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What is Erasmatazz?
Erasmatazz is the personal website of Chris Crawford, a veteran game designer and writer focused on interactive storytelling. It is less a polished product site than a long-running working notebook: essays, project notes, and tools for writers interested in building stories where the player's choices shape the narrative. The site says it has been online since 1996, and its centerpiece is Crawford's interactive story project Le Morte D'Arthur, described as playable but deliberately never finished.
What you'll find there
- Interactive storytelling tools and essays aimed at writers rather than programmers.
- Project pages for Crawford's story engines and experiments, including a piece on "Plan B for interactive storytelling."
- A large essay library on topics well beyond games—AI and economics, astronomy, language, politics, and personal reflection.
- A personal blog/log of recent additions, which gives the site an informal, diaristic feel.
Who it suits
Writers curious about narrative design, and readers who enjoy opinionated essays from a single strong voice, will get the most from it. Someone looking for a supported, documented authoring tool with tutorials and a community should treat this as a source of ideas rather than a software product. The site's own framing—"tools for writers"—signals its audience, but the material is exploratory and personal.
A practical next step
If you are evaluating it for interactive fiction, start with the library section on interactive storytelling and the Le Morte D'Arthur page, then read the "Plan B" essay to see how Crawford frames the design problem. That sequence tells you quickly whether his approach matches how you want to write. For broader context on the craft, Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling is a well-known independent resource.
What interactive storytelling tools does Chris Crawford offer for writers?
Chris Crawford's site presents interactive storytelling as a design problem for writers, built around his own long-running engine work and his playable Arthurian project, Le Morte D'Arthur. The page describes that work as available to play and explicitly unfinished, which tells you what kind of resource this is: a living design experiment rather than a packaged, documented toolkit you install and follow. The library section is where the substance sits for a writer, with essays on why interactive storytelling is difficult and on the limits of current approaches.
What a writer can actually take from it
- Design essays as the main tool. The library collects Crawford's arguments about story structure, player agency and the difficulty of making choice meaningful. These are useful as a thinking aid before you commit to an engine or a branching structure.
- A worked example to study. Le Morte D'Arthur is presented as playable, so you can examine how one designer handles scene flow and player input in practice rather than in theory.
- A candid account of difficulty. The essay titled "Why interactive storytelling is so difficult" is the most directly practical item for anyone deciding whether their concept is achievable.
Who it suits, and who it doesn't
| Reader | Fit |
|---|---|
| Writers exploring interactive narrative concepts | Strong: essays give vocabulary and warn about dead ends |
| Writers wanting software to download and run | Weak: the page centres on one designer's engine and project, not a general toolset |
| Teams needing documentation or support | Weak: no manuals or support structure are described |
| Readers interested in Crawford's broader essays | Strong: the site mixes storytelling with politics, astronomy and other topics |
A practical next step
If you are weighing an interactive project, read the difficulty essay first and write down which of your planned choices would change the story rather than merely decorate it. Then play Le Morte D'Arthur with that list beside you and note where your expectations and the game's responses diverge. For broader context on narrative design as a discipline, Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling covers craft and criticism, and Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation supports the tools and community around parser and choice-based fiction.
Is Le Morte D'Arthur playable, and how do I access it?
Yes. Chris Crawford describes Le Morte D’Arthur as available to play, calling it his "magnum opus" and noting that while it is not finished—and "never will be finished"—it is playable and "pretty good." The site presents it as a working interactive storytelling project rather than a completed commercial release.
How to access it
Start at Chris Crawford’s site and use the main navigation or the home-page announcement about Le Morte D’Arthur to reach the game. The site also hosts a library of essays on interactive storytelling, including pieces such as "Why interactive storytelling is so difficult" and "Plan B for interactive storytelling," which help set expectations for an experimental work.
What to expect
Treat it as an evolving project: expect an interactive narrative experience shaped by Crawford’s long-running design ideas, not a polished finished product. If you are a writer or designer curious about story engines and player agency, reading one or two of the library essays before playing will make the experience more legible. If you want a conventional game with a fixed ending, this is likely not the right fit.
