In Storytronics, interactive storytelling is achieved through artistic works called storyworlds. The experience a storyworld provides to the player is fundamentally different from that offered by traditional narratives. At its heart, this experience is about choice. As the storyworld’s Protagonist, you, the player, have complete freedom to behave in whichever way you like. Whether you prefer to be a sweetheart or a bastard, to gossip or to be discreet, to have your way through force, through subtlety, or through compromise, to seek romance or concentrate on other goals, to be generous or miserly, to avenge wrongs or forgive them, to be a dignified aristocrat or a reckless jester, you are free to choose.

What makes these choices so interesting is that they are made in a dramatic context. The computer-controlled characters (called Actors) are intelligent, and they each have their own personalities and agendas. They respond to your choices in emotionally complex and challenging ways, so you must consider the impact of your choices on your relationships with them. Overseeing your adventure is the storybuilder’s authorial voice, infused into the storyworld in the form of dramatic principles that affect the way the story unfolds.

Storyworlds are created using the special Storyworld Authoring Tool, or Swat. Once storybuilding is done, a storyworld can be played using the Storyteller software. This software employs Deikto, a revolutionary miniature dramatic language, to communicate with the player.

Tell me more about the experience of playing a storyworld
Tell me more about the experience of creating a storyworld
Tell me how Storytronics came to be