Tips and Tricks
This page is designed to present tips and tricks learned through practice which can improve the player's experience. This list is not exhaustive, and there's no guarantee that every tip will work every time, but these have been shown to be generally effective.
Narrative Prompts: Add text like the following examples to alter how the narrative is processed in each turn.
- "Do not rush the narrative" or "Take your time with the narrative" Lines like these have been shown to result in longer, more detailed AI output.
- "Describe in explicit detail..." Tell the AI what action, setting, or character you want described and it will generally provide greater detail than otherwise. You might also play around with other similar adjectives along with, or insted of, "explicit". For example, "extreme", "graphic", "precise", and "lurid" are all good options
- "...does not occur in this turn." Tell the AI what action or event you want to be certain the AI doesn't include. This is especially useful if the action is building to a conclusion and you want to be certain the conclusion gets its own turn. For example, if your adventure involves a chase scene but you don't want the pursuer to catch up yet...or if you want to ensure the chase ends in a particular way.
- "I am not __________" and/or "use third person pronouns when referring to __________". Too often the AI assumes that one of the characters in a scene must be the player's character. But this isn't always the case. It can be confusing if you suddenly see that the AI thinks you're one of the NPCs. Adding this prompt seems to fix the problem every time.
AI Reminders: Add brief descriptions or directions in the AI prompt area to maintain consistency in description and backstory.
- When returning to a setting or revisiting a character whose consistent description and/or backstory is important to you, you can add descriptions.
Image Prompts: Image prompts are less definite than narrative prompts. Generally, prompt repetition and excessive description are effective tools.
- Synonymous Repetition. This is where you repeat the same simple prompt with minor variations. For example, if I want a character to have insanely big muscles, I might include the following: "Large muscles. huge muscles. gigantic muscles. enormous muscles." etc.
- Iterative Repetition. This is where you repeat similar prompts while adding different details each time. For example, if I want a character to wear a white, cotton dress shirt with long sleeves, I might include the following: "white shirt. white dress shirt. dress shirt. long sleeved shirt. cotton shirt. white cotton shirt." etc.
- Overcoming Excessive repetition. There can be a problem if you give your character an emphasized feature (such as extremely huge muscles) and then try to cover up that feature (such as with a shirt). In that case, the AI may simply ignore the shirt and make him bare-chested. If this isn't what you wanted, you might find success in adjusting the ballance between those prompts by either removing some of the muscle prompts or adding more shirt prompts. It doesn't always work, but it sometimes does.
- Excessive Description. AI is apparently very bad at make people look older. To get a character to look older, excessive descriptions may be necessary, and these may have to be repeated. For example, to make a character look like she is 50 years old, add prompts like "face wrinkles. crowsfeet. neck wrinkles. deep wrinkles. forehead wrinkles. deeper wrinkles." Even with all of that, the character is likely to get only a few shallow indications of age. You can also change the AI prompt age to something greater. If you want the character to look 50, tell the AI you want her to look 65. Sometimes that helps.
Character Persistence: If an NPC is likely to become permanent or recurring and you want to have some consistency in his/her appearance, backstory, or description, add him/her as a secondary character in the main world-building area. Here, you can also play with AI prompted descriptions and run test images until you're satisfied that the AI knows how to make what you're wanting...or until you give up trying to make it do so.