What essays and articles are available in the Erasmatazz library?
The Erasmatazz site is Chris Crawford's personal publishing home, and the "library" is less a formal archive than a running collection of his essays, notes and project updates. According to the site's own recent-additions list, topics range widely: interactive storytelling (including pieces such as "Why interactive storytelling is so difficult" and "The world just isn't ready for interactive storytelling"), AI and economics, astronomy and meteor observations, geology, language and word usage, television and book reviews, and political commentary. The site also hosts his interactive storytelling project Le Morte D'Arthur, described as playable but never finished.
For a writer interested in interactive narrative, start with the storytelling essays and the project page rather than the general commentary; for a sense of Crawford's broader interests, the chronological recent-additions list is the fastest index. Chris Crawford's own framing is that this is a personal "ruminations" site, so expect opinionated essays rather than peer-reviewed reference material.
Why does Chris Crawford argue that interactive storytelling is so difficult?
Chris Crawford treats interactive storytelling as difficult because the writer must give up the control that makes conventional storytelling work. A linear story is a sequence of events the author chooses and the audience receives; an interactive story is a system in which the player's choices must produce dramatically meaningful consequences. That means the author designs a web of possible experiences rather than a single path, and must anticipate, or program, responses to choices the author never made. Crawford's site frames this as a long-running problem rather than a solved one, and his essay "Why interactive storytelling is so difficult" sits alongside related pieces such as "The world just isn't ready for interactive storytelling" and "Plan B for interactive storytelling" on Chris Crawford's site.
Where the difficulty actually sits
- Authorial control versus player agency. The more freedom the player has, the less the author can guarantee pacing, foreshadowing or a satisfying ending. Tightening one loosens the other.
- Combinatorial explosion. Each branch multiplies the writing and testing needed. A modest number of meaningful choices quickly outgrows what one writer can build and verify.
- Drama is about conflict and consequence. A choice only feels dramatic if it changes something the player cares about. Offering choices that merely change dialogue lines produces the illusion of agency without the experience of story.
- The medium's vocabulary is immature. Crawford has argued for years that the field lacks the equivalent of the tools and conventions that film or the novel developed, so each project reinvents fundamentals.
A practical way to judge the trade-off
If you are a writer considering an interactive project, ask what the player's decisions are for. A useful test: name three choices a player makes and state what each one changes in the story's outcome, not just its wording. If you cannot, the interactivity is decorative and the difficulty is being spent on the wrong problem.
Crawford's own work, including Le Morte D'Arthur described on the site as playable but deliberately unfinished, illustrates his view that this is an evolving craft rather than a product to be completed. Readers who want the argument in his own words should start with the essay itself on erasmatazz.com rather than with summaries, since his position has shifted over decades.
How can I contact Chris Crawford or navigate the Erasmatazz site?
Use the Contact Form linked from the site's main navigation to reach Chris Crawford; for navigation, start from the same menu, which points to Home, Library, Personal, Site Map and Contact Form. The homepage is mostly a dated log of essays and updates, so the Site Map is the more practical entry point when you want a specific topic rather than the latest entry.
Practical routes
- Contact: open the Contact Form from the navigation menu; it is the contact channel the site itself presents.
- Find writing by topic: use the Library, which is where the longer interactive-storytelling material sits, including pieces such as “Plan B for interactive storytelling.”
- Get oriented quickly: the Site Map gives you the structure without scrolling through the chronological homepage.
- Follow current work: the homepage lists recent additions and notes that Le Morte D’Arthur, Crawford’s interactive storytelling project, is playable though deliberately unfinished.
For a reader researching interactive storytelling tools, the sensible path is Library first, then the Site Map to check for related essays; use the Contact Form only for a specific question that the published writing does not answer. Expect a personal, essay-driven site rather than a product page with feature lists or support tiers. See Erasmatazz for the navigation and contact form itself.
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