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We posted a new updated rulebook yesterday, and I'm quite happy with it. After six months of live play, I think we're comprehending how this new style of game behaves. As a designer, I can't always know what will happen even after large-scale playtests. But people online have, by and large, been forthcoming with their play experiences, suggestions, and criticisms, and we have tried to learn from all of that.
Every change in this new rulebook is a little one, but it matters. Here's a summary of the most important ones:
- page 2: The Golden Rule now covers impossible situations.
- page 9: The Reset Your Hand rule is now really different.
- page 9: Cards are played from your hand unless otherwise specified; the display action is also modified a bit.
- page 9: Decks, hands, and stacks retain their permanence even when emptied.
- page 10: Evading now specifically says it resolves the encounter, and the effects after the encounter are now tightened up.
- pages 10-11: Attempting a Check was reorganized and future-proofed.
- page 11: Traits now specifically can determine a type of check, as in a Ranged combat check.
- page 12: It's now clearer that when you're dealt Fire damage, cards that reduce only Combat damage don't help you.
- page 12: We added the new concept of a "copy" of a card, which ceases to exist after you deal with it.
- page 12: Summoned cards are not part of location decks.
- page 13: Closing requirements explicitly describe their checks to close, and allow for multiple villains in a deck.
- page 13: We discuss what happens when a deck doesn't have enough cards for you to do whatever you're told.
- page 13: Dying now happens when you remove cards you don't have.
- page 14: We state that story cards have powers.
- page 16: The Blessings description got a reboot.
- page 17: Banes with no checks to defeat can't be defeated.
- page 18: We say that you must repeat a scenario if you fail before you can move on, and allow for different victory conditions.
- page 20: The example now is clearer when recharge happens and when the henchman is declared defeated.
- page 22: We rewrote some of the things to keep in mind, and added one.
- page 24: Some cleanup here due to other changes.
Now why did I list those? Mostly because I want you to know that every single one of those changes happened because someone on the forums needed help understanding our intent. I've read every thread on the Paizo, BoardGameGeek, and Reddit forums, which amounts to over 3,000 threads. The rulebook is different because of that. Nearly every change was because of a need to cover specific situations that thousands of cards' interactions create. So for example, when people couldn't parse what we meant by "a check to close a location," we amended the rulebook to define it.
This is something I'm proud of, not embarrassed by. Writing a game precisely is a challenging endeavor, and while a few people will pillory me for not being perfect, most everyone else seems to appreciate when we try to clarify things. Having a thriving community means having a thriving game; when thousands of people do something, some of them will have difficulty, and it's our responsibility to help them. We can't do it alone, and I'm thrilled we don't have to. Because there are a lot more cards coming, and that may lead to more clarifications as people discover how they work. I'm good with that, and I welcome people's contributions in making the game ever more enjoyable. Thanks for reading, and for playing our game.
Mike
Mike and PACG Design Team: Thanks for discussing PACG with us on thees forums and helping us understand. And thank you for taking steps to make things easier to understand for us and new players. I think is great that you are willing to listen to what gives us problems and make changes to help clear those things up for us. So thanks.
I appreciate the update; it was nice to see the new reset section and other updates moved into the rules.
- page 10: Evading now specifically says it resolves the encounter, and the effects after the encounter are now tightened up.
- pages 10-11: Attempting a Check was reorganized and future-proofed.
Now that non-bane cards with check to acquire 'None' are specifically covered in 'Attempt the Check', it seems even easier to believe that Blessing of the Gods can be evaded by Merisiel, which is supposed to be impossible.
My request for evade clarifications was probably too late: http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2qkn0&page=2?FAQ-request-Anything-were-miss ing#62
Chief Technical Officer
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"Evaded" does not mean "did not encounter." Evading is very explicitly part of encountering. I assume everybody agrees that you're encountering the card you're encountering, so I'm moving on.
"When you encounter" a thing means "when you encounter" that thing. Lots of cards use "when X, do Y." When do you do Y? When X happens.
Look into your heart—you know it to be true, but you're trying to logic yourself out of it!
But if you insist on having explicit logic, it's there for you. "When you encounter a card" is the exact same phrase that's used in the rulebook, at the very first sentence of Encountering a Card: "When you encounter a card, you—and only you—can go through the following steps." That should leave no doubt that "when you encounter a card" is the very moment when you encounter that card.
