Toward reusable roleplayers using an appraisal-based architecture

Abstract

Pedagogical drama uses engaging role-play to train the learner in dealing with the simulated situations. An important asset for such dramatic interactions could be embodied software agents that can take on different roles in the simulated domain. This paper describes ActAffAct, a bottom-up approach to constructing emotionally and dramatically believable and reusable characters for interactive drama. Emotions are central in engaging drama. The conflicts between the characters in a play and the emotions involved in resolving them are the constituents of a dramatic structure, a plot. This idea leads to the assumption that a cast of characters driven by a simulation of the process described by the appraisal theory of emotion might realize dramatic structures by simply interacting in an environment that is prone to conflict. By abstracting domain-independent mechanisms, these characters should lend themselves to reuse in different scenarios. Copyright © 2005 Taylor & Francis Inc.