There is of course a long standing debate about players playing characters with wildly divergent intellects. That is a part of this (and if you aren't familiar with it.... too bad, I'm not rehashing the details here), but only due to relevance.

I've been pondering a thing for some time. To toot my own horn somewhat, many people I know personally account me a 'very smart' individual.  I've come to disagree with this observation, however.  It isn't that I am smart or they are 'not smart', its that I have a head full of interesting and obscure trivia, while they know things that everyone else around them knows about.

I think, and mind you I'm no smarter than anyone else, that barring a few unfortunates who are physically defiecent, and perhaps (only perhaps...) a few people who are blessed, almost everyone has the same basic capacity for reason and 'intelligence' as everyone else.   The difference lies primarily in education and areas of interest, not actual capacity.  

Thus: including an intelligence stat in a game is merely reinforcing a potentially wrongheaded notion.   I could go on about bizzare methods of 'increasing' intelligence and the metagaming aspects of it; I could cite a notional model of what I mean via example, but I've laid out the bare bones of my case. I'll leave it at that... mostly because the boss is back and I don't want to get caught out half posted....

People also make connections at wildly different speeds, though, and take different factors as being relevant for making those connections. Faster speeds and better filters both seem to correlate with something I'd call 'higher intelligence'.

It is true that basic rationality is a near-universal human gift, but in the sense I mean the word dogs and chimps and lots of other creatures are just as rational as we are, so...

You should see my GRE score. Pathetic.

I'd disagree, atlhough training, interest and experience are a factor in making someone appear smart, there is in my experience a raw intellectual capacity that people have.  Those with it can learn and critically think much better than those without it, even when the gifted couldn't give a damn about the subject and the ungifted make it their life.  Intellect is more than memorization of information.

It may be your experience is more with the mean, certainly most folks clustered about the mean will seem to really only vary in interest and training not raw ability.  I tend to work in a world far above the mean, where folks have an amazing capacity to get it quickly and in depth, so I see the gap on a daily basis.

Well if you are going to have skills rolls based on intelligence, then I think you need the stat.  Same for every other stat.  

It is sometimes somwhat jarring when the "dumb as a rock" statwise character played by the smart person has a great idea.  I chalk that up to great insinct or "battle smarts" and not raw intelligence of the character.

Quote from: CallousWell if you are going to have skills rolls based on intelligence, then I think you need the stat.  Same for every other stat.  

It is sometimes somwhat jarring when the "dumb as a rock" statwise character played by the smart person has a great idea.  I chalk that up to great insinct or "battle smarts" and not raw intelligence of the character.

Tying stats and skills together is a subject of much facination for me. Games like GURPS do it too explicitly it seems, while games like D&D... at the higher levels certainly, seem to do it too little or too tangentally.

I think it is certainly possible to suggest a notional game with no stats at all, just various skills. Certainly if I ever finish up my Dynamic Fu game it will somewhat resemble that.

Xanther: I'll get back with you eventually... promise.

Yes I too spike have thought ALOT about attributes, and the scary thing my lastest incarnation for Pandora came to me in a dream. A most vivid dream I have had in my life, It enthralled me so much I took the time to draw it down, and to extrapolate furhter upon it.

What I have done, in regards to intellegence is to get it into a subcategory
called Mental, in the mental category is to place wisdom (Now called focus) and intellegence (Now called creation) a derivitive x 10 of the two scores is called Intution, and that score is the Spark of The mind which I belive is your general IQ, using the 6 different categories of it for a comprehensive whole.

I belive Wisdom is focus becuase it represents a adherence to knowldege and the ability to call upon your self for that correct answer you know to be true

Intellegence is Creation becuase it has the answers, but only by putting the answers together can you create things.

Together, they form intuition which is the whole of the two combinded and can be used as a mesuring stick. I consider, in my example of an 18 focus and a 18 creation to have a 36 intutiion (And therfore a 360 iq) to be perfectly justifiable (considering your taking a savants wiz score and hawkins calculating power into one score)

Depends on the game. How it is recommended to be used, and why.

I've seen brilliant players choose to play complete idiots. I've also seen less than brilliant players struggle to play a brilliant character--so as GM I helped them make connections and get information. My job is to allow people to play "not themselves in fancy clothes." so like any trait--strength, fighting, whatever, I make up what differences I can.

Oh I Agree totaly, which is why I came up with the intuition score,
so even soem one with a 3 focus (wis) and a 3 creation (int) = 60 IQ which is barely playable, but can be done. Perhaps there needs to be some guidelines with regards to the low or high stats and how it should be done next to the chart explaining intell, instead of you know x amount of languages more, or you get more spells per day, ect.  Perhaps there needs to be something that justifies this or that, any suggestions on this? How it should be portraited in a book, or the rules?

I like them if, as other said, other in game elements will be based on the character's intelligence and not the player's.

Personally, I factor both into my games and make allowances for them. I consider character versus player intelligence to be an artifact of gaming and deal with it accordingly.

Seanchai

Right, but more seriously what would you like to see with regards to actuall game text in a rules portion regarding it, when it comes to play? What should the players and GM have in order to facilitate a more cohesive focus with regards to how this acts in a game?

Since no-one can ever agree on an exact definition of "intelligence" - mainly because no-one wants a definition of it by which measure they would have to be called stupid - in games I've written I dodge the question by saying there are three mental attributes,

• Perception - how much you notice
  
• Education - how much you know - not just academically, and this being broad knowledge rather than specific knowledge, since specific knowledge is what we have skills for.
  
• Confidence - your willpower and resolve

Those three together are going to determine overall how "smart" you are - if you notice a lot, remember a lot, and stick to a task, then people will think you're brainy. If you pick things up quickly and are focused (high Per and Conf) then you can get away with not having a broad pool of knowledge (low Edu); and so on.

When we look at people who are successful in mental stuff, usually they're either outstanding in at least one of those three areas, or quite good in all three. And when we see someone who we say is stupid or incompetent, commonly they're lacking in one or more of those three.

No-one likes to think of themselves as stupid, so it's best to avoid definining "intelligence" in your roleplaying games, and define other things instead, things which together cover all possible meanings of it.

I have never felt that intelligence was a productive stat.  It can be difficult to relate to a gap in intelligence, and I believe a lot of people know that.  I'm perfectly happy with players playing characters only of their own intelligence.  I haven't read an rpg that regulated player ideas based upon the intelligence of the character (with weird exceptions being made on the extreme levels).  I feel that having intelligence as a stat restricts play more than it helps play, at both the mechanical level and the non-mechanical level.

I'm interested in keeping the game and metagame close to each other, leaving no room for players to benefit from non-character knowledge.

There are real differences in the ability people have in learning and gaining knowledge.

This is not the same as intelligence (in the sense that often, its assumed that people who are less or more naturally inclined to learning by traditional methods are somehow less or more inherently intelligent; but this is in fact not true), but it is a very significant reality nonetheless.

In an RPG you want to have something that can measure that, as well as your overall perceptiveness, and your ability to communicate and understand what is communicated to you. All of these things usually get summed up as "intelligence".

RPGPundit

I think you need to base the abilities you give characters in a game on the type of things they're going to be doing, what you want the players to control (knowledge/decision-wise), and what you want to have dice rolls for their characters.

If you had a Harry Potter RPG you might decide that you needed multiple "Intelligence" type ability scores (Wits, Knowledge, Scholastic Ability, etc), while the Pit Fighter RPG might only require a "Cunning" ability score.

What you don't want to do is start with the abilities D&D uses and try to shoehorn those into whatever type of game you're making.