Hey amjs. Welcome! I don't know if this is the best place to ask this question or not, but sure is nice to have you here.

The best groundcover for walking and playing on is grass. I don't know of any shade groundcover that could take a lot of foot traffic. The problem of course is that it's hard to get grass to grow under trees. You might try googling steppables to see if any of them will do the job, but I bet that will cost a fortune. How about moss? Because of drainage problems my neighbor's whole front yard is now nothing but moss. It's nice and soft and his grandchildren are always out playing on it. Moss is also expensive. I guess you could try St. Augustine. Anyway, here's a link to a UGA article about grass in shade. Maybe it will help.

Glad to have you on the forum.

Here is a link that might be useful: Grass in Shade

thank you so much for the suggestions. the steppables website is great! there's a groundcover that looks a lot like grass that grows in shade. it is expensive but at least there's something :)

I'm still new to gardening and to Georgia, so I generally hesitate to make suggestions...but what about dwarf mondo grass? As far as I know, it grows well in shade, is drought tolerant, and doesn't need mowing. And I think it's pretty easy to divide and propagate, so shouldn't be too horribly expensive. Sounds perfect now that I mention it. Am I wrong?

Creeping Jenny perhaps?