7.11. In rooms and regions

§7.11. In rooms and regions

Three elaborations of action descriptions increase the range of possibilities further.

Instead of taking something in the Supernatural Void, say "In this peculiar mist you feel unable to grasp anything."

Like the objects to which the action applies, this location - the "in" clause - can take any description, not just an explicit place like "Supernatural Void":

Instead of listening in a dead end, say "You strain to hear further clues as to the course of the underground river, but to no avail."

But we often want a rule to apply in any of a set of rooms: and where, unlike the "dead end" example above, the rooms have nothing much in common except where they happen to lie on a map. For instance, we might want a rule to apply only inside a given building, or a garden consisting of five miscellaneous rooms. If so, we can create a "region" as a convenient way to refer to that group of rooms:

The Arboretum is east of the Botanical Gardens. Northwest of the Gardens is the Tropical Greenhouse.

The Public Area is a region. The Arboretum and Gardens are in the Public Area.

Instead of eating in the Public Area, say "The curators of the Gardens are ever among you, eagle-eyed and generally cussed."

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