At the heart of the Storytronics technology lie the interactive storyworlds. Each storyworld is a universe of dramatic possibilities, which the player can shape into thousands of different stories by playing the role of the story's Protagonist. A storyworld is comprised of two groups of information - dramatic components and dramatic principles. Dramatic components are the same things that make up any story - the story’s Actors, locations, props, and occurrences.

Dramatic principles are the unique way in which a storybuilder expresses his or her authorial voice - since the player, as the Protagonist, is free to take the story in any direction, the storybuilder doesn’t concern him or herself with plotting out a specific storyline - instead, he or she defines the underlying rules that affect the way Actors interact.

For example, where a screenwriter would write: "on scene 5, Pete, who is a nice guy, proposes to Mary, who loves him, and she accepts", a storybuilder creates the dramatic principle: "when a nice guy proposes to a woman who loves him, she will accept". This principle applies to other Actors and at other times, as well, so that, if Captain Hook proposes to Wendy on scene 17, she will not accept, since he is not a nice guy and she doesn't love him (Of course, you could create a rule saying that women should be attracted to dark, rugged, one-armed rascals, in which case she just might consider it).

The central kind of dramatic principle is the Verb - a possible occurrence in the storyworld. The Protagonist and computer-controlled Actors interact by performing Verbs, which allows for extremely rich and varied behavior while ensuring that each action is dramatically significant.

The purpose of these principles is not to restrict the player’s freedom and force him or her to play the storyworld in a certain way - rather, it is to ensure that, whatever story the player chooses to play out, it will always be a moving, satisfying experience that, with good storybuilding, provides the same catharsis and insight we expect from literature at its finest. Thus, Storytronics allows freedom of expression both to the artist and to the audience, without one conflicting with the other.

Tell me more about dramatic principles and components
Tell me more about the concept of Verb-based dramatic interaction
Tell me more about the artistic process of storybuilding