# How to Start an AI Roleplay (First Message Examples) | Lunafic Source: https://lunafic.ai/blog/how-to-start-an-ai-roleplay | Published: 2026-10-20T13:20:43.665Z | Updated: 2026-10-20T13:20:43.665Z | Author: Lunafic Team | Tags: Roleplay, Guide, mc-mode > Why "Hi" gets a flat reply, and first message examples for romance, slice of life, deep talks, comedy, mystery, family drama and adventure roleplay. A good first message in an AI roleplay puts your character in a specific place, doing something, and gives the other character something to answer. One or two lines are enough. The most common first message is "Hi", and it usually gets a flat reply, because it gives the story nothing to build on. Below is why that happens, what to write instead, first message examples for romance, slice of life, deep conversations, comedy, mystery, family drama and adventure, and what to do when you have no idea where to start. ## Why does "Hi" get a boring reply? The AI matches what you bring. If you bring a greeting, it greets you back, asks how you are, and waits. It has nothing else to play with yet. We saw this a lot when new players tried Lunafic, many typed "Hi" to test a world first. A lot of people in Asia, our team included, grew up opening every conversation with small talk. In Indonesia it's called basa-basi, asking if you've eaten or how the trip was before getting to the point. With people it's good manners. With an AI character it spends your first reply, and the character mirrors it back to you. ## What should your first message include? It needs four things, and they fit in two lines. **Where your character is.** Give a place and a moment, like a train platform at night or the last day of school, and the AI builds the scene around it. **What your character wants right now.** Keep it small and close, like catching the last train, returning a borrowed book, or avoiding someone in the hallway. **Something the other character has to react to.** It can be an action, a question, a look or a small lie. Improv actors call this an offer, something the other person can accept and build on, and scenes grow from it. **Room for their answer.** Write your character's side and stop. If you write how the other character reacts, you have played their turn for them, and the AI has to either follow you or undo it. In most roleplay apps, Lunafic included, words between asterisks are your character's action and words in quotes are what your character says. Here is the difference in practice. > Hi. > \*I slide the borrowed book across the library desk, a pressed flower still inside.\* "I think you left something in here." The second one gives the other character a place, an object, a small mystery and a line to answer. ## First message examples for different kinds of story The four parts work in every genre. What changes is the thing that makes each genre interesting, so each example below starts with that. ### Romance Romance runs on distance. Two people want to be closer, and something keeps them apart, like pride, timing or a rule. A good romantic opener gives both characters a reason to stand close for a minute and leaves the feelings unsaid. In Japan, kids tease a pair who like each other by drawing an umbrella with both names under it, called aiaigasa, and sharing an umbrella does the same job in a scene. > \*The rain starts right as we reach the station exit. I open my umbrella, look at you, then at the rain.\* "It only fits one and a half people, you know." Nobody has said a word about feelings, and the other character still has to decide whether to step under. ### Slice of life Slice of life stories are about ordinary days, and the stakes are small on purpose. Japan has a whole genre called iyashikei, healing stories, where the biggest event of an episode can be a good meal. The hook is a small break in the routine. > \*It's 11 at night and the convenience store is empty except for the two of us, standing in front of the last rice ball on the shelf.\* "...Rock, paper, scissors?" It has a tired night, a tiny conflict and a silly way to settle it, which is enough for a whole evening of talk. ### A deep conversation Big questions are easier to talk about when they're attached to something small and real. Plato's Republic, one of the most famous books about justice, starts with Socrates walking home from a festival when friends stop him on the road and won't let him leave. In the Chinese classic Zhuangzi, two friends argue about whether you can ever know what another being feels while they stand on a bridge watching fish. > \*I lean on the bridge railing and drop bread crumbs into the pond. The koi crowd over each other to get them.\* "Do you think they're happy? Or just hungry?" The question is about fish, and it opens the door to how anyone knows what another person feels. ### Comedy Comedy needs a character who takes a silly problem seriously. Japanese manzai duos split the job, the boke says or does something ridiculous and the tsukkomi reacts to it. Your first message can play the boke and leave the reaction to the other character. > \*I'm standing at your door holding a goat on a leash.\* "Before you say anything, it's only until Sunday." ### Mystery A mystery starts with one detail that doesn't fit. > \*I put the receipt on the counter, the one I found in my sister's coat. Two coffees, last Tuesday, the day she told us she was home sick.\* "Do you remember who she came here with?" The detail is small and concrete, and the other character can answer it in many ways, including with a lie. ### Family drama Family stories work through what nobody says out loud. Yasujirō Ozu's film Tokyo Story (1953) follows an old couple visiting their grown children, who are too busy for them, and almost nobody says the sad part. In many Asian families a choice like studying abroad belongs to the whole family, and that is where the drama comes from. > \*Dinner is quiet. I put the letter from the university abroad face down next to my rice bowl and keep eating.\* There is no dialogue at all. The letter is face down, so everyone at the table notices it before anyone talks. ### Adventure Adventure runs on a clock, something has to happen before something else does. > \*The bridge is gone, and the city gates close at sunset. I wade into the river up to my knees, holding the sealed letter above the water.\* "If you're coming, come now." ## Start in the middle The Roman poet Horace praised stories that begin in medias res, in the middle of things, and storytellers have repeated the advice for two thousand years. Screenwriters have their own version, come into a scene as late as you can. For a roleplay it means you skip the part where your character wakes up, gets dressed and walks to school. Start at the classroom door, where the trouble is. ## Write only what your character can see Your character can't read the stranger's mind, so leave their thoughts out. Write what your character notices instead, the pause before an answer or the hand that stays in a pocket. When you write another character's thoughts, the AI may play everyone as if they knew them too, and the secret is gone before the story starts. ## How long should the first message be? One to three lines is plenty. Backstory, family history and the rules of the world belong in the world's sheet, where the AI can read them on every reply, and you can write that sheet with [these seven questions](/blog/worldbuilding-sheet-template). The first message only has to start the scene. ## What if you have no idea what to write? That's normal, and tabletop games solved it a long time ago. Since Dungeons and Dragons came out in 1974, the person running the game, the Dungeon Master, opens each session by telling the players where they are and what just happened, so nobody starts from a blank page. On Lunafic, a [Playable World](/docs/entering-a-playable-world) does that job. A Playable World is a world someone else built for other people to play. When you press Play you choose who you are, and the story opens with Your first move, a few starting choices the world's author wrote. Tap one and it lands in your reply line. You can send it as it is, change a few words, or ignore the cards and write your own. Some of them open with a picture of the scene. If the first reply still misses, you can retry it, or click into the story and fix any line yourself, which costs no AI usage. ## About Lunafic Lunafic is a roleplay app where you play one character and the AI plays everyone else. You chat with the characters like in any roleplay app, and everything is saved as chapters of a story the AI keeps remembering. In [MC Mode](/features/mc-mode/), the AI never writes your character's dialogue, thoughts or actions, and it stops when it's your turn. You can start free. Free accounts get a monthly AI usage allowance and the Flash model. Every reply runs on GPUs, the expensive computers AI needs, and we are a small team, so free use has a limit. When you pay, we try to give you the premium roleplay you expect. --- Read this on Lunafic: https://lunafic.ai/blog/how-to-start-an-ai-roleplay More from Lunafic: https://lunafic.ai/blog What is Lunafic: https://lunafic.ai/ai-roleplay AI characters you build stories with over long memories. You play as your character, the AI plays everyone else, and stories stay private by default.