(03-05-2015, 05:22 PM)Edvyn Wrote:(03-05-2015, 10:58 AM)Gaspard and K'nahli Wrote: things (i couldn't get the quotes to work right)
you need only read a good book or watch a good TV series with intelligent characters in it to see the divide between many of the intelligent characters found in fiction and the characters played by roleplayers that im criticizing. crime fiction, in particular british crime fiction (poirot, sherlock holmes, miss marple whatever), typically does a good job of presenting characters that are clever without resorting to them spouting meaningless technobabble or having their intellect shown by simply telling other characters "I AM VERY SMART".
this, in a way, goes back to the show don't tell thing everyone learns (or should have learnt) in english class. i need more than "this character is very smart" for me to accept that they are, in fact, very smart. they should do something within the story that proves it. say something insightful, come up with a master plan, solve a complex puzzle, bring up their wide general knowledge (or specialist knowledge if they're an expert in a particular field) in a situation where that knowledge is relevant, helpful and solves a genuine problem. that is how i can truly tell if a character is intelligent or not.
in cases where a player is really struggling with their character doing intelligent things, i would have to ask a few questions, chief among them:
"is intelligence vital to the character's concept or story, or is it another embellishment intended to make them better in comparison to others?"
if the player's motivation is to beat other characters or to live out their fantasies of being someone who isn't stupid, they'd probably just be better off not making intelligence one of their character's defining traits. if their character concept needs the character to be intelligent but the player just can't play that convincingly for whatever reason, it's up to the player to do some homework, or to negotiate with other players to set up situations where their character's intellect shines. if you can provide insight that could benefit that player's writing (maybe you know about the thing their character's meant to know about), you might be able to give that player some helpful hints. or you can just reprimand them. if a problem can be easily fixed, i see no good reason to accept that problem existing.
I see. Well, I agree with this to a good part, 'however', when it comes to Intelligence, I find the term too subjective; What I mean is this;
Intelligence comes in various shapes and sizes, such as Emotional intelligence, logic, abstract thought, communication, memory, problem solving etc. Intelligence in the end is an umbrella term describing a plethora of things, and  therein creating or upholding a 'standard' isn't as clear-cut and easy as "show me, don't tell." They might already be displaying their particular degree of intelligence, you may just not see it because your personal/subjective interpretation of it doesn't corellate with theirs.
To give an example ; you could have someone who seems like an overall ditz, knows more or less nothing of value in logical processes, someone who could by all means be described as an 'Idiot', and still have him be the perhaps most importantly intelligent figure in the group. What I'm reffering to is emotional intelligence. You can be dumb as bread in the educational sense, yet still exhibit the profound ability to recognize emotion, know how th cheer particular people up, or motivate them into action that someone you would call 'academically intelligent' would never be able to do.
Which brings me to the following term ; "Fach-Idiot" which is german. It roughly translated into Professional/Categorical Idiot/Moron, and is an entirely negative word describing the phenomena where someone has been groomed/trained in a very specific are (Let's take accounting), and all of his theoretical number shifting and 'min/maxing' approach he's been taught and is now trying to bring to a company might be 'intelligent' in a math sense, but utterly moronic considering it will destroy your workers overall morale, create an atmosphere of fear for their jobs, and eventually cost the company more then it stands to gain from this min/max approach because the quality of production and efficiency will go down with the unhappiness of the employers, and therein the so calleds 'Fach-Idiots' intelligent approach to this is anything but as he's actually achieving the opposite to what he wanted to achieve.Â
Another example of the so called fach-idiot would be someone highly knowledgable in one field, but a complete dunce when it comes to 'knowing life'. Such as interpersonal intelligence, societal intelligence and emotional intelligence. Someone who can code you the meanest programs or hack something in twenty seconds flat but can't participate in a social conversation without making it intrinsically awkward through his lack of experience alone. His intelligence is restricted to a specific field, outside of which he's a completel dunce otherwise.
This is more or less my point to Illustrate that you cannot just 'show/define' intelligence in a way where you could simply look at something and call it intelligent. Intelligence is too illusive of a word to hold it to such a standard. And Intelligent doesn't equal successful / productive either. A construction worker who, beyond simple math, who can't really grasp 'writing' or language properly can still be more successful and productive then a highly intelligent person. He may contribute to the creation of several homes, houses and buildings, earn good money and so on wherein the Intelligent person who just graduated from law school might find himself, due to economical circumstances, have no job, or a rather poor paying lawyer gig.Â
Now, who's smarter? the dumb construction worker that earns more, factually speaking contributes/creates more and is able to feed and nurture his entire family plus help a friend here and there, or the Lawyer who, with his vast intelligence doesn't amount to anything because the particular economic field has no 'use' for his brand of intelligence?
Intelligence in my opinion is too illusive of a subject where 'show me, don't tell' doesn't apply. Often times, your character may not have a chance to exhibit / show his particular brand of intelligence, or expose it to the roleplay. Same goes for any other presumed trait to a character such as strength, cunning or street-smarts. If your characters narrative is restricted to social meetings in pubs or bars, you have no viable way of 'showing' your characters traits, and, infact, making it a habit to 'prove traits by showing' can actually be detrimental as you then propel your character into a bit of an attention seeker who is basically going 'Here! look how intelligent I am by stating this!, or doing that!'. Though I will admit that this argument here is pretty 'meta' in nature. I do agree that there's probably players out there that simply spout intelligence as just another notch in their belt, as another 'awesum trait' to make their characters feel special, and that that is what you've more or less have taken as an example to your point;
However 'proving' or denouncing intelligence on a subjective interpretation of what the other person shows through their roleplay doesn't really work, unless they where as specific to say 'My character is a brilliant conversationalist' and then his way of talking / discussing topics is anything but. At most, you dispute/disregard very specific claims to intelligence like that, if what the player is doing stands in stark contrast what he claims their character to be. Otherwise, you can't hold people to a simple standard and go; "He's behaving like a moron in this example and/or i've only been exposed to his stupid tendencies, therefore the character is stupid and not intelligent."