Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

eaglejarl · Nov 22, 2021

Note: This is purely for my personal interest as something that I might use in a piece of fiction or in another game system. There is currently no intention for it to ever be part of MfD.

If anyone is interested, I'd love some help on defining / balancing a game mechanic to be used in an RPG / quest / fiction / etc. Specifically, finding edge cases, exploits, etc.

Every time you die your soul absorbs a bit more mana from the void before reincarnating back into your original body. This means that death is not permanent, it simply means losing time. My current thoughts:

You come back with a chunk of XP
The chunk of XP is sized based on what you were doing when you died
- Exciting fight against world-ending threat = huge
- Exciting fight against level-appropriate enemy = large
- Boring, no-stakes fight against a vastly inferior enemy who got lucky = tiny or 0
- Accidentally falling down a well because you were walking while looking at your phone = 0
- Killing yourself, directly or via intentional 'suicide by tarrasque' = negative a lot
You come back with a physical / mental Consequence that slows you down for a while while you wait to heal.
Maybe mental Consequences accumulate over time? Dunno. Might defeat the purpose.

The goal is to incentivize players to do risky and exciting things, but to disincentivize them from doing things that they explicitly know are outside their abilities solely to get themselves killed for the XP.

Any thoughts? Does it seem like this would be fun as a player?

EDITS:

Probably a good idea to say that, in the general case, the XP derived from winning the fight + the time that you missed would have been larger than what you got for passing through the void.

Halberdier · Nov 22, 2021

Testing testing one two three.

Excellent! I've recovered from my seve...I mean, my phone is fixed. Neat. Now where was I?

huhYeahGoodPoint said:
(If you can detonate a nuke in the enemy capital , every Kage in the Elemental Nations would be pushing the button before you could get done explaining the costs)

That is probably the most depressing part of what you said, and the real sign that it's a crapsack death world, plus or minus a few folks.

_The_Bomb said:
It occurs to me that we were only able to have Cannai transport us that one time because we had designed him the saddle to carry pups in. You know, the one we were riding in.
We were totally treated like a puppy.

We're young, excitable, curious, at times adorable, and not able to run far without getting tired.

We ARE a puppy. Cannai is just a good sport.

_The_Bomb said:
What does Cannai know about Icha Icha? Also, you're trying to make us reread that chapter again, aren't you? Was there something else there that we missed? Is there another apocolypse hidden in that chapter that I didn't spot? It was the slighly open black portal, wasn't it?

Kakashi, I'd imagine. Though the idea of Jiraiya pitching it to the toads so successfully that it circulated it hilarious (and unlikely).

_The_Bomb said:
Is it possible to learn a Seventh Path Element such as Metal if we meet all the other conditions?

Probably not? Though I'd be curious, since some people do develop non-5-element affinities. Like, if a wood element user could learn wood jutsu from the 7th path, is it only determined by natural affinity? If so, is it uniform in the entire population? And is there a way to manipulate it that isn't gross eugenics?

Also, probably isn't worth it, since that's a Lot of time on the 7th path,a lot of trainer time, and much fewer people we can learn jutsu from compared to back home. And if it doesn't work, it's completely wasted.

This I think is the biggest reason it might actually work: there's virtually no reason in character for anyone else to think it was worth the risk to bother trying it. And for those who are so secluded that it might be, we wouldn't have heard of them.

roobee said:
Hefty Evidence for constant warfare being the case is the death rate statistics of ninja. But a single strange counterevidence was that Naruto feared kidnapping an enemy ninja to save kagome from the block sealing incident might lead to a war.

This might be because it would be perceived as us having either a new contagious weapon, and/or trying to weaponize sealing failures, which seem to be on the very short list that gets international cooperation to dogpile on you (and not in the good way of the previous chapter).

roobee said:
You hypothesize that villages value survival/military over wealth. And that gathering wealth would mainly be used for converting to force. Under that chain of thought, why would villages give away their military force for wealth via missions?

