I just run them like intelligent real world people, maybe a bit moreso. So they think fast, draw connections, and can often use sheer brain power to be good at whatever they turn their minds to. They won't be omniscient or foresee all eventualties. IF it's an area they have turned their mind to they may anticipate events others do not. A military genius may be like Hannibal, but actually pulling off Hannibal type feats requires charisma as well as intelligence.

Many supergeniuses are aliens though and may have trouble understanding human thought processes.

Edit: Working in academia, the main difference I see between high-INT academics and lower-INT bureaucrats is that the bureaucrats rely on defined processes to function, whereas the academics can use sheer INT to make stuff work. Academics tend to do badly with the kind of rules-bound systems the bureaucrats impose on us, whereas we can solve problems ad hoc if we are not restricted.

Obviously, for a GM, there's all kinds of cheats you can do, regardless of system.  When I'm playing an NPC supergenius, I just cheat.

On the other hand, for players it's a lot more complicated.  In some systems, there's solutions based on the skills that the genius has and their ability scores reflecting their genius. In a lot, though, it really depends on just roleplaying the character as tremendously clever. That's hard; unless the player themselves are geniuses. And that adds a whole other problem: in my experience a disproportionate number of nerds (compared to average people of the population) just assume they're geniuses when they really aren't.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1032386in my experience a disproportionate number of nerds (compared to average people of the population) just assume they're geniuses when they really aren't.

Because they're typically a lot closer than the average member of the population is. RPGers are not a typical cross section of the population.

Quote from: S'mon;1032109I just run them like intelligent real world people, maybe a bit moreso. So they think fast, draw connections, and can often use sheer brain power to be good at whatever they turn their minds to. They won't be omniscient or foresee all eventualties. IF it's an area they have turned their mind to they may anticipate events others do not. A military genius may be like Hannibal, but actually pulling off Hannibal type feats requires charisma as well as intelligence.

Many supergeniuses are aliens though and may have trouble understanding human thought processes.

Edit: Working in academia, the main difference I see between high-INT academics and lower-INT bureaucrats is that the bureaucrats rely on defined processes to function, whereas the academics can use sheer INT to make stuff work. Academics tend to do badly with the kind of rules-bound systems the bureaucrats impose on us, whereas we can solve problems ad hoc if we are not restricted.

Hannibal, Alexander, Genghis... all these dudes were geniuses. But all three of them were HORRIBLE people otherwise, especially Genghis who could have been argued to have been an extremely high-functioning psychopath. Hell, Alexander (much like Genghis who would follow) himself had a pretty fucked-up childhood, no wonder he tried to conquer half the godamm known world at the time!

A lot of academics I've met aren't particularly intelligent -- they're just very knowledgeable and well-educated. When people refer to "Intelligence" in the sense of an omniscience spectrum (which is 9/10 the case), what they're really trying to get at is savvy. Savvy people are able to combine common sense (which many people do lack) with a dangerous intellect and innate understanding of the world.

This particular post of yours, it's funny actually, makes me think of individuals like Jordan Peterson. Taking him as an example, great academic but he has said some very, very stupid shit and has shown intellectual weakness in his approach to really sensitive and critical issues. He did an interview with another academic who has done -- and continues to do -- deep research into human intelligence. Now, where this doctor comes from a position of "how can we boost intelligence across the whole of the human race", Peterson's approach hews much closer to "how can we distinguish and segregate people of different intelligence thresholds".

You see this a lot with certain kinds of people -- usually White and middle-class or above but not always -- and unfortunately, they tend to be the ones in influential or powerful positions because they actually reinforce the "the old ways" and the status quo in their own way. Thomas Sowell, himself as widely regarded academic, said some crap about success in the African-American community but compared White european immigrants to Black people who were historically enslaved in the U.S. An academic in a Prager U vid I saw recently used this as the basis to say essentially "well, so what, it's kinda the same origin, right? Let's just focus what's going on right now, ignore historical reality" (problem was that guy came off like a coon but that's another topic in and of itself...). These are the same kind of streams of thought that people use to justify IQ as "intelligence".

Using Peterson again as an example: he stated he had an IQ of, like, 160 or somethin'. IQ has a deep-rooted origin in eugenics, phrenology and other racist, vile crap. When talking to that same doctor above, he queried further about something the doctor brought up called "g factor". This is "general intelligence", the actual base intelligence people have to able to pattern-search, compute and comprehend shit. IQ, in comparison, tests for education. Now, although Peterson initially was interested in this research, you could see he very quickly did not like where it was headed and repeatedly tried to segue into other areas of the conversation. g factor is scary because its nature's way of balancing 'dem real-life INT scores . He did a lecture where he showed some examples of g factor testing which was abstract pattern-searching and suprisingly (though not to me), most of the audience who were all university students (again, mostly White and Asian), had trouble quickly identifying by instinct how to match the patterns to their complete state in the immediate future -- Peterson himself admitted it took him longer than he would like to do it. Our ability as a species to handle literacy and mathematics is born directly out of this near-primal ability. And the innate confidence of intellect and the natural tendencies to be looking for those patterns before you're even prompted are signs of true intelligence.

