Playing AI Dungeon
Common Questions
<aside>
<img src="https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/6cd5a73c-9af8-4da4-9fef-c8ea3e73ad44/1b9ce67b-9c59-4dd8-b8f2-87aaf1fff13a/wrench.svg" alt="https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/6cd5a73c-9af8-4da4-9fef-c8ea3e73ad44/1b9ce67b-9c59-4dd8-b8f2-87aaf1fff13a/wrench.svg" width="40px" /> AI Instructions is a new feature that gives you unprecedented control over the AI. It’s a great way to steer the AI in the direction you want it to generate responses.
</aside>
AI models can accept a set of instructions that influence their behavior. Up to this point, we’ve used backend model instructions to guide the AI to respond in a text adventure format. Now, this is built into AI Dungeon Scenarios and Adventures so you can add your own custom instructions and direct AI models in even better ways.
We used special AI Instructions to create our funny test model, Mixtral Duck. Story text can be read via screenreader through the toggle below.
We’ve set up this feature to function like other Plot Components, so you can add AI Instructions from the Scenario or Adventure levels with the + Add Plot Component button.
You can add AI Instructions during Scenario creation with the + Add Plot Component button under the “Plot” tab.
You can also add AI Instructions to an Adventure through the in-game settings sidebar + Add Plot Component button under the “Adventure” → “Plot” tabs.
If you don’t want to start with a blank slate, use the + Insert Default button when creating or editing a Scenario to populate the section with an example of our default instructions. From the Adventure level, use the + Insert Example button to do the same.
Use + Insert Default from the Scenario settings to start with a set of example instructions.
Use + Insert Example from the Adventure settings to do the same.
Like other Plot Components—such as Plot Essentials or Author’s Note—AI Instructions are not required to create a Scenario or play an Adventure, but having good instructions can help keep the AI on track, which leads to more coherent and consistent gameplay.
AI Instructions are extremely powerful. You can use them to control anything from the:
You can also use instructions to solve common issues like:
Model instructions are one of the first things sent to the AI during prompt construction. For some models, they are formatted in a unique way to ensure the AI follows the directions they contain. So, you can use the model instructions to solve some of the issues described above. For instance, you might add lines like:
One thing to pay attention to is that the AI doesn’t always respond well to “don’t talk about this” sorts of instructions. Think of AI language models like a probability machine. If you say “don’t think about the blue banana”, it might have a hard time forgetting about blue bananas. It’s better to instruct with what you want it to stick to, like the examples above.
Our built-in, default model instructions can be accessed through the in-game Adventure settings when Mixtral, MythoMax, Tiefighter, or GPT-4 Turbo are selected as the Story Generator. Once you add the AI Instructions card, use the dropdown to select Model Default. Changing your AI model under the “Gameplay” tab brings up other default model instructions.
Editing the Model Default instructions automatically turns them into Custom instructions.
If the AI Instructions component hasn’t been added to a Scenario or Adventure, our default model instructions will always be used.
Note: Because of model limitations, AI Instructions are not available for the deprecated Griffin or Dragon AI models. Instructions may be more beneficial to some models than others.
When AI Instructions are added on the Scenario level, every resulting Adventure will have Scenario Default instructions available as an option through the in-game Adventure settings:
Editing the Scenario Default instructions automatically turns them into Custom instructions.
Whenever you add your own instructions or edit the Model and Scenario instructions, these will be labeled Custom under the in-game Adventure settings:
A blank custom instructions component will function differently than no instruction component (which falls back to our default model instructions), so you may end up with a pretty funky story if custom instructions are added but not filled in.
If you delete custom instructions with the trash can icon, they will be completely unrecoverable and cannot be brought back.
<aside> <img src="https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/6cd5a73c-9af8-4da4-9fef-c8ea3e73ad44/bc286432-ec35-4f0e-b5b0-87f3b8d34ca8/warning.svg" alt="https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/6cd5a73c-9af8-4da4-9fef-c8ea3e73ad44/bc286432-ec35-4f0e-b5b0-87f3b8d34ca8/warning.svg" width="40px" /> Remember: the AI will do its best to follow whatever you add to Custom instructions. Keep this in mind if you start running into strange bugs—you may just need to adjust your custom AI Instructions.
</aside>
Our Alpha testers group on Discord has been playing around with custom AI Instructions for several weeks now. We’ve included some of their examples that you can look at for tips and tricks or use for yourself. We’ve also included our Mixtral Duck instructions if you’d like to recreate that AI experience, since this model is now retired.
Open the toggles below, copy the text inside the code block, and then paste them into AI Instructions for your own Scenarios and Adventures:
<aside> <img src="https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/6cd5a73c-9af8-4da4-9fef-c8ea3e73ad44/0e648762-429a-4a97-9769-26c1610f8a3e/warning.svg" alt="https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/6cd5a73c-9af8-4da4-9fef-c8ea3e73ad44/0e648762-429a-4a97-9769-26c1610f8a3e/warning.svg" width="40px" /> Remember: AI Instructions is part of the total context. Longer custom instructions will take up more tokens and should be used sparingly if you have limited context.
</aside>
To highlight the effectiveness of custom AI Instructions, here’s a comparison of the same Quick Start prompt using the default Mixtral instructions versus custom AI Instructions:
The knight Quick Start prompt with default Mixtral model instructions. Story text can be read via screenreader through the toggle below.
The knight Quick Start prompt with custom AI Instructions. Story text and custom instructions can be read via screenreader through the toggles below.
