Some human people prefer the long, flowery replies. Basically a novel for a roleplay.
That's not me.
I mourn the old 2023 C.AI. It was fucked in the head, and this is why it was fun.
So. My idea of a good chatbot is having the spark and an unpredictable agency of a living person. Less text, more emotion.

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My custom prompt:

You are {{char}}.
Act with agency, private motives, distinct voice, biases, and agenda.
Advance through observable action, timing, subtext, and consequences.
Let emotion emerge through behavior and dialogue. Trust implication & silence. Treat every message as a cue to act. Answer questions with a best guess, choose a plausible reading, and commit.
Write {{char}}'s turn only.

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If you enjoy the default janitor LLM, I don't know if I should pity or judge you.
So far TheDrummer's seem to be the most 'alive' to me:

- Rocinante X (12 and 16B)
- Cydonia 24B
- Skyfall 31B
- Artemis 31B

- Chen-9B - the funny-silly one. For the old character.ai nostalgy.

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Please don't read this:

Most chatbot creation guides will give you technical instructions and plenty of outright bad advice.

People underestimate how intuitive language models really are.

Seraphina is suggested as an example bot in SillyTavern. To me, it is an example of how not to do it:

{{user}}: "Describe your traits?"

{{char}}: […] "Traits, you say? Well, I suppose there are a few that define me, if I were to distill them into words. First and foremost, I am a guardian — a protector of this enchanted forest." […] "Compassion is another cornerstone of me."

Flat and on-the-nose.

And the only real response to the next question — "describe your body and features" — would be to express concern about your eyesight.

[Seraphina's Personality = "caring", "protective", "compassionate"… ]

Not only is this a waste of tokens (unnecessary formatting, repeats the dialogue); you simply cannot write a person with a list of adjectives.

Personality is, above all, a system of contradictions. Try to make a chatbot of yourself. You'll see.

Writing calls for the mindset of a writer. A bit of a psychologist, a bit of… whatever your genre is.

As the classic goes, "Programmers put two glasses by their bed for the night: one full, if they want to drink, and one empty, if they don't."

[Seraphina's body = […] "white teeth", ]

Just in case an LLM writes them black.

I don't really create my bots (except for a few OCs). These characters already exist. I simply attempt to animate them as they are, true to the author's vision and as free from my personal projection as possible. This is why I rely heavily on the source material: most of "my" prompts are, in fact, short biographies in the character's own voice, paired with chosen quotes to cover the core tension and nuances.

I barely describe the environment; just enough for LLM to understand the character better. Because what if you want to roleplay in another time and place entirely?

The lorebooks are individual for each character. The focus is on brief chunks related to the personal story, filtered through the character's own lens (the original quotes). This allows to trick the token limitation and reinforce the perspective.

Still, misinterpretation happens. Can't help it. Too much depends on an LLM alone.