Because they take missions only advantageous to themselves? Don't take missions against national interests. Take missions that are neutral or aligned with national interests, where the extra money makes it worth the opportunity costs of doing other missions created internally. Or double dipping: if two minor villages will pay leaf for the same extermination or recon info, that's extra bank. As with most economics, the payout just needs to be worth the cost, and you're usually not putting important Ninja at high risk for these missions. Plus, you get info on your neighbors and enemies based on what missions that ask for. The ratio of needing a couple extra personnel to valuing accurate Intel skews right the more of a world power you are.

[X] [SageMode] These people are family. Let's treat them as such. (All Gōketsu ninja including Haru, Atomu, Rei, etc)

@eaglejarl that ability seems reasonable, though the distinction between "very difficult" and "effectively suicide" would need to be clear, because that's an insane XP swing at that line, and would cause salt potentially. XP gain from level appropriate death compared XP gain from level appropriate victory, when factoring in recovery time, is also something to look at, so it doesn't create perverse incentive to sub-optimize plans because it's better to lose than to win (assuming no other negatives than just dying, of course). Maybe the temporary loss of/inability to level the main stat we were using when we died, to encourage more dynamic growth and also to not keep trying the same thing over and over?

Sir Stompy · Nov 22, 2021

eaglejarl said:
Note: This is purely for my personal interest as something that I might use in a piece of fiction or in another game system. There is currently no intention for it to ever be part of MfD.

If anyone is interested, I'd love some help on defining / balancing a game mechanic to be used in an RPG / quest / fiction / etc. Specifically, finding edge cases, exploits, etc.

Every time you die your soul absorbs a bit more mana from the void before reincarnating back into your original body. This means that death is not permanent, it simply means losing time. My current thoughts:

You come back with a chunk of XP

The chunk of XP is sized based on what you were doing when you died

Exciting fight against world-ending threat = huge

Exciting fight against level-appropriate enemy = large

Boring, no-stakes fight against a vastly inferior enemy who got lucky = tiny or 0

Accidentally falling down a well because you were walking while looking at your phone = 0

Killing yourself, directly or via intentional 'suicide by tarrasque' = negative a lot

You come back with a physical / mental Consequence that slows you down for a while while you wait to heal.

Maybe mental Consequences accumulate over time? Dunno. Might defeat the purpose.

The goal is to incentivize players to do risky and exciting things, but to disincentivize them from doing things that they explicitly know are outside their abilities solely to get themselves killed for the XP.

Any thoughts? Does it seem like this would be fun as a player?

Do you get XP for winning these fights? Otherwise you're incentivized to find good enemies and make suboptimal decisions that get you killed.

Also what decides if the player is intentionally getting themselves killed, GM discretion? Does the player get penalized for high variance situations where they just ended up in way over their head?

How would it handle a last stand where the player knows they're doomed, but they get themselves killed holding off a superior foe to buy time for other people who aren't immortal?

It does seem pretty fun though.

RandomOTP · Nov 22, 2021

Halberdier said:
We're young, excitable, curious, at times adorable, and not able to run far without getting tired.

We ARE a puppy. Cannai is just a good sport.

Hazou also apologizes habitually and has a great deal of anxiety regarding authority figures.

My new headcanon is that Cannai totally sees Hazou as a rescue puppy in need of some TLC.

Oneiros · Nov 22, 2021

Oooh strat for finding out about sage mode we should consider! If we get the bear boss drunk enough he might let things slip!

Inferno Vulpix · Nov 22, 2021

eaglejarl said:
Note: This is purely for my personal interest as something that I might use in a piece of fiction or in another game system. There is currently no intention for it to ever be part of MfD.

If anyone is interested, I'd love some help on defining / balancing a game mechanic to be used in an RPG / quest / fiction / etc. Specifically, finding edge cases, exploits, etc.

