Turkey
time (weekend apparently) cuts into thread time, so here's some somewhat late replies (better late than never hopefully).
Obviously. But this isn't like some vast secret that uplift doesn't know about. They're mostly on board
From the quote you listed I believe they are more in favor of the end results but Hazou has not said how he wants to go about fulfilling them. I'm skeptical that they would approve of such aggressive dealings on the world stage, especially unanimously.
Unfortunately we won't be able to keep FOOM in the bottle. If we share it with Asuma he gets to use it however he wants. And Asuma has proven that he doesn't have our back. He will use it to empower people personally loyal to him and then be able to squash our ambitions.
As for the the techniques we are 4 summoners. We are already on the Sannin curve so I'm 100% sure if we put in a modicum of effort we will be able to make it to S-rank
Asuma has been more than fair to us given his political position: he has had more than enough justification to pull the trigger on a killbox with us in it multiple times yet he hasn't because deep down he respects and personally likes Hazou despite the headaches we cause him. He cannot favor us more without destroying the balance of political interests keeping Leaf from tearing itself apart. Leaders of diverse political factions cannot afford to treat governing relationships in any binary 'you're either with me or against me' manner.
Having a civil conversation with him about our belief (since it has not been proven in character yet) that we have found a way to increase experience gains for people will not end in Asuma immediately shackling us and forcing us to give up our secrets. He has demonstrated his willingness, if not his immediate ability due to politics, to work with us towards common goals in the past so I am confident we can treat with him civilly again. The initial conversation does not force us to hand over FOOM but it does convey the importance to Asuma that we believe we might be able to offer something very important provided that Asuma guarantees us certain stipulations. If anyone would understand the gravity of the situation of a clan offering up one of its most precious secrets for the good of the village yet still needing some reassurances since the secret is just that good, it would be the Hokage, the person who deals with and executes judgements on the letter and spirit of Leaf law and clan politics daily.
We need to find a way to convince Asuma that Hazou's ambitions align with his so we can better influence the future of Leaf towards accepting our Uplift ideology. Talking with him and trying to find common ground for a compromise that makes both of us happy is the best way I can think of to achieve that.
Now as for, and please correct me if I'm reading the subtext wrong, you dislike the thought of having Hazou extend trust in such a potentially vulnerable way to an authority figure we don't have any leverage over. I consider this first conversation as a way to ascertain whether or not we can actually trust Asuma with how FOOM works or any other form of empowerment we may come across in the future. If he does not verbalize that we would be giving him the ability to betray us by teaching it to whomever he wants we can infer that he would be planning to do exactly that. However, if he goes to the trouble of explaining his position within Leaf and asks for a compromise to train only those who are loyal to Leaf first and foremost (not their individual clans) we can start having the compromise bartering.
If Asuma wants to train himself and his current personal ANBU in FOOM I would accept that given the conditions that we, the Goketsu, in return have the ability to teach SC to people we choose while notifying we are doing so to the Tower. We would also probably have a stipulation that we would be responsible for hunting down those who would abuse the trust invested in us because SC and FOOM are such strategically vital secrets for Leaf. However, this means we as our ideology will have the ability to outnumber all of Leaf's S-rankers in the future. We would be trading power now and any remote hopes we have of successfully betraying Leaf for securing our eventual dominance in Leaf and better protection from Orochimaru (which, if we ever tried to leave Leaf, Asuma would send him after us because it would kill two birds with one stone).
I recognize that if Asuma really wanted to he could renege on this deal to cut us off, but I'll (hopefully clearly) explain more about why I want us to engage in proposing cooperate-cooperate further on in this post. As a way to potentially address those concerns we could sanity check this in the abstract with Ino and/or Sasuke. Both of their clans have ways of aggregating different techniques from multiple different sources to create something new so they might have precedent for sharing something like this with the Hokage, if not on this magnitude. I don't recommend petitioning Shikamaru though because he would be likely to suss out the workings behind FOOM even if we try to be vague.
I'm sure Kurenai will not mind us shipping Asuma with a Mist-nin at all.
Are they together in MfD? I can't remember.
Education, in MfD or in the real world, is hard to quantify. What separates the valedictorian from the average student? People use the word "talent", but what is that actually? Naturally good reflexes? A better memory? How about "drive", whatever that means in biological terms?
In game mechanical terms, every ninja has a talent level that determines how many XP they get per day. In the interest of keeping things manageable, every ninja gets XP every day regardless of whether they are in mission or in training.
Was this the same solution y'all had for the Chunin exams?
On the one hand, I understand how much of a headache it would be to have fluctuating XP rates based on what each individual in MfD does each day. Updating thousands of character sheets isn't feasible for human intelligence authors with limited timeframes (on the off chance either or both of you are post-singularity AI's then I would be disappointed
).
On the other hand, not holding all of the characters to the same standards as our PC's makes expanding our manpower economies of scale functionally impossible. There will always be a wall between our chosen ones and frankly effectively lesser beings: they can't help what they are through no fault of their own. This in turn incentivizes players to focus more on the PC's and only the PC's because there will be a better return on effort investment for doing so.
There might be a way to compromise between simulationism and efficiency with enough brainstorming. How would a system have to function to satisfy y'all's needs as QMs? A bell curve distribution could be used so that various NPC's receive varying levels of XP per day with few people having exceptional days, most having expected outcomes, and a few unlucky souls having a bad day. I don't know how you manage NPC sheets (if they even exist) and there is the problem of revealing too much to players in the form of OOC knowledge which can lead to metagaming. Maybe we could accumulate multiple solutions and y'all could pick one without telling us what it is?
Food for thought at least.
Not even a ballpark estimate huh? Oof.
