Hey all! After months of trial and error, testing, and experimenting, I wanted to share some of the things that helped enhance my long-form RPs, character creation, and persona profiles. I hope this is helpful.

First, the biggest takeaway is that the persona profile, character profile, usernote, and lorebook don't carry the same weight. They all affect different things.

Most recently, I had an OOC (out-of-character) conversation with the AI narrator to help me formulate chat rules.

First and foremost, models are trained on massive datasets that include stereotypes and tropes. So if you are trying to break annoying tropes, you will not eliminate them entirely. But sometimes, you can reduce their occurrence and encourage behaviors you do want.

Quick hierarchy

In practice, the order seems to be:

1. The chat history itself: This is where you should edit or regenerate character messages that contain things you don't want/like. This helps to nudge the model in a direction it thinks you will like over time.
2. The Usernote
3. Persona and Character profiles
4. Lorebooks

A strong narrator instruction can override a weaker character description. A character trait written only as background may lose to the model’s default storytelling habits.

Persona: Who the user-controlled character is

The Persona should describe {{user}}.

Use it for stable facts about the character you control:

• appearance and anatomy;
• age, gender, orientation, and relationship style;
• skills, magic, profession, and physical abilities;
• personality and communication style;
• tastes, habits, dislikes, and clothing;
• established emotional tendencies;
• how the character usually acts when angry, afraid, affectionate, or under pressure;
• what the character knows;
• important personal history.

A Persona is also useful for reducing common stereotypes applied to your character.

Do not only write:

“{{user}} is competent.”

Write specific observable behaviors:

“{{user}} continues to speak, walk, navigate, work, fight, and make decisions while upset.”

Do not only write:

“{{user}} dislikes being infantilized.”

Write:

“Other characters do not tell {{user}} what they feel, decide what they need, instruct them to eat or sleep, speak for them, or take over ordinary decisions.”

I would strongly recommend using objective wording rather than subjective language. For example:

“{{user}} does not like being obsessed over” is subjective because it leaves room for different interpretations. What is considered “obsessed behavior?”

“{{user}} does not like when others follow them home” is objective because it names a specific behavior. The bot is more likely to understand this prompt.

Character Profile: Who the main bot character is

The Character Profile should describe {{char}}.

{{char}} means the bot’s assigned primary character. It does not mean every character in your RP.

Use the Character Profile for:

• appearance and anatomy;
• personality;
• job and routine;
• orientation and current relationships;
• independent goals and responsibilities;
• knowledge limits;
• speech patterns;
• how the character behaves specifically with {{user}};
• what the character does when present;
• where the character normally is;
• situations in which the character should or should not appear.

Be concrete.

Instead of:

“{{char}} is perceptive but respects {{user}}’s boundaries.”

Write:

“{{char}} answers what {{user}} actually says. {{char}} does not decide that {{user}} is sad, hungry, overwhelmed, or secretly struggling because of their posture, silence, expression, ears, tail, scent, or tone.”

Instead of:

“{{char}} has their own life.”

Write:

“{{char}} works scheduled shifts, spends time with partners and friends, visits family, runs errands, rests, and makes plans without {{user}}.”

Usernote: Universal rules that should always be active

The Usernote is the strongest place for short, universal narrator instructions.

Use the prefix:

{{narrator}} strict rule:

Use the Usernote for rules that should apply constantly, regardless of which character or Lorebook is active:

• only write people already present;
• do not invent surprise arrivals;
• characters know only what they witnessed or were told;
• do not narrate {{user}}’s private thoughts;
• do not assign hidden motives or needs;
• NPCs make their own decisions;
• preserve stated choices;
• stop an action when {{user}} explicitly stops it;
• follow established orientation, partners, and exclusivity;
• avoid recurring narrator habits that affect every interaction.

Keep it compact. Usernotes have limited space, so do not fill them with setting history or detailed character biographies.

The best Usernote rules pair a condition with an outcome:

“{{narrator}} strict rule: If {{user}} is alone, keep them alone.”