So if the steps of encountering a card trigger that time—and they very clearly absolutely do—then so can other things. Only in this case, the card is telling you to do a different thing at that time. You don't get to evade, because you're not at that step yet... and because the card will be going into your hand right away, you never will be at that step.
Don't forget the first real sentence under Things to Keep in Mind, in Cards Do What They Say: "Read any card as it is encountered or played, and do whatever it says as soon as it makes sense to do so."
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Look into your heart—you know it to be true, but you're trying to logic yourself out of it!
Maybe he'll be convinced if this were sung by Bryan Adams, and a mulleted Robin Hood and Maid Marion were gallivanting about?
Anyways...making anything worthwhile, in any field, is generally an iterative process, and I'm really glad Mike, Vic, Chad, and the rest of the Merry Men are willing to do so. Thanks for the rulebook update!
You forgot to mention an awesome new feature: The Table of Contents is now linked to the pages it references. Much easier to find the section you are looking for.
page 13: Closing requirements explicitly describe their checks to close, and allow for multiple villains in a deck.
Since I haven't encountered a scenario with multiple villains, I'm not sure how important this is, but the above fix doesn't really propagate through the rest of the rules.
The Encountering A Villain section is partially worded as if there was one single villain.
A situation of having multiple villains is covered in the If You Defeat the Villain, Close the Villain’s Location but not in the If the Villain Has Nowhere to Escape to, You Win! section.
There could easily be a situation where I encounter, defeat, and prevent the escape of, a villain, but I shouldn't win due to the presence of a second villain somewhere else. After the Scenario doesn't cover this possibility either.
The intent could well be that you'd win if you defeat a single villain as long as you prevented multiple villains from teaming up at the same location, that is: you win if you encounter only one villain and there are no more in the villain's current location deck, but you keep playing if you find a second villain when examining. That would just be weird though. Its not like you'd give up and call it a day just because you found one of multiple bad guys at a location and a quick search didn't turn anyone else up.
page 12: We added the new concept of a "copy" of a card, which ceases to exist after you deal with it.
I'm a fan of this particularly. I thought it funny that situations could arise where there was a limited supply of Ancient Skeletons or Zombies. At least now, no one is safe and the "Current Player" can't play favorites.
I've seen (via Skull and Shackles playtest for one thing) a few scenarios with multiple villains. I think they've all had explicit rules on the scenario card that deal with them as well. Those rules all affected the definition of "winning" the scenario. Since the Golden Rule says Scenario trumps the rulebook, that would seem to take care of the issue since winning would be redefined from simply defeating "the" villain with nowhere to flee.
But I've not seen everything, so I can't guarantee it would always be like that.
Thank you Mike for the breakdown! It is greatly appreciated. Thank you for such an amazing (and what I consider) groundbreaking game!
"When you encounter" a thing means "when you encounter" that thing. Lots of cards use "when X, do Y." When do you do Y? When X happens.
Look into your heart—you know it to be true, but you're trying to logic yourself out of it!
I'm pretty sure my heart is telling me that I want 'when you encounter' to be between 'before the encounter' and 'after the encounter', evading to be prevented only by traits and the text 'may not be evaded' and evading to avoid location-specific 'when you encounter' text. My heart was forged in Usenet flame wars and thrown into a black hole, so don't expect to change that.
However, I understand that my heart is at odds with the way that you want us to play. So this dark heart, 10^3 sizes too small and filled with schadenfreude, wants everyone else to have to play the same way. I feel that they might not if there isn't at least a FAQ entry, preferably a step before evade that tells you to perform all the 'when you encounter' text and random text that isn't tied to a particular step.
But if you insist on having explicit logic, it's there for you. "When you encounter a card" is the exact same phrase that's used in the rulebook, at the very first sentence of Encountering a Card: "When you encounter a card, you—and only you—can go through the following steps." That should leave no doubt that "when you encounter a card" is the very moment when you encounter that card.
The rulebook now tells me that if any card has None for a check, then I read the special rules for acquiring it during the first check step, which happens after the card is evaded. So the 'if you encounter ... automatically acquire' text on the Blessing of the Gods has text that applies to both cases of when to act on text.
I believe that using 'encounter' two different ways in the rules means that a greater level of clarification is required, if only in the FAQ.
