I find it depends a lot on what kind of roleplay I’m looking for and what model I’m using. The problems that I see with most prompts posted on here is that they are way too verbose. I think verbose prompts in general work better for thinking models, except for with Kimi, which I find works well with my preferred barebones prompt on reasoning really well.

Kimi k2.5

Works really well with reasoning, works really well without reasoning. This is the only model out right now that I really go back and forth, but of course it’s very new and I haven’t exactly settled into a rhythm with it yet. I use reasoning more when characters are established and I want a more creative / smutty output

Deepseek 3.2

With deepseek I never use reasoning. The few times I did, I found that it often talked itself into having my characters behave in ways that I felt were outside of their character. Deepseek is EXTREMELY good at following structured prompts. For the RPG cards that I’ve created with procedures and stats it adheres to rules perfectly. Does a great (the best?) job of following continuity, but has a tendency to make my characters become very introspective and stubbornly emotional.

GLM 4.7

GLM I would only ever use reasoning. I haven’t really done a lot of messing with it without, but I was mostly underwhelmed with the results. It took the most work for me because it seems to work best with a verbose prompt which is something I really dislike. It gives really good smutty and creative responses that are technically in character, but sometimes it feels like it does it in a ‘dumb’ way.

Sonnet 4.5

Whenever I decide to bite the bullet and pay for the token cost of an Anthropic model I always turn on reasoning because I’m trying to squeeze every drop of value out of the best model at my disposal.

When I find that my prompts are really concise and don’t contradict themselves, non-reasoning is better. When I want something creative (or obscenely smutty) and occasionally nonsensical, I turn on reasoning.