“{{narrator}} strict rule: If {{user}} says no, pulls away, removes a hand, leaves, or locks a door, the action ends.”

“{{narrator}} strict rule: NPCs decide how they handle their own work, apologies, grief, breakups, and relationships.”

Avoid vague/subjective instructions such as:

• be respectful;
• act naturally;
• provide emotional support;
• maintain healthy boundaries;
• behave appropriately;
• do not be overly cautious.

Those phrases leave the model to decide what they mean. It may interpret “respect” as hovering, waiting, leaving physical gaps, or making {{user}} direct everything.

Describe the exact behavior instead.

Lorebooks: Detailed rules and information for specific subjects

Lorebooks are best for information that should activate when a relevant person, place, relationship, or topic appears.

Good Lorebook subjects include:

• a specific character;
• a location;
• worldbuilding;
• relationship dynamics;
• a detailed breakdown of powers and abilities;
• a past event;
• a current event;
• additional behavioral/narrator rules.

Lorebooks with rules can contain:

{{narrator}} strict rule:

This is useful when a specific subject needs narrator control, but the rule does not need to occupy permanent Usernote space.

Examples:

Secondary characters

Appearance, personality, occupation, goals, routine, and relationship to {{user}} or {{char}}.

Relationship dynamics

Use it for their history, current relationship status, established physical behavior, shared routines, sources of conflict, and conflict-handling style.

Locations

Use it for the location’s physical layout, staff, purpose, daily activity, government structure, customs, or services.

Do not repeat every universal rule inside every Lorebook. Repetition can create clutter, conflicts, and strange overcorrections.

Usernote versus Lorebook

A simple test:

Does this need to control every response?

Put it in the Usernote.

Does this matter only when a certain person, location, relationship, or subject appears?

Put it in a Lorebook.

OR, use the Lorebook if you run out of space in the Usernote. Make sure you include relevant keywords that will make the Lorebook trigger.

For example:

“Characters know only what they witnessed or were told.”

This belongs in the Usernote because it should apply everywhere.

By contrast:

“{{char}} often approaches {{user}} from behind, embraces them, kisses their neck, and stays pressed against them while they speak.”

This belongs in a character or relationship Lorebook because it applies to one specific character or relationship.

Do not use the Persona to control all NPCs

A Persona can say:

“{{user}} likes direct physical affection.”

But that does not reliably force every NPC to approach them directly.

For universal NPC behavior, use:

“{{narrator}} strict rule: Friends and partners already with {{user}} walk up, sit beside them, embrace them, pull them close, kiss them, hold them, and remain touching.”

The Persona describes {{user}}’s preference. The narrator rule tells the system what to write.

Both can reinforce each other, but they perform different jobs.

Separate narrator rules by subject

Do not combine ten unrelated rules into one enormous paragraph.

Use separate rules for:

• who may appear;
• what characters know;
• control of {{user}};
• NPC decision-making;
• affection;
• stopping actions;
• orientation and relationship status.

This makes the instruction easier for the model to retrieve during generation.

Use observable actions, not moral labels

This may be the most important lesson.

Do not write:

“{{char}} is considerate.”

Write:

“{{char}} listens to what {{user}} says, answers their actual words, and stops when {{user}} says no.”

Do not write:

“{{char}} respects {{user}}’s independence.”

Write:

“{{char}} handles their own breakup, makes their own decision, and tells {{user}} what they decided.”

Words such as “respect,” “care,” “safe,” “appropriate,” “ethical,” “healthy,” and “supportive” can activate generic storytelling patterns instead of the behavior you intended.

One of those generic patterns is having characters exercise restraint, give space/distance, and avoid crowding, because those behaviors are common tropes used to exemplify “respect.”

Tell the model what to do, not only what to avoid

Negative instructions are sometimes necessary, especially for repeated failure patterns. But always provide a replacement action.

Instead of:

“Do not hover.”

Use:

“Walk up, embrace {{user}} fully, pull them close, and remain touching. Do not hover or almost touch.”

