Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

Radvic · May 18, 2017

traverseda said:
Do you think we could keep that a secret?

Nope. There's no realistic way we can keep the fact we killed Minami from Jiraiya, and probably not from the other clan heads either. We can provide a cover story which they can choose to use and generate enough goodwill via our actions that they might be willing to overlook our treason.

For the record, I'm with @Velorien on the interpretation here. Everything done makes sense and seems like a correct interpretation of our plan and our paranoid friends. Really, I'm surprised that Kagome hadn't killed someone we cared about earlier, but I suppose that's what Mari had been doing for a year+.

traverseda · May 18, 2017

redzonejoe said:
Fuck your attempts at retcon, this happened.

I for one am mostly not looking for a retcon, and am instead trying to figure out why this sort of thing keeps happening, and how we can prevent it.

The obvious issue is that there's a gap between what we expect to happen and what will happen. We've tried to compensate for that in the past, but the fact that we the players weren't raised in this world is going to keep on causing that kind of friction. If we can't rely on Hazo having common sense, we need to account for that by either putting in a whole lot of extra work (which will make work for the QM's), relying on our team mates more, or forming habits that compensate for it.

Oneiros · May 18, 2017

Radvic said:
For the record, I'm with @Velorien on the interpretation here. Everything done makes sense and seems like a correct interpretation of our plan and our paranoid friends. Really, I'm surprised that Kagome hadn't killed someone we cared about earlier, but I suppose that's what Mari had been doing for a year+.

I'm 100% ok with Kagome doing this. It's his style. What I'm not okay with is blaming the hivemind for this. We didn't fuck up in telling Minami we fucked up in not understanding kagome

Jello_Raptor · May 18, 2017

@eaglejarl, @Velorien, @OliWhail : I know I pointed this out long ago, but I want to make the point again.

We control Hazou for tiny little bursts that span anywhere from minutes to weeks. We don't get his memories. Our window into the world you've made constitutes a minute fraction of the information and instinct that a reasonable model of Hazou would have. There's a gigantic amount of context that we simply don't have access to, or which is computationally difficult to reliably generate. (We might be able to do it with 20-30 active contributors on every plan, but we don't have that)

On the other hand, as authors and world-builders, you've built up general models of how this world functions. They are clearly nowhere near as complex as those of an actual person, but you can do that trick where you build up your general model of the world ("If <event> happens what are the major likely outcomes?") and then a significantly simpler filter for each character ("Which of those outcomes would <person> notice and react to?"). That, or analogous tricks (even if they're mostly subconscious), let you write realistic characters who make good decisions.

So we have this situation where the players get to be higher order thought processes of a character, but we get minimal access to the instinctual models of the world that normal people use to make decent decisions quickly. That lack of access isn't insurmountable, but it would take more people actively contributing than we have. (Or a much tighter feedback loop where QMs actively contribute on thread discussion with what Hazou would say if he could read it.)

Basically, as the system is now, Hazou can only ever really act like someone with a pile of deep neurological deficits that range from "absurd levels of forgetfulness" to "basically multiple personality disorder". I don't know how to fix that, or if the correct response is just to say "The player base should just learn how to deal with it." But, I will be very annoyed if you don't acknowledge that the issue is real or present a case for why I'm wrong.

redzonejoe · May 18, 2017

[X] Action plan: Error, rebooting

- Stutter, stammer and otherwise babble incoherently for a few moments.
- We should continue the mission now and delay deciding on Kagome's future until such a time as delay is no longer possible. This is a big decision that does not need to be made at night hundreds of feet in the sky and covered in blood.
- Stare into space a lot and mindlessly follow orders for the next few days.

This seems appropriate

hYGP · May 18, 2017

Traiden said:
Rules lawyering is a time honored tradition of people within denial of a bad outcome. We will do our best within the time limit of noticing a bad outcome before turning to handle the situation. Now if you will excuse me I shall be going back into the past to see how top secret Mist draining is and if Noburi should have spoken up during the portion of the day when we laid out our plan for him to state that the Mist would be good cover for him to get close with his water whip. Given that it is his secret and something he should have worked harder to keep secret.

The evidence which Minami would be worried about would be the water covering everything once the mist settles onto everything in the building.

The problem is that we didn't even mention it to Noburi first, instead going straight to telling Minami about it.

fiirofa · May 18, 2017

Alright--here's my issue:

All of the team, save us, apparently recognized this leak.
Why did nothing happen, save some glares, until now?

I agree with Kagome doing this. I just feel like... there should have been some warning?

traverseda · May 18, 2017

fiirofa said:
All of the team, save us, apparently recognized this leak.

Why did nothing happen, save some glares, until now?

I would have expected our team mates to have more agency than that, yeah.

Lailoken · May 18, 2017

Well, obviously, we just scrape up the salsa meatloaf and ask the sage to put her back together, minus the inconvenient memories.

More seriously, we either burn everything and run, or go all-in and try to accomplish something crazy like getting the capybara scroll or cracking some important break on the abduction case before this all comes due.

