This, from Storytron’s "Experience of Creating a Storyworld":
As you can see, storybuilding is nothing like any other artistic endeavor. Everything here is done at a higher level: Instead of creating a story, you create dramatic possibilities. Instead of planning a character’s behavior, you imbue an Actor with a unique personality, and send them into the storyworld to behave according to it. Instead of creating a plotline, you define special principles that maintain the narrative’s form. You do all this knowing that your storyworld will be played by countless people, each of which will have a unique experience on each playing. Thereby, you will reach that player on their own terms, and your impact as an artist will be stronger for it.
I’m not so sure that it doesn’t devalue or eliminate certain skills of the writer, much as software such as Autocad, Pro-E, etc. are design tools that can be easily used by non-designers. In writing a story, whether the characters (seem to) react on their own or are guided by the writer (and that’s a matter of how each individual writer handles his craft), there is some measure of importance to be placed on exactly how the writer maneuvered the characters in the story to create the unique twist and satisfaction of of the outcome. In Storytron, the writer can hope that one reader at least writes the story with his own vision in mind–maybe through random luck alone, but it’s something he will never know.
Barthes growls, but Edgar, I think, may understand.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology