My biggest takeaway was the need to address story
structure. Having the author script out meaningful content for
each potential story line followed by the participant is a highly
limited approach. But without structure, where is the building
tension, the release, the surprises that make stories exciting?
As an exercise, I de-constructed portions of a book I am
re-reading: Barry B. Longyear's "City of Baraboo". To support his
story structure, a Drama Manager would need to support N PreCursors: a
set of events that must have occurred prior to a Scene. One could
imagine an author writing several PreCursors, each of which provides
some context for a given Scene, using narrative, exposition or action
to make a point. The Drama Manager would be responsible for
ensuring the participant experiences enough PreCursors to make any
given Scene meaningful before allowing the participant to begin that
Scene.
The Drama Manager would also need to support chained Events:
i.e., Event A must be experienced before Event B is meaningful and/or
believable. One could imagine the act of a participant
experiencing any given Scene toggling one or many Events, thus opening
up new portions of the now "dramatically valid" story world.