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

[Jahydin]

This is something I've found about myself recently that I thought was kind of humorous. I've ran multiple successful campaigns through every edition of D&D over the years and never once realized how bad my imagination was until I started to play more narrative focused games like FATE and PbtA.

Looking back though, I didn't really need to imagine anything to be successful:
For Old School D&D I could focus on the simple dungeon maps, random charts, and mathematical rules.
3E/Pathfinder (favorite edition) was all about miniatures, battlemats, and rolling for everything to determine results.
4E was D&D the board game, so even more so I didn't need to visualize anything in my mind's eye.

5E was when the cracks started to show though. I ran Out of the Abyss and nearly keeled over from exhaustion from the amount of prep I had to do. Multiple NPCs all with distinct personalities and motivations, long stretches of travel time with little explanation on how to make it interesting, completely foreign races (Underdark) and how they might interact with the PCs, and gigantic demons that were in complex environments I couldn't just run with miniatures and dry-erase boards. Throughout this entire campaign though, I never once realized why it was so difficult for me; I just thought it was terribly written!

Then came Dungeon World. My friend asked me to play and it sounded fun, but quickly realized how difficult it was for me to play. I could see everyone was drawing the scene in their minds and then narrating what they saw; but for me, it's just blank. My brain just doesn't do that.

It made me realize that I don't even imagine scenes when I read books. I enjoy following the logic of the story, but not once do I "visualize" the characters, scenery, or action. At best, I just get small "flash" if I concentrate really hard.

Anyway, curious if anyone else can relate!

 

[CleverNickName]

Careful what you say about board games...you might accidentally summon an Edition War Lich!

I can't relate very easily, sorry. I'm ADHD, so my brain is always processing some kind of imagination scenario of some sort at all times. It's a lot like living with a permanent daydream running constantly in my head. When I'm not hyperfocused on some kind of mental task (like engineering design), my mind will wander to some pretty colorful and interesting places.

But good news: you don't have to play only 5th Edition adventures in 5th Edition D&D. You can play those old 3E/Pathfinder modules in 5th Edition fairly easy. The maps are already drawn, the room descriptions are already written, and the treasures are already stocked. If you stumble upon something that you don't have the 5E stats for, just Google it...chances are, someone out there has already converted it to 5E for you.

I remember seeing several of the old Pathfinder adventure paths fully converted to 5E somewhere, a while back (before Paizo decided to re-release them as completely new products). It wasn't a full conversion; it was more like a collection of notes to reference alongside the originals. But anyway: the resources are out there, and you mentioned that 3E/Pathfinder was your favorite. So I'd like to just encourage you to play what you like!

 

[fnordland]

I can sympathise with this, Indie games require a lot of emotional energy. Not everyone has the ability to improvise on the spot. There are many actors who need a script and hours of rehearsals to produce their craft. Catch them unaware on camera or even a podcast and they are human and not their characters.

When I look at rpg cons and stores, Indie games are a small % of store capacity and games offered. I am one of the people who buy scenarios and books rather than create them myself.

 

[AnotherGuy]

This is something I've found about myself recently that I thought was kind of humorous. I've ran multiple successful campaigns through every edition of D&D over the years and never once realized how bad my imagination was until I started to play more narrative focused games like FATE and PbtA.

Looking back though, I didn't really need to imagine anything to be successful:
For Old School D&D I could focus on the simple dungeon maps, random charts, and mathematical rules.
3E/Pathfinder (favorite edition) was all about miniatures, battlemats, and rolling for everything to determine results.
4E was D&D the board game, so even more so I didn't need to visualize anything in my mind's eye.

5E was when the cracks started to show though. I ran Out of the Abyss and nearly keeled over from exhaustion from the amount of prep I had to do. Multiple NPCs all with distinct personalities and motivations, long stretches of travel time with little explanation on how to make it interesting, completely foreign races (Underdark) and how they might interact with the PCs, and gigantic demons that were in complex environments I couldn't just run with miniatures and dry-erase boards. Throughout this entire campaign though, I never once realized why it was so difficult for me; I just thought it was terribly written!

Then came Dungeon World. My friend asked me to play and it sounded fun, but quickly realized how difficult it was for me to play. I could see everyone was drawing the scene in their minds and then narrating what they saw; but for me, it's just blank. My brain just doesn't do that.

It made me realize that I don't even imagine scenes when I read books. I enjoy following the logic of the story, but not once do I "visualize" the characters, scenery, or action. At best, I just get small "flash" if I concentrate really hard.

Anyway, curious if anyone else can relate!

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.

 

[jgsugden]

... It made me realize that I don't even imagine scenes when I read books. I enjoy following the logic of the story, but not once do I "visualize" the characters, scenery, or action. At best, I just get small "flash" if I concentrate really hard.

Anyway, curious if anyone else can relate!

Have you heard of Aphantasia? What you describe isn't terribly specific, but there are similarities to what I know about Aphantasia.

We all process information differently. If you're finding it difficult to run a game without miniatures and props - then don't. Even if you do not use all the swceneary or have the right miniature, just use whatever is on hand at the moment. Heck, you might even just Google a few features of the scene and see if there is some artwork out there to showcase what you're describing or seeing described.

Back in the 80s - when I had about 40 metal figures total as my miniature collection - I used a variety of toys and small objects to physically showcase a scene to players. When I think back on some of those most memorable events, I see the Red Dragon figure we used at the table - a stuffed animal ... not a mental picture of a dragon. We were not using it for a wargame style miniatures combat - just as a prop to set the stage.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Sounds like you might have partial aphantasia--heavy concentration can get you some mental imagery/simulated senses, but otherwise you don't really engage with that much.

Edit: Dammit, got distracted and thus swordsage'd by @jgsugden!

 

[aco175]

You must be doing something right to last 30 years and have people come back to play with you.

I can't remember ho many times I describe something like a trap being a giant round boulder that starts to roll down hidden rails behind you... and the players say, "Is it just like Indiana Jones." Even if I never seen the movie or read the book I find that there can be only so many possibilities in the world and even sub-consciously creating things you may have seen and forgot.

 

[pointofyou]

I wouldn't worry about it. You can accomplish a lot just by putting the right words in the right order even if those words in that order do not generate any imagery for you. I agree with the others who have said you're probably doing something pretty right to have people returning to your games.

Imagination is overrated anyway.

 

[moriantumr]

I have aphantasia and am a dm. I prefer story driven games over tangible map or figure driven games because it lets me focus on how the story makes me and others feel instead of hyper fixating on the now tangible thing I cannot see in my mind. Throwing out a map, or using a zone based ruleset, has let me be present with the players. It is really hard to create a map off the cuff when you can’t envision it to begin with.

 

[Ancalagon]

Two comments:

1: When you say imagination, do you mean "the capacity to form images in your mind?" Because it's a condition some people have (aphantasia) where this task is arduous or even impossible. But I would then state that this is only a subset of imagination...

2: Out of the Abyss IS hard to run. A lot of the 5e official campaigns are badly written/organized.