Governing narrative events with tropes as institutional norms

Thompson, Matt; Padget, Julian; Battle, Steve

Abstract

© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018. A narrative world can be viewed as a form of society in which characters follow a set of social norms whose collective function is to guide the characters through (the creation of) a story arc and reach some conclusion. By modelling the rules of a narrative using norms, we can govern the actions of agents that act out the characters in a story. Agents are given sets of permitted actions and obligations to fulfil based on their and the story’s current situation. However, a way to describe stories in terms of social norms is needed. Existing formalisms for narrative do not work at multiple layers of abstraction, and do not provide a rich enough vocabulary for describing stories. We use story tropes as a means of building reusable story components with which we describe the social norms that govern our storyworld agents.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Conference Name: Artificial Life and Intelligent Agents Symposium (ALIA) 2016
• Start Date: Jun 14, 2016
• End Date: Jun 15, 2016
• Acceptance Date: May 11, 2016
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2018
• Journal: Communications in Computer and Information Science
• Print ISSN: 1865-0929
• Publisher: Springer Verlag (Germany)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 732
• Pages: 133-137
• Series Title: Communications in Computer and Information Science
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90418-4_11
• Keywords: governing narrative events, tropes, institutional norms
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/889152
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90418-4_11
• Related Public URLs: http://2016.aliasymposium.com/accepted-papers/
• Additional Information: Title of Conference or Conference Proceedings : Artificial Life and Intelligent Agents Symposium (ALIA) 2016