Getting to the point of drafting sections of rules and that means I’m evaluating (yet again!) all of the bits. The past week has involved making decisions about what decisions the system will force on players.
The actual subsystem at hand is the surprise rules. In reviewing what information the general encounter subsystem has to provide the surprise subsystem, it lead me to pondering exactly what choices the encounter rules should be forcing, and how those fit into the greater travel system and its forced decisions. It’s decisions all the way down, like the giant stack of turtles on which the world rests.
So, the surprise system requires the encounter system to provide proximity information, based on primarily sensory capabilities. How far one can sense another is limited by terrain and weather and such and the line of sight, what can be heard, and whether scent is possible. The encounter rules should be determining all that and then the surprise rules determine if surprise can be a factor. If it’s possible, then the surprise rules determine whether or not a surprise situation happens and how that can play out, placing limitations on which parties can do what.
The surprise system, once any surprise situation has played out, then sends play to the action system. There, the chase or the fight or the dance off can play out. I find simply reviewing which sub-system provides which information for another, which decisions are inherent to each, and how the cascade of choices made by players rolls along is a useful exercise.