| Chapter 8: Change |

| 8.8. Moving the player

The player is a thing, too, and can also be moved, which has the effect of instantaneous transportation, without the need for a suitable map connection to the new location. For instance:

> move the player to the Bodleian Library

This will ordinarily result in a room description of the Bodleian Library being printed up, but that might not always be desirable. For instance:

> Instead of waiting in the Schola Maleficorum: say "A bored demon catches your eye (they really do have very inquisitive fingers) and throws you back out into the Antechamber."; move the player to the Antechamber, without printing a room description.

Thus tacking on the option "without printing a room description", remembering to add the comma, omits the description which would otherwise be produced. A compromise is to use the option "printing an abbreviated room description": this gives a full description if the player has never been here before, but only a brief one if it is a familiar scene.

We will see further examples of phrase options such as "without printing a room description", which can modify the normal behaviour of phrases, in subsequent chapters.

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| Example Terror of the Sierra Madre Multiple player characters who take turns controlling the action.

Suppose we have a game where we want the player to control two different characters, swapping bodies from one turn to the next. One player-character called "yourself" is predefined by default, but we can create more: "Terror of the Sierra Madre" Teresa is a female player-character. Teresa is in the Hay-Strewn Corridor. "Teresa stands opposite you[if Teresa carries something], her fingers wrapped tightly around [a list of things carried by Teresa][end if]." Teresa carries a bulb of garlic and a cross. And we need to make the "yourself" player-character interesting to look out from the outside, as well: The initial appearance of yourself is "Maleska watches you from eyes entirely black." Understand "Maleska" as yourself. Yourself carries a skull. Yourself is male. And if we wanted to give our two player-characters some different abilities: The carrying capacity of a player-character is always 2. A player-character has a number called strength. The strength of Teresa is 3. The strength of yourself is 5 Now for the exchange of power. The player is a player-character that varies, which means that we can set it to another player-character when we choose: Every turn: if the player is not Teresa, change the player to Teresa; otherwise change the player to yourself. When play begins: change the command prompt to "[bold type][player][roman type] > "; change the left hand status line to "[player]"; change the right hand status line to "STR: [strength of the player]". And since we need to override the standard behavior that player-characters are called "yourself" under some circumstances: Rule for printing the name of Teresa: say "Teresa". Rule for printing the name of yourself: say "Maleska". The Hay-Strewn Corridor is a room. "[if the player is yourself]The horse stalls are empty: you have already drained the animals, and carried off their corpses. The house will not long sustain you now. The window throws on the floor a bright square of malevolent sunlight[otherwise]The stalls for horses run down one side of the room, but the house has long stood empty. A square window without shutters looks out over the ranch, away toward the Sierras[end if]." Test me with "look / look".

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