Every time you die your soul absorbs a bit more mana from the void before reincarnating back into your original body. This means that death is not permanent, it simply means losing time. My current thoughts:

You come back with a chunk of XP

The chunk of XP is sized based on what you were doing when you died

Exciting fight against world-ending threat = huge

Exciting fight against level-appropriate enemy = large

Boring, no-stakes fight against a vastly inferior enemy who got lucky = tiny or 0

Accidentally falling down a well because you were walking while looking at your phone = 0

Killing yourself, directly or via intentional 'suicide by tarrasque' = negative a lot

You come back with a physical / mental Consequence that slows you down for a while while you wait to heal.

Maybe mental Consequences accumulate over time? Dunno. Might defeat the purpose.

The goal is to incentivize players to do risky and exciting things, but to disincentivize them from doing things that they explicitly know are outside their abilities solely to get themselves killed for the XP.

Any thoughts? Does it seem like this would be fun as a player?

inb4 an edgelord waits until a big fight and then kills all his teammates so they all get a bunch of XP from dying by dramatic betrayal in big fight, and then does his best to win the big fight anyways (as befits an edgelord), fails, dies, gets the XP buff as well.

Less limited, edgelord turns on party and starts routinely hunting them down. Either they die or he does, and either way the aggregate firepower improves. You probably can't extrapolate all the way to 'a bunch of dudes in a small room punching each other out for a decade' but that's the sort of vibe I could see if an enterprising munchkin got their hands on this mechanic.

This might be a problem, or it might lead to interesting plotlines, so I won't pass judgement on it on that basis.

Another idea is as such: if big exciting fights are XP-optimal, naturally it makes sense to ensure that as many of those are happening as possible. "Yes, I unleashed the sealed horror because I wanted us to fight it and probably die. It'll destroy half the country before we can take it out but dem sweet sweet gains man." Again the probable work of an enterprising munchkin, again maybe or maybe not a problem.

Something I've felt from the various quests I've participated in is that the mechanics are only a part of the recipe for creating a specific mentality and dynamic, and another critical component is the premise. In Oli's Ooze quest we had no intentions of peace, co-existence, or in general anything other than being a world-blighting catastrophe, and this wasn't because the mechanics particularly encouraged it. I'm in another quest where we play a completely amoral world-traveling spellcaster: we've caused multiple apocalypses by accident and when asked recently we were on board with causing another one on purpose because it would help solve one of our current problems.

With mfd the expectation of frequent high-intensity violence was there at the start, but eventually we came up with Uplift and that goal consumed our expectations of the nature of the quest: we survived long enough that our goal turned from 'survive' to 'win the setting' and the dynamics changed accordingly.

What I'm saying, I guess, is that if you want a party of Goku-style blood knights who seek out worthy opponents for its own sake and don't particularly care about their own survival, on top of these mechanics which encourage it you should arrange the campaign with that as an explicit goal. "Okay everyone, this is a party of bloodthirsty battlemongers at its heart and I want all of the characters to reflect that. I have mechanics here so you can be hyperviolent and hyperaggressive without compromsing your implicit goal of surviving and growing, so go nuts and come up with someone who would 100% throw themselves at an unwinnable fight just to see if their opponent bleeds."

edit: also it'd be probably wise to de-emphasize the importance of gear or otherwise find a way around the looting problem. If one of your guys gets a cool magic sword but then goes 'wait, if I die in battle someone will just yoink it' then suddenly they'll have incentive to preserve their own existence again.

OliWhail · Nov 22, 2021

huhYeahGoodPoint said:
Under a IR framework

"International relations"?

