Illustration: Story & Game

Here is about the simplest game you can imagine.  A team is divided into two even halves and they are positioned in squares facing each other, with one empty square between them.  Each member can step ahead into an empty square, or jump a player from the other team into an empty square. They can only move forward.  The game is cooperative - the teams can talk and agree how to handle the situation.

This setup means that at each turn, there are only two possibilities: red or blue can move to occupy the space, creating a space where they were before.  Our group of ten solved this on the third attempt, but some groups never solve it. The 'choice map' is my attempt to show these potential paths - but almost all of them will end up in blockage on the next move or two.

The thing that is like Story (as McKee describes it) is that interest arises from high-stakes choices between apparently equal 'goods'. Dramatica assumes that the point of a 'grand argument' narrative is to teach a lesson, to illuminate a world in a fruitful way.  The best stories furnish us with the moves and types and experiences that make us a little more awake, a little wiser, a little lighter in the step, by illustration.

Our group solved the problem when, on the third iteration, we had learned something about which choices not to make.  No one of us remembered the map of the whole field, but each of us remembered the particular mistakes near us, or involving us, which caused a breakdown in the earlier attempt.  The difficulty for a story-teller is to present regular, realistic challenges that offer this sort of dilemma - things that rather than build character, reveal it.  The story-teller too has a choice, but with this illustration, the better choice may come a little easier.