So when I ran my Saltmarsh game, I'd often use visual aids - printed pics to show players on a 3x5 card for NPCs, for example, or pics of the town, village or monster they were first encountering.

Having started a L&D game, I didn't have such prepared, and so relied on description instead. 

I'm not sure which works better, letting players fill in the gaps with their imaginations from my descriptions, or giving them a quick visual that speaks louder than a thousand words.  How do you guys do it?

I'll use visuals when they're available, but they're usually not.  I'm not ambitious enough to make them myself.  I recall that Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan had quite a lot of them and they were pretty important, as they helped figure out the puzzles that dominated that module.

With a Marvel game, I've used maps and minis once or twice.

With CoC I do handouts for clues.

Everything else, it's almost exclusively Theater Of The Mind. I'm good at setting a scene, and being evocative.

The exception is when a character is being attacked by a constricting snake, when I'll loop my flaccid penis around their neck, for a kind of Augmented Reality experience.

I mostly stick to a small handful of 'atmospheric' pieces these days, not direct representations of in-game events.

I've been trying to hone my skills at succinctly 'painting with words', emulating the style of Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf game books.

I've sworn off AI art for now, despite being a proponent last year. The idea of obsoleting artists on a societal scale is too disturbing for me, but I have to admit the idea of generating the perfect atmosphere piece is very tempting in my weaker moments...

Left to my own devices I rarely use visual aids, including preferring theater of the mind combat over grid. I have made a treasure map handout the old fashioned way, and that added something to the game. So I see the value, its just a matter of time and effort.

I do appreciate illustrations in published products though, the way the old Kenzer adventures did, and Barrowmaze more recently. I'll use those, and it shows the designer is really thinking about adding value instead of having each GM who runs it do the work.

When I was young I kept a scrapbook of cool pictures and built the adventures around them. I had handouts ready to go.

For my entire gaming career until about two years ago, I played everything pure theatre of the mind. The most we did for visuals was show a picture from the Monster Manual, or maybe spread some dice out on the table to show relative positions.

A couple of years ago I started playing on virtual tabletops, where there is an expectation of detailed battle-maps, character tokens, art, etc. and honestly, I kind of hate it. Firstly, because I spend time finding/making maps and hunting for character portraits that I could otherwise be spending writing adventures. More importantly, because it means that everything is limited to what I can find assets for. Want to do a really weird alien environment? Well, there's no mapmaker assets for it. Want to invent your own monster? Better hope someone else has already drawn one. Worse it encourages players to take the assets literally. I've said again and again that the maps I use are abstractions and people should pay attention to what I say as DM, but if you stick a visual in front of someone, they will always let it supersede the description in their mind.

I'm tempted to switch to just lines on graph paper for the maps, and try to find totally abstract tokens, just to shake my players out of that literalism.

Quote from: ForgottenF on December 16, 2023, 08:45:29 PM
For my entire gaming career until about two years ago, I played everything pure theatre of the mind. The most we did for visuals was show a picture from the Monster Manual, or maybe spread some dice out on the table to show relative positions.

A couple of years ago I started playing on virtual tabletops, where there is an expectation of detailed battle-maps, character tokens, art, etc. and honestly, I kind of hate it. Firstly, because I spend time finding/making maps and hunting for character portraits that I could otherwise be spending writing adventures. More importantly, because it means that everything is limited to what I can find assets for. Want to do a really weird alien environment? Well, there's no mapmaker assets for it. Want to invent your own monster? Better hope someone else has already drawn one. Worse it encourages players to take the assets literally. I've said again and again that the maps I use are abstractions and people should pay attention to what I say as DM, but if you stick a visual in front of someone, they will always let it supersede the description in their mind.

I'm tempted to switch to just lines on graph paper for the maps, and try to find totally abstract tokens, just to shake my players out of that literalism.

When playing online, I use an overhead cam looking down on a hex graph that I draw on with dry erase.  I hate VTT as well and refuse to use one.

VTTs have been slowly winning me over, like a a sweet-talking Succubus.

Mostly for the help they give my players.

I will print/draw a known world map, a letter, or treasure map, so the players can refer to it. Or if there's a challenge that relies on sight, such as a pattern of tiles on the floor, I might print or draw something. I keep it to utilitarian things.

Otherwise, I don't worry about it. Different people visualize things differently, so visual aids can be hit or miss for aesthetics. It's the same complaint when a book gets put to film. Some people like how the director envisioned the work and others don't.

Thanks for all the responses, gang! I appreciate it!

I think using some visuals (printed pics mostly) might help my players, as they've never played "historical" before and don't have a clear image, for example, of what a medieval village actually looked like.

But I do like having their imaginations engaged, it's more involving that way!

"It depends."

For any major set-piece battle with multiple elevations, for example, I'll print out a scale battlemap with pieces of it that I can slap down or take off.

For something that it is difficult to describe, I'll use a picture.

Any major "treasure" might get a scroll if it something like the deed to a castle.

Most of the time? Nothing.

Yeah, tabletop or VTT, sometimes a little bit helps. I don't go for the whole elaborate thing some folks do. I started gaming in the 70s and everyone I knew and gamed with used mats, markers and minis. I don't think it's fair to expect tactical choices if you don't at least do that.

But atmosphere illustrations, puzzle illustrations, pretty yet simple battlemats, and area maps plus street maps of towns are not asking too much.

I kinda avoid illustrations of monsters because I like to keep the players guessing. Monsters don't have "Hi! I'm a Ghoul!" stickers on their chests. I just use sorta generic tokens or minis and tell my players what their characters see.