I probably won't tell this right, but the experiment had these actors
pretending to be bit-players in a mini-play. The primary character was told
that he/she was going to enter a bus-station, buy a ticket for a bus to
another town, and then when the bus arrived, to ride it.
All people in the play-let wore radio earphones except for the primary
character. An Author sat in the audience/control room and told the
secondary players what to do. For example, one of the players was a ticket
agent. Based on what was happening in the story, the agent may be told to
call the primary character to the counter, tell them there were forms they
needed to fill out, etc.
On character was a hoodlum that tried to steal money at knifepoint from
everyone. The primary character had to decide what to do in that case,
whether to defend other people/ their money etc.
Note, the Author just kept the story going by thinking up plot twists
and opportunities for the Primary character to get involved. The Author
then gave these high level goals to the actors, who decided on manner of
presentation, and actual dialogue.
This whole scenario could be acted out on a Multiple User game using
the private talk channels for the author's radio links and the normal
"say and :emote commands to be the 'actors' voices.
then if you logged the whole thing, you would have the beginnings of a
story that you could then program.
Comments?
David (Whitten@netom.com) (214) 437-5255