Someone commented recently that it’s preferable to write a “for supplying a missing noun” rule than to create a new action that has fewer nouns. Ever since then, I’ve been thinking about Speech Motivations, which has quite a large number of actions, following in the pattern of Eric Eve’s Conversation Framework:
Informing it about is an action applying to two visible things.
Quizzing it about is an action applying to two visible things.
Requesting it for is an action applying to two visible things.
Pointing it out to is an action applying to two visible things.
Inquiring it for is an action applying to one visible thing and one topic.
greeting is an action applying to one visible thing.
saying hello is an action applying to nothing.
Saying goodbye to is an action applying to one visible thing.
Leavetaking is an action applying to nothing.
Voicing concerns is an action applying to nothing.
Talking about is an action applying to one visible thing.
wondering about is an action applying to one visible thing.
pointing at is an action applying to one visible thing.
Talking with is an action applying to one visible thing.
Implicit-asking is an action applying to one topic.
implicit-telling is an action applying to one topic.
implicit-requesting is an action applying to one visible thing.
implicit-inquiring is an action applying to one topic.
My pain concern is the 3-pronged style of “informing it about/talking about/voicing concerns,” which are all the same except that some of them rely on properties of the actor rather than nouns given in a command.
This morning I set out to tackle them, only to discover that:
So talking about has to stay.
Voicing concerns would be easier, I could just do this:
For supplying a missing noun when an actor talking about:
Now the noun is the concern of the actor.
Except that it then becomes ambiguous what happened when the noun is nothing. Right now I have “check an actor voicing concerns” rules to handle that, but I’m concerned that customizing the failure message would be harder when supplying a missing noun. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to replace it with a “check an actor talking about nothing” rule… what do you think?
Also, for simplicity, I try to have as many actions as possible redirect to one single action, to make it simpler to process. Usually that’s “voicing concerns,” because many different talking actions can be described that way, but sometimes it doesn’t work - especially since the concern property of the PC is often not what the player wants to talk about. Do you think it would be better to have everything redirect up to one of the fully-specified actions (informing it about, quizzing it about, requesting it for, giving it to, showing it to, etc)?