Velorien · Nov 22, 2021

Lord Marshal said:
@eaglejarl @Velorien Could i ask some questions? Of course usual disclamer applies(You don't need to answer/i fully understand spoons are limited/ect...)
We know Noburi:
-Used his bloodline to replenish the summoners of Leaf, aside from maybe Tsunade.
-Uses his bloodline to transfer Chakra between the various Jonins of Leaf under Asuma's order.
So
1) Does it means he knows the CR of the majority of Leaf Jonins? Does he know Orochimaru's Chakra Reserve? If so, could it be possible to know Oro's Chakra reserve?
2) Secondarily, we briefed Asuma on Mareo and the Bears scroll, did he give us some guidelines on how to move? Or we have carte blanche on how to proceed as long as it's not treason?
3) Did Hazou send a Dog messenger to the Hornets when he found out all the Hornets in Arachnid were dead? Or we need to vote it in next plan?
4) How much Hazou knows regarding the Dog Clan military capabilities/movements/situation/ Powerful members thanks to the Puppy network?(I imagine "A lot", it could very well be that Hazou doesn't understand much and just repeats the reports to Cannai).

1) Yes and no. The VD doesn't give clear information about how much chakra someone has, simply a feeling about how much chakra to push across.
Oro's reserves are massive. A substantial fraction of Noburi's capacity, although he can't give you a better answer than that.
2) He doesn't expect anything to come of it, so you have carte blanche as long as it's not treason.
3) You'll need to vote it in.
4) Quite a lot, in theory. In practice not much since he doesn't know the place names or the names of the dogs. Also, many of the messages were 'ciphered' in the sense that they used specific jargon terms he's not familiar with, probably with the explicit intent to keep him from understanding the messages he was passing on.

Sir Stompy · Nov 22, 2021

Velorien said:
2) He doesn't expect anything to come of it, so you have carte blanche as long as it's not treason.

This is actually much harder for Hazou to do than it sounds

Rafin · Nov 22, 2021

eaglejarl said:
The goal is to incentivize players to do risky and exciting things, but to disincentivize them from doing things that they explicitly know are outside their abilities solely to get themselves killed for the XP.

One problem I see is that on purpose "suicide by tarrasque" style deaths can only be judged by the GM, which means that people get rewarded for acting more serious and sincere than they actually are and punished for being excitable and having a different conception of common sense than the GM.

hYGP · Nov 22, 2021

OliWhail said:
"International relations"?

International realist

OliWhail · Nov 22, 2021

huhYeahGoodPoint said:
International realist

I am ashamed, I should know this - my girlfriend has a book called "neorealism and its critics" on her shelf for an international politics class

apooooop · Nov 22, 2021

OliWhail said:
my girlfriend has a book called "neorealism and its critics" on her shelf for an international politics class

As we all know, this is the most effective way to ingest knowledge - osmosis from an SO's bookshelf

MrRobot · Nov 22, 2021

eaglejarl said:
Note: This is purely for my personal interest as something that I might use in a piece of fiction or in another game system. There is currently no intention for it to ever be part of MfD.

If anyone is interested, I'd love some help on defining / balancing a game mechanic to be used in an RPG / quest / fiction / etc. Specifically, finding edge cases, exploits, etc.

Every time you die your soul absorbs a bit more mana from the void before reincarnating back into your original body. This means that death is not permanent, it simply means losing time. My current thoughts:

You come back with a chunk of XP

The chunk of XP is sized based on what you were doing when you died

Exciting fight against world-ending threat = huge

Exciting fight against level-appropriate enemy = large

Boring, no-stakes fight against a vastly inferior enemy who got lucky = tiny or 0

Accidentally falling down a well because you were walking while looking at your phone = 0

Killing yourself, directly or via intentional 'suicide by tarrasque' = negative a lot

You come back with a physical / mental Consequence that slows you down for a while while you wait to heal.

Maybe mental Consequences accumulate over time? Dunno. Might defeat the purpose.

The goal is to incentivize players to do risky and exciting things, but to disincentivize them from doing things that they explicitly know are outside their abilities solely to get themselves killed for the XP.

Any thoughts? Does it seem like this would be fun as a player?

