NZATD 2025: Miranda Verswijvelen

At Miranda Verswijvelen’s session for 2025 NZATD Tahu Ignite conference, she spoke about narrative design in learning games and scenario activities.

Miranda has a wealth of knowledge about writing scenario-based modules, educational games, and digital learning designed around social issues like financial literacy, climate change, or disability support.

Too often, Miranda said, stories and scenarios for learning are just quizzes wrapped in heavy-handed storytelling. Cardboard characters. Walls of information. Choices that aren’t really choices.

And it doesn’t work. Learners are alienated because it feels forced.

What we want to create with learning stories is narrative transportation: when you are so immersed that you are open to whatever is coming at you. Those moments when a book changes your life.

One of Miranda’s key points was around the difference between plot and story. “The plot is not the story.” We often get caught up trying to build a plot, but that’s not where the power lies, especially if we are making a branching scenario that gives the learner agency. The real value is in the emotional experience. As learning experience designers, we should be asking ourselves: what do we want the learner to feel when they engage with this content? A completely different plot that has the same emotional story might work better for learning than a plot that is identical to a learner’s on-the-job experience. Miranda said, “You can use any situation that has the same emotions to teach people things.”

The emotional layer is where the learning sits.

Miranda talked about a concept she’s developed called the Story Avocado. This is a diagrammatic view of the key features of a story that make it engaging for learners. At the core is the emotional drive, and everything else builds out from there. If you start with feelings that are compelling and relatable, then you can build meaningful learning moments around them, even if the context is completely different.

Another thing Miranda talked about is how often we rely on ‘fake’ choices in building scenarios: options that don’t change anything meaningful. If a learner’s decision doesn’t shape the experience in some way (emotionally, narratively, or interactively) it’s not really a choice. But not all choices need to teach something directly. Some should just give the learner space to express themselves, to feel heard, or to explore something from a new angle. A well-written, emotionally rich decision point can do more for engagement than a perfectly structured multiple-choice question. We need to ask about our learners, “Do they feel like the story is listening to them?”

Miranda also shared a concept from A. Swords’ Forest Paths method (2020), of framing narrative design around helping characters manage resources, remove obstacles, and pursue goals. This sounds like a helpful model for structuring story that still allows freedom for the learner.

Miranda gave us really useful ideas about how to design characters, by focusing not on their backstories or details, but on their emotional drivers: what they want, what they need, what they fear. (This applies to NPCs as well. Give them personalities: three traits for each character) Use character’s dialogue and behaviour to show what matters to them. Let those relationships develop naturally through the learner’s interactions.

She also said, as she has before, that it’s OK if not every learner sees every scene. Not all scenes need to be seen, but every scene should matter. Each path through the story should offer something narratively valuable. (This means it’s not a good idea to plan the ‘good path’ and then write ‘bad paths’ around it, as they are unlikely to be great narratives at that point.)

Dialogue in learning games is hard for me at the best of times. Miranda raised the bar! Apparently it has to convey emotion, stay on message, be concise, and still feel natural. One of the tips I took away is to give every character a clear, distinctive voice that stays consistent throughout. That way, learners can follow who’s speaking without needing constant tags like ‘X said’.

Also: use fewer words. Let subtext do the work. Not everything needs to be explained. Sometimes what’s not said can be just as powerful.

Miranda talked about scenes, and looking at what we have written in terms of scenes. If a scene has no clear purpose, we should cut it.

We often look to commercial games or corporate learning for inspiration, but Miranda shared that this is not always where the interesting stuff is happening. She pointed to indie games, blogs, theatre, and even self-published books as rich sources of innovation in storytelling. She mentioned Edwin McRae’s work (2025) on storytelling for indie games as being well worth exploring, as well as Jon Ingold’s 2018 talk on dialogue (2018). And for anyone wanting to dig deeper, she’s written an article in Dirty Word magazine that dives further into these ideas (Verswijvelen, 2025).

My key takeaways: Let learners feel something. Let them make decisions that matter. Let go of the idea that there’s always one right path. And look up Miranda’s Story Avocado and tools for writing dialogue and choices in more detail.