We'll persevere to find a satisfying solution despite the setback.
I feel like this might be a question of timing more than anything else. @Oneiros , @Dictator4Hire , speaking as what I perceive to be representatives of the two ends of the "share FOOM when" spectrum: Would you both be satisfied with a plan that said "Wait until every member of Team Uplift is Jiraiya-level powerful, then share FOOM with people that we think will support our goals"? Said differently, is sharing it *now* a crux?
For me, there are two things making sharing FOOM sooner imperative:
- For maximum effectiveness while maintaining ideological integrity among the FOOM-empowered we need to start as soon as possible since the timeline for even one generation of FOOM soldiers not a part of our initial team will take twenty years. I doubt the world would have better odds of not dying to another dragon-level threat if we have to wait even longer before we have a force capable of actually dealing with such threats, not just sealing them away.
- I personally prefer having Hazou act as a leader of people rather than have him act as a Messiah-like figure to save people from themselves once he is already S-rank. I currently despise cults of personality thanks to recent events these past few years.
Those stand out the most right now but I might be able to think of more after my food coma wears off. My apologies for the addendum cop out.
She was, yes. In her case it was the academics. So far she is handling everything else just fine.
Huh, this is interesting in its own way. Does Hazou know this IC? This is potentially actionable intelligence.
We could petition Leaf to make tracks for students rather than have a set curriculum for everyone so that students who are less skilled in some subjects yet skilled in others can maximize their strengths while their comrades cover their weaknesses.
Making a copy of the sheet should work.
I'll see what I can do, but no promises when it comes to my tech prowess, for lack of a better term.
Instruction is strange. For example, while we were trained by Ebisu (and to a lesser extent, Mari), our overall XP rate didn't change. On the other hand, Hazou-optimized training is boosting Kei/Noburi/Akane's XP rates up quite high. My intuition is that the former is closer to the actual model, that XP rate is pretty much innate and very hard to change, but that can be changed with dedicated teaching (like Honoka is getting 1-on-1 with Kagome) or special circumstances (Hazou's hivemind-infection).
Honestly, the more I think about optimizing training plans the more I just want to help the kids regardless of the XP numbers. It would be hypocritical of me to advocate only helping NPC's when it's most convenient for us to do so. I'd still like to test our number crunching in game to confirm that we have an accurate handle on how the underlining mechanics actually function in practice so we can distribute our efforts effectively and efficiently. However, I still believe we need to help everyone who will accept our offers of assistance as best as we, either Hazou or the Goketsu as a clan, are able.
Alone, yes. Ejounin stats makes us very secure against normal ninja, but not enough to play the real game of changing the EN. That said, the process of acquiring the special skills needed to be S-rank is itself a journey worth taking. The quest is a narrative structure, and I would far rather have that narrative be "Team Uplift travels the world fighting people and monsters, collecting Forbidden Lore and powerups, and generally setting the world right one tyrant at a time" than "manage 1000 Academy students's training plans".
In hindsight, it's plain to see how the quest has changed (from the perspective of a player) since its inception. The players, and I would assume the QMs as well, have become very attached to our original band of misfits in now stark contrast to the premise I remember about this quest being as strict of a simulation as possible about trying to survive in a deathworld based on the Naruto universe yet made more rational.
I was convinced our first attempt was doomed from the outset as too many people made decisions based on MfD!incorrect canon knowledge.
Now here we are in Leaf alive and, if not completely well, in a position to recover, but we aren't pregnant with Sasuke's child so everything didn't go according to the thread's first "bold" plan exactly.
I mention all of this to preface that I am proud of almost (never forget the pedants) everything the thread has accomplished and I want to encourage everyone to keep the process of Uplift going by expanding it outside of our clan, not keeping it to ourselves until a much later time. I find the organic narrative of MfD more satisfying and inspiring because it comes from a simulation background. Ordinary people decided to do more than survive in a deathworld: to transform it, to improve it so that all people in that same world could thrive instead because we found the means to do so.
The simulationist nature, from my point of view, necessitates treating
all of the NPC's we interact with as real people. If they are to live in a world without war they must pursue lasting peace. If they are to live in a world with justice they must act to hold themselves and each other to equal standards. Improvement starts with a visionary but only endures when the masses practice it.
Hazou has to increase his personal power while laying the foundations for Uplift to prove through action that he leads from the front, practicing what he preaches and consequently succeeds by doing so. I do not want Uplift as a movement stifled by naysayers claiming Hazou only advocates for Uplift due to his strength gained from his connections to Jiraiya, his bloodline, his summons, and whatever else we find. Might making right has persisted since the Sage's time as the underlying axiom of the MfD world so to truly change stubborn simulated people's minds Hazou must champion what he/we believe is right
before he becomes so powerful he has to be placated, willingly or begrudgingly. The presence of the person espousing a message must not overshadow the message itself or that message will be silenced by perceived looming implications.
Hazou can accomplish all of those goals you mentioned like the tip of a spear skewering the evils of the MfD world with his compatriots in Uplift acting as his shield, army, vanguard, and logistical support. The training for those people currently outside of our sphere of influence must be delegated eventually to achieve accelerating growth but Hazou has to take the first step to begin the process. Conveniently, winning the hearts and minds of the next generation of Leaf ninja can in part be accomplished by winning in battle, acquiring more power-ups, and defeating malefactors. How we win those fights and how we present ourselves and our beliefs matters as well though.
A movement would be more narratively satisfying than having Hazou become effectively a Messiah. No chosen ones but choosing our own destiny and teaching others to do so as well seems more accurate to the tone and the themes of what this quest has become, to me at least. I won't hold it against you if you still disagree; I just wanted to clarify my stance.