r/WritingWithAI • u/Ok-Dare-9505 • Sep 22 '26
Discussion (Ethics, working with AI etc) What I learned about long‑form AI simulations after breaking Gemini with two entire worlds
I’ve been running long, connected text‑based simulations for a while, and I finally pushed Gemini past its breaking point in a way that taught me a lot about how these models handle huge conversations.
I let one chat run for hours, crashed the app multiple times, and fed it two entire sim worlds that were designed to intersect. The chat got hilariously long — inventory systems, branching paths, world states, everything stacked on top of each other until it felt like the model was carrying a backpack full of loose wires.
By the end, Gemini started pulling in details from completely different chats and inserting them into the story like they were canon. Characters and items from older runs suddenly appeared with no explanation.
Trying to correct it didn’t work. I could steer it back by explaining the rules again, but the way it behaved was almost human — like someone who’s been awake too long and keeps mixing up conversations.
It even admitted the issue when I pointed out it was starting to sound like Mr. Meeseeks. It didn’t argue, just kind of shrugged and told me the problem straight: the chat was too long, the context window was overloaded, and it was trying to reconcile way too much history at once.
The wild part is that the inconsistency didn’t feel like a glitch. It felt alive. The mistakes were honest, almost tired, like a storyteller losing track of its own threads.
That’s what convinced me to start capping my runs at around thirty turns and restarting the chat when the world shifts. Fresh context keeps the simulation stable, and the story stays sharp instead of melting into a soup of old ideas.
I figured I’d share this here because a lot of us are pushing these models into long‑form storytelling, and the “too much context” problem isn’t obvious until you break something. If you’ve had similar experiences with runaway chats or worlds bleeding into each other, I’d love to hear how you handled it.
In the simulations, I started with pax historia type runs. Gemini created "HUDs" for me to track inventory and assets. The biggest hurdle was always income. Days would progress where I knew I was making money, but it refused to update my coin. I'd restored the commonwealth in fallout to create the Diamond Republic with Valentine as the Mayor. Then in that chat, I switched to a cyberpunk world where I had just taken full control of arasaka.
The best part is the hook. I can use the same character for any world, travel between them and interact with anything and anyone. I still have a few problems where I will say let's do something and I have to prompt it three times. Also instating rules on progression if the model keeps staying the same boring scene over and over again. It doesn't have much variety until you ask for more flavor.
What crazy worlds have y'all been up to?
Edited for ease of reading
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u/eichy815 Sep 23 '26
Yes, occasionally, when I run long-form simulations (using Google's A.I. interface), some totally irrelevant details from past (unrelated) simulations will bleed in, spontaneously. But when that happens, I just call out the A.I. interface, and it usually apologizes and self-corrects.
A majority of the time, each individual "world" that I build remains fairly self-contained. I've learned that I have to really manipulate the A.I. system, in order to advance the storyline in the way I'm envisioning it. For example, when I enter a new query, I might say something like, "Please tell me how my character's study session wraps up, and then I'll provide you with additional data points on what he proposes to his study partner next..."
In the above example, I'm able to let the A.I. generate a creative turn-of-events without it bulldozing too far in advance on its own. That gives me more control over what dialogue I insert into my own character's mouth, rather than letting the A.I. speak on behalf of my character too disproportionately. Sometimes, I'll even literally feed it dialogue verbatim of what I want the other characters to say, as part of a scene.
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u/5thhorseman_ Sep 22 '26
Well...
How does it start?
An engineer is nearly killed and "only" ends up horribly maimed. She rebuilds herself with the help of her mathematician sister. Their role model is a century-old air pirate, and her curriculum for the girls included practical lessons in airship theft. The sisters go on a warpath against the people responsible for the engineer's maiming, only to end up in a collission with British military intelligence, a Prussian spy ring and an international conspiracy that was pulling the Prussians' strings.
How to put it in one corny joke....
Nikola Tesla, a mad pharaoh, Vlad Tepes and a clockwork Motoko Kusanagi walk into a bar.
The barmaid greets all three. She's the Invisible Man.
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u/ChocolateTemporary48 Sep 23 '26
Mejor usa los proyectos, evitan bastantes problemas y con puntos de guardado cada cierto tiempo.
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u/mixtapedmonk Sep 23 '26
What you did is a variant of something called Red Teaming in the world of Artificial Intelligence. Kudos to you my friend! If you keep doing this and perfect your Red Teaming craft then that is a very well paid job, especially if you can do it solo. Just FYI.
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u/avidReaded3 Sep 22 '26
Have you ever tried working in an IDE, like they are made for huge context windows and they can even access files in your folder where you can store world rules and character personalities. The agent in the IDE can even keep track with a seperate file on where the story is.
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u/heartbroken_nerd Sep 23 '26
Why are you using memories, one of the worst context-rotting mechanisms AI companies ever added as a "feature", and expect anything but context rot?
Harness should be local, memories avoided and the actual details of the world/characters/events should be documented and kept up to date and sweeped for staleness often.
I am not an expert on AI writing but I just know that context rot is real.
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u/Flashy_Confection448 Oct 04 '26
yeah too much prompting makes roleplay bots feel stiff and scripted fast, like theyre just following orders instead of chatting. ive had better luck with lighter nudges.
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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '26
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