How do you roleplay characters with superhuman intelligence?

[Scalenex]

I've heard a lot of discussion talk about high charisma characters and roleplaying.

I have seen a lot of RPG discussion threads on shy players playing high charisma characters but I haven't seen much on players playing high intelligence characters.

Without getting into specifics, I've seen a lot of TV shows and movies nose dive when average intelligence writers try to write dialogue and action for high intelligence characters.

I consider myself fairly intelligent but I'm not a genius.

I can imagine what it's like to be ridiculously strong. I can sort of visualize what a hyper-charismatic person would be like. I can sort of imagine what a hyper aware person would be like.

I might be able to extrapolate what it's like for someone like Albert Einstein, but what would a person with intelligence beyond humanity's look like?

I notice D&D and fantasy in general usually has hyper intelligent villains and strong heroes. What would a hyper intelligent villain want? What would a hyper intelligent hero want?

My thought, maybe I'm wrong, is that most hyper intelligent beings would gravitate away from Good and Evil and towards Neutrality. They just want to be left alone with their thoughts. In the real world, there are certainly lots of historical examples of very intelligent people being recluses. But recluses rarely make interesting stories for RPGs or fantasy novels.

I'm homebrewing a world right now and I have created a lot of races that are somewhat mentally imparied compared to humans but I haven't come up with anything superior to humans. Maybe dragons, I'm still trying to figure out how powerful to make dragons.

I'm populating my undersea fantasy right now and I'm using real world animals as a baseline. Crab People, Shark People, Mer people. Squids and octopi in real life are practically wizards. They have freakish camouflage abilities, ink blasts, and their intelligence is second to only humans. I cannot picture cephlapod people not being super smart, but if they are super smart, why aren't they running everything? Also, maybe it's Lovecraftian influence but I think squid people would lean towards Evil, or maybe I'm biased from Western folklore where hyper intelligent people lean towards evil.

[Vahnavoi]

For the most part, you don't, because you can't. Pretty much all people, when trying to play smarter than they really are, are at the mercy of the game mechanics giving you extra information and extra time to make decisions. Time is most important: the longer you have to make a decision or crack a problem, the more elaborate your reasoning and problem solving can get.

However, even more importantly, intelligence is orthogonal to values. In D&D's terms, a character's alignment, wisdom, personality etc. are all independent of intelligence.

So, check if you're implicitly asking two different questions at once: roleplaying superhuman and roleplaying inhuman intelligences are two different things. Even someone of superior intelligence would act like a normal person provided they have terminal goals similar to less intelligent people. On the other hand, a person with abnormal terminal goals would behave incomprehensibly whether they're highly intelligent or not.

[prabe]

It's easier to do, the smarter you are--not only can you adjust and adapt more quickly, but you are closer to seeing the world the same way your super-intelligent character does (at least on that axis). That said:

As a player, you use mechanics for knowledge, take notes, read every piece of written lore the GM gives you, and take time out-of-session to consider plans and alternatives based on what you think you see coming (or just in general). I find that staying engaged helps me to simulate higher intelligence, but "stay engaged" is such good general advice I'm reluctant to give it.

As a GM, you take the time out-of-session, and you cheat--especially if the PCs do something that seems obvious in retrospect--in the sense of allowing your super-intelligent villain to have prepared for things.

And yes, in both cases, consider both the goals and other aspects of the personality.

[Segev]

High intelligence enables you to solve problems faster. To hold more concepts in your head at the same time, and thus do more problem solving without aids like notes and calculators. It often, but not always, gives a better memory, but does almost always mean that, even if photographic memory is lacking, integration of ideas and concepts to the point that they can be reexplained even without recalling where he heard them is doable.

Some super geniuses will recall line and verse of every reference they’ve seen others will struggle with that, but still understand the topic very well. (This is a good way to write a genius who can be out-argued by somebody of average or lesser intellect. “What’s your source for that? My source that I can name says differently, and even though nobody listening knows why they should or should not trust my source, the fact that it sounds authoritative while you sound like you’re just saying to trust your word means I sound smarter and less biased.”)

Smart people make good intuitive leaps, because they pieced the details together sometimes faster than their conscious mind followed (but they usually can go back and explain each step if they must). This isn’t the same as wisdom’s intuition; it’s rooted in logic chains and reason, not perception and discernment of specifics to the situation.

