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In both mansion staging and within the Faire, each venue has its own
dramatic arc or Freytag triangle. In Medieval theatre, however, the series of
plays in a cycle predisposes an interactor to see each mansion-based scene
in sequence. At the Faire, an interactor has relatively greater freedom upon
entering the gate to choose a direction or venue. Although that arrange-
ment of stages and sellers predispose certain sequential traversals, it allows
for greater variations in the interactor's path. The arc of the joust is punc-
tuated with sharply rising and falling action in a cumulative series of en-
counters between knights and pages. The arc of the giant swing is shaped
by how the swing moves higher and higher until the children squeal, and
the operators of the swing then gently slow it down, punctuated by com-
ments from the participants. Further, the arc within a particular venue like
the maze will be different for each participant: horror to the lost little one,
triumph to the brave venturer. Now we have two levels of arcs: that of the
interactor's experience in each individual venue and that of each visitor's
unique journey through the Faire. One might compare the overarching plot
for an interactor as a line drawn along the curves of the venues visited as
well as the chance encounters and conversations of the day. The environ-
ment of the Faire can be visualized with an overlay of a plethora of arcs
blooming from the gate and stitching themselves through the arcs of vari-
ous venues, activities, sights, and sounds. The same (but more) may be said
of Burning Man, but that's another story.
There are approaches that we can take as designers of dramatic interaction
that go in different directions than the notion of predisposing interactors to
make certain kinds of choices or tilting the balance toward dramatic inter-
action through strategic design of gameplay as Clint Hocking and others
have done. We can look for guidance to the observation of and theories
around emergent behavior. A simple instance of emergence is when an in-
teractor does something you did not foresee and for which you did not
consciously design the potential. An example from science fi ction is Kirk's
triumph in the reputedly unbeatable Kobayashi Maru training scenario
(Trek check). He did this, they say, by hacking the system, and it was al-
ways unclear whether this was a “legal” action. Noah Wardrip-Fruin tells
an amusing tale of the “emergent” qualities of gameplay in the experimen-
tal game
Prom Week
in which he took actions that made every character
