Controlling Narrative Generation with Planning Trajectories: The Role of Constraints

Abstract

Abstract. AI planning has featured in a number of Interactive Storytelling prototypes: since narratives can be naturally modelled as a sequence of actions it has been possible to exploit state of the art planners in the task of narrative generation. However the characteristics of a "good" plan, such as optimality, aren't necessarily the same as those of a "good" narrative, where errors and convoluted sequences may offer more reader interest, so some narrative structuring is required. In our work we have looked at injecting narrative control into plan generation through the use of PDDL3.0 state trajectory constraints which enable us to express narrative control information within the planning representation. As part of this we have developed an approach to planning with such trajectory constraints. The approach decomposes the problem into a set of smaller subproblems using the temporal orderings described by the constraints and then solves these subproblems incrementally. In this paper we outline our method and present results that illustrate the potential of the approach.

Embedding and Implementation of Quantum Computational Concepts in Digital Narratives

“…[8][9][10]. These methods assume that there is a definite event and character state at each point in the narrative along with explicit plan or rule-based structures for computing narrative developments.…”

Learning to Listen: Critically Considering the Role of AI in Human Storytelling and Character Creation

“…For example, the hypertext fiction model emerged, in which links to branching narratives allowed for branching stories and some level of direct agency over the story (Bolter and Joyce, 1987). Researchers have continued making advances in story generation, developing AI story, world, and character generators that are planning-or event-sequence-based (Fairclough and Cunningham, 2004;Lebowitz, 1987;Porteous and Cavazza, 2009;Riedl and Young, 2010;Young et al, 2004;Barber and Kudenko, 2007;Min et al, 2008). Generators may also be character-centric, in which players' interactions with intelligent agents move the stories forward (Magerko, 2006;Swartjes and Theune, 2006;Cavazza et al, 2002).…”

STACK with state

“…As we move towards the model-based and free-path designs, we expect that methods from IS become particularly useful, starting from constrained narrative generation (Porteous and Cavazza, 2009) and leading to full-on drama management. We further expect that the design of a pedagogically relevant free-path question in mathematics to be very difficult.…”