To portray them, it’s mostly about having them come to correct conclusions on sparser evidence. But be sure they also have good reason for not entertaining alternate hypotheses that fit the same evidence. Or have them speak of all the possibilities, and narrow them down incisively as more evidence arises.

[Nifft]

I might be able to extrapolate what it's like for someone like Albert Einstein, but what would a person with intelligence beyond humanity's look like?

I notice D&D and fantasy in general usually has hyper intelligent villains and strong heroes. What would a hyper intelligent villain want? What would a hyper intelligent hero want?

My thought, maybe I'm wrong, is that most hyper intelligent beings would gravitate away from Good and Evil and towards Neutrality. They just want to be left alone with their thoughts. In the real world, there are certainly lots of historical examples of very intelligent people being recluses. But recluses rarely make interesting stories for RPGs or fantasy novels.

Super-intelligent people have the same basic human needs as you: community, companionship, communication.

IRL you see a lot of super-smart recluses because they can't get those things from nearby people, because the nearby people are outside the super-smart person's communication range (which seems to be roughly ±30 IQ).

So in a fantasy world with more than just humans, the brainy loners might tend to find companionship with non-humans.

This association with non-humans might tend to impose non-human outlooks, and that's something you can leverage as a DM.

If you have personality traits which you use for NPCs that are non-human / super-human in some way, you could pretty easily have a super-smart human NPC adopt some of those personality traits. That might be sufficient to show that the NPC Wizard finds himself swayed by the emotional connection to his intellectual peers.

[Zarrgon]

You can't, it's simply impossible.

You can have the DM tell your character everything and then you can act like your character figured it all out....but that is not role playing high intelligence.

The thing is "intelligence" covers a lot of mental abilities. And intelligence is just a part of a persons mind.

So really, you just need to "make it up".


And TV shows....are the worst. It's bad enough with all the ''cop" shows with super intelligent people...that act like idiots as they are written by someone with maybe average intelligence. The worst of the worst might be Sherlock. Most writers have no clue how to write the character....and it shows in every episode.

[Mr.Sandman]

The Octopi aren't running things for the same reason they aren't in our world. Male octopi die shortly after breeding, and females work themselves to death caring for the extremely fragile eggs, and even if you take the eggs away a hormone in their brain switches on putting them into a slow death by ennui. Octopi are naturally incredibly intelligent and fast learners, but they have noone to teach them and only one life time to learn things in. In fact I have often expressed the opinion that, were it not for these detriments, earth would have a second sentient species within 2 generations.

[NichG]

There's lots of facets to intelligence as has been pointed out. For short conversations at least (e.g. deities speaking with PCs and the like) I tend to depict characters with superhuman intelligence as being somewhat 'unaffected', or affected in sometimes the opposite ways as one would expect. So if something is said that they didn't expect or didn't know, rather than communicating and displaying their shock, or spending a bit visibly questioning the veracity of the information, I skip those steps and immediately have them ask the followup question. If at the end they decide not to believe the thing, they can appear to switch from 100% buying into the premise to 100% denying the premise without a word said wrong by the other side.

That doesn't mean they accept whatever they're told at face value, it's more to indicate that they can simultaneously hold a conversation 'as if it were true' since that is the context of the person in front of them, without actually having to believe 'that it is true'. So I'm trying to highlight an ability to hold multiple conflicting beliefs or hypotheses in their head at once.

Similarly, I tend to have superhumanly intelligent characters change their direction quickly and decisively a few steps before when other characters would. So if they're in a fight and they're losing but still have 90% of their hitpoints and most of their resources, they will flee or change tactics immediately, not wait until they're down to 20%. They will also tend to more heavily use the side-effects of things that they can produce rather than the direct effects, or try to accomplish multiple things at once with a single move whenever I can spot those opportunities. For example, if they're running away via Planeshift they might not just Planeshift to somewhere else random, but rather Planeshift to a place where the environmental hazards are more dangerous to their pursuers than themselves.

Finally, this is much easier to do as the GM, because whenever the character is trying to anticipate the behavior of other NPCs, make plans about how environmental factors work, etc, they can be right as often as you let them since the same brain is being used to come up with the plan and to evaluate its consequences (e.g. yours). You can't do this when their plans involve the PCs of course or when their plans involve things with very concrete existing mechanics for them. But something like 'if I scatter some coins as I run past, the crowd is going to rush after them and block pursuit' or 'if I push this barrel, it's going to get in the way of that cart that is moving in from a side-street and create a jam' or the like can work to display a level of creative thinking.

