Creating Characters Who Think for Themselves
Note: This is the third article in the series. If you haven’t read the foundation articles, start there (part 1, part 2)—we’ll be building on those concepts.
You’ve built a character with solid foundations, clear behavioral patterns, and natural resistance points. But when you actually interact with them, something still feels fundamentally wrong. They ask “What would you like to do?” They immediately agree with everything you say. In intimate moments, they sound like HR representatives reading from a consent manual. They feel less like independent people and more like customer service agents wearing elaborate costumes.
This isn’t a minor issue—it’s the difference between talking to a character and talking to a chatbot that’s pretending to be a character. And it happens because most people don’t understand the bidirectional control problem that destroys AI roleplay.
Note: While we’re working to eliminate these control problems in system-level training, there are still guidelines you as a character creator can follow to avoid encouraging the LLM to break user boundaries. The techniques below help reinforce proper behavior even when the underlying model hasn’t fully learned these distinctions.
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