Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
-
- Tags
- naruto rationalist romance armageddon is looking better and better damn you kishimoto explosions everywhere explosives solve everyone if in doubt surrender to the mercy of zabuza it seemed like a good idea at the time looks like a really bad case of being a jōnin my god. where does the lore end? precommitting is the winning plan screaming in kagome screw the rules i have explosives something bad might still happen sometimes you gotta sociopath stabby zabby subsection c of paragraph 9 should include we can weaponize this so hard open voting
- Location
- Bronx
[X] (roads) Build roads
[X] (roads)(costs) Use many casters, do not involve Noburi
[X] (roads)(costs) Use many casters, involve Noburi
[X] (roads)(toll) Charge a toll
[X] (roads)(costs) Use many casters, do not involve Noburi
[X] (roads)(costs) Use many casters, involve Noburi
[X] (roads)(toll) Charge a toll
- Location
- UK
[X] (roads) Build roads
[X] (roads)(costs) Use many casters, involve Noburi
[X] (roads)(costs) Use a few casters, involve Noburi
[X] (roads)(costs) Use many casters, do not involve Noburi
[X] (roads)(toll) Do not charge a toll
[X] (roads)(ecology) Fuck the ecology
I advise everyone voting for a toll to consider whether Leaf is smart enough to set it anywhere near an optimal value. Leaf taxes profits at near 100%.
Fuck the ecology, but also be careful about flooding, because these walls will completely block waterflow. You can punch a few holes through them to allow rivers to flow, if need be.
Actually, temporarily flooding grid cells before draining them seems like an especially easy way to depopulate areas. This jutsu is bonkers, potentially more important than Elemental Mastery and Shadow Clone.
[X] (roads)(costs) Use many casters, involve Noburi
[X] (roads)(costs) Use a few casters, involve Noburi
[X] (roads)(costs) Use many casters, do not involve Noburi
[X] (roads)(toll) Do not charge a toll
[X] (roads)(ecology) Fuck the ecology
I advise everyone voting for a toll to consider whether Leaf is smart enough to set it anywhere near an optimal value. Leaf taxes profits at near 100%.
Fuck the ecology, but also be careful about flooding, because these walls will completely block waterflow. You can punch a few holes through them to allow rivers to flow, if need be.
Actually, temporarily flooding grid cells before draining them seems like an especially easy way to depopulate areas. This jutsu is bonkers, potentially more important than Elemental Mastery and Shadow Clone.
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- Location
- Yes.
Alright, what are the non-obvious mistakes that can be made?
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
Given that the Goketsu are the ones funding it, the only people I can imagine having a say on the toll rate are us, Shikamaru, and Asuma. Shikamaru's smart and Asuma doesn't really have a reason to object to reasonable proposals, so I don't see outside meddling being a problem for the toll rate.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Assuming this as default nears into Marked for Economics territory. I believe we can trust Shika and Hazou-pilot to be reasonable about the taxation, and we can always manually fix it if they're not.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
I'd prefer this to be more of a thing in one or two urban locations rather than a "There is a highway style toll booth every ten miles" type thing.
This is mostly just a cosmetic thing, since I'd like them to be used without farmers shaking a fist at the sky whilst cursing Hazou for costing them a 1$ equivalent every ten miles of travel, and on principle I dislike economically inconveniencing poor people.
E: But also, I absolutely understand if you dont care to think about it too much. It matters to me, is all.
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- Location
- floating away
[X] (roads) Build roads
[X] (roads)(costs) Use many casters, do not involve Noburi
[X] (roads)(costs) Use a few casters, involve Noburi
[X] (roads)(costs) Use many casters, involve Noburi
[X] (roads)(toll) Do not charge a toll
We can still charge tolls in the future, or on other roads. Right now we need to get people to see that the road is worth use and investment/ expansion.
We can also use tunnel excavation (or even civilian labor) to carve small tunnels through them, allowing crossings and waterflow to prevent flooding.
[X] (roads)(costs) Use many casters, do not involve Noburi
[X] (roads)(costs) Use a few casters, involve Noburi
[X] (roads)(costs) Use many casters, involve Noburi
[X] (roads)(toll) Do not charge a toll
We can still charge tolls in the future, or on other roads. Right now we need to get people to see that the road is worth use and investment/ expansion.
We can also use tunnel excavation (or even civilian labor) to carve small tunnels through them, allowing crossings and waterflow to prevent flooding.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
ponwog and first offhand thought without talking to @Velorien, it would be a charge to get on and off the roads, but I don't really care to get into the weeds on this. In particular, I don't want to deal with issues like "Well, what if people avoid the toll by climbing down and up again in order to go around the toll booths?"I'd prefer this to be more of a thing in one or two urban locations rather than a "There is a highway style toll booth every ten miles" type thing.
