TADS 3 Library - "neutral" messages for US English

This module provides standard library messages with a parser/narrator that's as invisible (neutral) as possible. These messages are designed to reduce the presence of the computer as mediator in the story, to give the player the most direct contact that we can with the scenario.

The parser almost always refers to itself in the third person (by calling itself something like "this story") rather than in the first person, and, whenever possible, avoids referring to itself in the first place. Our ideal phrasing is either second-person, describing things directly in terms of the player character's experience, or "no-person," simply describing things without mentioning the speaker or listener at all. For example, rather than saying "I don't see that here," we say "you don't see that here," or "that's not here." We occasionally stray from this ideal where achieving it would be too awkward.

In the earliest days of adventure games, the parser was usually a visible presence: the early parsers frequently reported things in the first person, and some even had specific personalities. This conspicuous parser style has become less prevalent in modern games, though, and authors now usually prefer to treat the parser as just another part of the user interface, which like all good UI's is best when the user doesn't notice it.