Well once again I’m off on a quest of exploration and discovery, sent by he who chuckles once I’ve finally bitten down on the bait. The same chuckler who put me in the middle of Grace and Trip’s marital problems in Facade.
Storytron is a new concept in developing interactive story. All the forms of interactive narrative–text IF, games, hyperfiction, fall short in one area: the amount of freedom the reader/player has in creating a storyline that is unbounded by author intent. Storytron is based upon action/reaction, and the multitude of ways that people react to events.
The central kind of dramatic principle is the Verb–a possible occurrence in the Storyworld. The Protagonist and the computer-controlled Actors interact by performing Verbs, which allows for extremely rich and varied behavior while ensuring that each action is dramatically significant. (Storytron)
What I’m beginning to understand as the crux of the concept is that the author will be building a storehouse of verb-based action phrases that cover a wide range of situations–cause and effect–and these will form a basis of action as called upon by reader input without specific guidance of having been written into the storyline, even as possibilities to that specific segment of the story, by the writer.
I’ll link Storytron in the right sidebar as a project I’m working in, somewhere near what I’m currently reading, so that I do not necessarily have to remember to link it in the postings–something often forgotten in the fever of learning and sharing. Also, it will show the world how great I am at multitasking in taking on so many projects at once. Or, a dismal failure and scattered personality in biting off more than I can chew.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology