I'm really hung up on this damn dealmaking problem. I have determined that there is an additional problem: the need to provide the translator and the abstract graphics system with a clean, direct set of arguements. If we pass pointers in the substory record, we can get ourselves into major messiness. Of course, we already do so in a few cases, but I think we must restrict such cases. Also, there is the matter of user inputs; we cannot ask the user to select numerical values. Thus, we can't have generic dealmaking verbs; each verb must specify the overall nature of the deal, with the objects taking up the specific terms. Thus we might have OfferSexForMoney, DemandHelpForThing, OfferObligationForHelp, and so forth. In some of these cases (such as Obligation and Sex) there is no object to pass; in others, such as Money and Thing, there is an object. Also, there will sometimes be help-type deals that specify a person-object, such as HelpPoison, HelpGetDate, and so forth.
You know, this is getting awfully complicated. Perhaps I am considering too much complexity. We can always use IndObject for any person-object; I just can't see any deal situation involving a total of four people. The only other dealable items are things, which could go into ThirdObject and FourthObject.
The other possibility here is to just proceed with ThirdObject and FourthObject being of datatype Anything. After all, we can just warn the storybuilder that using these things is tricky and you're on your own. Why not? Use of these two objects will be rare.
For the moment, that is the course we will follow. I've tried all sorts of alternatives and I just don't see any clean solution.