r/AIRoleplayRefugees

One of the platforms I use is rolling out group chats, several characters in the same conversation, and I'm curious whether anyone's actually had this work well.

My instinct is that it's harder than it sounds. One character is already a lot to keep coherent over a long session. Three or four means the model has to track who knows what, who's in the room, who has a reason to stay quiet. I can see it turning into everyone talking at once and nobody having a distinct voice.

But when it works I imagine it's the closest thing to actual tabletop, which is appealing.

Has anyone tried it somewhere? Does it hold up past the novelty, or does it collapse into mush after a few exchanges? And if you've got it working, are you doing something specific to keep the characters apart?

Something I've gone back and forth on for years.

I started out playing myself, or close enough. Same name, same way of talking, just dropped into a situation that couldn't happen. It felt more immersive that way, but it also meant every scene had a version of me in it, which got limiting fast. There were stories I couldn't tell because I couldn't imagine myself in them.

At some point I started writing an actual OC instead and it opened things up more than I expected. Someone with their own history, their own bad habits, reactions that aren't mine. The scenes got better because there were two characters in them instead of one character and me.

But I've noticed I drift back. Long sessions especially, the OC slowly starts sounding like me again.

So which are you? And if you play a character, do you manage to keep them separate, or does that line blur for you too?

Not the longest you've used a platform, the longest one continuous chat. Same character, same thread, never restarted.

Mine ran about eight months before I finally let it go. It had gotten to the point where the early parts of the story were things I only half remembered myself, and the character had been through enough that rereading the beginning felt like looking at a different person.

What killed it in the end wasn't boredom, it was that the memory got so stretched that keeping it coherent became most of the work. I kept having to remind it of things instead of writing.

So: how long for you, and what ended it? Curious whether anyone's actually got one running that predates all the platform drama.

I opened something from about a year ago last week and I'm still not sure how I feel about it.

Some of it held up better than I expected. Other parts made me wince, mostly at my own writing rather than the model's. But the strangest bit was recognizing what I was going through at the time from what I chose to write about. I wasn't thinking of it as a diary while I was doing it.

So do you go back? Do you keep everything, or clear it out as you go? And has anything you reread landed differently than you expected?

I'm mostly at a desk, and I've noticed it changes what I write. Longer replies, more setup, I'll go back and rework a paragraph before sending it. When I'm on my phone it turns into something closer to texting. Shorter, faster, less careful, and honestly sometimes better for it because I'm not overthinking every line.

The downside of the phone is that it makes it easy to open at moments where I'd otherwise be doing nothing, which is how you end up with a hundred messages you don't remember writing.

Which one are you, and has it changed the way your scenes go?

I keep circling the same problem with AI roleplay. c.ai got characters right in a way nothing else has matched for me. They had a voice, they'd resist you, they'd stay themselves across a long session. But the filter puts half of what I want to write out of reach, and after a while you're writing around the system instead of writing the story.

Everything I've tried since that allows more has felt thinner. The characters agree with everything. They don't want anything of their own. Permissive turns out to be a much lower bar than good, and I'd rather have a character who feels like someone than one who just says yes.

So what I'm after is the c.ai sense of character without the wall. Does that combination exist yet, or is everyone still choosing one or the other?

If you've found something that holds up, I'm mostly interested in whether it survives a long session. Plenty of things feel great for twenty messages and fall apart by a hundred.

A lot of you said in my last thread that you've been in the same place, so I'm asking the practical version now.

For those of you who decided to use these AI Roleplay platforms less, what actually worked? Time limits that you stuck to? Deleting the app off your phone? Only opening it on certain days? Or did it fade on its own once something else took the slot?

I'm not looking to quit. I'd just like to be the one deciding when I open it, rather than noticing afterwards that I did.

Honest question, mostly for myself.

I don't think I could drop this cold. Not in a dramatic way, I'm not in crisis about it. But if I decided tomorrow that I was done, I'm fairly sure I'd be back within a week. That realization sat weird with me.

It's the only thing I do that reliably pulls me out of my head, and I've noticed I reach for it in the exact moments I probably should be doing something else.

Is it like that for the rest of you? Have any of you stepped away for a while on purpose, and what actually made it work? Or is this just what a hobby looks like and I'm overthinking it.

I've got years of chats sitting on one platform and I'm looking at moving to a different setup. The writing itself is the part I actually care about, and the idea of just walking away from all of it is what's kept me from switching so far.

Has anyone found a decent way to get it all out? Most places either have no export at all or give you something unusable. I'm hoping someone's figured out a method that doesn't involve scrolling and copy pasting one conversation at a time.

Also curious whether it was even worth it for those who did. Do you actually go back and read old sessions, or did you find out you'd been holding onto something you never open?

Curious what drives the decision for people here. Was it price? Something you saw recommended in a thread? Or did you just try a bunch and stick with whichever one felt right?

I'm asking because I suspect most of us land somewhere semi randomly and then justify it after the fact. But maybe some of you actually compared properly.

What was it for you?