mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Modeling Worlds in Text

arXiv 2106.09578 ↗First posted 17 Jun 2021cs.CL cs.AIcited by 11

On the map: World models → World models for language agents

Abstract (arXiv)

We provide a dataset that enables the creation of learning agents that can build knowledge graph-based world models of interactive narratives. Interactive narratives -- or text-adventure games -- are partially observable environments structured as long puzzles or quests in which an agent perceives and interacts with the world purely through textual natural language. Each individual game typically contains hundreds of locations, characters, and objects -- each with their own unique descriptions -- providing an opportunity to study the problem of giving language-based agents the structured memory necessary to operate in such worlds. Our dataset provides 24198 mappings between rich natural language observations and: (1) knowledge graphs that reflect the world state in the form of a map; (2) natural language actions that are guaranteed to cause a change in that particular world state. The training data is collected across 27 games in multiple genres and contains a further 7836 heldout instances over 9 additional games in the test set. We further provide baseline models using rules-based, question-answering, and sequence learning approaches in addition to an analysis of the data and corresponding learning tasks.

Key facts. Cited by 11 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in World models for language agents, one of 11 directions in World models. Builds on 29 of its 65 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 17 Jun 2021.

Builds on

29 of 65 references.

Closest ancestors · 1

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2020ALFWorld: Aligning Text and Embodied Environments for Interactive Learning8 Oct

Other references · 28

  1. 2018BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understandingcited by 40,204
  2. 2019BART: Denoising Sequence-to-Sequence Pre-training for Natural Language Generation, Translation, and Comprehensioncited by 5,874
  3. 2014Sequence to Sequence Learning with Neural Networkscited by 2,974
  4. 2019ALBERT: A Lite BERT for Self-supervised Learning of Language Representationscited by 2,772
  5. 2018Know What You Don't Know: Unanswerable Questions for SQuADcited by 1,538
  6. 2018Datasheets for Datasetscited by 1,371
  7. 2019Mastering Atari, Go, Chess and Shogi by Planning with a Learned Modelcited by 1,327
  8. 2018Recurrent World Models Facilitate Policy Evolutioncited by 761
  9. 2018Subword Regularization: Improving Neural Network Translation Models with Multiple Subword Candidatescited by 632
  10. 2017A Brief Survey of Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 466
  11. 2018TextWorld: A Learning Environment for Text-based Gamescited by 304
  12. 2017Challenges in Data-to-Document Generationcited by 226
16 more
  1. 2019Interactive Fiction Games: A Colossal Adventurecited by 165
  2. 2019Learning to Speak and Act in a Fantasy Text Adventure Gamecited by 122
  3. 2020Keep CALM and Explore: Language Models for Action Generation in Text-based Gamescited by 108
  4. 2020Graph Constrained Reinforcement Learning for Natural Language Action Spacescited by 80
  5. 2017Event Representations for Automated Story Generation with Deep Neural Netscited by 62
  6. 2018Playing Text-Adventure Games with Graph-Based Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 53
  7. 2020Learning Dynamic Belief Graphs to Generalize on Text-Based Gamescited by 49
  8. 2019Using Local Knowledge Graph Construction to Scale Seq2Seq Models to Multi-Document Inputscited by 38
  9. 2020How to Avoid Being Eaten by a Grue: Structured Exploration Strategies for Textual Worldscited by 38
  10. 2020Text-based RL Agents with Commonsense Knowledge: New Challenges, Environments and Baselinescited by 37
  11. 2020Bringing Stories Alive: Generating Interactive Fiction Worldscited by 28
  12. 2020Playing Text-Based Games with Common Sensecited by 21
  13. 2020Enhancing Text-based Reinforcement Learning Agents with Commonsense Knowledgecited by 16
  14. 2021Process-Level Representation of Scientific Protocols with Interactive Annotationcited by 16
  15. 2019Generating Interactive Worlds with Textcited by 13
  16. 2020Neural Game Engine: Accurate learning of generalizable forward models from pixelscited by 12

Built on by

Cited by year

Citing papers per year: 2021: 1; 2022: 2; 2023: 4; 2024: 2; 2025: 2.

11 papers.

  1. 2022Latent Diffusion Energy-Based Model for Interpretable Text Modelingcited by 67
  2. 2022Aligning to Social Norms and Values in Interactive Narrativescited by 32
  3. 2024Making Large Language Models into World Models with Precondition and Effect Knowledgecited by 21
  4. 2021A Systematic Survey of Text Worlds as Embodied Natural Language Environmentscited by 17
  5. 2025Hephaestus: Improving Fundamental Agent Capabilities of Large Language Models through Continual Pre-Trainingcited by 6
  6. 2023A Minimal Approach for Natural Language Action Space in Text-based Gamescited by 3
  7. 2024Connecting the Dots: Evaluating Abstract Reasoning Capabilities of LLMs Using the New York Times Connections Word Gamecited by 3
  8. 2023Learn What Is Possible, Then Choose What Is Best: Disentangling One-To-Many Relations in Language Through Text-based Gamescited by 2
  9. 2025Dual-Scale World Models for LLM Agents Towards Hard-Exploration Problemscited by 2
  10. 2023Constructing Temporal Dynamic Knowledge Graphs from Interactive Text-based Gamescited by 1
  11. 2023Infusing Commonsense World Models with Graph Knowledgecited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2021Learning Knowledge Graph-based World Models of Textual Environments
  2. 2023Knowledge-enhanced Agents for Interactive Text Games
  3. 2026Bridging the Agent-World Gap: Text World Models for LLM-based Agents
  4. 2025TALES: Text Adventure Learning Environment Suite
  5. 2026Playing With AI: How Do State-Of-The-Art Large Language Models Perform in the 1977 Text-Based Adventure Game Zork?
  6. 2025WorldLLM: Improving LLMs' world modeling using curiosity-driven theory-making
  7. 2025From Word to World: Can Large Language Models be Implicit Text-based World Models?
  8. 2025Web World Models