Assembling a narrative

Inspired by the Open Work and Lector in fabula by Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco, we have designed a small game of chance that will help the reader in constructing their own narrative.

Instead of presenting a classical article, fixed by the authors in its static form, we encourage the reader to build their own text, balancing player's agency (introducing metacurrency) with randomness (dice rolls determining the leght of each random walk in the knowledge graph).

Here an example of knowledge graph built upon the concept of constraint:

To determine the next page to be visited, the player will:

• locate the cursor on the current page (root node in the network)
• roll 3d6s (3 six-sided dice) and take the highest result. If the player has no dice (shame on you!) we provide a simple web-simulator:

Knowledge Walk

• A result of 6 allows the player to walk a path of length 3 in the knowledge graph. Furthermore, the player gets a token.
• A result of 4 or 5 corresponds to a walk of length 2.
• A result of 1,2 or 3 corresponds to a walk of length 1.

If the path reaches a "dead end", an imaginary leaf in the concept tree, the player can arbitrary jump to any node at the edge of the graph using the so-called Pac-Man effect.

Tokens

Each player can impose their agency on the otherwise random path by spending, at any time during the walk, a token to visit a specific node in the graph, regardless of the dice poll result.

Narrative log

Players should take a simple log of their journey in the knowledge graph, recording the URLs of each visited page.

Afterwards, with the help of an AI tool or by simply summmarizing, the player will generate their own version of the article, filling in the gaps between the individual concepts to construct a continuous narrative.