So I wanted the player to be able to "scan" the surrounding "rooms" before entering them. I thought that the look option would allow me to do that, but as far as I can tell you can't have a look direction and an exit in the same direction. Is there any advice for me or am I missing something obvious?

Hi! I'm extremely new to this, but what I would do is make an object in the room you're scanning from with an alias of the room you want to scan. Set the object as scenery, and add a verb to it "scan". Then have it run a script doing whatever you want the scan to do. As an example, let's say you're in a room called "inside" and you want to scan "outside". Create an object in the room "inside" called "outside1" and set its alias to "outside". Set the object as scenery. Add a verb to the object "outside1" called "scan", and have it print a message , "scanning outside....". Now play the game and input "scan outside" and if should print the message "scanning outside....". You can customize this to make it how you want. I hope this helps, and apologize if it doesn't make sense.

Thanks I'll try that and see if it works.

This may help.
http://docs.textadventures.co.uk/quest/advanced_scope.html