This is mostly just a cosmetic thing, since I'd like them to be used without farmers shaking a fist at the sky whilst cursing Hazou for costing them a 1$ equivalent every ten miles of travel, and on principle I dislike economically inconveniencing poor people.
E: But also, I absolutely understand if you dont care to think about it too much. It matters to me, is all.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
[X] (roads)(ecology) Fuck the ecology
I'll answer on the ecological point as follows:
I'll answer on the ecological point as follows:
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
This is a good idea! We should implement it!! ^.^
[X] (roads) Build roads
[X] (roads)(costs) Use many casters, do not involve Noburi
I want to be fast, but not distract Noburi from other stuff. We just got all that money from Snuncle, let's use it!
[X] (roads)(toll) Do not charge a toll
Initially wanted no toll (to raise usage & goodwill), but then inferno vulpix made good points about people judging us. Then veedrac made other good points about people overcharging (people seem to think this probably won't happen). It was a close match in my mind, but I'm landing on no-toll.
[X] (roads)(costs) Use many casters, do not involve Noburi
I want to be fast, but not distract Noburi from other stuff. We just got all that money from Snuncle, let's use it!
[X] (roads)(toll) Do not charge a toll
Initially wanted no toll (to raise usage & goodwill), but then inferno vulpix made good points about people judging us. Then veedrac made other good points about people overcharging (people seem to think this probably won't happen). It was a close match in my mind, but I'm landing on no-toll.
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- Location
- Texas
Hazō hasn't spent nearly enough time with Noburi recently. Let's change that!
[X] Hang Out With Your Little Bro
Word Count: TBD
[X] Hang Out With Your Little Bro
Word Count: TBD
- Carve out a few hours to hang out with Noburi uninterrupted.
- Shadow clones can take Prime's place dealing with business.
- Relax, celebrate that your family has survived the war thus far.
- Skim through some of the research notes from Orochimaru and discuss ideas.
- Talk about...
- Noburi's medical aspirations.
- Interesting procedures he's seen Kabuto perform
- His opinion on Tsunade
- If he's heard anything about Tsunade's research being published
- Thank Noburi for trusting Hazō to plan his training. Promise to allocate more time to medical training in the near future.
- Mention that Hazō has considered learning about the body in order to use bioseals.
- That Hazō will never be half the medic Noburi is, and that Hazō would like to see if they can work together.
- "I know how important medicine and medical jutsu are to you. It's how I feel about sealing. I want to improve my art, just like you want to improve yours."
- Ask if Noburi would be willing to help if Hazō decided to follow in his footsteps and learn about the human body.
- Confess that something has been on Hazō's mind for a while.
- Hazō overheard Noburi tell Kei that his chakra system was torn out and turned sideways.
- Could Noburi please tell Hazō what that was about?
- If it's something he's researching, can we help?
- Offscreen
- Begin/continue sealing prep for an attempt at ARS.
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- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Has sufficient wholesomeness... Might want to reassure Noburi that we're not trying to usurp him or learn medical jutsu. Medicine has always been "his thing" that Noburi can point to and say "I know this. This is mine. I wasn't born with this, I earned this."
He's mentioned before how important it is to him. Noburi is a medic at heart. He didn't even want to turn the Medical Scalpel into a weapon of war. He wanted to keep it pure.
Noburi "The Next Tsunade" Goketsu is a Medic, and we need to reassure him that Hazou (the genius brother that Noburi is jealous of) isn't gunning for one of the foundational things that Noburi has built his sense of identity upon.
If you add some amount of reassurance, you'll earn my vote.
He's mentioned before how important it is to him. Noburi is a medic at heart. He didn't even want to turn the Medical Scalpel into a weapon of war. He wanted to keep it pure.
Noburi "The Next Tsunade" Goketsu is a Medic, and we need to reassure him that Hazou (the genius brother that Noburi is jealous of) isn't gunning for one of the foundational things that Noburi has built his sense of identity upon.
If you add some amount of reassurance, you'll earn my vote.
- Location
- Texas
Responding here as well for other readers' sake.
I've added a couple of bullet points addressing these concerns. Thank you for bringing them up. I hope the changes are sufficient to address them. If not, I'm willing to make additional changes.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Maybe add something to the effect of "we know how important medicine and medical jutsu is to you. It's how we feel about sealing. We want to improve our art, just like you want to improve yours."
And, if you could, include Mari? Either in the conversation for a family lunch (meta-level: play mediator), or as a sanity check?
