I can't remember the exact context, but I saw a post some time ago mentioning the (in)ability to pick up certain items in a game, which made me wonder what the conventions are in text adventures.

Is it expected that the player should be able to pick up everything that isn't nailed to the floor, even if it has no specific purpose in the story? e.g. if a character has items/keepsakes in their home that are mostly there to provide flavour/backstory, and which could physically be picked up and taken with them, but wouldn't really be of much use in their travels. I suppose that in theory, small uses could be found for each one, but I'd ideally want the player's inventory not to be cluttered, and for players to be able to easily distinguish between plot-centric or otherwise useful items, and ones that are just there for flavour.

Would players feel that their freedom is being limited too much if an error message were to appear, explaining why the player character doesn't feel the need to pick up a certain item? In the project I'm working on, I'm planning on not having very many items that the player can pick up, but the ones that can be taken potentially have several uses. It'd be good to know what people's thoughts are.

This is essentially the TES (Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim) games question. Do you allow the near total freedom, like found in TES games, or do you do the older more traditional limited freedom rpg type of games, or a combination of the two (some but limited freedom). It just depends on how open/free you want your game to be. Obviously, making a TES-like game is a lot more work for you (allowing practically every item to be picked up and sold, for example. Not to mention all of the cheat codes available to undo any critical mistakes due to this freedom, along with fixing/moving NPCs that get stuck or that you cause to get stuck, or if you kill critical npcs, etc etc etc. Making such a cheat/fix system is another huge amount of work on your part).

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As for the other things you mention about:

there's ways to handle items, you can have a very organized advanced item (+storage) system, vs no such system where your inventory would get cluttered up.

you can always separate out the quest items from other items (many games have the quest items be non-interactive, they're just displayed to the person and handled internally by the game for the quest events that require them), for example:

items (these can be interacted with):

-> healing items (life, mana, etc)

-> curing items (status effects removal items)

-> battle items (usable only in battle)

-> etc etc etc item categories

quest items (these can't be interacted with):

blah blah blah items

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if you just have default/generic "can't/negative" messages (ie "You can't do that"), it's not as bad, as making them more descriptive and specific (much more work to do this) to the action that you do and the other things involved with it (ie: you can't use the bronze key on the locked gold door).

you always need some prompting (information to the user), as they need to know what is going on... communication is important, even if it is stale (preferably not though obviously). You never want the black abyss/hole of lack of information/communication to the person playing the game on what is or is not going on with whatever action or whatever within your game.

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Personally, I didn't really like the freedom (of specifically Morrowind, as I've not played Oblivion nor Skyrim; too old too poor/broke too busy, sighs) of the TES games. The traditional very restrictive RPGs of old, actually work really well. "Freedom" is an illusion in playing a game, all it actually means is more work for you, the game creator. There's no such thing as "freedom" in a game, everything is controlled by you, you're just deceiving people into the sense of having freedom, and-but that's just a deception/perception put upon them.

As a general rule, if an item can be picked up it should be possible to pick it up. There are few things more annoying than trying to pick up a pencil and being told YOU CAN'T DO THAT with no reason being given as to why.

I take two approaches.
1. If you should be able to pick it up, I let the player, but print a message like "You pick up the pencil, but wonder why because there is likely no use for it in this dungeon crawler of a game!" and give the item a description similar hinting to the player it is likely useless.
2. Give an explanation as to why you can't pick the object up like "You consider picking it up, but you can't imagine a real useful purpose for it right now. So, you leave it be."

Heck, sometimes I make objects 'unpick-upable' with a message indicating that you see no reason to lug that thing around. Once a reason is found, the object can then be taken. Players probably hate that, but I think it adds to the realism.

I agree with davidw...the 'you can't take that' message is a distraction from game immersion.

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply! There are definitely some useful things here for me to consider. I agree with HK about freedom in games... I'm playing Fallout 4 at the moment, and it sometimes feels as though the extra 'freedom' often comes at the cost of having a coherent/compelling story (it's hard to feel invested in the main story or characters when your journey is constantly derailed by someone asking you to help rebuild settlements using tin cans...). I'm considering playing with the idea of player agency in general, in the game I'm working on at the moment, so that was interesting to read.

It's good to know what the accepted conventions for picking up objects are, too... I agree that generic error messages for something as simple as trying to pick up an object are annoying, and tend to break my immersion. The second approach in your list is the one I was leaning towards myself though, XanMag (I already have custom error messages for anything that can't be taken). Since this will be my first completed project, I'd rather keep things simple and only have a small-ish number of usable inventory items, as the main thrust of the game is based around the character(s) and how the player deals with interactions with them.

generic prompts are bad for immersion, but they're better than no prompting. That was the point I was trying to make, if that wasn't clear.

Obviously, having more catered prompts is best, but sometimes this can be too much work... it depends on how deep (how much you account for/handle in terms of what the person playing may try to do or whatever) your game is ...

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I'd also recommend taking a look at as many games as you can, see what ideas/designs/systems/methods/concepts that they decided to use. There's a lot of really neat things in games, so get accquinted with as many games as you can.

(a great example, I like mentioning is this old SNES game's, 7th Saga's, additional feature/mechanic of 'defend'. If you ever played, at least in old, rpgs, the 'defense' combat action is usually pointless. 7th Saga came up with a great way to make it useful in terms of tactics/strategy in whether to use it or not: not only does your defense increase when you 'defend' until your next combat turn, but on your next combat turn, you'll do more damage than normal when you 'attack'. So you could either just attack for normal damage and take normal damage per combat turn, or you could defend->attack for extra damage to enemy and reduced damage to self over 2 combat turns)

ChrisRT wrote: I agree with HK about freedom in games... I'm playing Fallout 4 at the moment, and it sometimes feels as though the extra 'freedom' often comes at the cost of having a coherent/compelling story (it's hard to feel invested in the main story or characters when your journey is constantly derailed by someone asking you to help rebuild settlements using tin cans...). I'm considering playing with the idea of player agency in general, in the game I'm working on at the moment, so that was interesting to read.

I think it’s important to strike a balance between “on the rails” gameplay and “linear” gameplay. I remember when I played Oblivion a few years back, I spent weeks just running around doing random quests in the wilderness, exploring dungeons and ruins, finding cool items and weapons, learning spells and having bags of fun… all the while, the world has been attacked by enemies and is on the verge of destruction.

Yet it didn’t matter that the world was on the verge of destruction as no matter how long I left the main storyline, it was still there waiting for me when I returned. So while the freedom to do so much random stuff was great, the impact of it was lessened a lot by the fact that none of it really mattered in the scheme of things.

the open-ness/freedom is your choice (it's not mandatory, you chose to do that random stuff instead of the main storyline/quest), you can always not go around doing the random stuff, sticking strickly to doing the main storyline stuff.

think of the open-ness/freedom/random stuff you can do as the 'sub quests' in the old traditional linear rpgs, they're eseentially the exact same thing.

my own personal issue with open games like TES, as a player of the game, I need more direction for myself. Maybe I'm just too used to the traditional old school linear rpgs, meh.

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maybe what I personally hate most is, losing access to (any) parts of the game. I hate linear games that remove or prevent accessing/going to old areas (or have areas that are only available for a defined window/period/place of time/when in the game progression).

Also annoying for me personally, is if the game is too linear. I like a little deception-perception that there's some "freedom" for me as a player of the game.

P.S.

@ ChrisRT:

if you don't already know, every game maker must read Emily Short's articles

https://emshort.wordpress.com/

for an example:

https://emshort.wordpress.com/how-to-pl ... geography/
(path: interactive fiction resources -> writing if -> my articles -> geography)