Gamers often discuss the idea of "player skill" vs "character skill" in games. That is: my wizard can speak Elvish--that's character skill--but my wizard knowing that a slow, tough monster with no distance attacks is best attacked with distance attacks is player skill. I know that so my wizard knows it.
In most games I like, what my wizard does is the result of both.
Some people don't understand how the Intelligence stat works in games where player skill is an element (since an intelligent player can add so much to the character's vocabulary of ideas) and I thought of this the other day:
A high-intelligence PC functions like a modern person who has a phone with internet and remembers to use it.
Do I know who Jonathan Livingston Seagal is? I do not, really. I remember the name, that's all. In fact I got his name wrong. But if I had a higher Int I might not have. But I have the internet so I can look him up and then know. A high Int PC would have a better chance of already knowing.
A high Int PC has facts at their disposal.
As we know: not everyone who has the internet and uses it is actually smart. For example, just because they can all google what a logical fallacy is doesn't mean that they'll avoid using them in their own thinking. The person "playing" these people isn't smart, even though they have the information.
A high-Int PC played by an average-Int player player is like most people on the internet: lots of access to facts, very little ability to use them to figure things out.
An average-Int character played by a high-Int player is like a clever person on an alien planet--they can figure stuff out, but only if they get help with what everything they're looking at is, does, or why they'd want to do it.
So there you go.
