You can actually make your additional approach work by adding this line:
Before asking someone to try showing something to someone:
try the second noun examining the noun instead.
(If you type the “actions” debugging command before typing “John, show me the grand canyon,” it’ll show that the action that generates the implicit take is “asking John to try showing the Grand Canyon to yourself,” so that’s what we need to write the rule to cover.)
It’s also easier to override the carrying requirements on an action in 6L02 and subsequent versions of Inform than it was before, at least without using the now-eliminated-and-never-loved procedural rules. (Easier in the sense in which math professors say “I’ve thought about it for two days, and it’s trivial”; it took me a while to get the syntax and everything right here.)
As per example 377, “Lollipop Guild,” the “carrying requirements rule” is the one that blocks implicit takes, so we want to say “The carrying requirements rule does nothing when…” Unfortunately if we just write “…when showing something to someone” that doesn’t seem to cover third-party actions. The only way I was able to get it working was just by extracting the action name part of the current action, which is the same no matter who’s acting:
The carrying requirements rule does nothing when the action name part of the current action is the showing it to action.
And then I had to delist two separate check rules that were interfering with the showing action, because the Standard Rules really don’t want to let a rogue showing action through:
The can't show what you haven't got rule is not listed in any rulebook.
The block showing rule is not listed in any rulebook.
And then we have to write more rules for showing it to. In this case we can just redirect the action to examining, but if we wanted something a bit more complicated we could do that too. So what we get is:
[code]The Overlook is a room. “This is a scenic overlook with a fabulous view of the Grand Canyon.”
John is a man in the Overlook.
The Grand Canyon is a backdrop in the Overlook. The description is “You gaze out over the canyon in awe.”
The carrying requirements rule does nothing when the action name part of the current action is the showing it to action.
The can’t show what you haven’t got rule is not listed in any rulebook.
The block showing rule is not listed in any rulebook.
Carry out an actor showing something to someone: try the second noun examining the noun.
Persuasion rule for asking people to try doing something: persuasion succeeds. [/code]