All the World's a Stage

http://www.cappuccinomusicaltheatre.ca/
onstage.htm

Relegating the player to the role of an impromptu performer and the authored space as a stage better illustrates the relationship between participant and author in interactive fiction than an onlooker to a static object as it is seen in the visual arts, literature, and cinema. In their dissertation Computer Games and Interactive Narrative, Monica Evans references Janet Murray's criticism on the position of "players as authors:"


"We could perhaps say that the interactor is the author of a particular performance within an electronic story system, or the architect of a particular part of the virtual world, but we must distinguish this derivative authorship from the originating authorship of the system itself…The interactor is not the author of the digital narrative." (118)

Without including too many post-modernist musings, the story within a story proves to be an interesting and more accurate representation of an individual's place in an interactive narrative, but also in any narrative. Everyone who views art in any form leaves with a different understanding, feeling, and narrative, which can be evidenced by the amount of (and growing number of) theorists and critics of art. Murray notes that the real difference is that the participant in interactive narratives have agency within the art, but doesn't change the actual authored space (Evans 117-118).

The will of the dice have decided you will explore this perspective with a female Human Chaotic Evil Cleric titled The Drama Queen. She is looking for a quaint village to gain notoriety, and having noticed the migration of evil characters around the region, and the history nearby, she decided to pay Hommlet a look. Because of her particular intent, The Drama Queen won't be following the adventure typical player would in the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, which is concurrent with idea of a player crafting their own story within a story.

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