So the PCs come into town, and they need to find this guy, and learn something he knows, and steal this widget that he has hidden away. So they ride up the road and see a town in the distance, and a player starts to talk.
PLAYER: Krog says, "Hey, we no want the bad dude to know we coming. Let's hide all our battle banners and tuck away our magic and hide the elf's ears, so that bad dude won't hear any rumors about us being in town."
Later in town...
PLAYER: Krog says, "I'm not good at at picking up street rumors. Krog is will go down to mercenary hall and hang around there and see if any of his people come in an make recruitment pitches or put up posters advertising for work."
Later in town...
PLAYER: Krog says, "Good job getting hired as a butler, Lefty. How about I give you all my weapons and armor and you hide them in the house? Then I show up and you hire me as a ditch digger, like I used to back on my Dad's farm. That way I can be close by if you get into trouble."
How smart does Krog need to be to come up with potential solutions to problems? Int 10? Int 8? Int 6?
I think you are getting at the heart of the problem, if you aren't already there. To make it more explicit to those that don't get it, let me answer my own question I threw out earlier.
'Planescape: Torment' is an awarding winning and IMO well concieved computer role-playing game that is in many ways very different from the sort of experience that has come to be known as an 'RPG' on computers. For one thing, it attempts to be mostly about character development and story telling rather than simply combat. It doesn't capture the PnP experience or even try to, but it does do something very interesting instead. In 'Planescape:Torment', if you want to make a powerful fighter you dump stat strength, dexterity and constitution and instead pump wisdom, intelligence, and charisma.
Why do something so counterintuitive?
The answer is that the computer game actually attempts to model your character as having the wisdom, intelligence, and charima you assign to the character. If you choose a character with low wisdom, intelligence, and charisma it severely limits your ability to interact with the game world. Even if you as the player know what to do or say, if your character has a low enough int, wis, or charisma, the option to do or say those things won't be available. You will instead find a list of less appealing, less insightful, more insulting options to choose from, and choosing these options results in greater hazards and difficulties and less rewards for the character. The dialogue and puzzle solving options opened up by having a smarter, more observant, more charismatic character more than makes up for having a less strong, less intelligent, and less charismatic character so that in the end, the strongest possible character is one that starts the game with high wisdom and charisma. Wisdom is by far the most important stat in the game, even though you can't play as a cleric.
It would be possible to run a PnP game like this. Instead of having a player say something in character, the player simply states what he intends to do and makes a skill check. If the skill check fails, then the DM would provide to the player what the player says (or at least, what the outcome was) in the same way that the computer game provided to the player what he could say. But, just as it is questionable that 'role playing' on the computer is really role-playing, it's equally questionable whether any role-playing would actually be going on by anyone other than the DM in such a game.
If we resolved social and mental challenges in this entirely mechanistic way, then social and mental skills would be just like physical skills. Just because you were charismatic wouldn't make your character charismatic, any more than just being a good jumper would make your character a good jumper. However, if we did use such a highly mechanistic approach, the freedom of the player would be greatly constrained and much of the fun of play - the actual role-play - would disappear.
Should the DM adjust odds of success on these problem-solving episodes based on Krog's Intelligence score?
To some extent. However, the more Krog's player plays out the scenes, the less oppurtunity the DM as to use the dice to determine the outcome. Krog might theoretically be bad at information gathering, but Krog's player might be extremely good at it - to the point that the DM would have to make the game world follow the dice rather than any logically consistant and believable structure if he wanted to restrain Krog.
I should note that, lame as the attempt may be at some level, the way you animated Krog suggests Krog's limited intelligence and charisma in at least some fashion. There is therefore I think an honest attempt to play the character, in as much as - whether I as the DM throw the dice or not - if NPC's react to Krog in a negative fashion - condescendingly, ignoring him, insulting him - such actions appear to be the logical result of Krog's behavior and personality, and not merely the arbitrary results of a die throw. That isn't to say that Krog should automatically fail, but it does mean that if he does fail, the stories 'reader' will understand why without being informed what the die roll was.
The player of Krog, wanting to enter the town in a stealthy fashion, has an almost limited number of actions he can take to suggest or implement this course of action while still being in character. In the case of hiding the parties standard, Krog's player could do any of the following:
1) Hide or attack the party standard for some other stated reason than the player's real motivation. That is, Krog's motivation doesn't have to be the same as the player motivation. Krog might knock over the party banner, and put up an old rag or banner the party found earlier and say, "Me never like this ugly thing. Me much better like this Dragon banner. It more stylish and green suits Krog's good looks better."
2) Use irony or some other technique to call attention to the problem from someone else in the party. As they are approaching the town, Krog goes over and starts waving the banner around, "Here comes the League of the Lantern. Bad guys better watch out. Krog is here! We're heroes. We're dangerous. And we're coming to get you, bad man."
3) Point out the problem or idea without elaborating the plan: "Krog puts sack over head so big bad guy won't see him coming. Krog scared of bad guys spells, but if Krog sneak up and get ahold of little weasel, heh heh heh."
And hopefully, the rest of the party can play well off your lead instead of reacting to you out of character.
And on and on and on. I'm sure there are dozens of things you might do here to help the party without acting like you were the party mastermind, and while playing up your character's flaw in a relevant and interesting way.
...)
