Retcon: a Least-Commitment Story-World System
In this EXAG 2022 presentation, Ian Horswill describes Retcon, an experimental interactive narrative engine that allows writers to author stories in which some aspects of the overall story, such as the tone, genre, and character relationships, can be chosen incrementally by the player. Stories are authored as a set of fragments (aka storylets) tagged with their story world assumptions. The system tracks the active assumptions and removes from consideration any fragments that contradict the established story world. This allows the player some degree of co-authorship, and allows her to explore the possibility space of different stories afforded by story worlds.