[ianbicking]

I went to some lengths to ground the action in my game: https://ianbicking.org/blog/2025/07/intra-llm-text-adventure

That said, I think there's a lot of prompting techniques that can help here. (Actually the Guided Thinking section is an example of prompt-only techniques: https://ianbicking.org/blog/2025/07/intra-llm-text-adventure...)

You must at least do some pre- and post-processing to have the LLM consume and generate text that isn't part of the main user interface. But given that you can put in guidance that can increase the small-scale surprise of the interaction. For instance I'll have the LLM write out some of the objective environment at the moment before it considers a decision, so that it doesn't essentially retcon the setup for a plot direction it intends to take.

For the larger arc you'll need something like memory to pull the whole thing together. That include repetition over time. You can ask the LLM not to repeat itself, and it can do that, but only if it understands what it's done. And to some degree it needs to understand what it's _doing_: the LLM like the player is still generating short turns, and so if it wants to create surprise that is revealed over multiple turns then it needs space to plan ahead.