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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9004961" data-attributes="member: 6790260">By exploiting the key thing they have, which the character does not have: Unlimited time. Or nearly so.Perhaps. Perhaps it was just that the genre had been around longer--after all, she wrote The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1916, while Doyle wrote A Study in Scarlet in 1887. A lot can happen in three decades. Doyle wasn't a total pioneer, but he was one of the early highly successful mystery authors in English.I think that "cheating" in this way--working backwards from a destination to the start--is acceptable if used very sparingly, but its use should be avoided if at all possible. Instead, exploit the fact that you have months or even years to think through things that, within the narrative of the story, may only get days or even hours of thought. A large portion of "intelligence" is insight, and it's a lot easier to have insight on something when you've spent a thousand hours studying it instead of one hour.There are other things you can do though:1. Recruit outside help. Two brains are in fact smarter together than each individually, because what is familiar or gets unnoticed by one may be caught by the other. I confer with other people whose judgment, taste, and discretion I trust.2. Consult the great masters. Sun Tzu wrote a wonderful book about strategy. It's celebrated by military academies today, two millennia later, for very good reason. Mysteries, historical fiction, actual histories talking about great military commanders or diplomats or statesmen, etc. Long as you vet before you read, you really can't go wrong by reading more books.3. Listen to your players. Because the only other people who can personally comment on your game are your players--and sometimes, their ideas are fiendishly clever.4. Keep notes, especially ones that help you learn from your mistakes. Because portraying an intelligent person is often a matter of showing them making correct decisions without making any mistakes first (or correcting their mistakes very rapidly.)So, yeah. TL;DR: Mimic "fast processor" by using "slow processor for longer time." Mimic "perceptive and thorough" by using "lots of outside help." Mimic "know/remember tons of stuff" by "do research and read more." Mimic "fiendish cleverness" by using "steal ideas from your players." Mimic "make few mistakes, and correct those mistakes quickly" by using "make lots of mistakes, but document them so they don't happen again."Most of the difference between a highly intelligent person and a typical person is just speed, memory capacity, and forethought. The only parts of intelligence you cannot mimic like this are creativity and (to use a TVTropes term) "Xanatos Speed Chess," where you dynamically modify The Plan proverbially "on camera." Creativity, intuition, and flexibility are just things you have to learn, or accept that you can't really do those parts, so you probably want to run intelligent villains who don't have those traits (perhaps as a significant weakness!)</blockquote>

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