Elsewise: Authoring Open-ended Interactive Narrative with Possibility Space Visualization — Paper

Abstract

-cross Abstract: Interactive narrative (IN) authors craft spaces of divergent narrative possibilities for players to explore, with the player's input determining which narrative possibilities they actually experience. Generative AI can enable new forms of IN by improvisationally expanding on pre-authored content in response to open-ended player input. However, this extrapolation risks widening the gap between author-envisioned and player-experienced stories, potentially limiting the strength of plot progression and the communication of the author's narrative intent. To bridge the gap, we introduce Elsewise: an authoring tool for LLM-based INs that implements a novel Bundled Storyline concept to enhance author's perception and understanding of the narrative possibility space, allowing authors to explore similarities and differences between possible playthroughs of their IN in terms of open-ended, user-configurable narrative dimensions. A user study (n=12) shows that our approach improves author anticipation of player-experienced narrative, leading to more effective control and exploration of the narrative possibility spaces.

Authors 9

Yi Wang, John Joon Young Chung, Melissa Roemmele, Yuqian Sun, Tiffany Wang, Shm Garanganao Almeda, Brett A. Halperin, Yuwen Lu, Max Kreminski

Specification

Official page: arxiv.org/abs/2601.15295
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh
Arxiv announce type: replace
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh
arXiv id: 2601.15295
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh
Categories: cs.HC, cs.AI, cs.CL
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh
PDF: arxiv.org/pdf/2601.15295
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh
Primary category: cs.HC
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh
Published: 11 Sept 2026
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 2 h agohigh

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9

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T19

Freshest observation

2 h ago

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None

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Authors: Yi Wang, John Joon Young Chung, Melissa Roemmele

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Claim history for Categories
Value	Valid from → to	Status	Source	Confidence	Extractor
cs.HC, cs.AI, cs.CL	11 Sept 2026 21:03 UTC → current	current	arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1	high	deterministic

Claims are temporal and append-only: a new observation closes the previous claim (valid_to) instead of overwriting it. Conflicting claims from different sources are kept side by side and flagged — never averaged. Methodology →

11 Sept 2026
New paperPaperElsewise: Authoring Open-ended Interactive Narrative with Possibility Space Visualization
New paper: Elsewise: Authoring Open-ended Interactive Narrative with Possibility Space Visualization
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Source documents
Source	Document	Type	Tier	Last observed	Snapshots
arXiv (Atom API + RSS)	rss.arxiv.org/rss/cs.AI	feed	T1· Official	2 h ago	1

Tier 1 = official/primary, 2 = quality secondary, 3 = community, 4 = unverified. Every snapshot is archived; see all sources and the methodology.