Save the Robot – Chris Dahlen

Today’s NYT talks about Intimate Exchanges, “a 750-page epic by Alan Ayckbourn that asks 2 actors to play 10 characters in 8 interconnected plays.” The two actors’ decisions at the beginning lead to different middles and ends. If the actress lights a cigarette in the first scene, it sets them down one path; if not, they go down another. Theatergoers have gone multiple times to catch the different permutations. (Here’s a map of all of them.)

Anyone who’s a gamer or under 30 will immediately recognize what this sounds like: Choose Your Own Adventure, that popular form of interactive storytelling where decisions during the story could lead to different plots and endings. Of course, the choices come from the actors, not from the audience – and it sounds like every decision leads to a “win state.” Taking the failure out of those books could have made them more interesting: you would have focused on where you wanted to go, rather than worrying about being punished for making the wrong call. (Some of the books, and especially the knock-offs, could get really frustrating; they sure didn’t merit repeated readings.)

But the other thing they get right is that the form fits the play’s themes. “The structure of Intimate Exchanges, which tracks a group of people falling in and out of various romances, is the key to its purpose. The cause-and-effect storytelling highlights how small choices can radically alter our futures.” I can’t vouch for whether it works, but I like it when the form of a game fits the story it’s trying to tell – and Planescape: Torment is one of the only games I can think of that does it well. Imagine if there were a really good, thematic reason for the Adventure books to tell a branching narrative, and it wasn’t just a gimmick? I’m sure there’s a pomo novelist out there who’s tried something similar.

It would also be good if the NYT had recognized a kinship with games – and if games could pick up some artistic tips from this kind of exercise.

While I’m talking about Choose Your Own Adventure: an indie band called Morningbell made a choose-your-own-adventure album, Through the Belly of the Sea, where you read the liner notes and then sequence the tracks based on where you want to go next (”To run away from the squid, go to track 4″ etc.). I meant to write something about it, but I didn’t really like it – so I’ll just link to Eric Harvey’s review (he gave it a 4.4).