I've known and been friends with several savvy people in the short time I've been alive. Thing is, these people are scary bright. I know that, they know that. Each of us have chips on our shoulders because of the cards life dealt us early (abuse, poverty, isolation, neglect, the list goes on -- let's just say take your pick). And what's scary to me isn't that they are bright: it was that realization that we saw the same shit. We move differently.

(None of this is to disparage Peterson, his lectures are great background listening but he's getting hit with that same "genius worship" which blinds people to who he is rather than what he says. Same with Alexander, I think he is an awesome historical and one of proudest-born but he was not somebody I would recommend most people interact with when you actually understand how he became who he was)

Quote from: RPGPundit;1032386Obviously, for a GM, there's all kinds of cheats you can do, regardless of system.  When I'm playing an NPC supergenius, I just cheat.

On the other hand, for players it's a lot more complicated.  In some systems, there's solutions based on the skills that the genius has and their ability scores reflecting their genius. In a lot, though, it really depends on just roleplaying the character as tremendously clever. That's hard; unless the player themselves are geniuses. And that adds a whole other problem: in my experience a disproportionate number of nerds (compared to average people of the population) just assume they're geniuses when they really aren't.

One of the key things people never seem to realize is that in order to be a genius, you have to be a horrible person in other regards. RPGs are very good at representing this spectrum right at the fundamental level, the vintage 3d6 chargen or classic point-buy are particularly apt. You can't have it all -- something will give. Something has to give.

Einstein was a genius when it came to physics but he was a fucking weirdo outside of that. The Sherlock example given above (Cumberbatch's portrays him as a sociopath) is great too. And another that always catches people off-guard when mentioned is El Chapo -- that dude is dangerously intelligent but he is a fucking psychopath.

A potentially more relatable example: that guy on your team who's really good at code but gets caught up in chasing technical side of things and is socially introvert and a bit awkward. That's real-life sheet balancing in check. So I use that as a basis. I don't cheat, I just place myself in that person's mindspace for that type of character, figure what makes em' tick and shit.

But that is the same reason I've come into conflict with other players as a player when I was first starting out: I could call shit before it happened and made moves in-game that long-term secured my party's interests but essentially made it so I was "always in the limelight". For instance, in a Vampire game I was like "lemme chat up the Sheriff, get on her good side -- and err, lemme invest money in this goth nightclub and get a Haven sorted in its basement". Worked out because I used that good favor to smooth over a fuck-up on the other players' part that I knew the GM would pull some shit over (but I guess they felt it invalidated their agency because whatever they did, I was already makin' moves). Did something similar in a Black Crusade game that stopped my Apostate from gettin' his head squashed by a chaos marine (but where two other players got killed 'cause they, as the GM put it, "got in his way"), ended up getting some phat loot out of it from the GM for roleplaying well.

Hah hah, our current Vamp game at the club is just FILLED with Daeva right now. Although when I joked that my first ever VTR char was a Daeva and of course I must have embraced all the players there, they all got a bit skittish real-quick, hah hah hah hah. Maybe it was a look in my eyes or something...?

You do realise PragerU is just a video blog and has nothing to do with academia?

I have been reading Jordan Peterson's book - he is definitely not a super genius! But in dnd terms he has high WIS and CHA as well as very high INT.

A good example of a genius level public intellectual I think is Steven Pinker. One striking feature of his writing is how he anticipates and refutes so many of the objections to his work. I see fairly bright people try to argue against Pinker using arguments he has refuted in the very work they are criticising! I actually disagree strongly with Pinker on a couple points but I can see extremely high INT at work.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1032386And that adds a whole other problem: in my experience a disproportionate number of nerds (compared to average people of the population) just assume they're geniuses when they really aren't.

Quote from: S'mon;1032403Because they're typically a lot closer than the average member of the population is. RPGers are not a typical cross section of the population.

Caveat: obviously my whole 'I'm not special, you're not special (well, you might be in the outside world, but that's not our business unless you bring it to the forums)' schtick makes me a bit biased.
You see, I have seen so many people on forums state that, but I've never seen much evidence to that effect. And other than a bit of selection bias (of the 'smart people would be slightly more likely to find this activity/subculture fun' variety), there doesn't seem to be much mechanism to create that situation. Nerd-dom is an opt-in category. There is no entrance exam, education requirement, or challenging workload. There's no (effective) gatekeeping. There's nothing stopping a less than smart person from coming to like (the amazingly broad category which is) nerd things, declaring themselves a nerd, and participating publically enough that others can notice them within their personal sample of known nerds. Why would we assume then that nerds are closer to genius than the average member of the population, except as a way to make ourselves feel good about the group we threw our lot in with?

Quote from: S'mon;1032412You do realise PragerU is just a video blog and has nothing to do with academia?

