Quick Hacks to Growing Your Imagination

Imagination! We tend to think that either we have it or we don’t, that either you’re creative or you’re not. But what if I told told you that your imagination can be practiced, developed and improved over time? In today’s video, I talk about the 4 principles of imagination and how you can use and practice each of these components as a game master to help you develop and grow your own imagination to plan and run amazing roleplaying adventures. So, the next time you’re feeling stuck while planning your D&D, Pathfinder or Call of Cthulhu adventures, take these principles put them into practice – you’ll be amazed by the results!

Today we are talking about your imagination. Imagination is based on 4 principles which can
be practiced and developed over time.

The 4 principles of imagination are:
• Experience
o Just living counts, but using it counts for more.
o Awareness is key – take your experiences and be aware of your emotions and
responses. Remember them!
o Draw upon experience to create real-life responses and reactions on the fly.
• Research
o Learn more about different stuff.
o This is something that you can actively do, but its also something that we do
passively all the time.
o Something as simple as watching a documentary on TV can be enough
research to provide you with material to use in your games.
o Pay attention to what you are watching and understand how it works. Then
you can apply it to other stuff.

• Freeform association
o Linking different things together. Take things that seem to not have anything
in common with each other and link them together.
o Build your narrative out of this by using your research to understand why
these things would be linked together, and then use your experience to tell
the emotional journey.
o Link stuff to stuff – the links make the stuff interesting, that’s where the fun
is.
• Inspiration
o Stick a giant banana into it! Kickstart your inspiration with this.

o Giant banana for the win! Where, what, why, when, who and how did it get
there?
o This allows you to come up with a bunch of different solutions to a problem,
and then you can use your freeform association to link these ideas together
and help you with your original idea.

We can see now that these 4 components of imagination are powerful tools to developing
your imagination. They can each be practiced and used to help you develop your
imagination and in turn amazing adventures.