Anyhow:

- Hold multiple beliefs or ideas simultaneously and switch between them freely as the situation demands, without excessive attachment or inertia to one or the other.
- Don't continue in futile courses of action once the writing is on the wall. Be able to completely abandon a plan in an instant and change direction as the situation evolves. Commit decisively when changing.
- Take actions that have multiple simultaneous purposes whenever possible. Think in terms of the obvious response to your next action and try to set things up so that the character's opposition has to do two actions for each one of yours, in order to stay on top of things.
- If you're GMing, take advantage of the fact that you're running the game and so have access to a 'perfect' simulator of what would happen, at least for plans that don't have to be played out mechanically. Give the NPC access to a variable level of this ground truth based on their intelligence.

[Mastikator]

Closest approximation I can think of is meta-gaming: a player with encyclopedic knowledge of the game, and a DM that humors him will produce the outcome of being superhuman intelligent. Since the player is allowed to deliberate over issues while the game is paused, and has full knowledge of all possible objects in the game they will be able to deduce things at a superhuman rate.

What do they want?
You should also consider that *terminal goals are not related to intelligence, goals and intelligence is orthogonal, the function of intelligence is not to create goals but to figure out how to achieve them. Highly intelligent people are better at coming up with intermediate goals, goals that are a means to an end, the terminal goals. The terminal goals are still the same: food, shelter, family, community, esteem, self actualization, etc.

*terminal goals are goals that you just have

How do they act?
Based on real world geniuses I think it's fair to say they would talk and act mostly the same way everyone else does, it would be impossible to tell if someone is super intelligent just by looking at them. I used to think I was smart because people often told me how impressed they were with my intelligence, truth is that was the halo effect talking, I'm not smart, I'm just kinda good looking, tall and I dress well.

The good news is you can act and look anyway you like.

Why don't superintelligent cepholopods run everything?
What terminal goal would that solve? What is the ultimate point of running everything? They might have some ideological or religious reason to want that. Maybe some of them are narcissists who want to be worshiped by the "lesser species"? That would be a thing a villain could do. World domination because vanity.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

I'm surprised no-one else has posted this yet.

Regarding playing superintelligent NPCs, the trick I tend to use as a GM is to cheat a little.
I assign them a small set of empty slots for special abilities (spells, gadgets ,whatever is right for the game and setting). These empty slots are used to let them have exactly the right thing prepared, because they planned for exactly this situation to happen. As in "Lucky I had my Bat-Shark-Repellent!"
Now, I only give them a small number of empty slots, because otherwise it would get silly. Generally it would be one or two. And it's still then limited by my ability to come up with a fix on the fly.

As far as their plans and schemes go, I assume that the players plans are part of the the NPC's plans, because the superintelligent NPC has thought of those contingencies. I limit this to the sort of thing that the players do that is relatively routine - if the players come up with an idea that is pleasingly smart and clever, then I don't pretend I already thought of it. They've got to have a break and reward now and then!

[Scalenex]

I think the best suggestion on this thread is that hyper intelligent creatures would be hyper prepared.

At least half of the comments touch on this somehow. I especially like the idea of blank slots to let the GM come up with things on the fly that the character planned "well in advanced."

One of my friends was talking about a lousy rendition of Sherlock Holmes because the writers were average people. "Smart people prepare for contingencies so to average people they look like wizards." Note that friend is a paranoid well prepared individual who is handling the current quarantine like a boss.

[Taln]

The Otherworldly Incantations blog has a very helpful series called Roleplaying Intelligent Creatures in D&D 5e. The P2: Hyper-Intelligence page is especially relevant. (Sorry I can't post links yet.)

[MoiMagnus]

I think the best suggestion on this thread is that hyper intelligent creatures would be hyper prepared.

I'd say that representing hyper intelligence through hyper preparation is a good advice, it would be wrong to consider that hyper intelligent beings would always be prepared. There is a lot of personality involved in whether or not the character actually like to prepare.

