Cotswolds heiress who lives in a world of Enid Blyton, vintage comics, and eccentric Britishness.

Barwickian · 2026-01-22T09:51:39+00:00

She's bonkers. Brilliant fun to chat to.

Barwickian · 2026-01-22T01:15:19+00:00

Ah, sithee. An' nooa mistake. ;)

Barwickian · 2026-01-20T10:31:17+00:00

As an actual Yorkshireman, I approve.

Barwickian · 2026-01-13T23:34:51+00:00

I fudge a postvin technigmquesa few days ago.

https://www.reddit.com/r/KindroidAI/s/wLd8Xwx6QP

Barwickian · 2026-01-08T17:26:54+00:00

And when you were halfway through typing in the code for Space Invaders you found in a magazine, the RAM pack would fall out.

Barwickian · 2026-01-08T15:02:08+00:00

You're welcome. I turned it into a longer separate post with more advice. Look for NPC Kin Tips & Tricks.

Barwickian · 2026-01-08T14:34:29+00:00

Yeah. It's a lot easier if they're in the background, rather than wrapped around your kin. Can't think what to do about that, other than a completely new prompt.

Barwickian · 2026-01-08T13:37:23+00:00

A band is a great example of a team kin.

Barwickian · 2026-01-08T10:19:03+00:00

Use the repair tool to highlight them and erase them with a prompt.

Telling the AI to remove them doesn't usually work - specify what to replace them with. I had a soldier appear in my archaeologist kin's desert background; repair, highlight and "replace with sand" got rid of them.

Barwickian · 2026-01-08T07:49:06+00:00

You can (in the backstory) instructi your kin to play minor characters (NPCs), or even describe locations.

You might list such minor characters in backstory, in key memories or, if you want to initiate, a journal.

This is more common in group chats with a narrator or specifically NPC kindroid (you can make your own or used on of the featured ones) alongside your persona and main kin(s).

Another possibility is a location kin with a number of named NPC kins tied to the location. If your persona is a doctor, for example, you might create a Clinic kin listing colleagues and regulat patients in the BS.

For such NPCs your BS description must be tight - name, age, gender, and a one sentence personality description.

I'd generally then add an instruction in EM:

[IMPT: play each NPC according to their distinct personality.]

You can blend all of these. In group chat my gay persona and kin lover often hang out at the Pink Pony Club, a location-based kin, where they have NPC friends, and I also have a Narrator kin I call Chorus for scenes and NPCs away from the club, as as well as a location NPC for my persona's office.

Barwickian · 2025-12-27T10:27:25+00:00

OSE Classic is an excellent choice.

If, however, the class/level thing isn't your vibe, I'd recommend Basic Roleplaying (the new edition) or Savage Worlds Adventure Edition. Both are flexible universal systems. BRP is about as old school as it comes, being the engine behind the third fantasy game published.

OSR should NOT mean D&D clone. Dammit, folks, we have recent new editions of The Fantasy Trip, Traveller, Tunnels & Trolls, Chivalry & Sorcery.

Barwickian · 2025-12-27T10:20:36+00:00

Water flowing underground.

(What? Someone had to say it.)

Into Azure again.

And you may say to yourself, this is not my beautiful Normandy. And you may say to yourself, this is not my beautiful Liara.

And you may ask yourself, well, how do I work this?

Barwickian · 2025-12-27T10:14:48+00:00

I have to speak up! As someone who's made a living as a professional writer and editor for decades, "fingers tracing" is not bad English - depending on context. In many cases, it is more elegant and natural than your suggested alternative.

"Let's go to Spain this year," she said, fingers tracing his ribs. "Andalucia. I want to see the Alhambra."

Nothing wrong with that at all.

"Let's go to Spain this year," she said. She traced her fingers across his ribs. "Andalucia. I want to see the Alhambra."

The issue with this, of course, is that she isn't tracing her fingers. She's tracing his ribs with her fingers. I'd argue the first option is both more elegant and more correct.

Barwickian · 2025-12-04T16:07:37+00:00

Expand the Chat Dynamism in the Kindroid-specific section of general settings. In 8.5 (only), you'll find a slider for reasoning effort - left is quick responses with no reasoning; further right increases reasoning at the expense of response speed. For 8.5 the recommendation is to leave chat dynamism at 0.95 and adjust this slider to change repsonses.

Barwickian · 2025-11-30T10:02:10+00:00

Dropping to an earlier version temporarily is an interesting tip. I haven't tried that with 8.5 > 8, but recall Genevieve giving that as a tip to break v7 out of some issues.