EDITS:

Probably a good idea to say that, in the general case, the XP derived from winning the fight + the time that you missed would have been larger than what you got for passing through the void.

I kinda have toagree with vulpix here, aside from that it also involves player minimizing risks and do a lot of "not-punchy" setup to a big payoff since we can only get stronger by death there all the incentive to avoid risks.

This sistem would work well if we playing with a setup of someone ho actively wants to die in glory, like a warhammer dwarf slayer .

Sir Stompy · Nov 22, 2021

For real is there a definition of treason anywhere? As far as I understand it's basically whatever the Hokage says. Giving aid and comfort to enemies of Leaf? Who are the enemies of Leaf? Rock and Cloud for sure, Sand and Mist too? What about random missing nin from halfway around the world?

Unaligned Player · Nov 22, 2021

Sir Stompy said:
As far as I understand it's basically whatever the Hokage says.

Along with "Whatever they can reasonably enforce." but yeah that's pretty much it.

eaglejarl · Nov 22, 2021

Halberdier said:
@eaglejarl that ability seems reasonable, though the distinction between "very difficult" and "effectively suicide" would need to be clear, because that's an insane XP swing at that line, and would cause salt potentially. XP gain from level appropriate death compared XP gain from level appropriate victory, when factoring in recovery time, is also something to look at, so it doesn't create perverse incentive to sub-optimize plans because it's better to lose than to win (assuming no other negatives than just dying, of course). Maybe the temporary loss of/inability to level the main stat we were using when we died, to encourage more dynamic growth and also to not keep trying the same thing over and over?

Sir Stompy said:
Do you get XP for winning these fights? Otherwise you're incentivized to find good enemies and make suboptimal decisions that get you killed.

Yup, I edited this in a bit ago -- the awards from dying should always be less than the awards for winning.

Sir Stompy said:
Also what decides if the player is intentionally getting themselves killed, GM discretion? Does the player get penalized for high variance situations where they just ended up in way over their head?

Fair points. XP is nearly always GM discretion, I suppose. Even in a system like D&D where they have Challenge Ratings and calculated XP therefrom, the DM is still the one calculating it and can grant bonuses if desired. As such, any system for it is going to need cooperation from both sides.

Sir Stompy said:
How would it handle a last stand where the player knows they're doomed, but they get themselves killed holding off a superior foe to buy time for other people who aren't immortal?

If I were running it there would be good XP to be had in those cases. "Epic awesomeness" is what we're trying to incentivize.

Inferno Vulpix said:
inb4 an edgelord waits until a big fight and then kills all his teammates so they all get a bunch of XP from dying by dramatic betrayal in big fight, and then does his best to win the big fight anyways (as befits an edgelord), fails, dies, gets the XP buff as well.

Less limited, edgelord turns on party and starts routinely hunting them down.

Blerg. I think the only answer is "Don't let those people at your table."

Inferno Vulpix said:
What I'm saying, I guess, is that if you want a party of Goku-style blood knights who seek out worthy opponents for its own sake and don't particularly care about their own survival, on top of these mechanics which encourage it you should arrange the campaign with that as an explicit goal. "Okay everyone, this is a party of bloodthirsty battlemongers at its heart and I want all of the characters to reflect that. I have mechanics here so you can be hyperviolent and hyperaggressive without compromsing your implicit goal of surviving and growing, so go nuts and come up with someone who would 100% throw themselves at an unwinnable fight just to see if their opponent bleeds."

Eh...not exactly what I was looking for. That kind of thing gets old, and I much prefer characters that aren't so one-note.

Inferno Vulpix said:
edit: also it'd be probably wise to de-emphasize the importance of gear or otherwise find a way around the looting problem. If one of your guys gets a cool magic sword but then goes 'wait, if I die in battle someone will just yoink it' then suddenly they'll have incentive to preserve their own existence again.

Oh, good point.