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Chief Technical Officer
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The rulebook now tells me that if any card has None for a check, then I read the special rules for acquiring it during the first check step, which happens after the card is evaded. So the 'if you encounter ... automatically acquire' text on the Blessing of the Gods has text that applies to both cases of when to act on text.
You do raise a good point there. We'll contemplate.
I believe that using 'encounter' two different ways in the rules means that a greater level of clarification is required, if only in the FAQ.
The *real* problem here is that "before the encounter" and "after the encounter" are both steps that happen *during* the encounter, and we would benefit from terminology that didn't imply that they happen outside of the encounter. That's not going to happen in Rise of the Runelords, because it would require too many changes to both rules and cards, but I hope to change it for Skull & Shackles.
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Chief Technical Officer
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Well I'm glad you (and may be Mike) finally and eventually noted this "small" ambiguity. How long does this took? 6 months? And - I wonder - was it not evident enough during game designing and playtesting?
That's really beyond me.
Welcome to the boards. We have few rules here, but one of them is "don't be a jerk." You have made two posts, both of which are borderline. You don't have to like us or even agree with us, but you do have to tone down the attitude, or you will not be welcome here.
For mike :) :http://bit.ly/1iwCmDc
I smiled.
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Welcome to the boards. We have few rules here, but one of them is "don't be a jerk." You have made two posts, both of which are borderline. You don't have to like us or even agree with us, but you do have to tone down the attitude, or you will not be welcome here.Well I'm glad you (and may be Mike) finally and eventually noted this "small" ambiguity. How long does this took? 6 months? And - I wonder - was it not evident enough during game designing and playtesting?
That's really beyond me.I simply expressed an opinion and a criticism to a game I paid for. Nothing you can't take easily with no consequences whatsoever.
Anyway,I apologize if you felt offended by my words. Let me put it in a less "jerky" way.
"How is it that in designing and playtesting phase no one noticed such a big wording issue, about such a central aspect of the game (encountering)?"
I'd like to share a polar opposite view if I may, and looking at the boards I'm assuming this is the view that a major percentage of the game's buyers/ players share: I would like to thank Paizo, Mike, Vic and how ever many other folk who are behind the scenes of the card game for treating it as an evolving game rather than 'Shipped, done'. To put it in perspective, I've bought my fair share of pc games that have been more or less broken right out of the gate requiring patches that may or may not (Skyrim, I'm looking at you) fix what's knackered.
The ongoing support and obvious enthusiasm for this game from the developers is a nice change of pace for me, and the fact that the creators are not only willing to engage with their playerbase pretty much constantly, and actively take on board and make changes, however small, based on those conversations makes this a game I'll easily and willingly get behind both vocally here and by buying it.
Cheers all - happy customer here.
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I wasn´t the one asked, but i´m willing to reply to some of your points Io Stesso.
1)I personaly think that the main difference between people with your view, and the people that praise Mike, Vic, Chad, etc. is that we don´t think we got a broken product. We got a good product and they are trying to make it better. And fixing something and making it better are fundamental differences. (As is said, this is my opinion, i don´t have any clue if that is a represantation for anyone but myself.)
(And yes, misprintings are things that are broken and need fixing, but they are doing much more to improve the game, than just to plug holes.)
And i´m totally with you that if something is published broken, that is a bad thing. I just don´t think that PACG is broken.
2)I´m quite sure they playtested the hell out of that game, what i´ve seen from the forum, their games are playtested for around a year before anything hits the shelf. But you can only playtest in a smaller sense, you can´t send a copie to anyone to get feedback. And having the playerbase that could find something increase by 1000% or something like this after publishing, that will bring stuff up that no one has thought of yet.
3)You could think it´s mandatory, but, at least i think that is the point here, the difference is that in big companies, there is "someone" who does that, PR-Agents and stuff like that. Here those people are the ones that are directly involved with the game, and not someone that is paid for engaging the playerbase.
4)And of course i want a working car, but like i said in point 1), i don´t think the game is broken.
You have your opinion and no one has the right to take that from you, i just wanted to elaborate why some people feel the urge to thank them.
And again, this is my personal view of things, i´m not imposing to anyone that i´m right, it´s just my interpretation.
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lol - I won't quote again, that's big enough on its own but I appreciate your view, and your right to it.
So - questions.
