| Chapter 8: Change |

| 8.17. Random choices of things

As well as choosing random values, we often want to make a random choice of things or rooms. Perhaps a character is to wander about at random; perhaps a falling block of masonry will crush some random item. The value

> random D
> a random D

(the article "a" is optional) produces a random choice of the things in the world which fit the description D. For instance,

> say "You can see [number of adjacent rooms] way[s] from here; how about [random adjacent room]?"

Unexpected results may follow if there is nothing in the game which fits the description, as then the random choice will be nothing. For instance, the above would then say:

> You can see 0 ways from here; how about nothing?

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| Example Zork II A "Carousel Room", as in Zork II, where moving in any direction from the room leads (at random) to one of the eight rooms nearby.

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