Dynamic Plot Generating Engine

When creating interactive drama computer games then it is frequently useful to be able to generate a plot to use as a background for the drama and to use as a knowledge base for Non-Player Characters. In this article a new engine is proposed that dynamically creates new game plots for a murder mystery based game. The game engine uses Bayesian networks to create a new plot based on a probability map of a typical murder mystery novel. To abstract plot elements for the construction of the Bayesian network a morphology, similar to the morphology of the Russian structuralist Vladimir Propp, is created for murder mysteries. The engine creates a complete and consistent murder mystery that is solvable with logical inference. For each new game the engine generates a unique plot, a murder mystery with the necessary attributes that are needed for such a plot to be logically consistent, coherent, and complete, and make sense from the human perspective. This game engine is responsive to preset constraints rather than a pre-authored narration, which opens up numerous possibilities for integration in computer games where the constraints can be manipulated by interactions from game events and player interaction.