Something to not forget is that hyper intelligence doesn't protect you from being a human being.
Plenty of very intelligent peoples are in depression, fully aware of their depression and the irrationality of some of their though, but still unable to break out of the cycle. [For example, a character with hype-intelligence might be able to analyse it's own behaviour far too efficiently, and conclude he has no free will, which is devastating from a mental stability point of view].
Plenty of others suffer from laziness and procrastination. Their judgement might be clouded, and they might also have focus issues preventing them to perceive quickly what's happening around them.
They can also have a lot of difficulties to understand other's feelings and ways of thinking, but I feel like that quirk is kind of overdone in fiction in general.

Just because they have the capabilities of being super-efficient and super-prepared because of their high "D&D Intelligence" doesn't mean they have the "D&D Wisdom" required to make a full use of their capabilities.

As for additional advices for hyper-intelligence, more on the technical side:

1) Cooperation with the DM for rule exceptions. If you have DM approval, it is much easier to come up with "out-of-the-box" solutions. Things like "cancelling a this specific spell mid-casting and continuing like this other spell in order to do X" can really show the "very good at finding hacky solutions" character. But don't forget to find a reason on why this solution is not an always-possible-solution-that-anyone-can-use, because your can easily destroy the coherence of a universe by adding new utilisations of a spell.

2) Thinking faster than acting. If you're combat turns last 10min or more in real life, congratulation, you are RPing super-intelligent beings that are able to coordinate themselves with each others and deeply think about their next move for very complex actions that last for around 6s in universe.

3) Abstract effects. That one is more a DM-advice. If you have a genius tactician against the PC, it might be difficult to actually give a genius tactic to your monsters. What is easier to do is to give them raw +2 bonuses to attack rolls and some other things, and describing the enemies as significantly more efficient than usual.

4) Skill checks. That one is a little sad, but sometimes you don't have better. Similarly to using a charisma-based check to try to convince someone, you can use an intelligence-based check to try to outsmart him.

[Keltest]

Regarding playing superintelligent NPCs, the trick I tend to use as a GM is to cheat a little.

For practical purposes, I think this is probably the solution. As a DM or player, you have to metagame a bit. Maybe the DM lets you have restricted access to the notes to represent your better memory. Maybe a successful roll to know something yields more data. Maybe youre allowed a little bit of retroactive preparedness.

[KineticDiplomat]

Well super smart people are by definition neurologically atypical.

Which means they are generally going to be different. That doesn’t mean crazy, but it does mean they are going to think and act differently than your normal person. From an RP perspective, this might take the form of behavioral or linguistic tics. Perhaps they have a tendency to leave sentences dangling, or don’t feel the need to clarify pronouns as often, or reference parts of the conversation long past because they just naturally assume everyone else has been holding it all in their heads and doesn’t need further explanation.

Perhaps they are very rigid in their thinking - they’ve spent most of their life knowing that they are usually right, even when many people tell them they are wrong, and have a certain amount of stubbornness as a result.

Maybe they are so far above others that they tend to lowest common denominator people when speaking to them, because they’ve long ago learned no one seems to keep up with how they speak naturally and they developed a way to speak to others - which means they might actually appear dumber than they are at first glance.

[russianwizard]

I can't really offer much that hasn't been offered already in terms of theory, but I have a good amount of experience in this—one of my recent characters was an Artificer/Wizard in a Spelljammer campaign who ended her journey at a comfortable INT 30.

The first thing that came to mind when describing her, that I haven't seen mentioned here at all, is "lonely." She had almost no way of relating to the rest of the party since she was so far above them in terms of raw mental capacity. Her closest friend was another wizard, with an Int of 24, and they still had trouble relating. She had been giving flying lessons to the crew, but had to stop because she simply couldn't teach them to do the multivariable calculus that she was using to fly perfectly.
Another issue she had was obsession with preparation. She planned for everything, but worried constantly that something would catch her off guard.
Eventually, she died was erased from time because she messed up a wish, which was a completely fitting end for her considering her 8 Wisdom.

Which means they are generally going to be different. That doesn’t mean crazy, but it does mean they are going to think and act differently than your normal person. From an RP perspective, this might take the form of behavioral or linguistic tics. Perhaps they have a tendency to leave sentences dangling, or don’t feel the need to clarify pronouns as often, or reference parts of the conversation long past because they just naturally assume everyone else has been holding it all in their heads and doesn’t need further explanation.