1. No. And as stated there is no way this game is broken; by 'broken' I mean something so bad you cannot play it.
2. Yes. All games are playtested on the go. That's why different revisions come out. The old thing that didn't work is out and the new thing that fixes the situation comes in - that's evolution. As I understand it, Pathfinder exists because of revisions to another game which were less than warmly received. If you like, and again to draw a pc gamer comparison, you can see these as patches. The difference I would argue, and a huge plus, is that these 'patches' are being applied as and when they are brought up and worked through by way of the forum and FAQ, rather than having to wait months with no idea what's happening.
3. No. It's not at all mandatory; it certainly helps and is expected by and large, but it's not mandatory. Also, it's easy to set up forums etc - actually getting the people who *made* the game to take part - that's something else. I certainly wouldn't use the word 'abuse' at any point though.
4. Me playing this game and finding something erroneous, which I can generally quickly check on the internet and resolve and me having a car that does not get me to work is hardly a valid comparison.
You do seem to be going the drama route here; I just don't really think there is any. I know that's generally the way of the internet, but...
heh - the pizza's here :)
When you say...
1) Do you think that publishers who publish PC games that are "more or less broken right of the box" should be praised for their job? Do you think they fully deserve the money you paid for such games? Don't you feel like you are just getting used to be abused by publishers to the point you are now thinking that "being abused" is the natural way to go? That all things are to be sold in a broken and incomplete status, just to be fixed, a little day by day, at your home?
You are obviously making a comparison between PC games being broken and PACG. Coming back later with the "I've never said or implied that PACG is a broken game" is just foolish because you implied it right there.
There's a difference between constructive criticism and what you're doing, which is just being a jerk. Have you ever bought something that you didn't like or didn't turn out the way you expected? If you dislike the game that much, you should just return it and move on.
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Chief Technical Officer
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On this forum I just made a complaint and asked a couple of questions, to designers (unanswered)...
You asked:
Anyway,I apologize if you felt offended by my words. Let me put it in a less "jerky" way.
"How is it that in designing and playtesting phase no one noticed such a big wording issue, about such a central aspect of the game (encountering)?"
What *possible* answer could there be for that question?
The fact is that this game was playtested by a huge number of people, for months. Check the back of your rulebook for the giant list.
And all of those people helped us make the Pathfinder ACG a really good game—a game that a *lot* of people have called the game of the year—people who know or care not one whit about the FAQs or the revised rulebook. It's a game I'm really freaking proud of, and a game that you're insulting to my face.
As for the volume of errata, that's not on those playtesters—that's all on me, and it's *not* because the game is littered with errors—it's because of my philosophy regarding making the game better.
Complicated games that involve the interactions of hundreds of cards with each other create edge cases—it's unavoidable. (If you don't want edge cases, I suggest you stick with games with the rules complexity of Checkers.) Many publishers deal with them by issuing FAQs, but not actually changing anything in the game. I say that's not good enough—that in addition to answering the question, you have to make sure the cards or rules cover those edge cases. And that's what most of our FAQ is—covering edge cases and answering questions that most players will never ask.
Very few of the resolutions in our FAQ involve actual errors—yes, the number of errors is not zero, though I wish it were, but no *reasonable* person can expect perfection given the complexity here—and also given the fact that this is, frankly, a type of game that didn't *exist* before.
To give you some perspective, the number of unique cards in Rise of the Runelords is about the same as the number of unique Magic: The Gathering cards released in the original Alpha/Beta/Unlimited/Revised sets, plus the Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends, and The Dark expansions, plus all of the unique promo cards released during that time. I'm pretty confident that if you dug up all of the FAQs Wizards issued during that time (and keep in mind that they also had several revisions of the rulebook in there too), you'd find that the PACG stacks up very well. But you know what? Magic was *still* perhaps the single best card game ever designed, from the day it was released, and that would have been true even if they hadn't answered a single FAQ.
You complain that your cards are all patched up with stickers, but let me ask you this: Assuming you applied a sticker for every resolution that changed a card, what percentage of those stickers actually answer a question that *you personally asked* when playing the game? For most people, I'm confident that that percentage is going to be *tiny*. And when you then look at those cards as a percentage of the total cards, it'll be far smaller than even that. This is *not* a game that doesn't work out of the box as you say—but it *is* a game that can work better. (And so are most other games—Checkers aside.) Which is why I'm making it work better.
