February 12th, 2021
One of the killer problems that has vexed all my efforts at interactive storytelling is communicating the personality of characters to the player. The problem is more acute in interactive storytelling than any other story medium, because the player must be able to act on their knowledge of the personalities of each character. Personality traits that are revealed only late in the story can ruin the experience of the player. Indeed, in many mysteries, the crucial character traits are revealed only at the end. Agatha Christie’s use of this trick was particularly flagrant; usually you don’t learn about the special relationships among the characters until the solution is presented. “The victim was Abigail’s mother?!?!?! And Herbert was spurned by Abigail four years ago?!?!?” Sorry, but we can’t pull that crap in interactive storytelling.
Of course, we could begin the story by specifying the personality traits of the characters, as we might find in a typical role-playing game. That’s fine for gamers (indeed, they expect it), but it violates the conventions of storytelling. What to do?
With Le Morte D’Arthur, I have relied on a strictly linear graph in Act I, during which I present the characters and the dramatic context in a purely expository fashion. The player has little opportunity to interact with the characters. In Act II, the player is given greater freedom to interact with the characters, but the interactions are more exploratory in nature: the player can poke at the characters to get a better feeling for their personalities. Only in Act III does the player finally have the freedom to interact with the characters in dramatically decisive ways. Only in Act III do we begin to see dramatically significant branching, and even then the branching is merely binary.
The only other strategy that is likely to work is to base a storyworld on an existing well-known story. For example, one could build a storyworld based on the original three Star Wars movies. Everybody knows the personality traits of Luke, Leia, Han, Chewbacca, Obi-Wan, and Darth Vader, so you can plunge the player right into the action. At least, until Disney’s lawyers catch up with you:
There are still plenty of storyworlds that are out of copyright, such as the Iliad and the Odyssey or King Arthur or something from Shakespeare; but few people know these stories well enough to be able to interact intelligently with the characters. How much do you know about Menelaus or Penelope or Tristram or Percival? Can you describe the relationships among Claudius, Gertrude, Hamlet, and Polonius in Shakespeare’s play?
For now, I am not able to imagine any better structure than the three-act scheme I describe above. I’m sure that there are other ways; I hope some reader conceives of one. If you do, contact me using the Contact Form at the top of this page.
