Writing a scenario

Write it first, as the story's first passage rather than as a description of the world. A concrete moment, a room at a particular hour, someone already speaking, gives the narrator something to answer on turn one.

A scenario with a good opening and a thin world plays better than one with a long world sheet and no way in. Add more scenes later: several openings on the same world are the usual reason to have one scenario instead of three.

The world sheet is sent on every turn, so every line in it is paid for on every turn. Keep the lines that change how a turn gets written:

• Where and when this is, in a sentence or two.
• What is true here that would not be true elsewhere: what technology exists, who holds power, what the danger is.
• What the reader is assumed to know already.

Leave out what only matters once. A city's history, a family tree, the rules of a card game: those are lore entries, and they arrive when the story mentions them.

Aim for a screenful. If you cannot say which paragraph a line would change, cut it.

Style directives are separate instructions from the world, and they are the fastest way to change the prose. Write them as directions:

• "Past tense, third person, close on the persona."
• "Two to four paragraphs a turn."
• "Do not summarise what the player just did."
• "No dialogue for the persona; the player writes that."

Keep them out of the world sheet. You will want to change one without disturbing the other.

Write the cast that appears in the opening scene and let the rest arrive. The bookkeeping model files a new person the first time the story names one, marked provisional until you keep it, so the cast grows on its own while you play. Every character you write by hand is a sheet you maintain. See characters.

An entry is sent when one of its trigger words shows up in the recent story text.

• Give an entry every word the story will actually use, the nicknames and short forms included.
• Keep the content to what is needed when it fires, not the whole subject.
• Reserve always on for the two or three facts every single turn depends on. Each one costs what a world sheet line costs.
• An entry with no trigger words and no always on can never fire. The list marks it as unreachable rather than letting it look fine.

The turn reminder is re-sent near the end of the context, where a model actually attends to it. Spend it on the rule that keeps slipping, and spend it on one: "the persona cannot read", "never write the persona's dialogue". Its whole value is being short and being last.

Ten turns tell you more than another hour of writing. Play them and watch for the four things that are usually wrong:

• The narrator writing your persona's actions or dialogue. A style directive.
• A fact it keeps getting wrong. The ledger if it is about this story, a lore entry or the world sheet if it is about the world.
• Turns that run much longer or shorter than you want. A style directive naming a length.
• A tone that is close but not right. The genre field first, since it steers the prose more than its length suggests, then the style directives.

Ask about this world answers a question from what the scenario actually holds. Use it before you add more, to see what you established rather than what you remember establishing.

Find the cast

Runs over a description you have already written and creates the characters it finds in it.

Import a card

Character card JSON, or any file dropped onto the page. Attribution comes with it where the card carries it.

Write one by paste

The application hands you a prompt for your own AI chat and takes the reply pasted back. It sends nothing itself, so this works with no key and no account.

Every field on the form is listed in scenarios.