This is completely accurate. Perhaps, carrying it farther, it's common to pick up conversations from multiple days ago and carry on as though there was never an interruption?
I also like the earlier suggestions of slight metagaming in order to increase the appearance of intelligence.

Instant decisions are also a good way of showing intelligence: to the average person they look hasty, but they simply considered all the options and selected the most logical one with extreme speed and accuracy.

Anyhow:

- Hold multiple beliefs or ideas simultaneously and switch between them freely as the situation demands, without excessive attachment or inertia to one or the other.
- Don't continue in futile courses of action once the writing is on the wall. Be able to completely abandon a plan in an instant and change direction as the situation evolves. Commit decisively when changing.
- Take actions that have multiple simultaneous purposes whenever possible. Think in terms of the obvious response to your next action and try to set things up so that the character's opposition has to do two actions for each one of yours, in order to stay on top of things.

This is all great advice. It's quite hard to put yourself in the shoes of someone who's smarter than you, but the dilation of time especially in combat is quite helpful for maintaining the appearance.

I hope whatever insights I have were helpful. If you want more insight into the bad decisions that evenespecially intelligent characters make, check out our campaign journal for a nicely compacted list of all the stupid things we've ever done: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...8-Jenna-s-List

[Segev]

Intelligence that outstrips wisdom will tend to lead to overly trusting the models they have in their heads and being surprised by reality having unforeseen complications. Very intelligent people will have better models, so this gets obscured a bit, but when they come up with grand schemes, it will show.

[Psyren]

You can have the DM tell your character everything and then you can act like your character figured it all out....but that is not role playing high intelligence.

Why not? This works fine in my opinion; I've played many high-Int characters that do exactly this.

(Not "everything" though, just more than the lower-Int characters get.)

[prabe]

Why not? This works fine in my opinion; I've played many high-Int characters that do exactly this.

(Not "everything" though, just more than the lower-Int characters get.)

It certainly works as part of the metagame approach.

Something I don't think I've seen yet is this: Don't try to "talk smart." Don't try to overinflate your vocabulary or overcomplicate your sentence structure--it'll just sound stupid. Nothing jumps out more than someone trying to talk (or write, in printed fiction) someone smarter than they are. Don't worry about big words--not all smart folks use big words all the time; not all of them even bother with good grammar.

[Zarrgon]

Why not? This works fine in my opinion; I've played many high-Int characters that do exactly this.

It "works" only superficially and the player is not in any way playing or role playing a intelligent character.

A lot of gamers want to play/role play a smart character. After all intelligence is amazing and a person playing a RPG or doing many things in life can dazzle anyone of even slightly less then themselves. A lot of people struggle with a lot of things and are amazed when someone else just effortlessly does it.

They watch the intelligent gamer have their character take some actions, have a plan or three, avoid a trap or obstcale or three, get the treasure and do the adventure goal: all in a fairly easy smooth manner.

And the player really wants to do that. They want that feeling: that the world is easy and with just a little effort they can get what they want, and maybe even be an all star hero.

So what they settle for is: the DM tells them some stuff about the game play. But it does not do all that much. Even telling a player X does not help them much as that is just stand alone information. So they still must use their own mind to understand, processes and use it. Unless the DM also gives them context and all other relevant related information and then tells the player what to do.

In short, the player is NOT in any way playing an intelligent character: at best they are playing a character with inside information.

[Nifft]

It certainly works as part of the metagame approach.

Something I don't think I've seen yet is this: Don't try to "talk smart." Don't try to overinflate your vocabulary or overcomplicate your sentence structure--it'll just sound stupid. Nothing jumps out more than someone trying to talk (or write, in printed fiction) someone smarter than they are. Don't worry about big words--not all smart folks use big words all the time; not all of them even bother with good grammar.

A thing which some smart people do do is talk accurate.

Don't mush words when dealing with important topics (to your character). Think about specific words, which may be large or small, but which exactly describe the important thing.

When it comes to that topic, be sure you exactly include what matters, and exclude what doesn't, with your language.

Be concise and precise.


If you make it look natural and quick, you'll look smart as a player, which is a bonus -- but you don't need to actually do it quick. Take your time outside the session.

[prabe]

A thing which some smart people do do is talk accurate.

