Going Nowhere

In the previous version of the Handbook, I alleged that a rule such as “Instead of going nowhere from the Forest” would work differently from a rule beginning “Instead of going nowhere in the Forest.” In testing today, I’m not finding a difference; “from” and “in” seem to produce the same output.

Is there still a difference? If so, what situation would produce and display the difference?

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Hi Jim,

Yes there is definitely a difference.

Going in applies if the direction you want to go is invalid, and this stops the default “You can’t go that way.” message.

Going from applies if the direction you want to go is valid, and this stops you from actually going there.

the forest is a room.
the clearing is east of the forest.
instead of going in the forest, say "going in." [no valid exit exists]

instead of going from the forest, say "going from." [valid exit exists]

Sample output:

forest
 
>e
going from.
 
>w
going in.

(I remember the difference as going in means you are running inside the room in circles, and going from actually leaving the room…)

Thanks. That helps. But my example was of “going nowhere in” vs. “going nowhere from.” Is there a difference in that case?

My bad, I missed the ‘nowhere’ part… too eager to help. I must breathe in and out and learn to read :D.

When I have both rules, it always seems to choose going nowhere from before going nowhere in when I go in an invalid direction, even if I change the rule order in my source. I take it the going from action takes precedence.

instead of going nowhere in the forest:
	say "going in.";
	continue the action.

instead of going nowhere from the forest:
	say "going from.";
	continue the action.

And both rules fire when I try to go to an invalid direction:

>w
going from.
 
going in.
 
You can't go that way.

So apparently no difference.

One can show it’s possible for going nowhere in and going nowhere from to differ with a perverse contrivance:

Say someone tried going west from the Lab when there was no map connection west of the Lab. Both of these rules would fire during that same action:

Before going nowhere in the lab, move the player to the parlor.
Instead of going nowhere in the parlor, say "ha.". 

With from instead of in only the first one would.

in is whatever the character’s location is at the moment the rule is triggered. Throughout the action, from always means the character’s origin, and to always means their destination. So in a successful going action (absent perverse contrivance), in means the same thing as from during Before, Instead, and Check, and it means the same thing as to during After and Report. (It changes during Carry out, so the results of in would depend on the exact rule order, and is probably worth avoiding.)

But for failed movement, we never get to the Carry out rules. in and from mean the same thing throughout Before, Instead, and Check, like usual (again, absent perverse contrivance).

(A preamble using going nowhere to is a compiler error in 10.1; previously, it compiled but would never fire.)

I hadn’t really thought about it before, but I’m going to resolve to make a habit of using from/to for the successful motion cases and using in for going nowhere. The former is the significant part, since it’d be easy to go wrong with in given how it changes meaning during the action. There’s no harm in going nowhere from but it’ll be easier to remember as a dichotomy.

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