-but, yes, every plan needs to start with dispel if only on the off chance that this is some sort of really elaborate Leaf induction test.

redzonejoe · May 18, 2017

traverseda said:
I for one am mostly not looking for a retcon, and am instead trying to figure out why this sort of thing keeps happening, and how we can prevent it.

Fair enough. People trying to skip out on consequences is a pet peeve of mine, so I reacted rather strongly.

I do agree that there is an issue in this quest, such that this keeps becoming a problem.

Radvic · May 18, 2017

Oneiros43 said:
I'm 100% ok with Kagome doing this. It's his style. What I'm not okay with is blaming the hivemind for this. We didn't fuck up in telling Minami we fucked up in not understanding kagome

Blame is an interesting concept. The way that it is relevant here is "who do the others think is at fault" which is pretty clearly "Hazou and Kagome." Like, it would have been substantially easier to catch this as readers if we'd gotten more than three relevant sentences in updates detailing that this might be a problem, but it's not particularly helpful to comment on that aside from to complain. Given that, there's a huge distinction between the hivemind and Hazou. In general, this is what happens when you hang around a paranoid possessive explosive murderer as a friend. He kills people for you without you asking him to.

Jello_Raptor · May 18, 2017

Honestly, a non-trivial part of me says the most realistic option is to check ourselves into a mental hospital.

Lailoken · May 18, 2017

Jello_Raptor said:
Honestly, a non-trivial part of me says the most realistic option is to check ourselves into a mental hospital.

Hey, guess what is about to go down at a hospital?

Erwing · May 18, 2017

I can't even.

Ok, so some things happened

- Hazou proposes a plan that everyone recognizes as stupid
- everyone goes through with it without saying a thing
- then takes action without Hazou that results in a team member dying.

What the hell? Why is it that our team only thinks for themselves when it fucks us over?

Edit: Better yet, now they're asking him his opinion. Like the plan that he proposed that got a teammate killed is just a brush off, and they want him to lead again.

traverseda · May 18, 2017

Radvic said:
Like, it would have been substantially easier to catch this as readers if we'd gotten more than three relevant sentences in updates detailing that this might be a problem

Yeah, I don't really think we were given enough information to reach the conclusions about this being a problem that our team mates did. Hazo might very well have had that information though. If he did and we didn't that's a problem, unless it's the result of him rolling really badly on perception or something.

Velorien · May 18, 2017

traverseda said:
@Velorien Do we not have common sense? It seems like the plans are interpreted in the worst possible light a lot of the time. Can Hazo roll to interpret the plans in a way that isn't idiotic? Did he roll, and just roll poorly?

It's more the case that we attempt to render plans as faithfully as possible (prior to NPC intervention). So if the players explicitly write for Hazō to inadvertently reveal a secret, to me at least it undermines the philosophy of the quest to overrule that in the name of common sense. Just as it wouldn't be fair for Hazō to suddenly make a bad decision in violation of the plan, it doesn't seem fair for Hazō to suddenly make a good decision in violation of the plan.

Traiden said:
Now if you will excuse me I shall be going back into the past to see how top secret Mist draining is and if Noburi should have spoken up during the portion of the day when we laid out our plan for him to state that the Mist would be good cover for him to get close with his water whip.

Cariyaga said:
There are two plans (which each have bifurcations) Hazou's come up with in how to approach acquiring Shiratora; suggest them both to Minami, with preference for the second for the fact that it involves less people. Leave the final decision to her.

There is no suggestion in the plan that anything should be run past the rest of the team before bringing it up with Minami.

Traiden said:
The evidence which Minami would be worried about would be the water covering everything once the mist settles onto everything in the building.

Which she cares about because...?

Jello_Raptor said:
@eaglejarl, @Velorien, @OliWhail : I know I pointed this out long ago, but I want to make the point again.

We control Hazou for tiny little bursts that span anywhere from minutes to weeks. We don't get his memories. Our window into the world you've made constitutes a minute fraction of the information and instinct that a reasonable model of Hazou would have. There's a gigantic amount of context that we simply don't have access to, or which is computationally difficult to reliably generate. (We might be able to do it with 20-30 active contributors on every plan, but we don't have that

By the same token, you are only called upon to manage minute windows in Hazō's daily life: to make individual plans for individual missions or other activities. You only need specific pieces of information for that purpose, and only need to take account of a limited number of factors. Hazō does plenty of things each day that do not require your intervention, and he does them just like any other young ninja unless there's some reason he shouldn't. It's only in the segments where you take control that he gains potential for extraordinary success or extraordinary failure.

With that said, if you perceive a problem and wish to suggest solutions, I'm happy to consider them.

fiirofa said:
Alright--here's my issue:

All of the team, save us, apparently recognized this leak.

Why did nothing happen, save some glares, until now?

I agree with Kagome doing this. I just feel like... there should have been some warning?

This is OOC knowledge, but whatever:

Noburi and Keiko spotted the issue instantly, but by that point you'd already told Minami. Noburi would have confronted you when the opportunity arose (there is very little privacy atop a skytower). Keiko explained her plan in the update.

Kagome realised the issue later, after some thought.

Akane never noticed.

