Participants in interactive narratives have a unique way of engaging the story they are about to experience by integrating themselves into the structure it takes place. Many works of interactive fiction allow the reader to input commands or dialogue options, while many video games allow the player to control an avatar within the game with certain functions through a controller or mouse and keyboard.
Dungeons & Dragons instantiates the player through formulas to determine the parameters and functions of the character they create, then verbal negotiation with the author, known as the Dungeon Master, to navigate a world through the imagination, some of the time including physical boards and pieces to help visualize what is going on. These are all means to communicate with the narrative, and the relationship the player develops with the system of rules that define the game world is participating in what the field of cybernetics would call a "feedback loop" (Voorhees 21). A feedback loop is created when properties and actions of a system affect the environment, and the environment in turn influences the system, creating an adaptive symbiotic relationship that makes it difficult to see the boundaries between the system and the environment. Donna Haraway then takes this relationship, before limited to machines and abstract concepts of systems, to people and how they interact with systems by saying "we are cyborgs" (Haraway "Cyborg Manifesto"). Haraway uses cybernetics to show relationships with fiction and politics affecting the individual, and how the individual, in turn, forces the former 'systems' to adapt to them as well. When players explore the village of Hommlet, the rules of
Dungeons & Dragons and the actions and adapting on the part of the author acts as the system while the players become cyborgs.
The will of the dice has placed you into the character of Cyborc, a Half-Orc male Fighter of a Neutral Good alignment. In general he means well and often tries to to appear friendly to the locals of Hommlet, however comes off as quite intimidating. His gut feeling tells him something strange is going on in this village, so he is investigating in hopes to gain acceptance by the people.
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