Much of what I’ve read about the drama management systems that underlie many interactive storytelling engines dedicates substantial effort to the task of describing techniques for keeping players “on track” as they progress through the story. A number of popular solutions exist for negotiating the tension between rich unrestricted player interaction with the environment and the demands of the grand narrative arc in which the player’s representative character is presumably immersed. Most often these solutions involve subtle (and not-so-subtle) player “correction” systems which either restrict player agency directly or manipulate circumstances to more indirectly keep the player on the “narrative rails”.Direct solutions often take the form of violations of the game rules, as in The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion where all non-narrative characters may be killed indiscriminately, but those NPC’s deemed critical to quests or stories are functionally immortal. In some cases a direct solution might involve manipulation of the interface, by altering the function of a cursor or menu so that only narratively felicitous actions are permitted in any given context.
Indirect solutions involve the engine manipulating circumstances in order to prevent undesirable actions, or encourage desired outcomes. An indirect solution to the problem of players attempting to kill plot-critical NPC’s, for instance, would be to have their weapon jam, or run out of bullets when they made the attempt. This solution is somewhat hackneyed, but it has the advantage of maintaining the reality of the world seamlessly, rather than actively violating the rules that the player has been playing by. Often indirect solutions are “soft” answers to the problem of guiding the player, allowing the player to engage in limited versions of actions they are are accustomed to performing, and then incorporating a “coping mechanism” for dealing with player deviations from the narrative arc.
Both of these approaches are built around the assumption that players are either unwilling, and/or unable to engage in the narrative as predefined by the game creator. This is a legitimate assumption, however in many ways it speaks to failings on the part of the storyteller to effectively engage the player in the story, or to provide the player with sufficient knowledge to move along the narrative arc. Providing the player with sufficient knowledge to progress in the story is a reasonably straightforward problem to tackle at the authorial level. Engaging the player sufficiently, on the other hand, is a Gordian Knot of a problem.
The assumption that players are unwilling to engage in the story is rooted in debates about player Agency. (more…)