I interviewed Omnis, a DM with lots of experience running games for kids, about how he’s taken charge of the youth D&D program at his local gamestore! Omnis shares his tips and stories about his XP with the program, and I hope they help folks get some ideas and courage for taking the leap into championing a program like this themselves.

Note: This post may contain affiliate links. At no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission from purchases made using them. TTRPGkids uses this to keep the site going. Read full disclosure here.

What cool stuff do you do? 

I am a gamer, writer, storyteller… the usual suspects when it comes to tabletop RPGs.  I’ve written on a couple projects.  There’s Paragons the role-playing game, and one of the Transformers books by Renegade Games, which was a huge childhood dream of mine; I’m a big fan of Beast Wars and was extremely happy to be on the project. 

I also run the youth D&D program at the store I work at!

How did you get into tabletop RPGs?

This is a fun one.  So, I have always been kind of interested in original characters.  I always liked writing, even before I got wind of D&D. 

One of my first ever characters was Krono, whose name is hijacked from Chrono Trigger because I thought that was the sickest name you could make.  I made that character and was drawing little miniature comics in middle school, all the way up into high school.

Then, I met a couple friends who are involved in the space, and we wound up doing cooperative storytelling together.  Another one of my friends was like, you should play D&D at my brother’s house; he’s a DM, but he runs second edition.

Me, not knowing, since we were playing third, was like, cool, let’s play second edition.

THACO scores… how I have eliminated them from my memory.

I started making characters for D&D, and then me and my friends would all get together and kind of storytell together without the roleplaying element until we decided to play a big epic level campaign together, and I’ve just been playing ever since.

It’s one of those things where once you get hooked, you’re like… oh, I can’t not have this in my life. 

That’s exactly it.  The storytelling has always been there, and then someone slapping on a couple rules to say throw in dice rolls to see if something ridiculous happens is it. 

One of the reasons why I’m very pro-LGBTQ is also because of this.  Experimenting with my characters and their genders, species, peoples… They’re all people.  It was very easy for me to, even now seeing the issues we’ve got, say, I support these people because they’re people like the rest of us.  If anyone is reading this and having some issue, playing in your world and experimenting with who you are and who you want to be should be a safe space.  You should be allowed that. 

Can you tell us about the youth D&D program that you run?

The program I run is not my personal creation.  I joined in as a GM, but, the long and short of it is that we have seasonal content.  When I joined, kids would sign up for X number of weeks of content.  You would play a long running campaign, pay the fee, meet new friends or come with a group you already have, and I would run you through an adventure either of my creation as the coordinator or of my own, after I ran it past them first.  

Eventually, the previous program coordinator left, and the owners asked me if I wanted to take it over, of which I obliged because D&D is one of my favorite games ever. 

It is a lot of work, but there is something very uniquely special about seeing a kid’s eyes light up with the possibilities of what they can do.  

One of the things I tailor into the program is that I will introduce some of the rules, but I also want the imagination to run wild.  As an adult, I know what I can and can’t do, but a kid will look at it and ask if they can breach the wall Rainbow 6 style. I’m like… that was not my intention, but sure!  We’ll get you in there. 

I basically sit down, write the content, and have hired several DMs to run additional tables.  We’re running tables virtually every day, every week really.  Now that it’s under me, I’ve also chosen to convert it to a bi-monthly format, so you know you’re signing up for two months.  You can come in, new or old, and it accepts players ages 8 – 17.  We pair you up with like age groups and set you loose!

It’s good to have such a large age range too because kids will see the other groups playing.  Older kids will see the young ones with all that energy and the young kids get to see the big kids playing next to them. 

I will be honest with you, that’s kind of why we gate it a little bit.  Generally, the pairings are 8 – 13, 10 – 15, and 13 – 17 so there’s not a huge discrepancy with a 17 playing with an 8 year old. 

Then, there’s one kid, Ian, who’s been with us for several years, and now he has just moved to a 13 – 17 year old table, so I’m excited to see what changes in what he experiences with this table.  I know one of the kids at this new table is a very big power gamer, so I want to see where your roleplay meets this power gaming table.  

Watching the kids grow up in the program is a treasure.

What has been the trickiest part of running such a large program?

The trickiest part of running such a large program has been the timing of it all.  I run this in a board game store, so we have regular hours and a bunch of different events that happen. 

For example, we also play Magic the Gathering in the store on Mondays and Fridays, so I can’t have another table after a certain period of time because those seats will fill up with Magic players. 

We get a lot of people interested in the program, but I can’t make any more room with the six kids per table limit.  And we don’t want too many at the table because it gets rowdy or some kids won’t have their chance to shine.  It is literally just hearing a parent say “our availability is only this day” and I have to tell them there is no more room.  

We’ve been trying to do a waitlist so we can reach out if anything changes, but we also really only get from 4pm – 6pm, right after school, for the program, but if your kid is in a bunch of different after school activities, it can be hard to get in.  

