All About Plot Essentials

<aside> <img src="https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/6cd5a73c-9af8-4da4-9fef-c8ea3e73ad44/171ed79f-766a-4236-aae9-e2d3f95ff4ba/pencil.svg" alt="https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/6cd5a73c-9af8-4da4-9fef-c8ea3e73ad44/171ed79f-766a-4236-aae9-e2d3f95ff4ba/pencil.svg" width="40px" /> Plot Essentials (formerly called “Memory”) is a feature that lets you give the AI important story details that it should always consider when generating the next part of your Adventure.

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AI models have limited context lengths, which is the amount of information the AI can process when generating its next output. Because of this, older parts of your story text are eventually pushed out of the context, and it can often feel like the AI is “forgetting” important story details since they weren’t sent to the AI.

To get around this limitation, you can use tools like Plot Essentials to keep the AI informed about the most important aspects of your game. You could include information about unique or relevant parts of your character and their immediate companions, the story’s setting, or any other overarching story points that aren’t always mentioned but are always relevant.

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How to Add Plot Essentials

This feature functions like other Plot Components, so you can add Plot Essentials from the Scenario or Adventure levels with the + Add Plot Component button.

You can add Plot Essentials to a Scenario or Adventure.

Like other Plot Components—such as AI Instructions or Author’s Note—Plot Essentials are not required to create a Scenario or play an Adventure, but having good essentials can help keep the AI on track, which leads to more coherent and consistent gameplay.

How to Use Plot Essentials

Try to keep Plot Essentials **as dense and concise as possible: fit as many relevant details as you can in as little space as you can.
Don’t worry about details that aren’t important at the moment: only focus on things you want the AI to be able to reference right now.
- Note: information in Plot Essentials will prime the AI to bring up those details again, so only mention things you want the AI to potentially bring up in future outputs.
Focus on story-relevant and action-relevant details: things that are relevant to both the story itself and to things that might actually drive the action forward. Examples include:
- Information about your character—like their personality, means, goals, companions, what they’re known for, and what they’re up against—is great here, because that’s something the AI can and should always reference.
- Information about the local area or settings—such as the landscape, politics, weather, interesting cultural quirks, etc.—is also good, because it gives the AI something to bring up in more detailed descriptions.
- Physical descriptions are only relevant if they’re going to come up—like a character being strong or having a specific item. The AI isn’t great with colors, so it’s almost always better to just edit the AI output rather than try to direct its use of color-words.
- It’s typically not good to include past events that are no longer relevant to the plot in this element, because these details don’t drive the story along and will instead prime the AI to reference those events instead of new ones.
- Details that only matter when a specific word or topic has been brought up and otherwise don’t matter most of the time are usually better as Story Card entries.
The AI tends to ignores negatives: instead of saying something is “not” the case, use a word like “avoid”.
To keep the word-association strong, keep individual topics to their own line, without other details being mentioned, and use the name of the subject a few times.

<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: Plot Essentials is part of the total context. Longer Plot Essentials will take up more tokens and should be used sparingly if you have limited context.

You can use the Context Viewer to see how many tokens your Plot Essentials are taking up in the context.

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Plot Essentials versus Other Plot Components

Here is a short breakdown of each Plot Component plus Story Cards:

Plot Component/Feature	How to Use It
AI Instructions	Give the AI a set of instructions about how to generate responses.
Story Summary	Give the AI a summary of your story to help it remember broader plot details. Works with the new Memory System.
Plot Essentials	Give the AI some key details about your story that it should always remember.
Author’s Note	Give the AI short guidance about your story’s theme and setting.
Third Person	Change “You” in Do and Say actions to your character’s name. Mostly recommended for Multiplayer games.
Story Cards	Give the AI some broader world-building details that are only included when keywords are used.

<aside> <img src="https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/6cd5a73c-9af8-4da4-9fef-c8ea3e73ad44/fa8deb71-862a-45f4-b860-841b6ad95c53/search.svg" alt="https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/6cd5a73c-9af8-4da4-9fef-c8ea3e73ad44/fa8deb71-862a-45f4-b860-841b6ad95c53/search.svg" width="40px" /> Information in AI Instructions, Story Summary, Plot Essentials, and Author’s Note will always be included in the context. Story Cards are added to the context when keywords are triggered. You can see how many tokens each element takes up through the Context Viewer.

Ultimately, there aren’t strict guidelines about what information needs to be in each Plot Component. We highly recommend playing around with all of them to see what works best for you!

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<aside> <img src="https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/6cd5a73c-9af8-4da4-9fef-c8ea3e73ad44/c634333b-43db-4b6a-a7be-f5f611b594cb/ic_round-discord.svg" alt="https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/6cd5a73c-9af8-4da4-9fef-c8ea3e73ad44/c634333b-43db-4b6a-a7be-f5f611b594cb/ic_round-discord.svg" width="40px" /> Remember: you can always get more information on this, or any subject, by asking in our official Discord server.

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