ryah/st-freaky-d20-preset

This repository contains a custom preset file for SillyTavern, an open-source chat frontend that lets users run AI roleplay sessions with various language models. SillyTavern presets are text-based configuration files that tell the AI how to behave during a session. This particular preset, called Freaky FrankenSIM, is a fork of an earlier community preset called Freaky Frankenstein 4 MAX+, which was already known for producing vivid, sensory-rich roleplay output. The author's starting point was a frustration with AI echoing: the AI would take a player's actions, rephrase them slightly, and return them as a response without advancing the story. The preset includes a No Echo Protocol block that instructs the AI to instead take physical action, ask a new question, or introduce new information whenever a player acts. This pushes non-player characters from passive reactors into active participants in the story. The signature addition is a dice system. SillyTavern supports random number macros, and this preset uses them to generate a virtual d20 roll at the start of every turn. That roll feeds into multiple systems at once, including a D&D-style action resolution engine that assigns difficulty ratings to things a character attempts. A critical failure might mean slipping and getting a bloody nose while grabbing a shampoo bottle, a great success clears obstacles cleanly. Unpredictability keeps the AI from always taking the safe, predictable path. Two other engines run alongside the dice. The Living World Engine tracks every named NPC's location, mood, and current task off-screen, advancing their state each turn so they can wander in for plausible reasons or react to events they overhear. The Chekhov's Gun Tracker plants and manages narrative seeds: an object picked up, a secret overheard, or a deferred answer can be registered and triggered later under specific conditions, such as a time delay or a particular character being present. The repository is a single preset file intended to be loaded into SillyTavern. It does not contain standalone application code. The README is detailed documentation of each system, with testing examples from the author's own roleplay sessions.