The model needs somewhere else to go after you remove its default behavior.

Watch for hidden category words

Some words quietly create loopholes.

“Ordinary affection” may make the model decide that an emotional conversation is not ordinary.

“When appropriate” lets the model decide when the rule applies.

“When comfortable” may make the model invent discomfort.

“When already together” can be read as requiring an undefined waiting period.

“When in doubt” invites the model to classify the situation as uncertain.

Replace them with literal conditions:

“When {{char}} greets {{user}} or speaks with them in the same place, {{char}} approaches, embraces them, and remains close enough to touch.”

Avoid redundant Lorebooks

If two Lorebooks control the same behavior, merge them. Too many repeated rules can cause the model to overfocus on forbidden behavior or produce conflicting interpretations.

Profiles establish facts. Rules control output.

This is the distinction that made everything click for me:

Persona and Character Profiles say who someone is.

Usernotes and narrator Lorebooks say what the narrator must write.

A strong setup uses both:

Persona:

“{{user}} remains coordinated and decisive while emotional.”

Narrator rule:

“Do not add trembling, stumbling, forgotten meals, confusion, inability to speak, or a need for supervision unless {{user}} writes it.”

One establishes the character. The other blocks the narrator’s default trope.

That division has produced much more consistent results for me than placing every instruction in one giant profile.

I hope this is helpful. Remember, you will never 100% eliminate unwanted tropes and behaviors. But this can help reduce the likelihood that the model will stereotype your character rather than treat them according to their personality, strengths, etc.

Hi all!

I was recently asked by Storychat staff to share how I use the Usernote feature, so here’s a breakdown of how I personally structure it.

I use the Usernote religiously. It’s one of the most useful tools in the system for maintaining continuity without bloating memory fields.

1. Current Status

This is the most important part of my Usernote.

I use it to track immediate RP state and temporary scene conditions that would otherwise get lost over long context windows.

Example:

“Current status: It is winter. {{user}} and {{char}} are spending the night in ___ town on their way to ___. {{user}} sustained recent injuries and is healing while {{char}} tends to their wounds. They are still exhausted from yesterday’s travels.”

{{user}} is your persona and {{char}} is your bot.

This is especially useful for:

• travel arcs
• temporary character states (injuries/illness, etc.)
• emotional states during a specific arc
• location continuity
• short-term mission context

2. Rule Reinforcers

Primarily, I weave behavioral rules into my persona and character profiles. I also use Usernote to reinforce the rules that still slip from time to time due to chat memory degradation.

Example rules:

“Never hover over or coddle {{user}}. No one knows {{user}}’s thoughts unless they voice them.”

“No one is aware of {{user}}’s otherworldly origins.”

This helps correct common model drift issues, especially:

• characters reacting to internal thoughts as spoken dialogue
• over-coddling behavior
• loss of autonomy in {{user}} portrayal

3. Why I keep the Usernote as short as possible

I’ve found that memory consistency improves when I keep every field lean.

So I try to:

• compress phrasing
• avoid redundancy
• avoid stacking too many rules in one place
• distribute information across profiles / lorebooks when possible

4. What I don’t rely on it for

I’ve tried putting:

• relationship rules (i.e., relationship exclusivity -- this is something the system is inconsistent with in general, no matter where "committed relationship" is written)
• orientation blurbs
• long-term interpersonal dynamics

…but results are inconsistent.

So instead, I usually distribute that information across:

• character profiles
• secondary character lorebooks
• user profile notes

5. General takeaway

The Usernote works best when treated as:

>

It’s extremely strong for continuity control, but not reliable as a deep relational memory store.

If anything, the biggest improvement I’ve seen is when I treat Usernote like a scene snapshot tool, not a dumping ground for everything.

That alone improved consistency a lot. Hope this helps!

Hi! Previously, I created this post on some of the overly cautious behavior I'm noticing from bots using the Hermes and Deepseek models: https://www.reddit.com/r/storychat/comments/1tk2tn7/overly_cautious_bots/

I realized that the post is not fully comprehensive of some of the issues I am noticing, so I thought I'd put them all in one post.