Don't mush words when dealing with important topics (to your character). Think about specific words, which may be large or small, but which exactly describe the important thing.

When it comes to that topic, be sure you exactly include what matters, and exclude what doesn't, with your language.

Be concise and precise.


If you make it look natural and quick, you'll look smart as a player, which is a bonus -- but you don't need to actually do it quick. Take your time outside the session.

Or, if your brain works this way, coin new words. Apt neologisms might work to establish at least a certain kind of intelligence.

[Nifft]

Or, if your brain works this way, coin new words. Apt neologisms might work to establish at least a certain kind of intelligence.

That's risky. You might dorfldorp.


In contrast, if you look up better, more specific words between sessions, you may actually learn more words -- which will help you to legitimately be more Intelligent, since D&D Intelligence is about book-learning and Knowledge checks, probably even more than it is about IQ and such.

[prabe]

That's risky. You might dorfldorp.


In contrast, if you look up better, more specific words between sessions, you may actually learn more words -- which will help you to legitimately be more Intelligent, since D&D Intelligence is about book-learning and Knowledge checks, probably even more than it is about IQ and such.

Yeah, you might tongue-tie yourself, if your brain doesn't work this way, but someone asking how to play characters more intelligent than themselves might have enough self-knowledge to know their strengths and weaknesses.

[NichG]

If you specifically want to sound like a theoretical scientist or mathematician, you can coin new words but this should be done as a mechanism of discussion rather than just randomly saying something and assuming people around you know what you think it means. You can use constructions like 'Lets consider things of this type, I'll call them X'. It sounds more like a particular dialect of academic than necessarily indicating intelligence to me though.

[Segev]

It "works" only superficially and the player is not in any way playing or role playing a intelligent character.

A lot of gamers want to play/role play a smart character. After all intelligence is amazing and a person playing a RPG or doing many things in life can dazzle anyone of even slightly less then themselves. A lot of people struggle with a lot of things and are amazed when someone else just effortlessly does it.

They watch the intelligent gamer have their character take some actions, have a plan or three, avoid a trap or obstcale or three, get the treasure and do the adventure goal: all in a fairly easy smooth manner.

And the player really wants to do that. They want that feeling: that the world is easy and with just a little effort they can get what they want, and maybe even be an all star hero.

So what they settle for is: the DM tells them some stuff about the game play. But it does not do all that much. Even telling a player X does not help them much as that is just stand alone information. So they still must use their own mind to understand, processes and use it. Unless the DM also gives them context and all other relevant related information and then tells the player what to do.

In short, the player is NOT in any way playing an intelligent character: at best they are playing a character with inside information.

The key is that sometimes the DM does just give them the implication.

"Okay, you've got 5 clues. Roll Intelligence, Investigation proficiency counts" (for a 5e example). If they roll over the DC - which can be 20 to 25 and still doable if they're really smart - give them the full implication of the clues.

It's no different than telling the player of the high-Athletics character, "Your roll means you can leap the chasm by swinging from the dangling vines like Tarzan." He doesn't have to demonstrate the skill to RP somebody who has it.

[Zarrgon]

The key is that sometimes the DM does just give them the implication.

"Okay, you've got 5 clues. Roll Intelligence, Investigation proficiency counts" (for a 5e example). If they roll over the DC - which can be 20 to 25 and still doable if they're really smart - give them the full implication of the clues.

It's no different than telling the player of the high-Athletics character, "Your roll means you can leap the chasm by swinging from the dangling vines like Tarzan." He doesn't have to demonstrate the skill to RP somebody who has it.

You can't compare physical game actions, even more so very simple and direct actions. Can an athletic character leap or climb or jump over something? Sure that is easy and simple and straightforward. The character does X. And if your character does athletic things, you can happily say your playing an athletic character. When it comes to mental actions like intelligence things are very different and not so simple and direct. Intelligence covers a vast umbrella of many things. The typical to "role play a smart character" is only to just tell the player things they don't know or figure out things for the player that they can't figure out.

For some players that is enough: the athletic character player made a roll and did a thing; the smart character player made a roll and did a thing.

