Telling stories: a metagame description of a conflict

This paper describes the use of metagame analysis to describe and explore a conflict situation. The analysis was carried out by the author, who was as sociated with one of the parties in the conflict, for his own benefit. A fu ll description of the analysis is provided. A particular characteristic of the situation was that it was not possible to specify preferences for scena rios for any of the actors with a reasonable degree of confidence. This mad e the standard metagame analysis approach unworkable, and an alternative ap proach, involving the development of stories describing a variety of possib le future events, was used instead. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All righ ts reserved.