storytelling experience. The first is an example Chris Crawford is fond of using: that of
a parent telling a child a story. The parent has in mind a story to tell including what char-
acters it will involve, what surprises it will contain, roughly how the story will unfold,
and approximately how it will end. But as the child asks questions about the story, the
parent will change the tale accordingly. The parent may use a book as a guide, but will
stray from that guide as necessary. For example, the story might begin: “As the prin-
cess wandered through the dark forest, she was frightened by many different things she
saw, including a large newt, a dark cave, and an old shack.” As the parent tells the story,
the child may ask questions. “What color was the newt?” “The newt was a strange
shade of yellow, a color the princess had only seen in the royal spiced mustard.” “What
about the cave?” “From within the cave came a terrible smell, reminiscent of the smell
of sulfur burning.” “Maybe there’s an old sorcerer in there, making potions. Does she
go into the cave?” “She did enter the cave, taking each step carefully in order to avoid
stumbling in the dark. And as she went deeper into the cave, she started to see a light,
and a voice shouted, ‘Who is it that enters my cave?’ And as she got closer, the princess
saw an old wizard with tattered robes...” There may not have actually been a sorcerer
in the story as the parent had initially intended to tell it, but as the child asks questions,
instead of answering “you can’t go that way” or “there’s nothing special about it” as a
poorly designed computer game might, the parent adapts the story to the child, adding
detail and introducing new characters and situations as necessary. The overall story arc
and its main protagonists may not change that much, but the child has had a real role in
determining what exactly happens in the story.
Another example of truly interactive storytelling is found in many pen-and-paper
role-playing games, such asDungeons & Dragons. In a game ofD&D, the Dungeon
Master (DM) leads the game, guiding the other players through the game-world and
telling them the story as it happens. The Dungeon Master plans out in advance the
locations the players will be exploring, has some idea of what characters the players
will meet in what locations, and probably knows what major conflicts will be presented.
The players, though, are in control of what parts of the level they investigate, and how
they conduct themselves with the different NPCs they may meet. For instance, the DM
probably does not have a script of what the different NPCs will say when approached.
Instead, she knows what their personalities are like, and how they are likely to respond.
When players ask an NPC a question, the DM is able to come up with a reasonable
response on the fly. A clever DM will never have to say, “The NPC does not understand
your question.” As with the parent-child storytelling experience, the DM will be able to
keep the players on track with the overall story she wants to tell, while allowing the
players a considerable amount of freedom in how that story unfolds and perhaps even in
how it resolves.
Of course, the problem in creating a computer version of an interactive storytelling
experience such as the ones described above is that both require a human to be telling
the story, since a modern computer will never be able to dynamically come up with
story developments as well as a human can. So the best a game designer can do cur-
rently is try to recreate such an interactive storytelling experience, but, in lieu of
dynamically generating the story line, anticipate all of the questions players might ask,
places they might go, and lines of dialog they might want to say. Of course, this is a Her-
culean task, and no matter how much anticipation the designer employs, she will never
Chapter 11: Storytelling 205