§7.3. Reactive Characters
As we observe characters, so they observe us. Those who seem to have no awareness of what the player is doing often come across more like waxworks than like people. Zodiac demonstrates a scenario where the watchful presence of a dangerous criminal keeps the player from doing what he otherwise might, while Police State expands on this idea with a policeman who reacts to entire types of behavior in his presence, regardless of whether the culprit is the player or a third party. Noisemaking has a crow who will fly away in response to any loud noises the player makes.
And, of course, we definitely want to have characters react to being looked at or otherwise interfered with. Search and Seizure implements a smuggler who reacts when we try to confiscate his possessions. Pine 1 gives us a sleeping princess who can be woken by a variety of methods.
We wrap up this section with two complete puzzle scenarios that demonstrate what can be achieved by giving characters reactions to the player's behavior. A Day For Fresh Sushi has a fish who watches the player's actions and comments on them, while the live furnishings in Revenge of the Fussy Table instead comment every turn on the current state of the world, until the player has successfully sorted out all their complaints.
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Note that the policeman will never get to the second persuasion rule, so he will always refuse to do the player's nefarious bidding.
And here's an unnecessary aesthetic touch from a later chapter, which will round up the descriptions of your friends into a single paragraph:
Notice the difference between the two rules about disorderly conduct: the one for other people says 'the rule succeeds' to make sure that the action is counted as a success and not (as normally happens with instead rules) a failure. Most of the time we don't care whether actions are judged successes or failures, but it matters here, because if we type CHARLES, JUMP and the result fails, then text such as 'Charles is unable to.' will be printed - which would get in the way. So we declare the action a success. |
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Note that the policeman will never get to the second persuasion rule, so he will always refuse to do the player's nefarious bidding.
And here's an unnecessary aesthetic touch from a later chapter, which will round up the descriptions of your friends into a single paragraph:
Notice the difference between the two rules about disorderly conduct: the one for other people says 'the rule succeeds' to make sure that the action is counted as a success and not (as normally happens with instead rules) a failure. Most of the time we don't care whether actions are judged successes or failures, but it matters here, because if we type CHARLES, JUMP and the result fails, then text such as 'Charles is unable to.' will be printed - which would get in the way. So we declare the action a success. |
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