Sep 17 2008
A question of intelligence
OK, for those of you who have played a role playing game where there’s an incremental or numerical value representing intelligence you’ll follow this short discourse quite easily. For those who haven’t, well go out and pick up a game of Dungeons and Dragons.
How many times have you ever come up with this great idea or retort or question and then paused as you glanced at your character sheet…”Oh whoa…my intelligence score is pretty damned low. I wouldn’t think of that.” and begrudgingly dropped the idea? I certainly know that I have. Which brings into question the idea of a numerical score for intelligence.
Why is there one in the first place? I’ve recently been toying with the idea of getting an old school game back together and in preparation I’ve been perusing a bunch of grognardian blogs. One of the tenets of old school seems to be to challenge the player and not the character. In essence it’s saying that there’s not a whole lot of weight placed upon attribute scores. I like that idea a lot. And I suppose it’s the way we played when we were young. Way before skills and feats… Way before proficiencies and prestige classes. Yeah, long ago.
Anyway, I’m sitting here nodding to myself thinking “Those were great times.”, when I stop short, sit up and think, “Wait a minute. We certainly didn’t hesitate in leveraging a high score when it suited us.”. In other words, have you ever said to the game master, “But Bofo the mage has an 18 in intelligence… he would of course be able to figure out EXACTLY where to place that fireball for maximum effect without liquifying his compatriots.”? I think we’ve all been there.
So, the question remains, does it even make sense to have numerical representations of non-physical attributes? There are all sorts of kinds of intelligence… Book Smarts, Street Smarts, Cunning, Logic, etc. How does a number represent that? I might posit that a game like Dungeons and Dragons could conceivably be played without scores for intelligence and wisdom. You could get around things like spells known / learned via level.
Charisma lies in that middle ground. I would say that the value now strictly represents physical attributes. Pure looks.
I dunno, does anyone think that something like this might work? I do. But hey, I’m kinda kooky that way. 