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Chief Technical Officer
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Yes, the Pathfinder ACG is more complex than Magic was at it's birth. That's why it takes 24 11x8.5 pages to explain the rules, where the Magic rulebook initially took 40 card-sized pages. (Magic has gained complexity as it has gained cards.)
I guess the reason that none of the designers or playtesters had an issue with the "before the encounter" or "after the encounter" language is that none of us are as clever as you are. Congratulations for seeing what we didn't.
If you're suggesting we should have released the Base Set and waited for feedback before sending any expansions to the printer, you wouldn't have any expansions to play with yet. And the only FAQ entries we *wouldn't* have for chapters 2 through 4 would probably be the change to the Amulet of Fiery Fists and the added use of the "display" action (which, by the way, doesn't make a bit of functional difference). In short, that plan is terrible.
I designed the tray, and I'm also very proud of it.
Hey Chris Brett! Welcome to PACG. I hope you have a great time adventuring.
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Chief Technical Officer
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You know, I actually *can* give a better answer to why, during development and playtesting, nobody thought the "before the encounter"/"after the encounter" phrasing was weird.
In the playtest rules, and indeed the actual printed rulebook, the steps of encountering a card were presented in paragraph form, not as a list of steps. The Encountering a Card section began with something like "Unless you evade the card, do anything that happens before the encounter." (I don't have those rules in front of me, so I'm paraphrasing.) And at the very end of the section, it told you to do anything that's supposed to happen after the encounter. It functioned fine, and it made sense.
But when the card game hit a wider audience, issues arose from a couple of directions.
First, we had people ask if evading meant that they didn't encounter the card. The answer to that was implicit in the rulebook, because your opportunity to evade came under a giant header called "Encountering a Card." But it was not *explicitly* stated, and things like that really should be.
Similarly, we had people ask exactly when they banish/shuffle in/acquire/do whatever to the card they encounter. The answer was again implicit—it had to happen after everything described in Encountering a Card. (If it happened *before* the "after the encounter" stuff, then none of the "after the encounter" stuff on the card you were encountering would ever trigger, because the card would already be banished/shuffled/acquired/whatever.)
At about the same time, we were hearing from players who wanted to have things explicitly broken down into steps. This is something we had avoided as much as possible, because it makes the game more rigid from a design point of view: If we give you a list of things that you can do at a given time, then we can only ever design things that will fit into that list. Instead, PACG game design came from the opposite direction: you can do anything at any time unless something tells you that you can't.
But we agreed that since almost all of the questions about timing were coming from encounters, we needed to put in a little more rigidity there, so we converted it from paragraph form to a bunch of distinct steps. At that point, it became far more obvious that "evade" was a part of the encounter that happened before "before the encounter", and that you handled the disposition of the encountered card after "after the encounter." How it *worked* hadn't changed—only how it was *communicated*, and that made the issue far more obvious.
So now we have rules that are clearer to more people, but they have revealed a terminology problem. And we can't change the terminology at this point without errata'ing every card that says "before the encounter" or "after the encounter" on it, and that's just too big a change for what is ultimately a cosmetic issue.
It is something we will very likely change for Skull & Shackles, but we are having a very hard time coming up with terms for those things that don't just introduce new issues.
For example, a lot of people who have put a few minutes thought into this propose renaming them "before the check" and "after the check," which *is* more accurate, but has it's own problems: If a card requires multiple checks, we don't want anyone to think that these things happen before and after each of the checks. And if we said "before the checks" and there were only one check, that would be confusing to beginners. (Yes, we could say "before the check" on cards that have one check printed, and "before the checks" on cards that have more than one, but there are external influences that can change the number of checks on cards, so even that wouldn't work perfectly.) More importantly, though, if an encountered card didn't have a check at all, that would suggest that the "before/after the check(s)" powers might not fire off. The fact is, there's only one sure thing we can say about the card you're encountering, and that's that you're encountering it.
Wow. Thanks Vic. I actually hadn't remembered that. I pulled the original rulebook out and sure enough, all paragraphs on page 10 and no sequence on the back of the book. I've typed the words "Encountering a card sequence" so many times now, and I had no recollection there wasn't originally a "listed" sequence of steps. Here is the actual phrase:
If you do not evade, first apply any effects that happen before the encounter. Then, if it is a boon, you may try to acruire it for your deck; if it's a bane you, you must try to defeat it.
