Storylet

Term

The term storylet was coined by the studio Failbetter Games in 2010. In a design blog post explaining the narrative structure for the game initialled named Echo Bazaar, but would later be published as Fallen London (2009), the term "storylet" appears with the definition as "discrete chunks of narrative" (Failbetter, 2010; para. 3). Later, in another post two years later, the developers at Failbetter Games clarified storylets as "pieces of story like mosaic tiles, not pipes or complex machinery. Put them together. Build something wonderful" (Failbetter Games, 2012: para. 11).

In working with Failbetter Games and other, related projects, Emily Short (2019) has expanded on this term and refined its definition into three parts:

"[1] there is a piece of content. It might be a line or a whole section of dialogue, it might be narration, it might be an animation or scrap of film

[2] there are prerequisites that determine when the content can play

[3] there are effects on the world state that result after the content has played"

Storylets: You Want Them. Short (2019)

Historical Usage

While the term storylet is not used in descriptions of its design, Reigns (2016) has been described by both Short (2016b) and Kreminski and Wardrip-Fruin (2018) as an example using the concept.

In Reigns (2016), the player is presented with some text and two choices. Depending on the choice, one or more attributes (values) will be affected. If any of these values are decreased or increased beyond a set range as a result of choices made, the game ends. Play progresses as the player is presented with storylets based on current attribute ranges, specific sequenced previously unlocked, and random choices from the total possible storylets in the game. Each choice counts as a year in the game, with the goal to reign as as long as possible before starting with the next king in line and beginning again.

References

Failbetter Games. (2010). Echo Bazaar Narrative Structures, part two. Retrieved from http://www.failbettergames.com/echo-bazaar-narrative-structures-part-two/

Failbetter Games. (2012). StoryNexus Developer Diary #2: fewer spreadsheets, less swearing. Retrieved from https://www.failbettergames.com/storynexus-developer-diary-2-fewer-spreadsheets-less-swearing/

Kreminski, M., & Wardrip-Fruin, N. (2018). Sketching a Map of the Storylets Design Space. In R. Rouse, H. Koenitz, & M. Haahr (Eds.), Interactive Storytelling (Vol. 11318, pp. 160–164). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04028-4_14

Reigns. (2016). Nerial.

Short, E. (2016). Reigns. Retrieved from https://emshort.blog/2016/08/20/reigns/

Short, E. (2019). Storylets: You Want Them. Emily Short’s Interactive Storytelling. Retrieved from https://emshort.blog/2019/11/29/storylets-you-want-them/