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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 6681566" data-attributes="member: 6775031">If considering factors that the character is unaware of can be considered poor role-playing (which it is, based on this definition), then the player spending resources that the character is unaware of isn't even role-playing. Rather, it's asking the player to multi-task between role-playing and out-of-character stuff - what I would call 'story-telling', since it involves taking control of the story on a higher level. Most of the time you're in-character, thinking and acting as the character, but then sometimes you spend a FATE point (or whatever) to take a director-level action.It's certainly possible to role-play a character authentically (without meta-gaming) in a system where the player also has some out-of-character resources that operate on a narrative-control or director level (which the character is entirely unaware of), but I don't really see the point of including such mechanics in an RPG to begin with. Such an inclusion would be limiting your target audience to those players who enjoy both role-playing and story-telling, at the expense of players who only enjoy role-playing and don't enjoy story-telling. And even among the set of people who enjoy both, there's still a significant sub-set of people who enjoy those activities separately without any desire to mix them.Of course, there's also the possibility that a game might hit onto a superior combination, that is more popular than just the sum of its parts. Some people may hate peanut butter, and many people may greatly enjoy chocolate, but Reese's peanut butter cups might still end up being more popular than just a straight-up plain Hershey's bar. That doesn't mean you'll ever sell a peanut butter cup to someone who hates peanut butter, though.That really seems like a narration issue with the GM, but there's no reason to assume that the character necessarily believes the world to operate differently than it really does (as reflected in the game rules). It's weird if the GM would narrate that situation as a regular attack, when the expected outcome should probably involve death or near-death on the part of the PC; a more reasonable GM would avoid narrating that situation as such, unless the goblin had your character pinned (or whatever) and was in a position to deliver a CDG (or whatever they call it in the game you're playing - most games that use HP have some sort of rule for governing attacks which bypass HP).When the rules of the game don't line up with what's happening in the narrative, it creates a conflict between the player and the character. While the player could try to run the character as unaware of what the game mechanics would say, it can be difficult to keep that up for an extended period of time, and the justifications for taking certain actions can snowball out of control. Without getting too far into House Rule territory, the easiest fix is for the GM to bring the mechanics and narrative back into harmony by providing narration that is more consistent with the game mechanics. For example, instead of running HP as abstract luck that is slowly worn away by near-misses and which is replenished by Cure spells (that have no visible effect, since you weren't actually hit), the GM could describe successful hits as causing minor cuts and abrasions (and knocking the wind out of you), such that the character is aware of how much punishment it's taking and the relative likelihood of staying up much longer (on a scale from "Bring it on!" to "I can't take another hit like that...").Or you could also bring player-knowledge into harmony with character-knowledge by briefly altering the game rules. In a situation where the goblin literally has a knife to your throat, the basic assumptions of combat - the justifications for HP and weapon damage ranges - may no longer hold, and the GM might tell the player that this attack is going to bypass HP.</blockquote>

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