there, buddy?" "Yes, it's a spear inside a case and the case has 5 old letters on it but only the first 'D' and the fourth 'R' are still visible. The rest are empty. It's a clue to my character's actual name. When I touch the spear, I see myself in a room. It's an illusion, but I don't realize it..." (a couple minutes of narrating his PC's vision and getting a spooky ghost who is kind of possessing him)</li> </ul></blockquote>

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