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Friday, June 26, 2015

177. Storytellers

Most interactive media in the post-singularity age is intelligent and realistically responsive, either because of the actions of other players (such as in multi-user simulspace games) or because of sophisticated AI (such as in single-player simulspace games.) This trend goes farther than traditionally interactive entertainment, however, and into very old forms.

Partway between a customized choose your own adventure book and a single-player role-playing game, neverending stories (so-called because they are often designed to continue for as long as the user maintains interest) are low-tech presentation of high-tech content generation that are taking the market by storm. Entirely text-based, the stories can be run purely on mesh-inserts, and don't even requiring an ecto. The stories are usually of a single character, whose actions are determined by the user, the effects of which are determined by a specialized storyteller AI.

Storyteller AIs are typically designed to customize their content based on advice from the user's muse. Degrees of user control, writing style and the themes of the story are all customizable. Storytellers can also be used as educators, weaving lessons into the story according to the wishes of a parent or caretaker, which might encourage anything from problem-solving to adherence to certain ideologies.

Mechanics

Storytellers are AIs [Low]

Notes

Inspired by the primer from Neil Stephenson's The Diamond Age

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