But the two are far from equal. The physical action mostly just moves the character, but has little direct effect on the game. While the mental actions have huge effects. Giving the not so bright player information or letting the character do a mental action, does not effect the player. They are still who they are: you could give them a ton of information, even all the game secrets, and they would still be their normal not so bright self. Intelligence is also using gained information, and the player can't do that...unless the DM helps some more. Though, if you get to the point where just about every minute the DM is "helping the player to play a smart character", then you just cross the over the line of the DM is playing the character.

And on top of this, the not so bright player won't even feel that they are playing a smart character. After all they are just doing what the DM tells them to do. In effect, they are role playing a character that is following orders. And to make it worse, the player is only limited to the intelligence of the DM too. If the DM thought about it, they can tell the player....but only if the DM thought it first.

The worst is when a player with real intelligence plays, and they effortlessly do all sorts of smart things. The not so bright player does not feel so great when they just rolled past something that the intelligent player figured out for Real. The intelligent player makes all sorts of smart decisions and does smart actions, while the not so bright character just sits back and waits for a chance to roll to see if there character can do such an action. And on top of all that is the DM limit. The DM can only tell the not so bright player what they know and have figured out. A smart, clever player will very often think up a twist or surprise that the DM never thought of at all. But the player that is being told ''what their character knows and has figured out" will never be able to do that, as the DM can't tell the player something they never thought of first.


It is rare that a player finds playing a smart character by using the method of the DM tells them things and figures out things for the character has a fun and satisfying time playing the smart character. It might be a bit fun in the short term for the character to know things and figure out things while the player just tags along and takes credit, but it is rare it works out for long.

[Psyren]

It "works" only superficially and the player is not in any way playing or role playing a intelligent character.

You're just restating your assertion and I still disagree. Let's unpack this a bit - how do you define "a smart character?"

For me, a "smart character" is one who has information that those around him don't, especially on a variety of subjects, and especially if those subjects have practical application to the goals of his group. The GM passing notes to the player of the smart PC is therefore the most straightforward way of accomplishing that. And as for roleplaying - notes carry an additional advantage in that it is entirely up to the player whether and how to reveal that information to the rest of the group. He might be arrogant, berating those around him for being too simple to possess insight/knowledge that he portrays as being elementary, like Raistlin. He might eagerly share his knowledge with the group even unprompted, like Hermione. He might be taciturn, speaking only when necessary or when specifically asked, like Batman. There's a lot of ways to roleplay the information once they have it.

And as stated, a GM's note can contain any amount of context or clues necessary to portray different degrees of "smart."

So what they settle for is: the DM tells them some stuff about the game play. But it does not do all that much. Even telling a player X does not help them much as that is just stand alone information. So they still must use their own mind to understand, processes and use it. Unless the DM also gives them context and all other relevant related information and then tells the player what to do.

In short, the player is NOT in any way playing an intelligent character: at best they are playing a character with inside information.

As mentioned above, information is only a piece of the puzzle - the player still controls if they share it, how much of it, when, their attitude, and the delivery method. The source of that information is also mutable - the DM's note can represent a flash of insight, a photographic memory, laborious taking and cross-referencing of documentation, or even be the result of magical or technological aid, like divinations or computations. Any or all of these can be the purview of a smart character.

[Segev]

The worst is when a player with real intelligence plays, and they effortlessly do all sorts of smart things.

The best solution to this kind of thing, I've found, is to work it out at the table that, if your PC wouldn't think of such things, you feed your OOC insights to the player(s) of those who would.

Smarty McSmartypants may be playing Clerical Averagebrain (the Wise), and Norm Alsmarts might be playing Genius O'Wizardly, and Smarty might figure out things effortlessly OOC...but he tells Norm what he's figured out, and lets Norm have Genius O'Wizardly be the PC that put it together, and decides what to share about it, and how to present the information.

[prabe]

The best solution to this kind of thing, I've found, is to work it out at the table that, if your PC wouldn't think of such things, you feed your OOC insights to the player(s) of those who would.

Smarty McSmartypants may be playing Clerical Averagebrain (the Wise), and Norm Alsmarts might be playing Genius O'Wizardly, and Smarty might figure out things effortlessly OOC...but he tells Norm what he's figured out, and lets Norm have Genius O'Wizardly be the PC that put it together, and decides what to share about it, and how to present the information.

A somewhat different approach at least one player at a table I GM uses is not to dump his INT. It saves him the cognitive load of figuring out how much smarter he is than his character. It's kinda my own preference, as well, as a player.