Minecraft – Is It Possible To Pass The Selected Player Down The Command Block Chain

1.9+ Answer

For your first command, place an impulse command block. Then, for all subsequent commands, use a chain block on 'always active'.

1.8 and below answer

This is possible with the use of repeaters.

Simply string your command blocks together like so:

This will execute the commands left to right with a 4 tick delay between each when the button is pressed.

The delay on the repeaters can be changed or more repeaters can be added to make the delay between executions quicker or slower.

You can use the caret notation (^) in execute positioned, which removes the need for the x, y and z target selectors entirely (except in some really niche cases). The command you need is this one:

execute at @e[type=villager] positioned ^ ^ ^2 run tellraw @a[distance=..2] "Hey!"

As a bonus, you can get rid of the comparator (and also prevent that players why enter the radius multiple times get the message multiple times) by putting this command after the first:

execute at @e[type=villager] positioned ^ ^ ^2 run tag @a[distance=..2] add heardVillagerTalk

and modifying the first command to:

execute at @e[type=villager] positioned ^ ^ ^2 run tellraw @a[distance=..2,tag=!heardVillagerTalk] "Hey!"

This will prevent the issue the comparator had that players could walk in and out of the area and get the message every time.

If you're using a state scoreboard in your map, you can of course do the same with that. Let's say that state 0 is before having "heard" the "villager" "talk" and state 1 is afterwards. Make this command the second command in the row:

execute at @e[type=villager] positioned ^ ^ ^2 if entity @a[distance=..2] run scoreboard players set $game state 1

And make both only activate in state 0. This assumes that your state scoreboard is called "state" and the holder "$game".