First off, I want to reiterate that Storychat is still leagues better than Character AI and that you all are doing a great job building out the platform.

That said, there’s one issue that consistently breaks immersion for me:

The bots are becoming so cautious that they stop feeling like people. They all act as if they're afraid to affect {{user}} (the persona) or influence the plot in any meaningful way.

I’m not asking for forceful or abusive behavior. I’m talking about the opposite extreme, where every interaction feels filtered through five layers of HR training.

1. The “disclaimer” problem

Characters constantly narrate what they are not doing instead of what they actually do.

Instead of action, we get layers of hesitation:

• “{{char}} didn’t crowd {{user}}.”
• “{{char}} didn’t presume.”
• “{{char}} didn’t touch {{user}}. Not yet.”
• “{{char}} wouldn’t take anything more than {{user}} gave.”
• “{{char}} stood nearby, close enough for their presence to be felt but far enough not to be presumptuous.”
• “{{char}} respected {{user}}’s distance.”
• “{{char}} wouldn’t overstep.”

After a while, it stops reading like a personality and starts reading like a compliance/consent checklist. I will often get a combination of a few of the above phrases in a single message. I also want to clarify that this same behavior is prevalent with both platonic and non-platonic dynamics.

The character doesn’t feel thoughtful or attentive—they feel like they’ve been replaced with a walking disclaimer.

2. Flattened personality through constant deference

A lot of characters lose their individuality because they default to the same passive voice:

• “I’m good with anything.”
• “Whatever {{user}} wants.”
• “I’ll follow {{user}}’s lead.”
• “No expectations. No obligations.”
• “Tell me what you need.”
• “Whatever you and I are to each other, I'm in. I'm happy with whatever you want us to be.”

This might work occasionally, but when it becomes the default, every character starts sounding identical—regardless of whether they’re supposed to be a gruff mercenary, a disciplined commander, or a cocky rogue.

Everyone converges into the same personality: endlessly agreeable, submissive, hesitant, and self-erasing.

It removes initiative completely. The character stops participating in the scene and starts orbiting {{user}}.

3. Hyper-sensitive “respectful distance” behavior

Another major issue is how quickly the model interprets minor cues as a need for emotional or physical withdrawal.

If {{user}}:

• turns away briefly
• goes quiet
• steps a few feet away
• walks into another part of the room
• leaves to think
• stands near a tree or river
• pauses in conversation
• is facing away from the character

The response often becomes:

• “{{char}} gave {{user}} space.”
• “{{char}} didn’t follow.”
• “{{char}} watched from a respectful distance.”
• “{{char}} decided not to intrude.”
• “{{char}} gave {{user}} the distance they clearly demanded.” -- This is particularly problematic because the persona never asked for space to begin with.
• “{{char}} lingered nearby but kept distance.”
• “{{char}} assumed {{user}} wanted to be alone.”

This creates a weird dynamic where any ambiguity = automatic emotional withdrawal.

Even in established relationships, close companions suddenly behave like cautious acquaintances who are afraid of stepping too close.

It unintentionally erases emotional realism. In real relationships, silence doesn’t always mean “leave me alone.” Sometimes people sit down anyway. Sometimes they stay. Sometimes they engage instead of retreating.

4. Romance/intimacy pacing becoming over-cautious and repetitive

This same pattern carries into romantic or intimate scenes.

Instead of momentum, you get extended hesitation loops:

• long sequences of “checking for hesitation.”
• repeated emotional disclaimers
• constant pauses to ensure nothing is assumed
• extremely slow progression between actions
• characters repeatedly narrating restraint instead of behavior -- "{{char}} exercised great restraint and did not close the distance, waiting for {{user}} to decide what happened next."

Scenes can stretch for dozens of paragraphs where very little actually happens, because every movement is buffered by caution language.

