Building an AI-Powered Event Platform for Persistent, Participatory Storytelling
The Challenge:
Immersive events often depend on skilled performers, tightly managed timing, and extensive behind-the-scenes coordination to make participants feel as though they are shaping a living story.
Traditional event experiences usually follow one of two models.
They are either highly scripted, with participants moving through a predetermined sequence, or they depend heavily on live actors and facilitators who must remember every conversation, decision, clue, and relationship developing across the room.
Both approaches create limitations.
A fixed experience may appear interactive without allowing participants to meaningfully affect what happens.
A fully improvised experience can become difficult to manage as the number of:
- participants
- characters
- storylines
- clues
- alliances
- accusations
- timed events
continues to grow.
The challenge was to create an event platform capable of preserving narrative continuity while allowing participants to investigate, make decisions, form theories, interact with fictional characters, and influence the experience in real time.
The Opportunity:
Candice Roma and I saw an opportunity to combine conversational AI, live-event design, mobile interaction, and persistent narrative state within a single reusable platform.
That opportunity became Intari Realms, a joint product developed through Next Best Word and built on the broader Intari conversational AI platform.
Intari Realms was designed to support immersive experiences in which participants could:
- enter a fictional setting
- interact with AI-driven characters
- review evidence
- track suspects
- solve puzzles
- record notes
- submit theories and accusations
- receive story updates as the event progressed
The platform would act as both a participant-facing experience and a live operational system for the people running the event.
The goal was not simply to digitize a murder mystery.
It was to create an engine for stories that could remember what participants had done and respond as the narrative unfolded.
Our Approach:
We designed Intari Realms as a live narrative operating system that connects participant activity, AI characters, story progression, and event administration.
The first full implementation was an immersive mystery experience titled Murder at Canto Bight.
The event gave us a practical environment in which to test the platform under real conditions, with participants moving through the same fictional world while pursuing different clues, conversations, and suspicions.
We organized the platform around six primary capabilities:
- Persistent Participant State-
Each participant needed an experience that could preserve their activity throughout the event.The platform was designed to maintain information such as:- notes
- evidence reviewed
- suspects under consideration
- puzzle progress
- submitted accusations
- chapter access
- investigator conclusions
This allowed participants to move through the experience without losing their progress or relying entirely on paper materials.
It also created a stronger sense that the system understood where they were within the investigation.
- Chapter-Based Narrative Progression-
The story was divided into chapters that could be released according to the event timeline.Each chapter could introduce:- new evidence
- character developments
- additional suspects
- new puzzles
- changes in the investigation
- updated participant objectives
This gave the event a controlled dramatic structure while preserving freedom within each phase.
Participants could investigate at their own pace, but the overall story continued to advance toward a shared conclusion.
- AI Character Interaction-
Intari Realms extended the Intari platform into immersive narrative environments.Characters could be designed with:- distinct personalities
- private knowledge
- motivations
- relationships
- behavioral boundaries
- story-specific context
The objective was not to create characters that simply answered questions.
They needed to remain within the story, protect information they should not reveal, respond consistently, and help participants feel as though they were interacting with inhabitants of the fictional world.
- Evidence, Suspects, and Investigation Tools-
The participant interface included dedicated areas for:- rules
- notes
- chapters
- evidence
- suspects
- puzzles
- hints
- investigator reports
These tools were designed to support the mental process of solving the mystery rather than merely presenting content.
Participants could compare evidence, record observations, organize theories, and revisit information as their understanding evolved.
- Live Event Administration-
A successful immersive event requires more than a participant interface.The platform also needed to support real-time operation.Administrative capabilities included:- event-run management
- chapter timing
- cast and character configuration
- participant progress visibility
- accusation tracking
- scoreboard control
- content resets between events
- remote and local cast options
This allowed the event team to manage the experience as it was happening rather than relying on disconnected notes, spreadsheets, and manual interventions.
- Reusable Event Architecture-
Although the first event was a science-fiction murder mystery, the platform was not designed around a single story.The underlying structure could support other experiences involving:- investigation
- role-playing
- team competition
- interactive training
- historical simulation
- corporate events
- educational scenarios
- live narrative entertainment
The reusable architecture separates the event engine from the story content.
New Realms can therefore introduce different characters, rules, chapters, evidence, objectives, and visual identities without rebuilding the complete platform.
The resulting product combined event design, AI character systems, mobile experience design, database architecture, live administration, and narrative production.
The Outcome:
Intari Realms supported a complete live immersive event in which participants used the platform throughout the experience to investigate, collaborate, interact with the story, and submit their conclusions.
The first production event demonstrated that a custom digital platform could successfully support both the participant experience and the operational demands of a live narrative.
The system made it possible to:
- deliver story content in timed phases
- preserve participant progress
- centralize clues and evidence
- support AI-driven character interaction
- capture accusations and investigator reports
- manage live event state
- reset and reuse the environment for future runs
It also reduced the need for participants to carry large quantities of printed material or depend on a facilitator to answer every procedural question.
The platform became part of the fiction itself.
Rather than feeling like an administrative tool layered over the event, it functioned as an in-world investigative system through which participants could understand and navigate the story.
That integration between interface and narrative was one of the project’s most important outcomes.
Lessons Learned:
One of the most important lessons from Intari Realms was that immersive technology succeeds when it becomes nearly invisible.
Participants should not spend their time thinking about:
- database records
- timing controls
- application state
- content releases
- AI prompt management
They should be thinking about the story.
Every technical decision therefore had to support immersion.
A confusing interface, lost note, incorrect chapter state, or inconsistent character response could pull a participant out of the fictional world immediately.
We also learned that live events expose different risks than conventional software launches.
A website issue can often be corrected after deployment.
A live narrative has a fixed audience, a fixed time window, and a story that must continue moving even when something unexpected happens.
That required us to design for:
- rapid recovery
- state persistence
- manual intervention
- clear administrative visibility
- participant behavior we could not fully predict
Another lesson was that interactivity does not require unlimited freedom.
Participants are more likely to experience meaningful agency when the system gives them clear goals, understandable choices, and visible consequences.
The role of the platform was therefore not to generate an unrestricted story.
It was to create a structured world in which participants had enough freedom to feel ownership of their experience.
Looking Ahead:
Intari Realms established a foundation for increasingly responsive and personalized immersive experiences.
Future capabilities could include:
- characters that remember individual participants across an event
- story branches triggered by collective decisions
- dynamic clue distribution
- adaptive difficulty
- team-specific objectives
- automated facilitator summaries
- real-time narrative health monitoring
- multi-event character continuity
- physical props connected to digital story state
- voice-based character interaction
The same architecture could also be applied beyond entertainment.
Organizations could use similar experiences for:
- leadership development
- crisis simulations
- cybersecurity exercises
- sales training
- team building
- customer education
- scenario-based learning
The future of immersive experience design will not be defined by technology that merely surrounds the participant. It will be defined by systems capable of recognizing participation, preserving continuity, and making people feel that their presence matters to the world around them.
Intari Realms was created to explore that future.
Key Takeaways:
- Immersive events require both narrative design and operational infrastructure.
- Persistent participant state creates stronger continuity and reduces friction throughout the experience.
- Chapter-based progression allows a shared story to advance while preserving individual investigation and agency.
- AI characters require identity, boundaries, private knowledge, and narrative consistency.
- Participant tools should support how people investigate, collaborate, and make decisions.
- Live-event software must be designed for recovery, visibility, and manual intervention.
- Reusable event architecture allows new stories to be created without rebuilding the underlying platform.
- The strongest immersive technology becomes part of the fictional world rather than feeling like a tool placed on top of it.