The Curse of Knowledge in Role-Playing Language Models
Role-playing language models speak as characters in games and agent simulations, where the system records what each character can hear, see and understand. We test whether characters respect these boundaries in 480 scenes, each with a counterfactual twin that changes only the hidden fact, so mentions of the twin's fact measure guessing. Across 11 open-weight models, characters use content from speech they cannot understand or hear at 67 and 72 percentage points (pp) above this baseline, although most models correctly state what the character perceives. This is a curse of knowledge. The leak extends to hidden actions and private messages and changes where characters search. Five of six pro...
| Authors | Xiao Zhang |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CL |
| Published | 12 October 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 12 October 2026 |
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