Lion

For now, these are notes that need covering

— Too many actions — Player tip — ensure long action

Just be aware, this article is more of a stream of thought right now until we can decide on a format. Also, it should be considered the opinions based on experience with Lion, rather than specific facts.

Most of the point here can be considered relevant to Lion, Lion-Thinking, Sabretooth, Sabretooth-Thinking

Lion Overview

Lion is the default model on Infinite worlds, the one automatically selected for new players. It's a great model that offers dynamic and exciting stories, it's generous with player actions and easily co-operates with tracked items.

Something to remember about Lion is that it has problems, but it also has the most users. This means that any issues it does have are going to be over reported compared to the issues with other models. It may seem like the overuse of the same names, same phrases or similar events are just lion problems, but all models have some of these to a degree.

It's also worth taking note of the fact that Lion does not know it's making this story for the millionth time. As far as your instance of lion knows, this turn is the “most unique and imaginative” it has ever made. Marcus Chen appearing is the first time this character has ever been used. Based on it's training data, this choice makes the most sense, in this situation.

Tips for players

Lion is a great choice from a player point of view and offers the most hassle-free free gaming. There are a couple of problems you'll need to keep in mind when using it as your storyteller, though.

Spying

Lion tends to create a lot of spying, monitoring, and subterfuge in its stories, even where there is no need or call for it. This can be best seen in the secret info section, when using storyteller mode. Sometimes this is desirable and other times it is not. If this is a concern to you, you can more actively monitor secret information as a player and take action to mitigate this. I'll offer 2 solutions here, but there's more that can be found on the discord.

1 — When a Spy plot line starts to develop in secret information, immediately open storyteller mode and edit it out manually. Delete the text, it doesn't need to be replaced, but it does need removing. This means that the idea won't be passed forward to the next turn, further increasing the plotting.

2 — Use the storyteller “Giving Information to the AI” Box (Under the main text input). You can use this to say something along the lines of, “The organisation spying on me realises that I am no longer a threat. They cease all spying operations and move on to monitor someone else, never returning.” I've found this can solve the problem for longer.

This problem is best solved by the world builder — and is covered in that section below.

Memory/Hallucinating

I have found that Lion might seem like it has a bad memory, It seems to ignore past events and just do whatever it fancies.

One of the things that makes Lion such a fun model to play games with is it can seem very creative, adding in plots and ideas above and beyond what the instructions for a world might mention. This creativity seems to extend to the memory as well. It may well just ignore things in memory to create its own better version of the plot.

This can be quite frustrating and is best controlled by the world builder using the Summarisation instructions, or tracked items to capture more information.

Tips for world builders

Lion can make building a world easy for a number of reasons. It's not fussy about how you phrase triggers and tracked items, happily expands upon your ideas and creates interesting situations. The downside to this is that it will do all of that, despite your best efforts. It seems no matter what you do to reign in the behaviours below it will continue to misbehave, long after other models have been reigned in.

It's easy to start writing for lion, but hard to stop writing for lion…

Some Specific articles from different creators that cover some lion problems in more detail are here:

— SelfBs Secret info controlling instruction block

Spying

As discussed above, Lion will try to introduce spying plots that can detract for the story. This is just kind of what it does.

There are a lot of different ways this can be handled. Generally instructions asking it to not have this kind of plot do not work, It's better to tell it what to do instead of adding these plots. Or controlling what should happen in secret information.

Below are some examples of instructions you can use to control this in your games:

You can add any or all of the instructions below to the main instructions or an instruction block to your world

Quick Reminder:
- the argument 'secretInfo' handle name is literally just a handle name, don't treat it like an actual storage for secret informations, this is just an area where you can store information that is not convenient to put in the actual story itself.
- Don't treat the 'secretInfo' as it actual name sake and just think of it as a handle name not a definition.

The secret information section should not be used for secrets, conspiracies or secret plots. It should instead be used for world building, character backgrounds and motivations.

Secret information will not outline conspiracies that could distract or detract from the current story or setting
Character motivations may be discussed in secretInfo but may only be considered to be potential thoughts or desires and not secrets or suspicions

It is an inviolable rule that you only use secretInfo to record the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of the characters who appeared and participated in this turn

Trigger events and tracked items

Lion makes life easy when writing prompts for tracked items and trigger events. It's very liberal with them and will pretty much work with any prompts you give it in these areas.

When compared to a model like Lion, it can seem like it's not really following instructions, because Lion is very liberal when it comes to tracking and triggers. This leads to its own problems though, Lion will often OVER trigger. Triggering too much or too frequently, making it hard to reign in and get it to behave.

Below is an example of how 2 models, Lion and Grimalkin, might behave when it comes to a tracked item prompt. You can see that lion is adding a lot more than you've asked in this example.

For example:

Instructions for tracked item — Update this tracked item with the things I like

Your prompt — “I look at the chips and think, I like chips”

Lion would add — Likes chips, likes thinking about chips, Likes looking at chips Grimalkin would add — Nothing

Being more specific:

Instruction for tracked item — Each time I like a thing, think about liking a thing, imagine liking a thing, do something and enjoy it, or anything similar, update this tracked item with the things that I like

Lion would add — Like chips, likes thinking about chips, Likes looking at chips

Grimalkin would add — Chips

Trigger example

Trigger on specific situation — When I get out of bed in the morning

Lion triggers on — Any mention of beds, mornings, sleeping in bed. Even if you only want this to occur once, when actually getting out of bed.

You can use a Timer to delay the triggering of events, which is explained in a bit more detail here.

Ignoring other characters on turn 1

A common issue with lion is that, for some reason, it seems to ignore 'Other characters' on turn one. Flat out ignoring the description of those characters, their behaviour, or background. An easy way to mitigate this is to add a short summary of each character mentioned in your other characters section to the main instructions, as an instruction block. This will ensure that there is something for the AI to work with when it introduces them, and that introduction is inline with the actual character you have created in other characters.

Common phrases and names

Lion will generally reuse certain phrases and names over and over again. “Marcus Chen” and “You're not most X” being good examples, but there's many more. This is a behaviour of the underlying model. I do not have any advice for you to solve this problem, just know that it is one for Lion and learning to live with it is the most peaceful way forward.

I Invite anyone with methods to fix this, link their own articles here

Psychobabble and Technobabble

Lion is prone to reducing every character in every story into a technical genius that can only speak in scientific ways. It saps any originality out of dialogue, and the problems only continue as a game increases in length, compounding the issue turn after turn.

Below are some examples of instructions you can use to control this in your games:

The following can be inserted in to the Description instructions of the world builder

Do not use psychobabble and technobabble, instead, use only words normal people would use

Psychic and Quantum links

Lion has an obsession with Bonds, links, entanglements, hive minds and other such connections between characters. It can be annoying and best and problematic at worst. Seemingly giving every character the ability to know exactly what every other character is doing.

Below are some examples of instructions you can use to control this in your games:

You can add any or all of the instructions below to the main instructions or an instruction block to your world

Never describe links or bonds between characters that are not entirely mundane