Constructing a story world: what contribution to learning?

Narrative is a powerful tool to enhance learning: conceiving a plot implies gaining awareness of logical constraints among events; narrating it entails developing expression skills, and narrating with digital tools adds the ability to suitably use different codes as expressive means. But what if we construct virtual interactive stories? In this case the story creator does not conceive a story plot but a story world: a set of somehow related events, within which (partially) different plots emerge, at every run time, from the interaction between user and story-environment. In this contribution, I will report my own experience with conceiving a story world, highlighting how this type of construction implies a different mental activity than traditional stories. Discussing the experience will start from questions which are relevant for the educational use of any kind of digital narrative: Can such activity be beneficial for learning, in school or in work environments? What appears to be its main source of learning potential? How does it compare with other kinds of narrative activities?