"Dynamic" story?

"If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called 'research', would it?"

-commonly attributed to Einstein

"[A story] is nothing more than a sequence of events that someone relates to someone else."

-Jesse Schell, The Art of Game Design

It's pretty easy to define what a "dynamic story" is not. It's not a static, pre-determined, pre-written, pre-recorded, unchangeable story.

It becomes harder to define and agree on what a "dynamic story" is, should be, or can be. I think that's why there also tends to be a lack of agreement on whether such a thing is possible and/or desirable. Does generating "dynamic stories" imply giving up authorship and leaving the story to chance, the computer, and (maybe, sometimes) the player? Can "dynamic story" mean defining a game world and rules, letting the player loose, and assuming the player will create his own stories out of the events that transpire as a result of the rules? If a computer generates a story, is it already dynamic by virtue of not being pre-written before the game shipped?


For me, in the scope of this project, "dynamic story" means the following (in dimishing order of importance):

• The story is told by the game to the player

I have encountered, several times, the point of view that all games are "storytelling machines" in that they enable players to later tell stories about events that transpired during the game ("we were almost losing but then I stole the ball and made the goal right before the game ended!"). However, I see a huge difference between storytelling (the game tells a story to the player) and story enabling (the player tells stories about the game). I'm interested in the first one. As the player, I want to be told a story.

• The player has agency in relation to the story and its progression

Specifically, the player has agency over how his character acts within the context of the story, and the character's actions are acknowledged by the story and world in a sensible manner, much like a Game Master in a pen and paper RPG must constantly adjust to the players' actions. Ideally, the player has a constrained but flexible vocabulary of actions that enable him to react to the events of the story the way he sees fit. The story, in turn, can react reasonably and believably to the player's reaction.

• The story is engaging and interesting

'Cause boring stories are boring.

• The story mimics the typical RPG story style and storytelling conventions.

The familiar story structure would give the player comfortable, easy to understand stories. This could be especially important in such an abstract, strange setting as a story-based microgames game. On the other hand, it also provides a large, easy to understand and abstract basis for a story system. Thus, to answer the question of "how will a computer tell a story, and how will it decide what story to tell?" we can first answer, "how do computer games usually tell stories, and what stories do they tell?"

These constraints are guided by introspection: what is it that I find so appealing about a dynamic story system? What do I really want to achieve or fix with such a system?

Primarily, it is the frustration of running into what I would call the "invisible walls" of on-rails storytelling: "But I don't wanna walk into the trap!" "This escape plan is stupid, I have a better one" "I want to disagree with that guy but all the dialog options agree with him!" "Can't we just kill him or take the doohickey by force?" "I'm pretty sure I could have talked my way out of this" "What am I supposed to do to make the auxilary character finish his 'research' and progress the story?" "Oh, so this guy dies whether or not I choose to kill him?" and so on. 

It would be impossible to anticipate and address all the ways a player's idea of what his character should do next will disagree with the prescribed story, let alone create viable alternatives to the story for all of them! The usual solution is to not let the player make those choices. But is there a way to instead react to those choices as they happen?

My secondary motivation is a fascination with game worlds as models. I personally feel the most engaged and connected to a game world when that world is an understandable, internally consistent model. On the other hand, I often find myself get bored of games quickly if they don't engage me with their story, even if they have good gameplay. Why not try to create a model of an engaging story?