Placing and wearing
Three placement forms position an entity when the story starts: in
puts it inside a room or container, on puts it on a supporter, and
starts in is how actors (usually the player) name their starting
room. Two more lines dress and equip an actor. wears puts a wearable
onto an actor so that the actor is wearing it from the start, and
carries puts an item into an actor's hands as starting inventory, so
the actor holds it but does not wear it.
create the seed packet
a thing
on the potting table
A paper packet of runner-bean seeds.
create Alex
a person
playable
starts in the Greenhouse
wears the straw hat
carries the trowel
Mud on your boots, dirt under your nails.
before the game starts
change the player to Alex
end before
What a character carries is visible to the player but not reachable:
you can see the thief's knife, examine it, and be refused in the story's
own words when you try to take it, but you cannot simply grab it. Compose
open-inventory on the holder when the player should be able to take
from them — a friendly character holding something out, a horse with
saddlebags:
create the pack horse
a person, open-inventory
carries the saddlebags
A piece of scenery can be in several rooms at once: a ceiling that runs
over two rooms, the sky over a landing field. List the rooms, with
commas between them and and before the last, or name a region to mean
every room in it. The thing can be examined from each of those rooms,
is never listed among their contents, and is out of reach everywhere
else; in a dark room it is as unseen as anything else there. Only
scenery can be in more than one place, since a thing the player could
pick up cannot be in two places at once.
create the sodium lights
a thing, scenery
in the Sorting Room and the Loading Dock
Sodium lamps hang in rows from girders far overhead.
Note the disambiguation: on followed by an article is placement
(on the potting table); on followed by a bare word opens a behavior
clause (on the player watching).