Glossary

Aside: a line a character speaks to the audience, which nobody on stage hears.

Audience: the onlookers beyond the fourth wall. You write their remarks in the Audience box.

Baseline: the common ground of all versions of Roller: the parts of a world file that every version understands. See Worlds from other apps.

Backstory: what happened before a game began; it adds to the world's Story for that game. See Backstory.

Cast: the characters of a world, plus you (User) and the Audience. See The cast.

Context: how much text a model can keep in mind at once, measured in tokens. See How long can a game get?.

Event: something that happens in a turn that nobody controls.

Fork: a copy of a game, so you can try another direction. See Try a different direction.

Game: one playthrough in a world, with its own turns. See Games.

GGUF: the file format of the models Roller runs in Local mode. See Model files.

Hugging Face: a website where AI models are shared, most of them free to download. See What is Hugging Face?.

Hunch: a feeling about what's coming that Patch may give a character.

Impulse: a sudden thought or decision Roller gives a character, which they act on in that turn. See Nudges.

LM Studio: a separate, free app that downloads and runs models, and can serve them to Roller. See What is LM Studio?.

Model: the program that plays the characters. See Models.

Parameters: the numbers a model learned in training; "12B" means 12 billion of them. See Model sizes.

Patch: a second look at the last turn that rewrites its weak lines. See Patch.

Pass: sitting a turn out, so the characters act among themselves. See Pass.

Place: where a scene happens. See Places.

Preset: a set of settings for how the model writes. See Presets.

Protocol: the rules of the play that the model gets. See The Protocol and the Patcher.

Q4_K_M: the usual, compressed version of a model file: a good balance of size and quality. See Model files.

Stage: the middle of the window, where the play appears turn by turn.

Story: the description of a world's setting. See The Story.

Token: a piece of text, roughly three quarters of a word. Models count text in tokens.

Turn: one round of the play: what you send, and how the characters answer.

World: a complete, separate play with its own story, cast, places and games. See Worlds.

World file: a whole world saved as one file with Export legacy, to be loaded again with Import world. See Import and export.