Round 01 champion, mid-pack on multi-turn. The cheap local-friendly hold.
Composite Score
31.0
/100 · canonical
Arena ELO (R1)
1535
±44 · n=302
Multi-Turn ELO (R2)
1466
±44 · n=213
Reliability Rank
#12
failure-mode rubric
▌ Section 02 · The Lede
What this model is for.
Google's open mid-size dropped onto the leaderboard at #1 in our first community-vote snapshot — at 540 votes — and it was still there at 2,000. Six checkpoints, same name. Through the round we drained 1,857 votes from 335 readers, ran the multi-turn adversarial battery, and watched Gemma 4 26B refuse to move. The catch is that engagement is one leaderboard. Reliability is another. Gemma sits at #6 of 11 on failure-mode rank — not the safest pick if your scenes go past fifty turns, not the strongest on instruction discipline. What it is: the cheapest top-tier model in the round, one of three Round 01 entrants that runs locally on a single 24GB GPU, and the one voters ranked #1 on the average ballot — the highest SFW win rate in the field at 55%.
▌ Section 03 · At a Glance
Cross-test position
Gemma 4 26B holds #1 in Arena ELO. Sits at #15 on Composite, the caveat to watch.
Composite
15
Arena ELO
1
Multi-Turn
15
Rubric
15
Adversarial
12
Cost · Latency
7
▌ Section 04 · Strength & Weakness
Where it shines. Where it stumbles.
▲ Strength
Community top tier (#1, ELO 1535). Best cost-efficiency in the field. Runs locally on a single 24GB GPU.
▼ Weakness
No standout strength on tested failure dimensions. Drifts on long-context sessions. Pick Sonnet 4.5 if you're running 50+ turns.
▌ Section 05 · Failure Modes
Per-axis breakdown.
Six adversarial probes per session, twenty sessions per model, judged by Sonnet 4 against a fixed rubric. Further right = the model handled the failure mode better. Each axis is drawn as a band on the rubric’s 1 to 5 scale, not a number: judges disagree by about 0.3 at the model level, so overlapping bands are a tie. The right column is the rank within the rp-bench pool.
F1 · Agency
Doesn't write your character's actions
15
#17
F2 · POV / Tense
Holds 2nd-person, present-tense narration
15
#11
F3 · Lore
Doesn't break worldbuilding
15
#5
F8 · Momentum
Pushes scene forward when user goes passive
15
#6
F12 · Instruction Drift
Keeps to the system prompt
15
#11
F13 · Context Attention
Holds character cards 50+ turns deep
15
#14
“The model the community most enjoyed writing with — and the sixth-most reliable model on the board.”
Round 01 verdict · Engagement ≠ Reliability
▌ Section 06 · Subjective Dimensions
Engagement · Voice · Collaboration.
All three dimensions scored 1 to 5 by the Sonnet 4 LLM judge across twenty 12-turn multi-turn sessions. The same battery feeds the failure-mode rubric above; these are the subjective half of that judgment, drawn as bands with no number for the same reason.
Engagement
15
Tone Consistency
15
Collaboration
15
▌ Section 07 · Behavioral Metrics
How it writes.
Quantitative signals from the same 20 multi-turn sessions, compared against the population mean across all 11 models.
Avg words / turn
350↑
pop avg 265 · +32%
Unique-word ratio
0.597↓
pop avg 0.657 · -9%
Repetition score
0.069↑
pop avg 0.048 · +44%
▌ Section 08 · Flaw Hunter
Adversarial probe score.
Score of 100 minus deductions across 22 fail-mode flag types on adversarial 12-turn sessions. Further right = fewer flaws caught. Drawn as a band, not a number: about ten points either way is rater noise, so bands that overlap are tied.
▌ Craft band
-20100
From the Round 01/02 flaw-hunter pool. The current card carries the newer single-rater band.
Best- and worst-rated sample responses ship with the raw-vote endpoint in Round 02. When that lands, this section will surface the model’s highest- and lowest-scoring blind-arena turns side by side, scored on the same rubric the leaderboard uses.
▌ Round 01 verdict
Gemma 4 26B is the everyday champion of Round 01 — the model voters most enjoyed writing with, the cheapest top-tier option per token, and the only one in our pool that runs on a single consumer GPU. The caveat is the same one the failure-rank board makes: it's #6 of 11 on multi-turn reliability, and that's the seam to watch if your scenes lean on long-context attention or strict instruction discipline. Pick it for the everyday. Reach for Sonnet 4.5 when the scene needs to last.