A critical IF vocabulary

[Biep]

You mean as in the example given here?

take vase from mantel
Carefully, Richard takes the vase from off of the mantel. Something moves in the darkness outside the window, unbeknownst to him.

x window
Richard can’t see anything through the window while the blinds are drawn.

opwn blinds
The player seems to have either mistyped, or used an unneeded word.

Something scrapes by the window.

There still is a whole bit of theory to be developed around dealing with the knowledge gaps. The above example would work great in linear fiction, but in IF, since the player steers Richard, how can be established that Richard is not going to act on the player’s knowledge?
Generally, between player and PC, one can:

• Have no gap: amnesia, the apprentice approach (Suveh Nux), the Shade approach, …
• Remove the gap: background story text, a ‘remember’ command, a look-up device, …
• Use the negative gap in the game: learning on replay, Spider&Web approach, …
• Use the positive gap in the game. (How? The above example show the problems.)
• Ignore the gap (as many games do)