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Standard actions concerning other people
Giving it to , Showing it to , Waking , Throwing it at , Attacking , Kissing , Answering it that , Telling it about , Asking it about , Asking it for
Asking something about some text (past tense asked it about)
The Standard Rules do
not include any systematic way to handle conversation: instead, Inform is
set up so that it is as easy as we can make it to write specific rules
handling speech in particular games, and so that if no such rules are
written then all attempts to communicate are gracefully if not very
interestingly rejected.
The topic here can be any double-quoted text, which can itself contain
tokens in square brackets: see the documentation on Understanding.
Asking is an action existing only to catch commands like ASK STEPHEN ABOUT
PENELOPE. Customarily in IF, such a command is shorthand which the player
accepts as a conventional form: it means 'engage Mary in conversation and
try to find out what she might know about'. It's understood as a convention
of the genre that Mary should not be expected to respond in cases where
there is no reason to suppose that she has anything relevant to pass on -
ASK JANE ABOUT RICE PUDDING, for instance, need not conjure up a recipe
even if Jane is a 19th-century servant and therefore almost certainly
knows one.
Typed commands leading to this action
"ask [someone] about [text]"
Rules controlling this action
set action variables for when acting fast acting fast actions are fast rule name unlist
before doing anything except examining or reaping in Drawing Room
before doing anything except attacking when Nomos bonus is true
before doing anything boots of wandering weirdness rule name unlist
instead of doing anything with clouds of smoke when the smoke timer of the location is less than 1
instead of doing anything with rust spores
report an actor asking something about block asking rule name unlist