I'd like to offer the helpful suggestion of "engaging" as a possibility. So cards would say "Before engaging..." and "After engaging..." And the sequence in the rulebook would be:
Evade the card (optional).
Apply any effects that happen before engaging the card, if needed.
Attempt the check.
Attempt the next check, if needed.
Apply any effects that happen after engaging the card, if needed.
Resolve the encounter.
And in the longer explanation of the steps you could clarify that when you evade a card it is not engaged.
I suggested a worse version of this idea earlier. But I think I used slightly messier terms (and misunderstood what resolving the encounter actually meant).
Just a friendly suggestion. Thanks for all you guys do to clarify things for us, and even the extra steps you take to explain why something was done the way it was done. I appreciate it.
I'd like to offer the helpful suggestion of "engaging" as a possibility. So cards would say "Before engaging..." and "After engaging..." And the sequence in the rulebook would be:Evade the card (optional).
Apply any effects that happen before engaging the card, if needed.
Attempt the check.
Attempt the next check, if needed.
Apply any effects that happen after engaging the card, if needed.
Resolve the encounter.And in the longer explanation of the steps you could clarify that when you evade a card it is not engaged.
I suggested a worse version of this idea earlier. But I think I used slightly messier terms (and misunderstood what resolving the encounter actually meant).
Just a friendly suggestion. Thanks for all you guys do to clarify things for us, and even the extra steps you take to explain why something was done the way it was done. I appreciate it.
I may be reading it wrong, but doesn't that just change the word and keep the problem? The argument will then be the sequence of engagement. As a compromise, why not both? May be messier to write out, but seems to have more of an obvious flow to me -
1. Encounter (i.e. pick up) a card on your turn.
2. If the card can be Evaded, and you wish to, Evade.
3. If the card cannot be Evaded, or you choose not to, the Engagement phase begins.
4. Do the main text of the card.
5. Carry out any 'After Engagement' effects.
6. Carry out whichever action is suitable for the results of Engaging the card (Banish/ Reshuffle into deck etc)
7. The Engagement, and the Encounter ends.
That would, I think, sort out the 'But do I actually encounter it?' question - you encounter everything; you can choose not to engage though (given the choice/ ability).
Ok - I'll away and read that and see how many holes I can poke in it before anyone else does :)
Eesh - edited for terrible English. I'm Scottish, so I have an excuse, but still...
Well, I was thinking that "engaging" was a little more than encountering. Encountering was sort of like "seeing the card" while engaging was "dealing with the card".
I know we are talking "game terms" so dictionary terms don't work exactly, but think of two military ships at war. They encounter each other on the open sea. They may choose to turn around and run away, but they may also choose to engage each other. If they engage each other, that is when the shooting begins.
So in the typical sequence where the check represents the actual combat, that would be the engaging. And before engaging and after engaging happen before and after that. If you evaded, you are "turning around" instead of dealing with the "conflict". When there was "none" check, there is still an implied engagement, it just contains a "none" check.
Maybe it doesn't work. I don't know.
Well, I was thinking that "engaging" was a little more than encountering. Encountering was sort of like "seeing the card" while engaging was "dealing with the card".
I know we are talking "game terms" so dictionary terms don't work exactly, but think of two military ships at war. They encounter each other on the open sea. They may choose to turn around and run away, but they may also choose to engage each other. If they engage each other, that is when the shooting begins.
So in the typical sequence where the check represents the actual combat, that would be the engaging. And before engaging and after engaging happen before and after that. If you evaded, you are "turning around" instead of dealing with the "conflict". When there was "none" check, there is still an implied engagement, it just contains a "none" check.
Maybe it doesn't work. I don't know.
Agreed, I think we're heading in the same direction - Engaging is a much more 'in the thick of it' description than Encountering - the way I've written it, it just uses the word 'Encounter' to put brackets around the *entire* sequence of events from picking the card up from the location deck to putting it down wherever it ends up, whether the card has been tackled or evaded.
Any action that now happens 'before the encounter/ after the encounter' would, in the future, happen 'before/ after engaging' - the card has been encountered as soon as you pick it up.
I think for some folks that's where the disconnect is happening - how do you do something before an encounter when the very act of picking up the card is the start of the encounter?