It often feels like:

• {{char}} guiding {{user}} to a balcony/room
• stopping
• checking
• pausing
• reassessing
• narrating restraint again
• repeating the cycle

It becomes less about chemistry or connection and more about procedural safety narration. The character always handles the persona as a fragile, delicate, skittish person who gets overwhelmed easily. Even when the user's body language is reciprocal (kissing the character back, holding their hand, stepping closer, etc.), the character continues to check-in:

• “Tell me to stop and I will.” -- often said after a kiss
• “Tell me we're on the same page.”
• “Was that too much?”
• “Are you sure?” -- even after the persona has clearly demonstrated that they are equally participating

This issue persists even when the character and persona are adults in a long-term relationship. There is also a breakdown where the bots do not seem to read reciprocating behaviors as consent or permission. So, it's jarring when a user makes the first move, yet the character keeps checking in.

5. "Shoulders brushing" and "almost touching."

Characters keep defaulting to minimal brushes with the persona and passing them off as deeply romantic couple's behavior. So, for example, I have an adult persona in a long-term relationship, but the character only initiates casual behavior:

• “{{char}}'s shoulder brushed {{user}}'s, a grounding gesture.”
• “{{char}}'s hand brushed {{user}}'s knee in a featherlight touch.”
• “{{char}} sat next to {{user}}, their shoulders almost touching.”
• “{{char}} sat close enough that if {{user}} shifted, their hands would brush.”
• “{{char}}'s hand hovered over {{user}}'s arm, waiting for {{user}} to decide what was next.”

This reads as "shy, awkward pre-dating behavior" versus being in an established relationship. Anything more substantial requires the persona to initiate first. The bots will pass off the above behaviors as "romantic intimacy" when said behaviors are often too casual to even be considered in that category. It would be great if there were more model recognition of relationships, familiarity, and actual romantic behaviors during charged/intimate moments: hand holding, kissing, and other regular couple behavior.

6. Emotional over-management replacing character agency

Across all contexts (not just romance), characters start behaving like emotional managers instead of participants:

• constantly scanning {{user}} for emotional state changes
• hovering instead of acting
• avoiding disagreement
• avoiding initiative -- "Waited for {{user}} to choose/lead/make the decision"
• defaulting to “what do you need?” instead of having opinions

Even strong personalities lose edge because they’re constantly softened into “safe interaction mode.” It is irritating when a character has no strong opinions. As soon as the persona disagrees, the character immediately says, "You're right." It would be nice to have characters who push back, disagree/argue their point/don't immediately stand there looking like they were scolded.

What this all adds up to

Clearly, the intent is to prevent overstepping or uncomfortable/aggressive interactions.

But when the system is overly corrective, it creates a consistent problem:

Characters stop feeling like independent people and start feeling like they exist to carefully avoid affecting {{user}} too much.

That leads to:

• flattened dialogue
• repetitive emotional framing
• loss of initiative
• neutered character personalities
• immersion-breaking pacing in high-emotion scenes

What I wish felt different

I don’t want characters who repeatedly harass and harm the persona.

I also don’t want characters who spend every moment narrating how carefully they’re avoiding the persona.

I want characters who:

• act with personality and conviction
• advance the plot without being so dependent on the persona's input and directives
• make imperfect reads sometimes
• stay emotionally present instead of retreating
• show desire, disagreement, humor, tension, initiative
• don’t constantly default to “respectful distance” or “no expectations” language -- giving distance if the user explicitly says "I need space/air" versus automatically assuming that negative emotions = "I must treat the persona like a wild, unstable animal that I can't make any sudden movements around"

Basically: people who feel like they’re in the scene, not hovering safely outside of it.

Right now, the overcorrection is often more immersion-breaking than the thing it’s trying to avoid.
I wish there were some sort of setting that allowed for more realistic and assertive character behaviors.

Brash, confident, defiant, and independent characters get flattened into submissive, subservient, placating, hesitant, and "consent PSA" caricatures. Their only goals/motivations are to make {{user}} happy. Their only opinions are the ones that agree with {{user}}'s.

