The problem that dogged me for years was defining the appropriate verbs for the player in a storyworld. This, of course, is the decisive problem, and I never really solved it. However, I have figured out a way to organize my thinking about the verbs in a storyworld.
There are only four basic verb groups that show up in stories. All verbs in all stories can be placed in one of these four groups.
1. Dramatically critical decisions
These are the crucial verbs around which stories revolved. Yet they are few and far between. For example, in Lord of the Rings, Frodo makes only four dramatically critical decisions:
a. He volunteers to take the Ring to Mount Doom.
b. He allows Gollum to come along with him.
c. He orders Samwise to go home.
All of Frodo’s other decisions are obvious no brainers. He hides from the nazgul; he runs from the orcs; he tries to escape from the monster spider. These are all obvious, no-brainer decisions; they are not dramatically significant.
Even more striking is Luke Skywalker in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Luke makes exactly one dramatically significant decision: arguing for rescuing Princess Leia. Every other decision he makes is forced on him by circumstances. Can you cite any other decision that Luke makes in that movie that could plausibly have gone otherwise?
Thus, we come to the frustrating realization that interactive storytelling cannot hinge upon the player making many dramatically significant decisions.
Perhaps the only reason for the absence of lots of dramatically significant decisions in stories is that such a structure is required for traditional stories. That is, the storyteller wants to demonstrate that one crucial moment when all of the psychological forces converge on a character and force that character to change, to make a choice that they normally wouldn’t make. Perhaps the substantive decision that Luke made was his switching off the targeting computer and using The Force to shoot the Death Star. Perhaps this reflected a new self-confidence, an acceptance of the new life-view that Obi-Wan had taught him. If it were done in a game, the player wouldn’t bat an eye about ‘using The Force’—because success or failure would not depend upon the internal mental state of the player. But in the story, the fact that all the pressures converged on Luke at that moment reveal that this was in fact the crucial decision that the storyteller wanted to communicate.
Can we pull this off in interactive storytelling? Since there is no such thing as The Force, we certainly can’t reproduce that moment from that movie. But could we create an interactive storyworld that isn’t played like a game, but instead subjects the player to a convergence of pressures that ultimately force the player to make a choice that they would not otherwise make? Well, yes, but it would be a one-shot experience. The whole point of it would be to force the player to make a choice that changes the player; that can happen only once. This does not seem like the right path to follow.
We definitely want that crucial final scene in which the player must put all the pieces together to achieve the dramatic resolution. But how to get there? On the first playing, the player must enter the final scene under impossible conditions that guarantee failure. Only after playing many times does the player learn how to handle all the preceding situations to get everything to line up properly. The story is like a key entering a lock:
(Courtesy of mechanicalgifs.com)
Only after all the initial requirements have been met does everything line up for the proper resolution.
2. Development of the relationships between the player and the other characters
So what are all these prerequisite conditions that the player must satisfy in order to get the proper resolution? At this point, every gamer in the world will say something like “Kill the ogre guarding the vorpal blade, use the vorpal blade to kill the little dragon who’s guarding the treasure, use the treasure to buy the flaming blade, and use the flaming blade to kill the really big dragon who’s imprisoned the princess. Piece o’ cake.” This is why we shoot gamers who butt into discussions of interactive storytelling.
Lining up all the pieces is an interpersonal task, not a weapons-accumulating task. Twenty years ago I stumbled upon the answer without realizing it. I was working on one of the many versions of Le Morte D’Arthur that I have experimented with over the years. The scheme was simple: the climax of the story would be Mordred’s revolt against Arthur, which would happen sooner or later, depending on Mordred’s estimate of his chances. When he revolts, he attempts to recruit knights from the Round Table. Each knight has his own band of soldiers to add to Mordred’s army. If Arthur has ruled well and justly, few knights will join Mordred’s revolt, and the final battle at Camlann will be the end of Mordred. On the other hand, if Arthur has let things get out of hand, and knights are at each other’s throats, then Arthur might end up taking the Long Walk Down the Short Spear. There’s plenty of trouble to get knights fighting with each other. Saxons are raiding, stealing cattle from knights along the frontier. Arthur is expected to ride to the rescue to chase off the Saxons and recover the cattle. But if he’s slow to respond, or can’t induce other knights to join him, he might fail.
Knights are also stepping on each other’s toes. Their peasants are killing each other, and the knights are retaliating, and Arthur is trying to keep some sense of order in the kingdom. Oh, and let’s not forget the various romantic dalliances that are certain to trigger ugly confrontations.
Arthur has his hands full keeping this lot from killing each other, and his attempts at imposing some sense of royal justice on the kingdom will challenge his judgement at every turn. (By the way, it was precisely this dynamic that hindered the progress of nation-building in Europe during the Middle Ages.)
I tried to accomplish something similar with Siboot, with a series of daily cycles in which the player engages the other characters in interactions involving trust and deceit, culminating in nightly ‘dream combat’, in which the player’s successes or failures in gaining the support of other characters gives the player an edge in dream combat. The key point is that it was all the little interactions, the small promises of support, threats, and so forth would shape the outcome of the story.
This, I think, is where the designer of the storyworld succeeds or fails.
3. challenges to be overcome (which always ARE overcome)
All stories have lots of secondary stories in which the protagonist must overcome frightening challenges. In stories, these challenges are almost always overcome. The player says “These are not the droids you’re looking for.” Or he dodges the fist of the fellow attacking him. Or he successfully hides from the gunman sent to kill him. Whatever the challenge, the protagonist in the story meets the challenge successfully.
Most dilettantes working on interactive storytelling seize upon these challenges as the way to provide interactivity. There’s no dramatic interaction, but you have to shoot down the four TIE fighters sent to get you in order to proceed to the rebel base. If you don’t get them, you die and must start over. These juvenile designs simply turn the challenges into secondary games, requiring the player to jump through the right hoops, aim straight, solve the right puzzles, marhsal his resources wisely, and navigate the map correctly to reach the goal. This is not interactive storytelling; this is just another series of same-old, same-old games scattered along a pre-determined plot line.
4. Exposition: background and wondrous events
Another common element in conventional storytelling is the exposition of interesting people, things, and events. The gal has legs that just go on and on. The dark cliffs frown upon the exhausted travellers. The monster’s bloody red eyes glow like embers. Etc. Etc. Etc. This kind of exposition seems essential to good storytelling, which is why I created the Encounter system. These are text interludes that provide context, atmosphere, and some interesting variations on the rather mechanical style made necessary by the difficulties of producing large verb nets.
All stories use combinations of these four components. Interactive storytelling authors must somehow reproduce them in their work.