This is a... delicate topic.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
So, when the uncap system was originally introduced, it was a three-month free trial lasting up through the end of March. Now, after April Fools is over and we're not panicking about a stressful update, I'm ready to give my retrospective:
Unfortunately, the more I saw of the system, in discussions and in action, the more my optimism wore off. It comes with awkward edge cases, unpleasant side-effects, and isn't even all that good at what it's intended to do. Here following are the concerns I have with the current system:
1) Efficacy: The main thrust of the system is that, by forcing us to go out and do things to uncap our skills, we'll go out and have cool adventures on our own accord. The critical flaw, though, is that we are not always raising stats conducive to cool adventures. It would be one thing if we were pushing our Taijutsu or something else in our combat suite, but instead we're pushing Resolve and Sealing and we'll get around to Taijutsu... uh... eventually. The system doesn't not work, we're right now seeing incentive to go do a meaningful research project and uncap our Sealing, but as already mentioned Taijutsu is lying abandoned in a corner. Overall the uncap system is not very good at achieving its desired effects.
2) Edge cases: The premise of uncapping works out pretty well for our main stats. There's always another sealing project to do and another horrific monster to punch (sometimes in that order, in rapid succession), but there aren't many opportunities to use situational or low-level skills like Living Roots or Stealth. We may not have any intention of pursuing those stats right now, but the prospect of pursuing them does not sound simple or intuitive. If we wanted to level Cracking, we'd have to find a meaningful Cracking challenge for someone with level 4 Cracking, and then again at level 9, 14, and 19 before we can even begin to go up against anyone's Trapmaking for real. Finding these meaningful Cracking challenges would be... even if we knew where to look, it would feel horribly petty, wouldn't it? We'd be pursuing uncaps for the sake of uncaps, contriving a 'meaningful challenge' for skills we're not good at so that one day we might have an actually meaningful use for them. It's the awkwardness of fetch quests, just waiting to happen.
3) Side-effects: If a given uncap only affects the next division of five levels, the highest you can possibly move in one training plan is 9 levels. Bar any further elaborations or adjustments, all of which would increase the complexity of the uncap system, 'leapfrogging' stats across ABs becomes impossible. This implication was ratified by the QMs after some discussion of the topic with the hivemind. It's a reasonable decision, given the nature of uncaps, but it's still a bad aftertaste. Options for respeccing are already very limited, and leapfrogging was one of the critical tools for it in many of our build plans. Removing leapfrogging doesn't destroy respeccing, but it makes it much harder and makes many builds that much more calcified, which I find moderately dispreferrable.
Overall, the uncap system is not a failed system. The edge cases can theoretically be patched up as we run into them, and the loss of leapfrogging can just be the necessary price for the system to function. It doesn't stir us to action in quite the way it was supposed to, but we'll need to level Taijutsu eventually so it's not like it won't do anything. It's just... a lot of downsides, is all.
But a piece of advice I've seen from here is that while it's good to point out problems you see, it's better to also help solve them. So I was thinking about alternatives to the uncap system, and I think I have something:
Stagnancy, a mechanic which strongly encourages regular use of your main skills, whatever they happen to be.
The narrative side of it goes as such: A ninja who neglects their specializations, the skills which they forged in trials by fire, will naturally find themselves losing that 'edge', that something that kept them in top form. It takes more and more effort to simply avoid falling behind, cutting into the rest of their training time.
Mechanically, if a character goes an extended period of time without properly exercising the core skills of their build, they may receive a persistent 10% penalty to their XP rate, increasing in severity the longer the skills remain unused up to a 100% loss of all incoming XP. The penalty is removed/reduced when they go and use those skills in a meaningful way, until the next time they become so lax.
For someone like Hazou, his build is a mixture of Taijutsu-spec and Sealing-spec, so he is expected to engage in both those activities semi-regularly. If he goes a long time without doing any Sealing, he may begin to take an XP penalty until he does a proper sealing project. If he goes a long time without engaging in real combat, he may begin to take an XP penalty until he punches something in the face.
The exact duration 'a long time' represents is up to QM discretion, as is what roles a ninja's expected to stay active in. Given the trustworthiness of the QMs, I anticipate rigid and specific benchmarks would provide no meaningful advantage while bogging the whole thing down in nitty gritty. If y'all say Kei's gone too long without killing something with an exploding kunai, that's good enough for me.
