Stories Within an Authored Story

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To further dive into the narratives of those choices, and make note of the stories unavailable to the player, would be overwhelming and unnecessary. While the player got to choose where The Drama Queen went next on her misadventure, it was within a pre-rendered set of circumstances that the player moved around in. The options opened and closed were based on the personal disposition of the character the player lives through, so the narrative isn't only shaped by the avatar that exists within the game world, but also by the player themselves. It is possible that different people will receive different parts of the narrative and would have to compare notes to make sense of their personalized adventures, but this is only an alternative way of experiencing a narrative rather than the same way in a different medium. The player performs in relation to the cues given by the game and "owns the character," as would be said in theater and cinema, to become an extension of them. The hints of other ongoing events, material drawn directly from the adventure book of the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, provides stories for other play-throughs that are already created, but will be augmented by the presence of a particular set of players. A common denominator exists between all of these player experiences, and that is the authored space already created for players to interact with. Control isn't fought over nor negotiated, as it is the intent of the author to preempt the inhabitation of players within their story.

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