Interactive Fiction Techniques

(Up to: Ideas )

Interactive fiction is fascinating - not just MUD/MUSH-based stories, but also ideas like hypertext-based ones.

Here's an idea. Exploring Wikipedia is becoming almost like a past-time. Browsing from page to page becomes an afternoon's activity, a journey from one subject to another, completely (you would think) disjointed one. In a sense, an encyclepedia tells a story - the history of human ideas, in various linear and non-linear domains - historically, geographically, culturally, etc.

Is it possible, then, to achieve this same wonder with a specially-crafted set of pages, to arrive at some fiction? Narrative and description could be intermingled such that each page acts as an "about this thing" repository, but that also both reveals a bit more of the "plot", and offers leads for where to go next.

On a basic level, this would consist of a simple set of static pages, and indeed this has been done before. (Will find links to go here...)

On a more complex level, the path you take could be tracked, and sections of the site "unlocked" as you travelled around the information. This gives a little more sense of a "linear" storyline, in that the order in which the information is received isn't completely within your control, but then that's also part of the joy of storytelling and so may be a necessity.

On an even more complex level...?