Guessing the verb in Cattus Atrox

[<edromia@concentric.net>]

>>Pretty much anything you try to do while lying near the trap door will
reply
>>with, "But the rope is too tight!" - [> LOOSEN ROPES] and then "But your
>>hands aren't free!" - [> FREE HANDS]. I set up these verbs for use, they
>>weren't just blindly placed there. If you were reading and not racing
through
>>the seen, (which I think I get credit for, because you _are_ in a
>>tension-filled situation), you would have noticed these little tidbits.
>
>You've put your finger on the exact problem here.  If the scene is
>scary, if you want it to be tense and nerve-wracking and suck the
>player in, guess-the-verb is the kiss of death.  The player's supposed
>to be rattled, and that often means reading descriptions fast, typing
>fast, thinking fast and maybe not too clearly.  If you code assuming
>calm precision, you'll spoil the scene.


This reminds me of an interesting incident in Losing Your Grip.

I'm in the hospital, right? In the second fit. And I finally got that old
lady in the wheelchair back to her room. All of a sudden, she starts to
flatline. By this time I've been pretty well drawn into the game, so of
course I start to freak out. I don't have any idea what I typed, but I know
it didn't do any good. Doctors brush past, wheeling a crash-cart. The room
description is all blinking lights and people yelling "stat!" I don't know,
I was probably just pushing "z", feeling totally useless and pretty damn
sure that I was in the process of losing the game, or at least locking
myself out of a winning scenario, and I *really* didn't want that old lady
to die.

Then (and I don't remember the exact wording, but it was pretty close to
this), the head doctor looked right at me and said: "Administer CPR. Right
now."

Without even thinking, I typed in ADMINISTER CPR, and sonuvagun, it worked.

So it seems to me that there's a right way and a wrong way to clue the
player in to an improbable verb. Mr. Granade did it the right way; Mr.
Cornelson did it the wrong way. I base this judgment on the fact that almost
no-one (perhaps no-one at all) managed to figure out the verb in Cattus
Attrox without help, whereas I don't remember a single post complaining
about ADMINSTER CPR when Stephen released Losing Your Grip.

I'll tell you why I didn't get it, David, and why I never would have gotten
it in a million years. It's because even *after* I read the walkthrough, the
solution didn't make sense. LOOSEN ROPES? FREE HANDS? It's really that easy?
You should have mentioned that either 1) my captors are the worst knot-tiers
to ever be kicked out of the Boy Scouts, or 2) I happen to be an
accomplished escape artist. Otherwise, it isn't any more reasonable to
assume those commands will work than it is to assume BEFRIEND LION will
work. Sure, it makes sense semantically, but what are the odds?

Go back and find that scene in Grip and examine it very carefully. The game
practically spoon-feeds you the line: "Hey, idiot, type ADMINSTER CPR to
solve the puzzle!" But it manages to do it without so much as bending
mimesis, AND it does it in a way that doesn't break the fear and tension of
the moment, AND it does it in a way that doesn't require you to do something
*wrong* first, and so get the hint in an error message.

I mention all this because I'm not opposed to nonstandard verbs per se -- in
fact, I think they're a neat little treat when they're implemented well. You
just have to be very careful to implement them well, and if your players
don't think it worked, then that means it most likely didn't.

-M.
================================================
"If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding.
How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?"