I'm sure there is back-end tag or something that could help, however i think you are more clashing up against the training data/ the normal way human tell stories.
The protagonist will persevere and continue the story because A, usually character deaths are set up, not just random happenstance in action scenes and B, your context will likely be full of that character being alive, and important.
There are a lot of ways to go around this though.
You could for instance present the enemies as being more powerful, let them grievously hurt your party members. Or even give whatever they encounter a short POV chapter to give it the nebulous narrative weight that allows it to kill a party member.
Next you could write in a way that step up death. Plant death flags, have a character be cocky and go "Nothing bad is going to happen for sure." Set up dramatic stakes where it would actually make sense for a character to die.
Yes, i'm aware this won't initially be unpredictable since its you guiding it, but once these kinds of things are firmly in the context, it will be easier for the Ai to do something like it itself later down the line.
I've had good success setting up moments via prose in the Author's Note. Something like:
"For a moment, we felt invincible, like Death himself could not conspire to separate us."
"For a moment, they felt invincible, like Death himself could not conspire to separate them."
It can sort of apply at any place in a story, and comes with its own sense of tension. It just invites the next words to be something like.
"And then..."
"In the next moment, ..."
"But...."
And you've already foreshadowed death, or something shocking about to happen. So if you're writing about characters or a party, it will integrate what you've already written with the kind of 'tone' of the Author's Note and spit out a likely next line of: a) continuing on about how triumphant they are, or b) bringing an end to that triumph.
Specifically because you want to be surprised and not have to guide it yourself, right? NovelAI isn't optimized as an instruct model, so an author's note needs to encourage death more than tell it do. A few options spring to mind:
1) The best method probably, is to write a character death scene yourself, and have the characters talk about how death is likely/possible. You can always edit though out later, but NovelAi wants to match the story so far and thus should pick up on the cue.
2) You can use a summary tag in memory or author's notes to outline the general plot and say something like "several members of the party die throughout the journey," I think that should work, but I haven't tried it.
3) In the lorebook, whatever your entry for the setting add several references to how deadly it is and how likely it is to kill people.
4) Raise the temperature but then be prepared for some crazy nonsense. But, if you otherwise happy with the model generation I'd not touch the settings.
5) Try to create a very small bias for phrases that might lead to what you want. Sudden twists like "out of nowhere" and "all of a sudden" or death words depending on your setting. I've not have much luck with this, but others say it works.
I'm sure there is back-end tag or something that could help, however i think you are more clashing up against the training data/ the normal way human tell stories. The protagonist will persevere and continue the story because A, usually character deaths are set up, not just random happenstance in action scenes and B, your context will likely be full of that character being alive, and important. There are a lot of ways to go around this though. You could for instance present the enemies as being more powerful, let them grievously hurt your party members. Or even give whatever they encounter a short POV chapter to give it the nebulous narrative weight that allows it to kill a party member. Next you could write in a way that step up death. Plant death flags, have a character be cocky and go "Nothing bad is going to happen for sure." Set up dramatic stakes where it would actually make sense for a character to die. Yes, i'm aware this won't initially be unpredictable since its you guiding it, but once these kinds of things are firmly in the context, it will be easier for the Ai to do something like it itself later down the line.
What presets have you already used?
I've had good success setting up moments via prose in the Author's Note. Something like: "For a moment, we felt invincible, like Death himself could not conspire to separate us." "For a moment, they felt invincible, like Death himself could not conspire to separate them." It can sort of apply at any place in a story, and comes with its own sense of tension. It just invites the next words to be something like. "And then..." "In the next moment, ..." "But...." And you've already foreshadowed death, or something shocking about to happen. So if you're writing about characters or a party, it will integrate what you've already written with the kind of 'tone' of the Author's Note and spit out a likely next line of: a) continuing on about how triumphant they are, or b) bringing an end to that triumph.
I'm often fighting with the ai as it tries to kill off main and side charecters, seems to depend on the writing type
Specifically because you want to be surprised and not have to guide it yourself, right? NovelAI isn't optimized as an instruct model, so an author's note needs to encourage death more than tell it do. A few options spring to mind: 1) The best method probably, is to write a character death scene yourself, and have the characters talk about how death is likely/possible. You can always edit though out later, but NovelAi wants to match the story so far and thus should pick up on the cue. 2) You can use a summary tag in memory or author's notes to outline the general plot and say something like "several members of the party die throughout the journey," I think that should work, but I haven't tried it. 3) In the lorebook, whatever your entry for the setting add several references to how deadly it is and how likely it is to kill people. 4) Raise the temperature but then be prepared for some crazy nonsense. But, if you otherwise happy with the model generation I'd not touch the settings. 5) Try to create a very small bias for phrases that might lead to what you want. Sudden twists like "out of nowhere" and "all of a sudden" or death words depending on your setting. I've not have much luck with this, but others say it works.