I'm trying to write an encounter when the player enters a room for the first time - one that has branching dialogue and a full-on interactive conversation. The problem is, as soon as the first dialogue prompt appears, the room's description prints right underneath it before the conversation is over.

Is there any way to organize the encounter that will let it finish before the room description prints?

All I can think of is temporarily disabling room descriptions. So at the start of your scene you have

game.showdescriptiononenter = false

and then when it finishes, do:

game.showdescriptiononenter = true
ShowRoomDescription

Thanks! With a little bit of tinkering that ended up making it work perfectly.

You could also have moved the player into a room with no room description. When the conversation is over, move the player to the room with the description. Just a thought.