For convenience's sake, it would be nice to have a short grace period before the penalty is properly applied. For example, at the end of an update the QM may state something like "Hazou thinks his Taijutsu is getting rusty. He wants to find some way to get some real practice in, before he starts slipping." and then we have a few updates to seek out a combat challenge to prevent the penalty from being applied in the first place. As with uncaps, NPCs can seek to avoid stagnancy penalties when possible, though if no opportunities are available they may still suffer one.
I believe this mechanic will do a better job of spurring us to do cool and interesting things than the uncap system, with fewer edge cases or side-effects. Firstly, stagnancy always pushes us to exercise what we're good at, meaning the challenges we seek out will always be level-appropriate and a good fit for our builds. Hazou will avoid stagnancy by doing sealing research and punching things, not by getting way out of his depth in social combat or doing Baby's First Lockpicking. Mari, by contrast, will avoid stagnancy by dancing social circles around people and weaving elaborate genjutsu rather than sneaking around unseen. This avoids the awkward edge cases of low-level or situational stats and should do a far better job of, frankly, getting Hazou off his butt and out there punching something.
Secondly, while it is true that stagnancy means we can level skills without actively using them, this is only up to a point: you can only level a stat so much before it becomes a focus of your build and you'll be expected to exercise it on the regular. Thus we allow characters to 'dabble' with as many skills as they like while organically ensuring the growth of our character is accompanied by appropriate feats: Hazou's social stats are not those of a career politician's, at least not yet, but if we choose to seriously push stats like Deceit and Presence so he can 1v1 people in the council room we'll soon find ourselves obligated to out-social people in the council room (or other similar activities), which to me sounds like a wonderful bonding of mechanics and narrative.
Overall, I expect the stagnancy system to be less bookkeeping than uncaps, less awkward than uncaps, and better than uncaps at changing the incentives of the hivemind in the direction of cool adventures that utilize the full potential of our characters. I imagine there are a variety of places where the system can be fine-tuned, but even as it is right now I strongly prefer it to the existing uncap system. What do you think?
When the uncap system was announced, I was interested and tentatively optimistic. I agree with the motives for its inception, and as we saw with the wordcount penalties it's eminently possible to adjust the behaviour of the hivemind by changing the context of our decisions. This new system seemed poised to deliver that same benefit for our adventuring rates.
Unfortunately, the more I saw of the system, in discussions and in action, the more my optimism wore off. It comes with awkward edge cases, unpleasant side-effects, and isn't even all that good at what it's intended to do. Here following are the concerns I have with the current system:
1) Efficacy: The main thrust of the system is that, by forcing us to go out and do things to uncap our skills, we'll go out and have cool adventures on our own accord. The critical flaw, though, is that we are not always raising stats conducive to cool adventures. It would be one thing if we were pushing our Taijutsu or something else in our combat suite, but instead we're pushing Resolve and Sealing and we'll get around to Taijutsu... uh... eventually. The system doesn't not work, we're right now seeing incentive to go do a meaningful research project and uncap our Sealing, but as already mentioned Taijutsu is lying abandoned in a corner. Overall the uncap system is not very good at achieving its desired effects.
2) Edge cases: The premise of uncapping works out pretty well for our main stats. There's always another sealing project to do and another horrific monster to punch (sometimes in that order, in rapid succession), but there aren't many opportunities to use situational or low-level skills like Living Roots or Stealth. We may not have any intention of pursuing those stats right now, but the prospect of pursuing them does not sound simple or intuitive. If we wanted to level Cracking, we'd have to find a meaningful Cracking challenge for someone with level 4 Cracking, and then again at level 9, 14, and 19 before we can even begin to go up against anyone's Trapmaking for real. Finding these meaningful Cracking challenges would be... even if we knew where to look, it would feel horribly petty, wouldn't it? We'd be pursuing uncaps for the sake of uncaps, contriving a 'meaningful challenge' for skills we're not good at so that one day we might have an actually meaningful use for them. It's the awkwardness of fetch quests, just waiting to happen.
3) Side-effects: If a given uncap only affects the next division of five levels, the highest you can possibly move in one training plan is 9 levels. Bar any further elaborations or adjustments, all of which would increase the complexity of the uncap system, 'leapfrogging' stats across ABs becomes impossible. This implication was ratified by the QMs after some discussion of the topic with the hivemind. It's a reasonable decision, given the nature of uncaps, but it's still a bad aftertaste. Options for respeccing are already very limited, and leapfrogging was one of the critical tools for it in many of our build plans. Removing leapfrogging doesn't destroy respeccing, but it makes it much harder and makes many builds that much more calcified, which I find moderately dispreferrable.