It's not me you need to tell that to: it's the thousands of undergrads every year and general internet peepz that actually believe the crap that comes out of that platform and think it's legit.

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1032450It's not me you need to tell that to: it's the thousands of undergrads every year and general internet peepz that actually believe the crap that comes out of that platform and think it's legit.

It's not aimed at undergrads, it's aimed at naive Heartland Americans. They put an 'academic' patina on stuff aimed at people like the nice young lady at a store in middle Tennessee who complimented me on my English language ability and asked me if many other people in Britain spoke English too.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1032417Why would we assume then that nerds are closer to genius than the average member of the population, except as a way to make ourselves feel good about the group we threw our lot in with?

I'm not 'assuming'. I've met hundreds of D&D players over the years. I was also in the army reserve a couple years. They are very different sorts of people, and yes the D&D players are mostly smarter. Not vastly, maybe 2/3 to 1 standard deviation, but certainly enough to notice.

I think the only way you could genuinely believe RPGers were not higher INT on average was if you rarely met people of average INT. Or you hadn't met many D&D players.

Edit: The big gatekeeping on modern RPGs is the maths and literacy skills required. Plus now the existence of video games as a rival. I do recall at boarding school in the '80s when we were bored out of our minds and there were few entertainment alternatives, some shy/introverted boys of low as well as high intelligence loved D&D.

Quote from: S'mon;1032501It's not aimed at undergrads, it's aimed at naive Heartland Americans. They put an 'academic' patina on stuff aimed at people like the nice young lady at a store in middle Tennessee who complimented me on my English language ability and asked me if many other people in Britain spoke English too.

It is aimed at undergrads. Now you're being facetious, you must be, there's no other way. There's a lot of political realism theory 101 in those vids, that's first-year crap and it's like "hey, I'm an adult too!" Warheads or Butterfingers for those same college kids 'outta the bible belt and middle america.

That's hilarious, by the way. I'm going to assume you're not obviously White? Otherwise, that's even more funny.

Quote from: S'mon;1032506I'm not 'assuming'. I've met hundreds of D&D players over the years. I was also in the army reserve a couple years. They are very different sorts of people, and yes the D&D players are mostly smarter. Not vastly, maybe 2/3 to 1 standard deviation, but certainly enough to notice.

I think the only way you could genuinely believe RPGers were not higher INT on average was if you rarely met people of average INT. Or you hadn't met many D&D players.

Edit: The big gatekeeping on modern RPGs is the maths and literacy skills required. Plus now the existence of video games as a rival. I do recall at boarding school in the '80s when we were bored out of our minds and there were few entertainment alternatives, some shy/introverted boys of low as well as high intelligence loved D&D.

That's entirely possible. And in fact, 'closer [to genius] than the average member of the population is' might actually fit my experience. My experience is much more 'white male Americans who come from upper-middle class backgrounds, working in IT/Health Care/Academia, earn ~$100k-200k (or a little more if 40 y.o.+), think very highly of themselves, and are under the completely unsupported notion that they are geniuses.' I swear, 90% think that they are in the top 10%. We seem to not have landed on whether we are talking nerds or D&D players or RPGers, but splitting the difference, there are a lot of my anecdotal group overlap with those categories. I strongly suspect that being 'slightly smart' lines up with gaming, while those below average maybe don't care to play, and those well above average are off doing important things or something.

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1032518That's hilarious, by the way. I'm going to assume you're not obviously White? Otherwise, that's even more funny.

I am obviously white (I was getting fitted for my wedding suit at a local haberdashers AIR) - I told her that some of us in Scotland & Wales spoke Gaelic, but generally, yes, we did speak English in Britain.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1032522My experience is much more 'white male Americans who come from upper-middle class backgrounds, working in IT/Health Care/Academia, earn ~$100k-200k (or a little more if 40 y.o.+), think very highly of themselves, and are under the completely unsupported notion that they are geniuses.'

They may not be geniuses, but they are likely to be in the top 5-10% of the population. I suspect an academic on $200K is likely in top 0.5% and particularly well-adjusted, to boot.

Edit: You may be right that very intelligent people may be less likely to play RPGs, contra Big Bang Theory. I think it most likely that likelihood of RPG playing correlates strongly with IQ 110+, but that there is negative correlation between RPG playing and earnings when you control for IQ; ie D&D appeals to smart slackers.

For high Int PCs, allow Int checks to get clues

For genius level baddies, they deduce things normally impossible to deduce (eg sherlock holmes movie level) and/or have contingencies in place a normal baddie would not bother with (ad-libbed on the spot by the GM in the heat of the moment, eg player fireballs the Int 19 mindflayer, instead of taking normal damage the GM decides on the spot that the mindflayer would have anticipated this and drank a potion of fire resistance enroute to fight the party - either because the mindflayer has reports of the party using fire elsewhere and/or as a common spell attack in a high magic world, the mindflayer comes prepared).