If otherwise

Instead of climbing ladder:
if Tall Cow is in North Forest,
say "A small, elderly man taunts you with your own car keys and pulls a lever; the bottom half of the ladder falls to bits. Naturally, as Newton’s law dictates, you fall, but the Tall Cow flings itself under you and the ladder is still within reach. ";
remove ladder from play;
move broken ladder to North Forest;
otherwise, say "A small, elderly man taunts you with your own car keys and pulls a lever; the bottom half of the ladder falls to bits. Naturally, as Newton’s law dictates, you fall onto the packed dirt of the forest floor. ".

How do I make it be able to do more than one action after an “if” statement?

That’s one of the quirks of Inform. If you’re using “if-otherwise” syntax, the comma is only used when each statement is one instruction. This should work better:

Instead of climbing ladder: if the Tall Cow is in the Northern Forest: say "A small, elderly man taunts you with your own car keys and pulls a lever; the bottom half of the ladder falls to bits. Naturally, as Newton's law dictates, you fall, but the Tall Cow flings itself under you and the ladder is still within reach. "; remove ladder from play; move broken ladder to North Forest; otherwise: say "A small, elderly man taunts you with your own car keys and pulls a lever; the bottom half of the ladder falls to bits. Naturally, as Newton's law dictates, you fall onto the packed dirt of the forest floor."

When using this form of the if statement, you have to (1) use colons after the condition, (2) pay attention to the tab spaces, and (3) mind the consequences (being, in this case, that the ladder won’t appear when the second description fires, only in the first instance).

See 11.7 in the manual. There are two ways of doing this (begin/end and tabs). You can switch back and forth between them in a single document, but not in the same block of code.

Here’s how it would look in the begin/end syntax:

Instead of climbing ladder: if Tall Cow is in North Forest begin; say "A small, elderly man taunts you with your own car keys and pulls a lever; the bottom half of the ladder falls to bits. Naturally, as Newton's law dictates, you fall, but the Tall Cow flings itself under you and the ladder is still within reach. "; remove ladder from play; move broken ladder to North Forest; otherwise; say "A small, elderly man taunts you with your own car keys and pulls a lever; the bottom half of the ladder falls to bits. Naturally, as Newton's law dictates, you fall onto the packed dirt of the forest floor. "; end if.
(You can add tabs to that to make it more readable, but they won’t have any effect.)

And here’s how it looks in the indented style:

Instead of climbing ladder: if Tall Cow is in North Forest: say "A small, elderly man taunts you with your own car keys and pulls a lever; the bottom half of the ladder falls to bits. Naturally, as Newton's law dictates, you fall, but the Tall Cow flings itself under you and the ladder is still within reach. "; remove ladder from play; move broken ladder to North Forest; otherwise: say "A small, elderly man taunts you with your own car keys and pulls a lever; the bottom half of the ladder falls to bits. Naturally, as Newton's law dictates, you fall onto the packed dirt of the forest floor."
It’s probably best to pick one early on and stick with it. (Begin/end is somewhat more forgiving and explicit; indented is more concise, and is what is used in the I7 examples.)

Thanks for the responses! I used maga’s begin/end if example and it works just fine! :smiley: