| From: | shadowrn@*********.com (Hahns Shin) |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Intelligence (was Re: Combat Pool changes) |
| Date: | Wed May 9 13:45:01 2001 |
those links
> > > that foster genius due to no education and uncaring parents so
he has a
> > > low INT.
> >
> > I'd argue that bad upbringing and less chances do not a lower
> > Intelligence make. INT is largely mental quickness. But if you
want to
> > give him a low INT, that's fine.
>
> That's one of the problems with game systems (like Shadowrun) that
do not
> separate between intelligence and education. By all accounts, for
example,
> Marilyn Monroe was extremely intelligent, but almost completely
uneducated.
> (IMO, this duality is one of the main reasons that she is a legend,
but I
> digress)
I'll have to disagree (not about Marilyn Monroe, but about
intelligence/education). I think Shadowrun does a decent job of
separating the two: Intelligence is the attribute, Education is
Knowledge and Active skills. The more education you have (whether from
the streets or formal education), the more skill points you can
allocate.
True, starting Knowledge skills are based on Intelligence, but you can
always put some skill points into upping your Knowledge. Also, an
educated person would probably pick Knowledge skills that are more
mainstream, such as Quantum Physics or Medicine, whereas a less
educated person would have Street Gangs or Favorite Trid Trivia (I've
always argued that if the intellectual currency depended on useless TV
trivia, a lot of my friends would be gods in the field). And just
because you have more formal education doesn't mean that you have more
natural intelligence/talent. I have a friend who is very focused in
Medicine, but doesn't have much of an experience outside
Biology/Biochem and Med School (average Intelligence, so he had to
focus his intellectual endeavors to succeed... thus spending the extra
point premium for every point above 3 in his knowledge skills). I have
another friend who practically absorbs knowledge by just sitting
around (this guy is a menace in Trivial Pursuit), but his highest
education is a high school degree (to quash any argument about social
status, the guy also runs his own company and makes about 100k a
year). In any case, there are also the Education edges that make
defaulting to Intelligence easier (the more your mind is stimulated,
the more you know).
Another problem is the fact that education is exceedingly
time-limited. Real world example: My parents have a very difficult
time with computers and PDAs. I take it for granted that I can program
in C++, send e-mail on various different clients, work with Photoshop,
bring up med info on my Palm IIIx (almost a necessity now, wasn't that
way 5 years ago. And for any PocketPC pundits, there isn't much med
software for the PocketPC... shiny colors and MP3s don't help
patients), etc. How do you quantify that? SOTA? Is a Computer 1 skill
for my parents the same as a Computer 1 skill for, say, my brother
(who can IM, browse the web, and send e-mail, maybe fool around with a
DOS prompt, but that's about it)? Or another example, engineers (this
is from one of my friends who is an engineer) typically have a short
workspan before they are "promoted" to team manager (i.e. they no
longer actually do the cutting edge work). Does this mean that the
newly promoted manager has a lower technical skill level or that he
wasn't keeping up with the SOTA? I don't know, but I'm just bringing
up the topic.
The main problem with calculating intelligence as an attribute in RPGs
is that we have a hard time assessing intelligence IRL. There are just
too many variables involved: emotional stability, attention span,
whether or not the person wears glasses, etc. Test scores merely prove
that the person is good at taking that kind of test (the main
argument, which is somewhat unfounded, against the SATs). Logic has
very little to do with learning the nuances of language and music
(Shakespeare and Mozart are considered by most to be geniuses, but I
don't think they'd do well on standardized exams. Nor did Mozart have
a good upbringing, by all accounts). To even abstract such a concept
as intelligence would be doing the human mind an injustice. However,
how else could we do it in RPGs? There has to be a raw number for game
mechanics. The best you can do is to take the number as one aspect,
and roleplay the rest.
> Traveller (the original) did a good job of handling this, by making
it an
> attribute that worked slightly different than the others
(particularly at
> character creation). It has always seemed to me that education
should be
> treated as sort of half-attribute, half-skill.
Ah, Traveller. The only game where you can die in character creation
(okay, not really, but we always cracked that joke about the
"lifeplan" system they had).
Hahns Shin, MS I
Budding cybersurgeon
...trying to spend good karma to increase his Medicine 3 knowledge
skill...