Overall, the uncap system is not a failed system. The edge cases can theoretically be patched up as we run into them, and the loss of leapfrogging can just be the necessary price for the system to function. It doesn't stir us to action in quite the way it was supposed to, but we'll need to level Taijutsu eventually so it's not like it won't do anything. It's just... a lot of downsides, is all.
But a piece of advice I've seen from here is that while it's good to point out problems you see, it's better to also help solve them. So I was thinking about alternatives to the uncap system, and I think I have something:
Stagnancy, a mechanic which strongly encourages regular use of your main skills, whatever they happen to be.
The narrative side of it goes as such: A ninja who neglects their specializations, the skills which they forged in trials by fire, will naturally find themselves losing that 'edge', that something that kept them in top form. It takes more and more effort to simply avoid falling behind, cutting into the rest of their training time.
Mechanically, if a character goes an extended period of time without properly exercising the core skills of their build, they may receive a persistent 10% penalty to their XP rate, increasing in severity the longer the skills remain unused up to a 100% loss of all incoming XP. The penalty is removed/reduced when they go and use those skills in a meaningful way, until the next time they become so lax.
For someone like Hazou, his build is a mixture of Taijutsu-spec and Sealing-spec, so he is expected to engage in both those activities semi-regularly. If he goes a long time without doing any Sealing, he may begin to take an XP penalty until he does a proper sealing project. If he goes a long time without engaging in real combat, he may begin to take an XP penalty until he punches something in the face.
The exact duration 'a long time' represents is up to QM discretion, as is what roles a ninja's expected to stay active in. Given the trustworthiness of the QMs, I anticipate rigid and specific benchmarks would provide no meaningful advantage while bogging the whole thing down in nitty gritty. If y'all say Kei's gone too long without killing something with an exploding kunai, that's good enough for me.
For convenience's sake, it would be nice to have a short grace period before the penalty is properly applied. For example, at the end of an update the QM may state something like "Hazou thinks his Taijutsu is getting rusty. He wants to find some way to get some real practice in, before he starts slipping." and then we have a few updates to seek out a combat challenge to prevent the penalty from being applied in the first place. As with uncaps, NPCs can seek to avoid stagnancy penalties when possible, though if no opportunities are available they may still suffer one.
I believe this mechanic will do a better job of spurring us to do cool and interesting things than the uncap system, with fewer edge cases or side-effects. Firstly, stagnancy always pushes us to exercise what we're good at, meaning the challenges we seek out will always be level-appropriate and a good fit for our builds. Hazou will avoid stagnancy by doing sealing research and punching things, not by getting way out of his depth in social combat or doing Baby's First Lockpicking. Mari, by contrast, will avoid stagnancy by dancing social circles around people and weaving elaborate genjutsu rather than sneaking around unseen. This avoids the awkward edge cases of low-level or situational stats and should do a far better job of, frankly, getting Hazou off his butt and out there punching something.
Secondly, while it is true that stagnancy means we can level skills without actively using them, this is only up to a point: you can only level a stat so much before it becomes a focus of your build and you'll be expected to exercise it on the regular. Thus we allow characters to 'dabble' with as many skills as they like while organically ensuring the growth of our character is accompanied by appropriate feats: Hazou's social stats are not those of a career politician's, at least not yet, but if we choose to seriously push stats like Deceit and Presence so he can 1v1 people in the council room we'll soon find ourselves obligated to out-social people in the council room (or other similar activities), which to me sounds like a wonderful bonding of mechanics and narrative.
Overall, I expect the stagnancy system to be less bookkeeping than uncaps, less awkward than uncaps, and better than uncaps at changing the incentives of the hivemind in the direction of cool adventures that utilize the full potential of our characters. I imagine there are a variety of places where the system can be fine-tuned, but even as it is right now I strongly prefer it to the existing uncap system. What do you think?
- Location
- Fifth Dimension
[X] (roads) Do not build roads
- Location
- Texas
I added the former, not the latter. Adding Mari changes the feel of the scene in a way that is counter to the intent: two brothers bonding over shared nerdiness.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Rather than impact the general XP rate, what do you think of increasing the cost of their next lvl up?
As in, if Hazou goes a meaningfully long time without leveling Taijutsu, instead of costing [N] xp, it becomes [N+(1/2N)] and then [N+N], and then [N*3], [N*4] and so on?
At first glance, it has the same "urgency" factor, while still allowing the growth of other skills.
Mari, for instance, would require a steep XP purchase to lvl her TH-ing skill, rather than generate 0 XP for leaving one of her "main" stats untouched for so long.
This allows ninja who may want to Respec to do so (Mari has mentioned she made a lot of personal genjutsu, so it was likely a core part of her build before TLitF took her passion for TH-ing away), while still preserving the narrative.