4.3. Event Scheduling

| Chapter 4: Time and Plot |

| 4.3. Event Scheduling

We can use a schedule of events to give some life to our environment: if we have a town setting, for instance, it makes sense for shops and libraries to open and close at set times; this is just what we find in IPA.

Air Conditioning Is Standard has characters who follow a timed schedule of events to interact with each other, while the player mostly wanders around missing out on the action. (Sometimes life is like that.) The same effects could have been achieved with scenes instead of clock times, but there are occasions when we do want to plan our characters' behavior to the minute rather than waiting for the player to be in the right place to observe it: in a murder mystery or a time-travel story, the exact timings might be quite significant.

We may also want to add events to the schedule during play, as in

> Instead of pushing the egg-timer: say "It begins to mark time."; the egg-timer clucks in four turns from now.

> At the time when the egg-timer clucks: say "Cluck! Cluck! Cluck! says the egg-timer."

Similarly, we can schedule things during play to happen at a specific time of day, as shown in Hour of the Wren.

See Scene Changes for more things that arrive at pre-determined times

See Ships, Trains and Elevators for a train that follows a schedule, carrying the player along if he is aboard

141
| Example IPA Shops which each have opening and closing hours, so that it is impossible to go in at the wrong times, and the player is kicked out if he overstays his welcome. |
WI

340
| Example Air Conditioning is Standard Uses "writing a paragraph about" to make person and object descriptions that vary considerably depending on what else is going on in the room, including some randomized NPC interactions with objects or with each other. |
WI

146
| Example Hour of the Wren Allowing the player to make an appointment, which is then kept. |
WI

Here we allow the player to set the time at which some future event is going to happen, rather than letting the game decide. We'll need to borrow the syntax for defining new actions from a later chapter: "Hour of the Wren" When play begins: say "You more or less stumble across them in Central Park: a disparate group of people, all of different ages, sitting in a circle. They aren't talking to one another -- in fact, they seem to be trying very hard to ignore one another, like people in the waiting room of an especially embarrassing kind of doctor. You are about to go around when a woman in a grey pressed suit comes up to you. Her suit-skirt is trimmed in lavender cord, and she looks as though she might have been extremely sharp-dressed in 1944. She hands you a card." The Circle in the Grass is a room. "No one is looking at you, except for the secretary, if that is what she is." The player carries a card. The description of the card is "Typed: 'Active astrology - dislike your fortunes? change your stars! - make an appointment now - hour of the wren STILL AVAILABLE.'". The time of day is 1:55 PM. Understand "pick [time]" or "choose [time]" or "make appointment for [time]" or "make an appointment for [time]" as making an appointment for. Making an appointment for is an action applying to one time. Carry out making an appointment for: say "Fate cannot be commanded more than once." Instead of making an appointment for the time understood for the first time: say "You settle on [the time understood] for your appointment. The woman makes a note of it in an appointment book, which she carries in a brown paper bag. 'Excellent choice, ma'am,' she says in a low, urgent voice. 'You'll be very satisfied.'"; stars shift at the time understood. Understand "hour of the wren" as 2:00 PM. At the time when stars shift: end the story saying "insert cataclysm here". Test me with "x card / make appointment for hour of the wren / z / z / z / z".

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