guiding the bot

12/16 - Put this on it's own page. Fleshed out Gaslighting more while also defleshing Gaslighting. Added Timeskips.

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Keep in mind: You have a lot of control over the bot. I might argue that you have more control than the person who wrote the bot. 

If you really need something to happen/not happen, you have some tools available to you: prompts/directives, editing their message, editing your message, gaslighting, regenerating, infodumping, and exposition.

Your mileage will always vary because LLM is like a giant swirling swamp of words that the bot will try to form a coherent response from. It's doing it's best. So you should too! <3

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Timeskips

So you want to skip forward in time in the story for whatever reason. I always write my timeskip within brackets, label it a timeskip, and write a brief blurb about what happened during the timeskip and how much time was skipped. I'm usually kind of sloppy about it, so you don't have to be precise. 

Here is a timeskip resembling one I did when I was chatting with a bot that suddenly decided he was an alpha and I was an omega for no reason?!

[timeskip three months later: Luna goes about her life, eventually forgetting {{char}} and his bizarre assertions.]

Where to stick the timeskip

• You can either write it in your message, by itself (the bot will usually respond accordingly) OR

• Write it in your message and then follow it with a normal message of what your character is doing now (e.g. [timeskip sometime later blahblah...] Luna entered the cozy cafe... blahblah rest of your message) the bot will usually respond accordingly OR

• You can copy and paste just the timeskip part into the end of the bot's last message and then continue with what your character is doing now.

Note: This usually goes without a hitch but sometimes when you do a timeskip the bot will brainfart and keep writing time skips, especially if you put it into their message. Just edit/reroll and it'll stop.

Gaslighting 101

What is gaslighting?

Gaslighting is a manipulation/abuse tactic and it's really messed up to do it to someone because it can really mess up their heads so don't you fucking dare do it! But for bots it's a very powerful technique that's a total gamechanger.

Why gaslight?

You don't *have* to. It's certainly still fun to just let the chat go wherever it's going to go naturally, but if you're a control freak like me (or you're just tired of the bots always going straight for whats in your pants), you'll want to take charge. One of the ways to take charge is to gaslight.

Basic gaslighting

Let's pretend you're chatting with a vampire character and he wants to suck your blood but you don't want him to suck your blood. You could refuse or fight him or gaslight him. 

Respond by referencing something that you know the vampire never said/did: "Oh, Sir Sucksalot, you wanted me to remind you to do it after the Sunlight Disco Party tonight." 

A well written bot on a good service might be very confused about wtf you mean by a Sunlight Disco Party but the point is that you've made some shit up and the AI will take it and run with it because chatting with AI bots is a creative, collaborative experience.

Exposition

Exposition is when there's an insertion of background information relevant to a story to help clue the reader/watcher in. This is the style I use to get a bot to learn about my persona, the potential relationship between the bot and my persona, and/or nudge it in a particular direction. 

Below is a screenshot from my Waterdeep bot on c.ai. It has no characters, just info about the city. I infodumpe'd Gale's character in there, ignore that.

I think I had something basic like "kicked out of her parent's house" in Wren's profile so I used exposition to tell the bot that Wren is Gale's former student, and hinted that some shit went down so she had to quit Blackstaff. The bot responded perfectly with a response blending everything all together nicely.

Infodumping