The verb tense of the narration. This is one of the VerbTense objects (Present, Past, Perfect, Past Perfect, Future, Future Perfect). This controls the way {verb} substitution parameters are generated, which in turn affects most library messages. The default is Present, which is the conventional tense for most IF.

Examples of the English tenses:

Present: Bob opens the box.
Past: Bob opened the box.
Perfect: Bob has opened the box.
Past Perfect: Bob had opened the box.
Future: Bob will open the box.
Future Perfect: Bob will have opened the box.

(Language modules are free to add their own tenses if the target language has others that would be of interest to IF authors. They're also free to ignore any of the "standard" tenses we define. At a minimum, though, some form of present tense should always be provided, since most IF is narrated in the present. If you need to differentiate among different present tenses, you might prefer to define your own IDs instead of using the generic Present, but you should still support *some* present tense that's suitable for narration. Some type of past tense usable in narration is also nice to have. The others are probably of marginal value; in English, at least, other tenses are rare in any kind of narrative fiction, and are mostly limited to experimental or novelty use.)