Abstract.Computer-based highly interactive drama involves different authoring approaches, compared to linear media. Underlying design principles needs to be understood in order to guide the authoring process, to teach authors and to design better systems. This paper identifies a fundamental design principle termed Structural Writing that underlies some of the most generative approaches in interactive drama. A theoretical description of this principle is proposed, which leads to a general architecture for interactive drama that may help authors and researchers to design systems that better exploit the principle of structural writing.

Abstract. This paper describes the current state of a pedagogical immersive 3D story TBI-SIM and the changes that have been made to it. The system is a narrative simulation in a fully immersive 3D world in which the user controls a character that can interact with non-player characters (NPCs). The users achieve goals and make decisions that have an impact on the course of the story.Keywords: Interactive Drama, Interactive Narrative, Pedagogical Interactive Drama, Pedagogical Narrative Simulations, Educational Games, IDtension, Traumatic Brain Injury. Context Traumatic brain injuryChildren and adolescents undergo a dramatic change in their family life if one of their parents has a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Interactions among family members change rapidly and, often, for the worse; and new responsibilities are thrust upon the child or adolescent, who may be overwhelmed by feelings of guilt, anger or helplessness [2,6]. Our research project aims to develop and deliver educational material to youths faced with TBI of a family member. Based on testimonials we obtained through focus groups and interviews with families, we developed scenarios of everyday situations in an imaginary family in which members have to cope with the father's TBI. Techno-pedagogical environmentThe IDtension interactive drama engine has been used to implement the scenarios [9]. They are then displayed on the Unity game engine [12]. By playing a virtual character involved in short pedagogical stories (with a few goals to achieve), users experience different kinds of behavior. The experience of both usual and unusual situations in a safe simulation environment can be a good basis for further exchange in a real or a virtual focus group, or for therapeutic sessions with a psychologist. The 3D simulation that we developed provides an immersive interactive environment that readily engage users [3,4]. Engagement is reinforced by the narrative nature of the user experience, which focuses on relevant and striking situations, instead of simulating scientifically social relationships within a family. IDtension [9] is the underlying drama engine used to generate narrative actions, which does not rely on any branching or conditional branching mechanism, but generates appropriate actions on the fly, based on narrative rules and algorithms (see [9] for a full description of the engine). As a result, the engine enables a large number of choices, which differentiates the current demonstration from most pedagogical narrative simulations (e.g. Heart Sense [7], Carmen's Bright Ideas [5], FearNot [1] or Scenejo [8]). This larger number of choice aims at providing a greater engagement to the user.The system described in this paper is an improvement over an earlier demonstrated version [10]. Changes covered in this paper are about the scenario, the text-to-speech integration and the end-user interface.

Abstract. Dramatic situations have long been studied in Drama Studies since they characterize tension and interestingness in a plot. In the field of Interactive Digital Storytelling (IDS), integrating knowledge about dramatic situations is of great relevance in order to design improved systems that dynamically generate more narratively-relevant events. However, current approaches to dramatic situations are descriptive and not directly applicable to the field of IDS. We introduce a computational model that fills that gap by both describing dramatic situations visually and providing a quantitative measure for the interestingness of a plot. Using a corpus of 20 Aesop's fables, we compared the calculations resulting of the model with the assessments provided by 101 participants. Results suggest that our model works appropriately at least for stories characterized by a strong plot structure rather than their semantic content.Keywords: interactive storytelling, interactive narrative, interactive drama, computational narratology, computational models of narrative, dramatic situation, Aesop's Fables.

This paper takes a look at narrative forms as of yet unexplored in the field of digital interactive storytelling, and proposes methods for how they can be used in engaging ways for the user. Although the various Digital Interactive Storytelling (DIS) prototypes available produce several different story genres, they stem from the same classic narrative form. With this paper, we aim to introduce narrative techniques that have successfully been used in cinema, literature and the gaming world, and show how they could be adapted to DIS. We believe that by presenting these techniques authors and engineers can gain a better understanding of how to use and extend existing systems.

Nicolas SZILAS, Jean DUMAS, Urs RICHLE, Nicolas HABONNEAU Apports d'une simulation narrative pour l'acquisition de compétences sociales,