There is an enormous amount of reading I must still do to form some ideas about Storytron, and until I get further along in understanding and testing the menus available, these postings may be a statement refuted in a later posting as I discover its capabilities.
For example, a comment Josh made on The Great Lettuce Head weblog proposes that the program may be a good form of testing characters and their reaction–which is the main structuring for the drama and interactive possibilities. My response was that the characters may be too "tied" to their traits and therefore become predictable. It is when a character acts "out of character" that makes for more interesting story. However, since the verb (action) appears to be very flexible, allowing for all possible reactions, this too may be already written into the program.
As far as the elements essential to story, I recalled and found this from Aristotle’s Poetics:
Again, Tragedy is the imitation of an action; and an action implies personal agents, who necessarily possess certain distinctive qualities both of character and thought; for it is by these that we qualify actions themselves, and these–thought and character–are the two natural causes from which actions spring, and on actions again all success or failure depends. Hence, the Plot is the imitation of the action–for by plot I mean here the arrangement of the incidents. By Character I mean that in virtue of which we ascribe certain qualities.
So it would appear that Chris Crawford is on the right track with Storytron. It will depend on very involved and intricately planned characters, and how they react to a carefully built number of actions (conflicts) that are available to them.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology