Using scenes for groups of people

Authoring Inform 7
1

I have a scene which represents a group of people, and I want to handle “talk to group”, but getting compiler error:

Talking is an action applying to one visible thing. Understand "talk to [something]" as
talking.

Check talking:
	say "You can't do that." instead.

Instead of talking to the torch-group:
	say "That's probably not a good idea, since you don't want to draw attention to yourself."

The error: “You wrote ‘Instead of talking to the torch-group’ , which seems to introduce a rule taking effect only if the action is ‘talking to the torch-group’. But that did not make sense as a description of an action. I am unable to place this rule into any rulebook.”

2

You defined your action as “talking” rather than “talking to”.

3

Is that required for all actions? I’ve seen other actions without it.

4

If you want your action to have a preposition between the action name and the first noun (“talking to Bob”), you need to define it that way. Most actions take a direct object (“taking the book”) so they don’t need any preposition here; right now you could write rules about “talking Bob” and Inform would be cool with it.

5

Thanks

6

One other thing, how would I do something like:

Instead of examining the torch-group after talking to Peter:
	now the torch-group is in the City Road;

I also tried nesting:

After talking to Peter:
       Instead of examining the torch-group:
               now the torch-group is in the City Road;
7

What’s your goal, exactly? Do you want the rule to happen when you examine the torch-group immediately after talking to Peter? or when you examine the torch-group anytime after talking to Peter? (Like, if I talked to Peter, then waited a few turns, then wandered through a few other rooms, then tried to examine the torch-group, would that count?)

If all you want is for the torch-group to be in the City Road after talking to Peter, you can do that with:

After talking to Peter: now the torch-group is in the City Road.

No need to tie it to the examining action.