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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
Rules controlling this action
before asking someone to try doing something when the person asked is not the current interlocutor giving orders needs an interlocutor rule name unlist
before speaking when the current node is not the null-node and the current node is open decrease node-timer rule name unlist
before conversing when the noun is not the current interlocutor greet a new interlocutor rule name unlist
before speaking note conversation rule name unlist
NB: the change greeting command to greeting rule is listed before the giving orders needs an interlocutor rule in the before rulesinstead of asking a woman about "herself" asking a woman about herself rule name unlist
instead of asking a man about "himself" asking a man about himself rule name unlist
check when the node of the noun is closed nodal ask response rule name unlist
report open node response rule name unlist
report standard response rule name unlist
report default asking rule name unlist