This idea of agnostic design, if I’m understanding you correctly, is something I really like. Recently I’ve been watching a lot of different GDC talks which I’ve found have given me a lot of inspiration for IF games I want to have nothing to do with IF. So this is a design split not even just with IF such as Parser VS. CYOA but design ideas that transcend the medium in a lot of way (such as visual story telling VS. prose). I think I’m in a somewhat unique position, at least from what I see here on the forums, in that I haven’t played any transitional ID games and they aren’t why I choose to make IF, there are a few games that I think could be considered IF that gave inspired me, which I’ll touch on as I think they’re a sort if exception that proves this rule, but really I think when it comes to design there are a lot of core ideas that transcend genre and systems and even mediums.
To talk first about your first example of implementing things people associate with Twine in inform or vice versa; a big example for myself would be a game that’s inspired me a lot, an AIF game called Degrees of Lewdity. This is a twine game which doesn’t have many objects really but has a rather large, open, interconnected map, something I feel is more associated with parser games. And this game, while made in Twine, largely inspired me to want to make a game in inform (obviously if I wanted to make a similar game I could have used Twine but I chose inform mainly because I liked the syntax and the style of parser based gameplay). Now perhaps this is a contraversial opinion, but at least for myself the big difference I see between Twine and Inform or parser and CYOA generally is that CYOA just has all of the available inputs displayed on screen. And so as you’ve shown in your twine example opening a door I think the only real design difference here is how the information is displayed to the player (where in inform a play would most likely just be told there is a door here where as in twine then all of the possible verbs, opening, smashing down, locking etc, would be listed.) But as you point out I think in most ways this is design agnostic, except for in one key way.
So to return to GDC talks I watched one recently on complicity in games, I can’t recall all of the specifics but I believe I remember it talking a bit about parser games, a bit about vr and about more traditional 3d games (I think it may have also discussed CYOA). And where I think this idea of agnostics design could break down a little bit is around this idea of complicity. I want to say first that I don’t think other systems don’t provide complicity, I think all games do to some extent by being an interactive experience (even some films or other non-interactive mediums manage to make the viewer feel complicit), however I think something that is not agnostic about the design of a parser is that the actions the player takes have to first be the players idea. Perhaps the player is encouraged to open the door, since that’s typically what one does to a door and we’ve just mentioned one, but there’s nothing prompting the player to do so.
So the reason I brought up that I’m not really influenced by traditional IF is that when I decided I wanted to make a parser game, I was never interested in puzzles, which isn’t wholly unique I’m sure but again just from impressions it seems very core to the genre. I can’t remember the user but I remember someone in the forums discussing how different systems get popular, with on of the main pints being they have flagship games. And I think this is another thing that limits agnostic design between systems a lot. It’s not that you can’t make a non-puzzle based game in inform, I’m sure plenty of people have, and it’s not that you can’t make a puzzler in Twine but there is a sort of way people conceptualize what these systems are, what a twine game or a inform game is, that I think reduces this agnostic design. And I don’t want to discount the technical specifications people have pointed out which can contribute to this but the reason innovative games are innovative within these systems is because of these preconceptions, and they obviously succeed in working around the technical specifications to make something that defies expectations.
What has been a huge influence on me wanting to make a parser game has been Dwarf Fortress. Now whether DF is IF since its mainly text based (or entirely if you count ASCII) is a debate I’ll leave to others but I feel DF brings up another area where design is slightly less agnostic. The creator of DF has discussed in interviews how the game actually started out as a 3D sandbox that would model everything. However doing this in a 3D space was a huge order as everything not only needed coded but then 3D modeled. However once the DF projected started the creator saw how much easier it was to implement new things when one didn’t have to 3D model but could just use prose. And so I think some designs can run into technical/doability problems in certain systems. The difference in work from 3D to prose I think is quite stark but even from Twine to inform I think there could be doability limits on this agnostic design. Is it a realistic work load to have dozens of objects in dozens of rooms as click able links in a twine game? Would it be a good experience for the player? I don’t use twine so I have no idea. But I do feel at least when it comes to some choices, perhaps making every door openable, the system one designs within can at least aid work loads if not change something from near impossible to trivial (in this cases I think the generalness of informs aproach to actions such as open door trivializes the workload which (and again in inexperienced with twine) I feel could be difficult to write for a twine/CYOA game).
Despite these limits though agnostic design is something I really value, and I think there’s a lot one can and should learn not just from other systems of IF, not just other systems of games, but design philosophys in all arts. Another GDC video that stood out to me recent was in architecture and room design for grand theft auto. But what the speaker had to say about designing a 3D space for 2D display still got me thinking about how some of those lessons apply to IF. (If 3D games are making 3D spaces for 2D displays I think If writers are making 3D spaces for 2D displays to then be turned into prose). And so I think people should focus on thinking outside of the box of their working in more, even when that works against the system or genre or medium your in, because you can find inspiration from a lot of spaces and it’s breaking out of what’s comfortable that leads to the great innovative games that push how we think of these systems.