[LoD]

I meant for the ambiguity to apply to the contents of the bag, not to the object itself.

> a bag of Miracle-Gro

This object states rather than implies what the bag contains.

> a green and yellow plastic bag

This object is ambiguous for the sake of the character as there are other factors that could be involved. It does have something that everyone save color blind characters could see, which would be the color scheme of the bag -- which is often how people identify goods with which someone is unfamiliar. For example, someone might ask me to go to the hardware store and pick up some kind of lubricant. They'll tell me the name, but they will also tell me the shape and the color of the product.

Factors that exist in other games, which encourage forms of ambiguity are:

> Are there language barriers? Literacy barriers?

If that's the case, then perhaps objects like a green and yellow plastic bag would be preferred because they don't assume that the character can read, is familiar with the brand Miracle-Gro, or speaks English.

> Are there cultural or regional issues?

Are we assuming that everyone is going to be an adult that's grown up in a Western civilization and knows a thing or two about lawn care and/or planting? What if they are from a region where there's very little vegetation and they've never even seen a commercial fertilizer? All the fertilizer they've ever seen may be in the form of dung.

If I lived in another country and they told me to pick something up, telling me the name would do me no good. They'd have to tell me how it looked. That's part of the reason for why you may prefer a more ambiguous system.

There are lots of considerations to make, and you may feel that they're becoming too complicated -- but it all comes down to what you want to achieve and how deep a system you want to support. The broader strokes you paint, the more possibilities that you support. The more specific you become, the more narrow the playing field becomes. It's just a design choice -- not a right/wrong issue.

-LoD