8.10. Removing things from play

| Chapter 8: Change |

| 8.10. Removing things from play

Some things will occasionally be in a limbo state called being "off-stage": like actors or props not needed in Act II, but perhaps to be brought back on-stage later, they wait on the sidelines. Anything created with no apparent location will start the game off-stage, as in the case of the lamp here:

> Aladdin's Cave is a room. The genie's lamp is a container.

(Such things are easy to see in the World index because they are listed after all of the rooms and their contents, not belonging inside any room.)

To move something back on-stage, we simply "move" it back onto the stage set, so to speak: back to a room, or into, onto, or made part of something else which is currently on-stage. To remove something, we use the phrase:

remove (object) from play

Removes the given object from play, so that it is not present in any room. We are not permitted to remove rooms, or doors, or the player, from play; but we are permitted to remove backdrops, making them disappear from all rooms in which they are present. Example: remove the gold coin from play;

We can test whether something is on-stage or off-stage with:

> if the gold coin is on-stage, ...
> if the gold coin is off-stage, ...

or could, for instance, write

> say "Ah, so many absent friends. Who now remembers [list of off-stage people]?"

We can even write

> now the gold coin is off-stage

which is equivalent the "remove the gold coin from play", and similarly for on-stage. (If we say "now the gold coin is on-stage" and it already was, nothing happens; if it wasn't, it is moved to the current location.)

"On-stage" and "off-stage" are adjectives, like "visible" or "touchable", and they apply only to things. Rooms, directions and regions are the stage itself: so it makes no sense to ask the question of whether they are "on-" or "off-". Doors are always on-stage; backdrops are on-stage unless they have been explicitly removed using the "remove... from play" phrase.

122
| Example Beverage Service A potion that the player can drink. |
RB

123
| Example Spring Cleaning A character who sulks over objects that the player has broken (and which are now off-stage). |
RB

124
| Example Extra Supplies A supply of red pens from which the player can take another pen only if he doesn't already have one somewhere in the game world. |
RB

Suppose we have a supply closet in our game from which the player is allowed to take red pens. To keep modeling simple, we only allow him to have one in play at a time, and we test this by seeing whether the red pen is "off-stage" before moving it to his possession. This approach might seem no different from having a single red pen sitting in the closet, but it may be preferable, for two reasons. First, it's not very plausible for a supply closet to contain nothing but a single red pen (well, assuming a well-regulated supplier, anyway); and second, it gives the player a way to get a new red pen should the original be destroyed in a tragic handwriting accident. "Extra Supplies" The Supply Closet is a room. A supply of red pens is in the Supply Closet. Understand "pen" as the supply of red pens when the red pen is not visible. There is a red pen. Instead of taking the supply of red pens: if the red pen is off-stage: move the red pen to the player; say "You help yourself to a fresh red pen."; otherwise: say "You're only allowed one pen at a time. The department secretary is very strict." South of the Supply Closet is the Furnace Room. The incinerator is a thing in the Furnace Room. It is a container. "The incinerator is here, working full blast." After inserting something into the incinerator: remove the noun from play; say "A fiery blast consumes [the noun]!" Test me with "get pen / i / get pen / get supply / s / put pen in incinerator / n / get pen".

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