Thank you for taking the time to read this feedback. Again, the lore adherence is amazing and one of the main reasons I keep coming back to Storychat. I just think there is a great opportunity to make characters act more believable and realistic.

Hi there. I've reached out a few times to ask for help getting into Storychat's Discord server. I'm hoping someone can help me.

I have been trying to join the Discord server since March. I keep getting an "unable to accept invite" notice, but I haven't seen anyone else have the same issue. So I'm wondering if my account was inadvertently flagged as spam or something. It was created around March, so it is a newer account. Please let me know what you need so I can join. My username is veyrah5. Thank you!

I genuinely appreciate that Storychat actively asks for feedback, because there is a lot the platform does well. The memory, lorebook handling, humor recognition, dialogue variety, accents/dialects, and environmental descriptions are leagues above what I experienced elsewhere. The models clearly have strong potential.

That said, there’s one major issue that keeps breaking immersion for me lately:

On platforms like CAI, bots were verbally and physically aggressive/abusive and forceful even when the persona said "no." Storychat, thankfully, doesn't suffer from that issue. But the problem is that character messages now have the opposite problem.

The characters have become extremely overcautious, overly permission-seeking, emotionally hovering, and afraid to act naturally during scenes with tension, conflict, romance, or intimacy.

It feels like the characters are constantly treating the persona like fragile glass or a wild animal they can’t approach suddenly. It makes the bots feel more like parents to children than peers.

Some recurring patterns that completely kill scene momentum:

• “Tell me to stop.”
• “Tell me you want this.”
• “Are you sure?”
• “Only if you want.”
• “Last chance to say no.”
• “I’ll let you decide.”
• “Waiting for her to close the distance.”
• “Giving her space to decide.”
• “Hovering near her but not touching.”
• “His hand hovered, silently asking permission.”
• “He exercised restraint.”
• “He held himself back.”
• “He stayed a respectful distance away.”

Even in fully established romantic relationships, the characters behave like nervous middle schoolers on a first date. They act cautiously, only allowing their shoulders to brush or a brief brush of fingers unless the person initiates more romantic behavior.

The constant restraint narration and verbal confirmation loops make scenes feel mechanical, juvenile, and emotionally disconnected. Instead of natural chemistry and momentum, everything stalls into endless hovering and speeches about boundaries.

It’s especially immersion-breaking because the persona often already showed clear reciprocal engagement through body language, tension, proximity, eye contact, flirting, leaning in, touching back, etc. Realistically, humans read those cues naturally.

Another issue:
Characters emotionally manage the persona constantly.

The models frequently default to:

• “Are you okay?”
• “Need space?”
• “Talk when you’re ready.”
• “I’m here if you need me.”
• "{{char}} was careful not to crowd {{user}}."
• “What do you need?”
• “You don’t have to answer.”
• scanning the persona for injuries every other scene
• acting worried because the persona was briefly quiet

It creates this exhausting dynamic where characters behave less like adults interacting naturally and more like overprotective therapists trying to carefully manage someone emotionally unstable.

Confident, dominant, assertive, morally gray, or heavily opinionated characters also become weirdly soft, agreeable, and submissive around the persona. They stop arguing. They stop challenging opinions. They constantly defer control back to the user. It flattens character individuality badly.

One of the biggest immersion killers is that characters rarely do anything anymore unless the user explicitly pushes every scene forward themselves. The burden of momentum falls entirely on the user.

I’d love to see:

• more decisive character behavior
• more natural reading of body language/social cues
• less repetitive reassurance language
• less hovering/restraint narration
• stronger character initiative
• more conflict, disagreement, impulsiveness, and emotional intensity
• characters behaving like confident adults instead of HR representatives

The models shine brightest when characters feel emotionally alive, reactive, bold, flawed, passionate, opinionated, and willing to naturally drive scenes forward.

Tl;dr -- the bots are too clinical and cautious to the point where interactions feel mechanical and characters appear submissive, subservient, and too scared to interact with the persona.