§7.4. Barter and Exchange
By default, Inform characters are a bit grudging about giving and sharing objects: they react with disinterest when they're shown things and refuse everything they're offered.
If we'd like to change this, we can simply remove the default "block giving" rule, as in
The block giving rule is not listed in the check giving it to rules.
If we do this, giving items to characters will have the result of moving our possessions to the other person's inventory. Of course, without more customization, the player may not ever be able to persuade the other character to return his possessions. Bribery demonstrates a scenario in which a character will accept gifts if they are interesting to him, and respond with a changed attitude to the player.
Barter Barter expands further on this by allowing other characters to trade things with one another.
See Modifying Existing Commands for ways to allow the player to give or show things that he isn't currently holding
See Actions on Multiple Objects for an implementation of giving that allows the player to offer multiple objects at once, where their combined value determines whether they are accepted
See Money for ways to keep track of cash flow, physical money objects, and price negotiations
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By default, if we make no modifications, telling one player to give something to another will fail, even if persuasion succeeds. This is because the default behavior of the GIVE command is interrupted by the "block giving rule" -- since in many cases we do not want people to exchange objects freely. However, suppose that we do want characters to be able to exchange articles freely: we allow persuasion to succeed and turn off the "block giving rule".
And now we might want to implement a way to keep track of whether the recipient character wants what's being offered:
Since we've defined this as a relation, we could change what the characters like and dislike during the course of the game, freely; for instance, characters might grow hungry and suddenly like all the edible articles.
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By default, if we make no modifications, telling one player to give something to another will fail, even if persuasion succeeds. This is because the default behavior of the GIVE command is interrupted by the "block giving rule" -- since in many cases we do not want people to exchange objects freely. However, suppose that we do want characters to be able to exchange articles freely: we allow persuasion to succeed and turn off the "block giving rule".
And now we might want to implement a way to keep track of whether the recipient character wants what's being offered:
Since we've defined this as a relation, we could change what the characters like and dislike during the course of the game, freely; for instance, characters might grow hungry and suddenly like all the edible articles.
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