ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2025

WhatELSE

Shaping Narrative Spaces at Configurable Level of Abstraction for AI-bridged Interactive Storytelling

Figure 1: We present WhatELSE, an interactive narrative authoring system that allows users to shape a narrative space using language abstraction. (a)We use the pivot, outline, and variants to describe the narrative space. Users can import an example story as a pivot. The system elevates the pivot into a narrative space. It generates an outline and variants to describe the space. Users can (b) edit the pivot to shift the space, (c) elevate the abstraction level to expand the space, or (d) remove variants to sculpt the space.

Abstract

Generative AI significantly enhances player agency in interactive narratives (IN) by enabling just-in-time content generation that adapts to player actions. While delegating generation to AI makes IN more interactive, it becomes challenging for authors to control the space of possible narratives – within which the final story experienced by the player emerges from their interaction with AI. In this paper, we present WhatELSE, an AI-bridged IN authoring system that creates narrative possibility spaces from example stories. WhatELSE provides three views (narrative pivot, outline, and variants) to help authors understand the narrative space and corresponding tools leveraging linguistic abstraction to control the boundaries of the narrative space. Taking innovative LLM-based narrative planning approaches, WhatELSE further unfolds the narrative space into executable game events. Through a user study (N=12) and technical evaluations, we found that WhatELSE enables authors to perceive and edit the narrative space and generates engaging interactive narratives at play-time.

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