Aphantasia and Role Playing Games

[moriantumr]

I primarily dm and have aphantasia. I don’t really visualize things, but have a sort of list I access if doing theater of the mind. I actually prefer to do theater of the mind because drawing something up while doing is way to taxing and I end up with wires crossed between things and get frustrated. Sometimes players understand my descriptions differently than I intend, and I have been working to accept their vision instead of my list.
A funny aside, I love having aphantasia when it comes to tv and movie adaptations of books, because I have no visual expectations of characters and can enjoy the shows for what they are without the disappointment of it not meeting my minds eye. I missed your similar experience, so not necessarily an aside

 

[Cadence]

I find this both baffling and terrifying. I see stuff in my mind even when my eyes are open.

Out of curiosity, does this extend to other senses. Those with this difference, do you not "hear" thoughts, too?

Usually if I try to imagine music it is my voice doing the singing or humming the tune. Same for imagining a conversation. I think sometimes I will wake up with a song in my head that might be the music, but it stops if I think about it.

I sometimes have the impression that part of my brain might be doing the visualization like someone without it, and then that part tries to pass that knowledge off to the conscious part of my brain. (I know what the next lyric coming up is in a song, I can edit papers in regards to the contents as a whole, I'm pretty good at arranging furniture so it ends up being well laid out, I can keep track of where people roughly are in combat in D&D... but I don't hear it and I can't conjure a picture of them in my head. Or in rare cases I do it's fleeting and fuzzy.)

I didn't realize most people could visualize things until I found out some other people actually pictured things from stuff like grosser-than-gross jokes when they heard them or traumatic scenes in books when they read them. I thought "mind's eye" was totally figurative.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Out of curiosity, does this extend to other senses. Those with this difference, do you not "hear" thoughts, too?

Anecdotally from a friend, yes, but different senses are more or less involved from case to case, even with the same person. I know I don't generally imagine things using a single sense even when there should be only one involved. Tell me to envision an apple and I get apple #1 in the OP as a fleeting mental image unless I strain to keep it "up" in my mind, but it also comes with the scent and feel and taste of an apple - and "hearing" that crunch when you bite into one is just one more step in the process. I generally can't fully disentangle my sense memories and tend to get many all at once with that kind of exercise.

Completely novel imaginary things (eg the frumious bandersnatch from Jabberwocky, before reading any of the many explanations of the thing) get a vague mix of sensory impressions as my brain tries to piece something together from context and past experience - a sort of quantum state of imagination which collapses in on itself if/when more detail is provided. Visual and olfactory details seem to be most meaningful in my case, although sometimes tactile cues are stronger influences than either. The older I've gotten the more firm the initial "guess" has become (even when it turns out to be completely wrong), probably because I've got more memories to pull from and more practice at discerning context.

TL;DR People think differently from one another and often don't realize it, which is probably grounds for a lot of confusion and misery.

 

[Celebrim]

Well, on the bright side you don't have to worry about daydreaming when you are driving a car causes your vision to be replaced with what is in your mind's eye. I have to be very careful how much I engage my visual imagination while performing a task or I cease to consciously see.

As a highly spatial thinker who thinks in pictures and then puts words to them, even to the point of seeing and hearing the text I am now typing before I put it down, this is one of those things that I have a hard time imagining. It's like I get that blind people would struggle to do it, the way that deaf people would struggle to imagine sound, but that you lack a playback mechanism much less the ability to conjure up something baffles me.

My suspicion is that it's like color blindness or autism or inappropriate hyperfocus - really really annoying except in those narrow moments it becomes a superpower. To make up for the lack of mental imagery your verbal skills would have to be really high. I mean I can't remember the name of half the things I know because they are only coming up as pictures and referents and I can't attach the right sound to them. I suspect you don't have that problem.

 

[J.Quondam]

I can't envision what aphantasia must be like.

 

[payn]

I can't envision what aphantasia must be like.

Oh... I want to reply so badly....

 

[Aldarc]

This is one reason why Theater of the Mind isn't always ideals for everyone. There are people I know who may or may not have aphantasia who nevertheless have difficulties imagining scenes and require minis to help them keep track of what's going on.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I cant say ive ever come across this.

Its apparently really common, being present to some degree in around 40% of people.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I find this both baffling and terrifying. I see stuff in my mind even when my eyes are open.

Out of curiosity, does this extend to other senses. Those with this difference, do you not "hear" thoughts, too?

No, I hear internal sounds and music all the time. Doesn't surprise me given different parts of the brain process images and sounds.

 

[Reynard]

Its apparently really common, being present to some degree in around 40% of people.

No. It's like 4%. We just live in a society that rewards people for self diagnosis.