Partial poetics model of story
The Marlinspike design just described was informed by both theory and previous interactive drama systems.
Marlinspike is based on the neo-Aristotelean poetics discussed previously, which specifies that an interactive drama can be defined in terms of multiple levels. Its highest level--Action--represents the significant events of the story. These events materially rely upon the underlying level of the story world--comprised of Characters and Setting--while at the same time also formally specifying that story world's nature.
Marlinspike's architecture explicitly follows this model. It provides a virtual world filled with non-player characters (NPCs), locations, and props, all of which have internal state. As suggested by both Aristotle (1961) and Freytag (1895), the specific behaviors of these NPCs within scenes depend on their internal thoughts and motivations. Interactions within the virtual world materially produce the story events, or Action. The Marlinspike drama manager explicitly models the events of this Action level and then responds to influence its direction. The effects of previous events formally shape the state of the virtual world.
As a character in the story world, the player interacts through verbs and deeds. The alternative--letting players specify actions and events directly--would make the user more of a director than an actor in the drama. It is hoped that using verbs will increase the player's sense of immersive presence in the virtual world and of playing a character within the story, in accordance with the definition of an interactive drama. It also allows multiple possible ways to achieve the same story-level action. For example, the player might RESCUE(princess) by breaking down her door, picking the lock, or magically teleporting into her cell. This is somewhat similar to how Propp's different functions can be filled by the same event (Propp 1968). It also recalls Chatman's point that the meaning of an event cannot be characterized independently of the entire story context in which it occurs (1978).
Marlinspike scenes are also partly inspired by the encounters of tabletop role-playing games (Dungeons & Dragons 2003). An encounter is an event structured in if/then terms: "If the players do this, then this will happen." Sometimes this is can be as simple as "if the players enter this room, this monster will attack them." Marlinspike's scene preconditions work much the same way. Then, just as all encounters are linked together to form an adventure, Marlinspike's scenes are strung together as threads.
These threads, when taken together, aim to meet the poetics definition of a story being unified and complete, such that no part can be removed without leaving the whole "disjointed and disturbed" (Aristotle 1961). Each thread is a series of events unified by necessity. Yet, making allowances for the fact that some events may be more important or key to a story--as suggested by Freytag's "ornamental" events and Chatman's distinction between kernel and satelite events--only actions of high import are required to be incorporated into a thread.1 Marlinspike stories are complete when they start with a beginning scene, followed by a number of connected middle scenes, and then an ending scene.
The way Marlinspike selects a next scene that builds on past events is inspired by Keith Johnstone's (1979) work in improvisational theatre. Specifically, he claims that if one focuses on the structure produced by reincorporating previous events, the content of stories tends to take care of itself. I am suggesting here that this is because reincorporating--referring back from the current event to earlier events--while improvising a story means that the events of the story will be linked by narrative necessity when considering the finished story from beginning to end.
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Argax Project : Dissertation :
A Rough Draft Node http://www2.hawaii.edu/~ztomasze/argax |
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Last Edited: 26 Mar 2011 ©2007 by Z. Tomaszewski. |