When you play a storyworld, it starts very similarly to a traditional story - with a text exposition. The exposition generally tells you who the Protagonist, your storyworld avatar, is, who the other Actors are, and, of course, what the Protagonist's conflict is. Once you click past the exposition, though, things start looking mighty different.

You are a character in the storyworld. On the screen you see where you are right now, the faces of the other Actors present, and a close-up on the face of whoever Actor is currently doing something. Whatever they're doing is described to you in Deikto, and you can respond using a Deikto Sentence of your own. Selecting your response to story occurrences is both challenging and fascinating - storyworlds are designed to put you into situations where you have to make difficult choices, both for your heart and for your mind.

There is a stupendous variety of things you can do in each storyworld situation. For example, when an Actor accuses you of bedding their spouse, one can imagine many reactions, like denying it, shamefully apologizing, flauntingly admitting it, punching them, shooting them, running away, calling the cops, telling them they're not good enough for their spouse, telling them you didn't know it was their spouse and many others. An ideally-designed storyworld would give you all these options. Also, a storyworld is designed to minimize redundant or uninteresting choices, so that every move you make has a distinct effect on the storyworld, and lands you in a new interesting situation.

However, there are some reactions that won't make sense, like shoving a cake in your accuser's face, proclaiming oneself to be the reincarnated Charlemagne, or pulling the light bulb out of a lamp and eating it. The storybuilder cannot and need not provide for every imaginable silly behavior - he or she operates under the assumption that you share a common interest in keeping the story on track and not letting it get mangled up with nonsense.
Of course, "on track" could mean a lot of different things - if this is some sort of Monty Python-esque storyworld, the latter group of options just might be more appropriate. It all depends on the storybuilder's taste, and, therefore, as in any art form, you will enjoy a storyworld better if your taste is compatible with its creator's.

You aren't the only one who has a very wide palette of available choices - the computer-controlled Actors have just as many. You will discover that they are nothing like what you're used to with computers - not only are they intelligent, perceptive and coherent, they are also emotional, idiosyncratic creatures, who feel about each other and about you, both positively and negatively. Their emotions are quite complex - for example, if you are playing a Protagonist who has authority over an Actor, and that Actor disobeys you, you could decide to punish them. If you do, they might hate you for it, but if you don't they might think you're weak. If you don't punish them after having threatened to do so they might think you're dishonest, or they might just think you're merciful. It depends on their personality, their history with you, and perhaps some other values. Because the storybuilder shapes these emotional dynamics according to his or her artistic vision, no two storyworlds have the same dynamics; however, if he or she does a good job, the result is always highly convincing and engaging. Much of the pleasure in a storyworld is learning how to interact with each Actor, how they like to be treated, what irritates them, what their weaknesses are and how you can befriend them.

Storybuilders define special narrative principles that allow them to ensure your experience will be not only entertaining, but also dramatic. These can speed the story up if it gets too slow, add conflict to it if everything is just too peachy for drama, ease it up a little if it's too tense, and generally react to the way you choose to play your role, so that the story organizes around your choices in a dramatically coherent way. For example, suppose that you are playing St. George. Obviously, this storyworld has dragon slaying in it, which you are expected to perform. The storybuilder can create dramatic principles that will influence the computer-controlled Actors to pressure you into slaying the dragon, or even influence the dragon itself to come after you. If you don’t want to do any dragon slaying, the storybuilder can create a
principle that will detect that, and respond - it could become a storyworld about your struggle to escape the duty of dragon slaying, or some other Actor could slay the dragon and it becomes a story about your coping with the shame of cowardice. The possibilities are endless, and the more capable the storybuilder, the more fascinating and varied they become. In other words, while you are the author of the Protagonist's behavior, the storybuilder is
the author of everything else in the storyworld, including how your behavior affects the story. A good storyworld challenges and surprises you, while still allowing you to choose your own path. Of course, not every path leads to a happy ending, but ideally they all lead to cathartically satisfying ones.