That’s the one part that I would want to change. 

I would love for all the kids to be in the program, but there’s no way to make it happen right now. 

We often try to find out if there’s any other availability that they have because we now sometimes run it online.  The previous coordinator started the program before COVID, and they didn’t want to stop it during that time, so we started zoom meetings… and we’ve kept that going. 

There’s a lot of parents that want to make sure kids are having face-to-face time, and, while that’s good and true, there’s an option, just in case.  Some kids can’t make it out here, so they’re happy to play online. 

We even had participants for a while from the UK, which was really great.  I think they had to play on the Saturday or Sunday table because of timezones, but they were able to play at night for them and midday for us.  It’s open to everybody, and being able to suggest the online option, if playing is more important to you, there’s options.

Do you have a favorite story from your TTRPG games? 

There have been a couple instances where I have watched characters change… there’s one where the players found out that consequences happen.

This fighter, he was like… I’m the biggest and baddest there is… I’ve got sick armor and Frostbrand, and I’m going to annihilate everything. 

We were playing a Halloween themed adventure where they had geist weapons where, when you kill an enemy, the item gets an increasing +1 modifier.  So, you can break the math and get up to a +10, +20, and whatnot. 

The problem here is that the souls were attached to the blade, and if you failed a specific check, all those spirits would be summoned back as wraiths who would do Strength damage, and if you hit zero Strength, you’re just dead. 

He got surrounded and was almost dead, and I said, “hey, this is a very critical moment for your character.  He might die.  Are you willing to accept that right now?” 

They looked me in the face, gave it some thought, and said, “no”.

I said, “Cool, we’re going to make sure we get your friends in here to help you right now”.

And we did that.  

There was this moment of like… he understood something about the danger of his actions.  Immediately after combat, he ditched the weapon because, even though it would get stronger again, he didn’t want to risk himself or his friends again.  He even told the others to stop using theirs. 

It was good to see that he understood what that danger meant. 

I hope that even now, he is watching out for his friends.  If he finds out there’s something harmful, he knows something can get overwhelming really fast and he does something about it. 

The second story that I have is in the same campaign but different character, and it’s one that I’m really proud of because I know it stuck with this kid. 

There was a particular place in town that was a barbershop totally untouched by all the chaos and geist weapons, and there was just one guy in there who was always sweeping.  They went by this place because they wanted to check on him. 

When I said it was untouched, they wanted to get in… and he put a finger to his lips then went to the back.  I described that this very very long hand had extended from the back and crushed the only lightbulb in there. 

They’re like breaking the door down to get to this guy.  The player asked me… he was looking for that guy for three additional campaigns trying to find what happened.  Who took that guy’s face and crushed a lightbulb. He did find him again, but it was a chance encounter. 

The sense of chasing danger was also important.  

At the same table, we have one kid who learned the value of keeping himself and his friends safe and the other one who is chasing something unnatural to find out more about it. 

Those two stories in particular stick out to me as the reasons why I love what I do.

There’s lots of stories from that particular table that are like… oh yes, the whirlpool crab jail!  It’s so many micro stories that they’re going to keep in their heads.

Any final comments, sage pieces of wisdom, or shoutouts?

First off, shoutout to all of the folks who are doing actual plays, Critical Role, Dropout, Rivals of Waterdeep… they are people who I have watched who have given me ideas and made me want to make this more of a professional career. 

Then, I’ll depart with some sage advice. 

As someone who works in the store, I often try to tell people that for those who are players and are afraid to be DMs, the only thing stopping you is imposter syndrome.  

For a very long time, I idolized Matt Mercer and Brennan Lee Mulligan and everyone until, one day, I had a chance to actually meet them in person, and it was very apparent that they are people like the rest of us. 

You are perfectly capable and allowed to take the pieces of what you see and like and put them into your game. There’s nothing that’s going to stop you from being your best self except you. 

You can easily be that.  You don’t need to know all the rules. 

I’ve been playing D&D for 20 – 25 years, and I’ve never read a Player’s Handbook cover to cover in my life… and I never will.  It is probably a great read, but when I’m playing, I’m going to open up to the page I need, find the details on the ability that will let me dump a boatload of damage on this one enemy, and close the book to talk about my character and this cool sword he just got. 

As a DM, your only real job is to be the one with the toolbox.  Everyone has come to the sandcastle to play, and you’re the one with the toys.  If someone wants to play with something in the box, let them.  It’s more fun when you try to play with them instead of holding yourself to a specific standard that you see online. 

Just be yourself and embrace what you have to offer. 

That is a lovely way to end this, and thank you very much for sharing your XP with us!

————————

If you liked this post, make sure to subscribe to the TTRPGkids monthly newsletter to stay up to date on the latest reviews, tips and tricks, game and podcast list updates, and more! Thank you for playing tabletop RPGs with your kids and sharing this awesome hobby with the next generation!