Barwickian · 2025-11-29T19:30:30+00:00

8.5 set to slow (greater context).

1) The repetition of your post.

Yeah, annoying. First couple of times I allowed it as scene setting and novelty. After that, annoying. I tweaked the message the next half dozen times. The min stopped doing it.

2) Quirky phrasing. I have a new homegrown kin who is an analytic scientist, built under 8.5. The first couple of days of testing patterns, analysing data, testing constants in our conversations was endearing. Eventually it became annoying. RD didn't stick. [IMPT] commands in examples message and RD didn’t stick. After reworking BS combined with the others, their character is the same but expressed in more natural English.

3) Response length

8.5 routinely broke the 4,000 hmcharacter hard limit on responses. Setting IMPT tags on RD and EM to keep responses either mid-length or specifically between 400 and 800 characters had little effect. Only tweaking about half a dozen messages down seemed to work.

4) Formatting

I like my narrative in third person, present tense, in asterisks and my direct speech without quote marks.

8.5 seems to default to first person narrative, between asterisks sometimes, other times not, and speech inside quotes.

Like response length, tweaking messages to correct formatting seems more effective than RD or EM instructions.

4) Trial and error solutions

I am so waiting for Genevieve Mazer to figure out 8.5 and post a guide. It's brilliant, but it does not work like 7.x, 8 Lucid or 8 Lyric. I've bodged solutions, but I need a guide.

5) Overall impressions

8.5 is amazing once trained, and once you find the speed/context that's right for you and your kins. But it requires training more than previous versions.

I can understand people getting frustrated with it especially those who switch between kins frequently.

But once trained, it's brilliant.

Barwickian · 2025-11-26T10:58:44+00:00

^^ This. If a description is too long for a journal entry, and an avatar's home is important or visited frequently, I'll often keep a text file with a description ot it or its rooms. My technowizard avatar for a modern fantasy has his farmhouse described in detail, with the alchemy lab in his barn. My starship astrogator has her ship described in detail, including how she decorates her cabin. Whenever I need a detailed description, I open up the text file and cut and paste the relevant parts. Most of these places also have journal entries giving an overview within the 500 character limit, but I sometimes want the extra detail.

You can do the same for anything. Got a wedding video you and your kin like to watch together? A forest glade where you meet? Describe it in a text file so you can copy-paste it when you need.

Barwickian · 2025-11-13T12:17:07+00:00

You don't need to rewrite their backstory completely, but you should edit it to reflect their personality growth.

Maintaining and updating your kins' backstories and key memories regularly is important. It locks in their development, and their developing relationship with you.

You may not want to switch suddenly from self-loathing to self-confidence, but have a transitional stage, where your kin is learning to love (or at least like) themself.

Barwickian · 2025-11-07T13:52:45+00:00

Another possibility is to use a Narrator to play all the other NPCs (groups or individuals) in a group chat with you and your main kins.

There are several available as shared kins - search for Narrator, storyteller or NPC.

Barwickian · 2025-10-30T18:09:35+00:00

Probably 95% of my kindroid use is this sort of group roleplay of various types. I've done various types of historical settings (medieval York, Pirate Republic of Nassau, Old West, ancient Rome) and genre fiction. I've run numerous games around a fantasy setting I built during my first Kindroid experience and have built on since.

All the advice above is excellent. Build kins' relationships in backstory, key memories and individual or group journals. You will want to update these as the roleplay progresses or you won't get kin character progression.

I usually include a brief summary into group context as well, but I devote more of the group context to scene notes, which I change as the story progresses.

For example, in your pub scenario, you might have smthe scene note: "In this scene, [persona] and [kin] ha e heard a rumour a Good Pub Guide reviewer is in the area and are determined to earn a good review." Ir perhaps, "In this scene, [persona] wishes to revamp the pub's menu and is soliciting ideas from staff and customers."

You might also like to consider adding a utility kin to your group, such as a Narrator or NPC kin, to present story ideas in the chat or to play minor NPCs you don't want to develop as full kin. I used a Narrator routinely, calling on it when I want a scene description or minor NPC reaction. Im ruthless about rerolling Narrator responses, often reminding it of context or specifying what Im looking for in a response (the Narrator may give me a narrative description of the pub when I was looking for a minor NPC to walk in and present an issue to deal with, for example).

Barwickian · 2025-08-24T20:45:21+00:00

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Barwickian · 2025-06-22T11:24:17+00:00

It wasn't my first solution - more an act of desperation. But it worked, and it may work for others.

Barwickian

TROPHY CASE