D&D General I've Been a DM for 30 Years and I have Zero Imagination.

[Vrindlevine]

That's great news!

I have always thought humanities greatest trait is its capacity for self-improvement.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

4E was D&D the board game, so even more so I didn't need to visualize anything in my mind's eye.

Fascinating. I wish we could dig into that without the thread errupring into demonic flames lol

Suffice to say i had to visualize and be imaginitive more in 4e than in 3.5, partly because the fictional positioning changed so much every round rather than characters standing in place.

Anyway, i have a fellow DM with the same mental hurdle, and he watches a lot of videos thst visualize different things like spells, says it helps.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Yeah, it’s very common for people who have aphantasia to be surprised when they learn that’s not how it works for everyone.

Conversely, it took me a long time to recognise and respect those that can't "see" what I'm describing. I used to think that they just weren't trying. I changed a lot when I stopped expecting others to think the way I do.

 

[Jahydin]

Suffice to say i had to visualize and be imaginitive more in 4e than in 3.5, partly because the fictional positioning changed so much every round rather than characters standing in place.

Did you play with miniatures? That's what helped with me, especially since every adventure came with battle mats and precise instructions on how to set up each combat.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Wow, time flies! I thought it was only a year ago I made this thread...

Anyways, thought I'd give an update since I think I made quite some improvement. A coworker was surprised I never read a sci-fi book, so lent me his copy of Alien Clay. After a few pages or so, I would stop reading and really focus on a few moments I read about and imagine a static image of that scene. Mostly vague and not too intricate, but hey, beats complete darkness!

So it seems, for my case anyway, it's kind of a muscle I never knew I had. Slowly "working it out" the past few years seems to be helping (mostly via RPGs). Yay!

Oh, and book was great. I'm looking forward to reading his Children of Time trilogy next.

Firstly, massive congratulations, that's an extremely positive result--lots of people never develop this ability, so making even small progress is awesome. My hat is off to you!

Secondly, if you're looking for any recommendations, a sci-fi series that might appeal to you as sort of a bridge from where you're at to where you're heading could be Asimov's Foundation series, particularly the main trilogy (Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation.) The first book can be particularly nice because it wasn't originally meant to be a book at all, it started as short stories published in sci-fi magazines.

Asmiov is also useful because he has what I call "ideas-first fiction", at least with this series. The protagonist of the Foundation series is a concept--psychohistory, the statistical science of aggregate human behavior that can predict sociological evolution, but only at the scale of trillions of lives--while the characters primarily serve as vehicles for delivering adventures related to that core concept. Hence, the exact physical descriptions aren't super rigid, but you'll still get a story with enough cognitive meat for you to chew on while you practice envisioning things.

Another useful thing, in exactly the opposite direction, could be mystery fiction. Crime novels are almost aggressively rooted in the visualizable details of a scene. Consider checking out Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Absolute classic of the genre, her very first crime novel, and concrete enough to give you things to envisage without having to paint a whole landscape or hyperrealistic portrait just to get by. One trick to try if you do check out this or other mystery novels: if a new clue is introduced, pause and spend a minute or two just trying to visualize that one clue, in isolation, separate from its environment.

Again, awesome job on sticking with this, and I wish you the best of luck as you continue your journey.

 

[Jahydin]

@EzekielRaiden
Thanks for the kind words. And I'll absolutely check out both authors you suggested. Asmiov first though; that series just sounds too cool.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Conversely, it took me a long time to recognise and respect those that can't "see" what I'm describing. I used to think that they just weren't trying. I changed a lot when I stopped expecting others to think the way I do.

Pretty much the same here. I remember being shocked and a little alarmed at the idea that there are folks who cannot form mental visualizations, and likewise people (often but not always the same people) who do not experience an internal monologue. It was really really hard to even understand how someone could live that way, because I have an extremely active imagination, intense visualizations, and if anything perhaps too much internal monologue. (I don't really get "stream of consciousness" narratives, because they aren't like how I personally think, or at least every one I've read reads like a muddy sea of utterly random craziness, almost totally unlike my own thought-experience.)

Thankfully, once I got over my initial shock, my primary response was to try to achieve greater empathy with anyone that has this lived experience. Clearly, visualization is not necessary to lead a full and happy life, so they do not need my pity, and they sure as hell don't need anyone being negative about it. Instead, there is hope for situations like this one, where effort has opened doors of perception that were previously closed, or at least mostly closed.

 

[Belen]

I find it fascinating how you find the roleplay aspect of 5e exhausting when your favourite edition (3.x) was the one that broke me from the mechanical prep work and system mastery requirement.
I can empathise with your current situation, I too enjoy pre-planning as a DM, so these narrative-focused games such as Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, Dungeon World etc can be quite daunting for the traditional player/DM.

Yes. 3.5/PF1e ended my desire to ever see mechanics that heavy ever again. 4e seemed to triple down on mechanics, which I later realized that years later my main issues with 4e were down to the fact that they took the parts I disliked about 3.5 and focused on them.

 

[Belen]

@EzekielRaiden
Thanks for the kind words. And I'll absolutely check out both authors you suggested. Asmiov first though; that series just sounds too cool.

That really cool thing about Asimov is that everything he wrote was in the same universe although it was not always apparent.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Did you play with miniatures? That's what helped with me, especially since every adventure came with battle mats and precise instructions on how to set up each combat.

We sometimes did, but rarely durect from an adventure, so that is probably part of why. I also tend to make encounters very 3D, which does require more visualization, but part of it was also that people in my groups at the time tended to want descriptions of actions a lot and individual 4e actions are much more necessarily different from eachother than in any other edition.

Not only does the wizard create a new terrain hazard or bend the will of enemies while the fighter hits things, but two fighter powers will be completely different and much more specific than "i attack with my sword". My players needed help visualizing what those specific actions actually look like in context, so i spent a lot of time visualizing.