An interactive presentation and/or entertainment system, such as interactive personal computer software and/or interactive, live theater, allows participants to determine the events that occur throughout a story. Given simulated environments and story characters within them, the player introduces elements, picked from a list, which advances the narrative, event by event. Feedback about the current state of the situation or characters provides motivation to choose subsequent events. These events change situations, environments, and/or the characters within the narrative. As a result, greater flexibility and control with less confusion is achieved over previous methods and apparatuses. The story can be rewound and/or played with different choices, resulting in different outcomes. Source image/sound/description data may include prerecorded video, prerecorded audio, prewritten description, live acting, computer-based audio, computer-based imagery, computer-generated dialogue, and/or computer-generated characters. The range of events available are limited only by the design of the narrative, not this apparatus.