Interactive Generation of Dilemma-based Narratives

This paper presents a system which automatically generates interactive stories. These are focused on dilemmas in order to create dramatic tension. The story designer is only required to provide genre specific storyworld knowledge, such as information on characters and their relations, locations and actions. In addition, the system is provided with knowledge of generic story actions and dilemmas which are based on those clichés encountered in many of today’s soap operas. These dilemmas and story actions are instantiated for the given storyworld and a story planner creates sequences of actions that each lead to a dilemma for a character (who can be the user). The user interacts with the story by making decisions on relevant dilemmas and by freely choosing their own actions. Using this input, the system chooses and adapts future story lines according to the user’s preferences.