aia_2
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You got my point! ...and thanks for explaining in another interesting way!Like I said, this does not work. When you tell the average player additional information......they will act like a average player. They can't "really" act smarter then they are: they can only be who they are. You can give a player piles of information, but it is what they DO with the information that is important.
Example: the group wants to slay a green dragon, but finds the lair well protected. The average player sits in a slump and rolls and asks the DM "can my smart character think of something". So the DM reminds the player about the bit of lore learned in the last game: "this dragon likes good music and has been know to attend private music shows in deep wooded glades to listen to music." The average player just ignores this lore, yet again "darn, my super smart character can't think of anything". So the DM could take the second step of telling the average player that their smart character thinks setting up a music glade ambush is a great idea. The average player might agree, but if they do, this is now the DMs railroad: The players are just doing what the DM told them to do. Worse the average player will stumble and bumble around all average like in setting up the ambush in the most obvious and clumsiness way possible....and it won't work. The ONLY way it could work is if the DM had the smart character tell the player HOW to set up the ambush step by step and tell them what to do and what not to do. Setting up an ambush for a dragon is hard work, and you need to know what your doing.....and few average players are up to that. And, as the music ambush is not the players idea, you will likely get backlash as they don't want to do it as it's too hard and makes them think about things too much and it needs too much detail and so on. If your lucky, in a fun twist the players will complain about agency of the railroad they agreed to do.
I wonder what the other ways are?
Let me add my 2 cents and rephrase my initial question: my concern is referred to any attribute which is used in the role-play (namely the role-play, not the fact of playing at an RPG): you are simulating the psychics features of a character (useless to say,not the physical ones). This means that, in a D&D game, everything tied to INT, WIS and (even) CHA could have a potential inconsistency between the real stats of the player and the ones of the character. There are basically 3 situations in this scenario:
1. the player's stat is higher than the PC's one: in this case, the role-play action of the player should constantly underperform in order to reach the lower level of the PC...it is possible but it is difficult
2. player's and PC's stats are close: the best case as the player can behave without constraints on this side... his role-play can be naturally carried out with no or little changes
3. the player's stat is lower than the PC's one: this is the most tricky situation... besides any concerns in trying to explain to you not-so-brilliant friend playing with you that having a nobel-prize PC is not exactly fitting his capabilities, it is nearly impossible to expect a correct role-play... the DM should constantly try to "patch" this situation as it could not be even seized by the player! ...and i am not inventing a weird story... this happened to someone in my party! A nightmare! In this case, bloodtide refers with railroading to what i mean with "patch", but it is basically the same thing.