Rafin said:
One problem I see is that on purpose "suicide by tarrasque" style deaths can only be judged by the GM, which means that people get rewarded for acting more serious and sincere than they actually are and punished for being excitable and having a different conception of common sense than the GM.

Fair. Still, RPGs always require a certain amount of good faith between all participants.

ClawClawBite · Nov 22, 2021

eaglejarl said:
If anyone is interested, I'd love some help on defining / balancing a game mechanic to be used in an RPG / quest / fiction / etc. Specifically, finding edge cases, exploits, etc.

The first thing that comes to mind is Hazard Farming, trying to set up situations in the future that have some consequences and uncertainty: Set off the volcano because you think you can eventually stop the lava, free the orc chieftain who will come back next time with a bigger army.

Velorien · Nov 22, 2021

eaglejarl said:
If I were running it there would be good XP to be had in those cases. "Epic awesomeness" is what we're trying to incentivize.

It seems a bit of a no-brainer to choose between "get a boatload of XP and save your friends" and "run away, fail to save your friends, and quite possibly get killed anyway for less XP". I think you need to reconceptualise heroic sacrifice for somebody who will never be in genuine peril compared to normal people.

Shrooms · Nov 22, 2021

Velorien said:
It seems a bit of a no-brainer to choose between "get a boatload of XP and save your friends" and "run away, fail to save your friends, and quite possibly get killed anyway for less XP". I think you need to reconceptualise heroic sacrifice for somebody who will never be in genuine peril compared to normal people.

In some places this would be considered heresy

_The_Bomb · Nov 22, 2021

Within the past eighty chapters alone, there have been two seperate instances where our inability to subtly communicate information during an emergency could have caused the death of one or more family members. The first time was when Hidan popped by the compound and Mari nearly intercepted him on the way out.

eaglejarl said:
They reached the stairs and Hidan gestured him to lead the way. Hazō did, praying that they wouldn't meet anyone. The only way that this ended without anyone dying was if they got out unobserved.

Which, of course, meant that Mari was coming up the stairs.

"Hazō where did you go?" she asked, smiling. "The party is still at full blast."

Hazō was very aware of the S-rank murderer standing a few steps above him, just barely out of sight around the corner.

"I just needed a minute of quiet," he said, telling the Iron Nerve to call up relaxed body language and a broad smile.

Mari's face froze, just for an instant, and then her smile got wider.

"What do you say we head back down?" she asked, looking over his shoulder and visibly searching for any shadows or other hint of what the threat might be.

He glanced up the stairs. "Actually, I forgot something. You go on ahead. I'm sure that you and everyone else are having a great time in the main hall. Keep doing that. I'll be there in a few minutes."

She raised an eyebrow, then nodded. "I'm sure we are. Need me to get anything for you?"

"Nah, I'm good. Go on back to the main hall and enjoy yourself." A faint scuff of a foot from above made his spine try to crawl out through the skin of his back.

"Go on," he repeated, a hint of intensity in his voice. "Have fun with everyone else, in the main hall."

She eyed him for the longest moment that wasn't obvious, then nodded. "I'll do that. See you in a few minutes." She turned and disappeared around the corner.

"Gettin' smart there, kid?" Hidan asked, standing at the top of the stairs, in full view of anyone coming up or passing by, with his very distinctive scythe in hand. "Sounded like some code words being passed there."

"No sir. Just trying to...no sir."

"Well, let's get moving. Lead on, kid."

Crap. He needed to buy two minutes for Mari to clear the downstairs.

"Sir...can you please give me some hint of what's happening? Why are you here now instead of a week ago, or a week from now? What would be sufficient progress on Uplift to satisfy you? Give me something, please."

"Tryin' ta buy time for the rescue squad?"

Hazō sighed. "Trying to buy time for everyone to clear out of our way. As long as they don't see you, or see me leaving, then no one has to die."

"So you're tryin' ta deny Lord Jashin his due, huh?"

