Ticks and turns are horrible minutae details. I've added a sample piece of code into the "cookbook" section to try to bring some light onto the situation.
The system "inventory" command is now tickless as standard.
Garry's workaround is pretty good.
To be fair, I guess Infocom games like Hitchhiker's didn't count SCORE and HELP as a turn... but they DID count INVENTORY as one.
Is there an option to set INVENTORY to tick? Or will there be. I guess if I really want it to count as a turn in future (which sometimes I do... in turn-limited situations) then I can manually code an INVENTORY response, that will make it count as a turn.
Well, maybe I'll just make it count as a tick right now (don't depend on this Garry), and add a toggle to switch it off as a tick. Naturally I feel that I is a useful way of passing time when you just want to move through ticks, and wait is too many letters.
Please keep your workaround in place Garry.