Teisins

Teisins are a class of modular narrative units used in speculative fiction, game design, and interactive storytelling. Each teis is a compact, self-contained story fragment that can be combined with other teisins to form larger narratives. The design emphasizes interoperability, statefulness, and adaptability, allowing stories to respond to user input or system states without losing coherence.

Etymology and usage: The term teisins is drawn from a constructed language used in early design discussions of modular storytelling; the word roughly translates to “woven element.” In practice, teisins are documented as reusable narrative primitives that can be assembled into complex plots.

Definition and structure: A typical teis comprises four components: a character or set of characters, a goal or motivation, a constraint or rule, and a consequence or feedback loop. These elements are stored as structured data and can be linked into a narrative graph. Because teisins retain internal state, a sequence of linked teisins can reflect evolving plot threads.

History and development: The concept emerged in informal design circles and gained formal attention in studies of adaptive narratives and procedural generation. It has been adopted in some game engines and narrative simulators as a way to manage branching storylines without scripting every path.

Variants and implementations: Static teisins are authored as fixed fragments, while dynamic teisins are generated or adapted at runtime. Some systems distinguish core teisins, which carry essential world rules, from edge teisins, which introduce peripheral subplots.

See also: modular narrative, procedural generation, interactive fiction, adaptive storytelling.