The removing action uses a “[things inside]” token. What that means is that if the noun doesn’t match something inside the second noun, even if it’s plainly visible, the parser says “You can’t see any such thing.” In fact, it looks like the parser error is the actual you can’t see any such thing error, and not a customized “That’s not inside” error like you’d think it ought to be. Is there a good way to tell when the parser failed because of a [things inside] token? Is it already implemented in one of those newfangled newbie-friendly extensions?
I notice that Neutral Library messages has an “But it isn’t there now.” message for the removing it from action, but it doesn’t seem to fire.
Another thought: For actions that take a second noun, is there a way to have the parser error tell you WHICH noun failed to match? It’s very frustrating to see “You can’t see any such thing” when you can’t tell which thing is supposedly not visible.
For now, I’m creating new grammar lines for removing that replace [things inside] with [something]. Are there any situations where that would be undesirable?
You can see a bowl (in which is an egg) and a box (in which is an egg) here.
However, I rate this as a lesser problem than the “You can’t see any such thing” message. I hate that message too.
Possible workarounds (I haven’t tried them): Add a “does the player mean” rule to up-rate removing X from Y if X is in Y. Or, have two grammar lines, one with the [things inside] token and one with [something].
I’m not removing the line with the [things inside] token. Is that even possible without completely replacing the entire Grammar Section of the Standard Rules?
This is looking like a 100% win. It even works if the new grammar lines use the “[things]” token. I’d like to propose it as an addition to the growing set of player-friendly features.