  We address the integration of storytelling and Large Language Models (LLMs)
to develop engaging and believable Social Chatbots (SCs) in community settings.
Motivated by the potential of fictional characters to enhance social
interactions, we introduce Storytelling Social Chatbots (SSCs) and the concept
of story engineering to transform fictional game characters into "live" social
entities within player communities. Our story engineering process includes
three steps: (1) Character and story creation, defining the SC's personality
and worldview, (2) Presenting Live Stories to the Community, allowing the SC to
recount challenges and seek suggestions, and (3) Communication with community
members, enabling interaction between the SC and users. We employed the LLM
GPT-3 to drive our SSC prototypes, "David" and "Catherine," and evaluated their
performance in an online gaming community, "DE (Alias)," on Discord. Our
mixed-method analysis, based on questionnaires (N=15) and interviews (N=8) with
community members, reveals that storytelling significantly enhances the
engagement and believability of SCs in community settings.