This exchange with Mari was probably the most terrifying part of the chapter. It took ages for them to get on the same wavelength and sounded so suspicious that it might honestly have been better for Hazō to say "This is an emergency. Evacuate everyon to the main hall ASAP." Seriously, it might actually have been safer to have been completely transparent instead of leaving Hidan wondering if Hazō had just ordered her to fetch Orochimaru and Tsunade.

The next time was when Hazō had to grab Kei and evacuate the compound before Orochimaru found them.

Velorien said:
"Sorry to interrupt," Hazō said, "but Kei, I need you to come with me. There's somewhere we need to be half past now."

He didn't use any Gōketsu hand signs (Hyūga were notoriously observant even with the Byakugan off, and it would have been a dead giveaway that something was up), but clearly something about his still-shaken countenance spoke louder than words.

"The Blood God is a beginner trap, Hyūga," Kei added by way of a parting shot. "His tactics appear powerful and straightforward, but require great subtlety to execute without drastically increasing his threat rating, at which point he lacks the defensive cards to endure reprisal. You would fare better with the Plaguemaster or the Prince of Passion."

"Do you know where Snowflake is?" Hazō asked.

"Last seen following Noburi in that general direction."

Hazō tsked. "We don't have time to find her. Dispel her; we can't let her stay here on her own."

Kei frowned. "Without her consent?"

Hazō was already moving on. He wouldn't be able to run fast enough on his own. Where was…

Speed was of the absolute essence here (to the point that Hazō took the embarrassing step of having Akane carry him instead of running himself) and it was absolutely painful to see Kei delay them by trading barbs, talking about the card game with Neji, and questioning Hazō's order to dispel Snowflake.

Neither of these situations were Hazō's, Mari's, or Kei's fault. Sure, Kei and Mari could have been a little quicker on the uptake and Hazō could have been better at communicating the danger they were in, but at the end of the day it was a PASS/FAIL situation and they all PASSED. The point of this isn't to criticize them, but to highlight the need for a better way of handling these situations going forward.

More specifically, the Gōketsu need a verbal code that can quickly and subtly convey information. Not something complex like the Nara or Gōketsu sign languages, but rather a few code words and phrases that have dedicated meanings known to all members of the Gōketsu. These codes would only be used during emergencies and would be as simple as saying a sentence containing one of these words or phrases. This is both for spoon purposes and because I have absolutley no idea how to make anything even slightly more complex.

