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The same criterion applies to interactive storytelling. With any given dra-
matic situation, our user can imagine a great many possibilities; our task is to
provide as many of those possibilities as is reasonable. For example, if Pierre
slaps Vincent with his glove, we would surely expect Vincent to be able to chal-
lenge Pierre to a duel, or slap Pierre, or verbally or physically assault him. Were
we to provide all of these options, then our ratio of accessible states to con-
ceivable states would be fairly good. We could increase that ratio by including
some of the less obvious options, such as Vincent skulking away or bursting
into tears or falling on his knees and begging forgiveness. A truly heroic ef-
fort would further include such unlikely options as Vincent picking his nose
or reciting a Tennyson poem - but the “imaginability” of such options is so
low that little would be gained from this. In any case, we can agree that a fully
developed interactive storytelling product would surely include hundreds or
thousands of choices for the user.
Choice means verbs
Thus, our goal is to provide the user with many choices. What, precisely, do
we mean by “choice”? In particular, how can we express the vague concept of
choice in a computationally accessible data structure? My answer is to reduce
the broad concept of choice to the more specific concept of a verb ensconced
inside a sentence. Thus, a choice is a selection of one of several plans stated as
sentences:
“I will slap Pierre with my glove.”
“I will challenge Pierre to a duel.”
“I will insult Pierre.”
“I will punch Pierre in the nose.”
The core concept of each of these choices is the verb (slap, challenge to duel,
insult, or punch in the nose), but that verb must be given context with the
inclusion of a subject and a direct object to form a sentence.
Discrete versus free-form verb choice
In the ideal storytelling engine, the user will be free to choose any verb imagin-
able. However, the effort required to dramatically process so many verbs pro-
hibits such an arrangement. For the moment, we require a simpler arrange-
ment that saddles the storyteller with a manageable amount of labor. If a
sto-
ryworld
(my term for the data structure fed into the storytelling engine) is to
