EXITS command in parser games: Do you list blocked exits?

[bkirwi (Ben Kirwin)]

@AmandaB

Either in a room description paragraph separated from the main description, or with EXITS, etc. It makes me think the game is trying to fool me by obscuring things.

@CMG had a nice bit on this sort of thing in his postmortem for Eat Me a few years back:

@CMG

There’s a convention in parser games that the first paragraph in a room description doesn’t matter. I’ve even heard players describe this paragraph as the “wallpaper.” It can safely be skimmed, even ignored. I’ve never liked this convention.

Room descriptions in Eat Me are important. Ignoring them will make the game harder. I knew I’d need to train players to pay more attention. The game’s opening rooms are structured with this in mind.

The rest of that section is a bunch of tricks to get players to pay attention to things in the text. It’s very smart!

Speaking personally, I don’t like this convention much either. As a reader, I don’t like it because one million identically-structured exits paragraphs are no fun to read; and as a writer, I don’t like the implication that the main description shouldn’t have any important stuff in it. (If it wasn’t important I wouldn’t have put it in at all, dang it!)

Of course, that’s just about room descriptions! exits commands and “you can’t go that way” messages are times that the player has specifically asked for that info, and it’s best to give it to them in a direct way. (My game was did a bad job of this bit, which I regret!) And the status-bar exit listing is a great idiom.

@bg

If there is a blocked exit, do you list that, or not? Something like “The way to the west is blocked” or “You don’t want to go east”?

Personally I think just listing the things that would be obvious to the player-character is the way to go. If the room description mentions an exit, it should probably be in there somewhere; if the character has learned about a secret exit from an NPC or something, it can go in there too; if the character refuses to use an exit, it would be a kindness to mention that.

A bit like inventory, maybe? Not a great place to reveal info to the player for the first time, but a very good place to remind them of things in a clear and direct way.