Aphantasia

[scimon]

So I recently realized I have Aphantasia, this being the inability to form mental images. I was wondering, would this be a quirk? Or would it be a full blown disadvantage?

As someone who's had it my whole life and done OK I do wonder if there's things I could do *better* if I had it. I'm guessing art is a lot easier if you're just translating an image you can effectively see into something real.

So yeah... thoughts on Aphantasia as a disadvantage anyone?

[Varyon]

It's going to depend on how you see it influencing the character. First and foremost, in settings where it's otherwise available, such a character would probably have the Feature - Taboo Trait: Visualization (depending on the setting, there may be other Taboo Traits - Magery would be off-limits in some settings, as might Jumper, Warp that isn't Line-of-Sight Only, Snatcher, etc). It may also serve as an Incompetence Quirk - or even an Anti-Talent - for several artistic skills.

I'd probably just set it as a Quirk, then just make certain I didn't give the character any skills/traits that I wouldn't think made sense for someone with the Quirk.

[Stormcrow]

Quirk. It could lead to the occasional IQ roll to recognize a face that hasn't been seen for a while or to remember details from a scene that weren't consciously noted at the time, but it won't come up all that often.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

This is one of those "how does it effect the character specifically" things. For example, while it's plausible that it might prevent you from being a professional painter or something like that, I used to follow a YouTube content creator whose aphantasia didn't prevent her from coming up with costumes, theatrical makeup, set dressing, and so on. That is, the condition doesn't necessarily limit your ability to create images; it might just change how you approach the process. As it stands, maybe just call it a quirk.

[shawnhcorey]

Originally Posted by scimon

As someone who's had it my whole life and done OK...

If so, why would it even be a quirk? Even a quirk must effect game play or it's just a variation of thinking.

I have the opposite, hyperphantasia. Altho it helped in math and science classes, as an adult I did not find it make much difference.

[The Colonel]

Might even protect you from some psychic/magical/memetic attacks.

[whswhs]

I have almost no mental imagery, but I can navigate fairly well; I think of directions and maps kinesthetically, in relation to my own body. C and I have had difficulty in communication at times because I almost always know which way is north and she almost never does. There are other ways to retain spatial relations than visually.

[khorboth]

You have to remember that the core questions are about how this affects a person's performance. Since you just discovered it, that's probably not much. I'd probably go quirk because it can hamper some specific tasks & make people treat you weirdly.

[scimon]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Quirk. It could lead to the occasional IQ roll to recognize a face that hasn't been seen for a while or to remember details from a scene that weren't consciously noted at the time, but it won't come up all that often.

Yeah, the weirdly, recognising faces? Not a problem, but describing them? Very hard.

And yeah the scene thing 100%.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by shawnhcorey

If so, why would it even be a quirk? Even a quirk must effect game play or it's just a variation of thinking.

I have the opposite, hyperphantasia. Altho it helped in math and science classes, as an adult I did not find it make much difference.

I think this is true of a lot of things like this. There are considerable variations in the way humans perceive the world that by and large don't matter much.

People have known about them forever, but never bothered to categorize them and give them names. A good example that we can say with absolute confidence about because it has an actual physical difference we can measure is odor receptors. There are hundreds of them that people may or may not have, which has to alter the way they perceive scents or flavors, because some of them can't detect some chemicals at all. You'd think this would be a big deal for universal skills like, say, cooking. And yet all it amounts to before recently is the observation "tastes differ".