Examples:
HAZŌ: Kei, there you are! Akane needs to talk to you. Something about an old friend from home.
This is an emergency. Drop everything you are doing and come with me right now.
KEI: [Immediately ends conversation as naturally as she can]
HAZŌ: I think I saw her by the door; we should hurry before she slythers away.
Code Orochimaru.
~~~~~~
MARI: Hazō where did you go? The party is still at full blast.
HAZŌ: My throat was bothering me so I stepped out to grab some peppermint tea.
This is an emergency. Code Hidan.
HAZŌ: I'll join everyone in the main hall as soon as I can.
MARI: [Immediately ends conversation as naturally as she can]
(Note: there is no phrase for "get everyone to the main hall ASAP," but as long as Mari knows there's a Hidan related emergency she'll start reading between the lines and quickly figure it out)

Let's ignore the fact that the professional ninja would have substantially less obvious codes than this and would be substantially better at integrating them into an otherwise normal sentence. I can only write these skills as well as I could do myself, given enough time. Also ignore the fact that they would realistically have hundreds of phrases mapped out so they could convey very specific information in a wide variety of situations. We all have a limited number of spoons so let's stick with only a few important ones.

Note: All of these phrases are only ever used in emergencies, so the first one you use may as well have the meaning "This is an emergency" attached to whatever the actual translation is. Also, there is also no need for a phrase that means "false alarm" becuase if it was truly a false alarm, they wouldn't need to use a secret, emergency-only code to say so.

Code	Translation
???	There is an unspecified emergency.
an old friend from home	Drop everything you are doing and come with me right now.
???	Do not listen to what I am actually saying.
peppermint tea	Code Hidan.
slyther	Code Orochimaru
Fifi's toy	Unspecified S-Ranker (not Hidan or Orochimaru)
???	Evacuate.
???	Go and bring help.

The idea for this is that it never needs to be thought of except when something goes really wrong in-story, at which point it's just a matter of checking this list to see if there's a relevant code phrase for the charecters to use, if not, well, they'll have to wing it. Hopefully they'll do better than the last two times.

If anyone has any good ideas for a better code phrase or a specific meaning that needs to be encoded let me know and I'll add it. But we should really keep this list as short as possible.

[ ] PLAN FRAGMENT: Prepare for the Worst
- Offscreen, implement a rudimentary verbal code for the Gōketsu to use for convaying information subtly during an emergency.

Sir Stompy · Nov 22, 2021

eaglejarl said:
Oh, good point.

I think you could do some interesting stuff with gear that travels with the user when they die. Let's call it "soulbound". Soulbound stuff would be highly desired by the players, and you could incentivize conflict with real stakes that way.

It's also a way to get them adventuring, if they have a really cool item, but it's not soulbound, they could hear a rumor of a wizard who can do it for them, but there's a dragon in the way etc. that's a conflict with real stakes, without putting the end of the quest at risk.

Velorien · Nov 22, 2021

_The_Bomb said:
Also ignore the fact that they would realistically have hundreds of phrases mapped out so they could convey very specific information in a wide variety of situations.

This is your all-purpose reminder that memorising hundreds of anything is non-trivial, especially when you rarely or never use or encounter most of the items on the list outside the context of memorisation.

_The_Bomb · Nov 22, 2021

eaglejarl said:
"We need to source some chakra metal, so start asking around. I talked with Cannon and told her that I didn't think I'd be able to find her ancestor's teeth caps. She looked very sad, and then I asked her if she'd be willing to be my summon if I had a new set made, just for her."

Gaku looked up in interest. "Teeth-caps for a dog?"

"Yeah, I thought it was pretty crazy. Anyway, she was offended at first but then Cannai pointed out that her great-grandfather's teethcaps wouldn't have fit her anyway and would only be good as a sentimental thing. She was intrigued by the notion of having a set of her own. She didn't actually commit to becoming my summon if I can get them made but I'm going to get them made regardless. Cannai noted that they would have to be made from chakra metal because reasons." He waved a hand in vague incomprehension. "I don't know if that was simply a demand of quality or if there's a real reason but he was insistent. Anyway, I talked to one of the Inuzuka smiths and he thought the idea was fascinating. He had no idea how to do it, but he's got imprints of Cannon's teeth and is going to try to figure something out. We'll need to source the chakra metal somehow."

@faflec, has there been any updates to this that I missed? Even if it's just as simple as "Gaku was unable to find any chakra metal," it would be helpful to know for the next part of my Chakra Metal Synthesis post.

_The_Bomb · Nov 22, 2021

Velorien said:
This is your all-purpose reminder that memorising hundreds of anything is non-trivial, especially when you rarely or never use or encounter most of the items on the list outside the context of memorisation.

I know. I had to memorize nearly two hundred japanese charecters and another three hundred words over the course of this semester. Kill me now.
It actually would be essentially trivial for Mari (and probably also for @faflec), since Mari's specifically trained to pay attention to and remember small details and is apparently skilled enough at it to briefly notice the effects of the grue.
You're probably right that they wouldn't actually have hundreds of phrases, but I suspect that several dozen would be pretty realistic. I'm sure that there's real life professions that have to memorizes codes like this. There's no way that ninja don't have at lesat basic training for this sort of thing (though if they don't, that's Old Lizardbreath's fault, not yours).

Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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