Oneiros · May 18, 2017

Also how did Kagome manage to hide this from Hazou? He has no deception and hazou has 24 dice. So Kagome kept this murder plot a secret for the entire night without anyone on the team discovering it? I don't by that

Edit: Like we got no signs in the update before this one that anything was up. We dropped of the victim and bought the pin there were nothing in the text to suggest anyone was upset. Hazou has levelled deception up a ton so should be able to catch when people are hiding stuff from him.

Velorien · May 18, 2017

Oneiros43 said:
Also how did Kagome manage to hide this from Hazou? He has no deception and hazou has 24 dice. So Kagome kept this murder plot a secret for the entire night without anyone on the team discovering it? I don't by that

By virtue of knowing this, and therefore staying absolutely silent the whole night. Even then, Hazō picked up on his attitude. I'm not sure how you think Hazō could have made the leap from "Kagome hates Minami just like we saw then they first met" to "Kagome is planning to murder her tonight". Hazō's not a Yamanaka.

ContextBot · May 18, 2017

What confuses me is that Mist draining is considered such a huge secret ? I was under the impression that post TGR Mist-drain became a kind of: "Oh we don't tell the children because they would be annoying" kind of thing. Also by that logic the Byakugans ability to see chakra would be a huge secret.

OliWhail said:
Is Noburi still a VD prodigy? or is draining through mist something every Wakahiza has by the time they're chuunin?

We don't think it's too much of a spoiler to disclose: Noburi's skill with VD is well above those of his age mates and yes, draining through mist is still a legendary technique among Wakahisa youngsters. This is for two reasons:

Most Wakahisa genin are being trained for things other than their bloodline. Since they are intended as second-rank support there is no expectation that they'll need to use it in combat, so it doesn't matter if it's slow. Noburi has been able to be much more self-directed in his study, so he's focused on it enormously more than his peers.

There's two reasons the draining through mist technique is legendary:

It's an ace-in-the-hole that the clan doesn't want spread around. Kids are not good at keeping secrets so you don't tell them about it until they figure it out on their own, by which time they're grownup enough to keep quiet.

Because there's an informal rule among the grownups to not talk about it. They got sick of all the youngsters going "when will I learn to drain through mist, huh?" and "sensei, I wanna learn how to drain through mist" and "ooh, I got it, I got it! There's definitely something over there, honest!" etc. Easier

I mean I can see that Noburi would be annoyed by this, but it's not a huge fucking secret, Leaf must know by now that Wakahisa can do this. I mean Jirayia and the Uchiha still remember that the Kurosawa have Uchiha blood, the Nara know about the Coin stuff, but Leaf doesn't know that Wakahisa+Mist=Bad idea? Sure not common knowledge but not the end of the world.

Also possible solution:

1. Drain Kagome
2. Have him be killed by Hazou in a way that he can be revieved.
3. Put him in storage scroll.
4. Have very fucked up conversation between Keiko and Jiraiya on the summoning path.
5. Have Mari use Lost in the Fog Genjutsu on Kagome.
6. Send him back.
7. Have a proper lie how Minami died.
8. Cry because Mari probably forget something meaningful.

2.5 activate Mangekyou Sharingan

Briefvoice · May 18, 2017

How did Kagome even know chakra draining was supposed to be a secret?

Noburi has been freely using chakra drain the entire time he's been with the team. I don't know why Kagome would think it was any more secret that water whips or the Frozen Skein.

Lailoken · May 18, 2017

Really, the problem is that Kagome resorted to half-measures. There's another non-clan witness who needs to be taken care of. Oh well, Ino is a better investment, anyway.

Traiden · May 18, 2017

@Velorien But there is a part of the plan which involved the whole group in the making of the plan, the bullet point above the one you quoted in fact.

Cariyaga said:
Brainstorm with whole team on plan. Accept critiques and suggestions, especially from Keiko and Minami.

There are two plans (which each have bifurcations) Hazou's come up with in how to approach acquiring Shiratora; suggest them both to Minami, with preference for the second for the fact that it involves less people.

Bold for emphasis.

Radvic · May 18, 2017

Jello_Raptor said:
Honestly, a non-trivial part of me says the most realistic option is to check ourselves into a mental hospital.

Depends on what our goal is. I believe I've stated since the beginning of the quest that one of the best ways for Hazou and friends to achieve their goals is to lock themselves up and not interact with society. Like, a life of farming was probably the best we could have gone.

traverseda said:
Yeah, I don't really think we were given enough information to reach the conclusions about this being a problem that our team mates did. Hazo might very well have had that information though.

So far as I'm aware the clues were as follows (I've followed with why I didn't initially see them as such):

Jiraiya didn't tell Minami our bloodlines and abilities
- I'd assumed she'd gotten a separate briefing
We never got a scene with our team explicitly revealing their bloodline abilities to Minami
- I'd assumed that had happened behind the scenes
We used Misterators and had Noburi drain people through the mist in the update
- I'd assumed that Mist draining was an obvious thing Wakahisa could do
We had an update break before the first night
- I'd assumed it was just because EJ was tired
The team didn't trust Minami
- I'd forgotten that Kagome's answer to everything he doesn't understand is explosives

Traiden said:
@Velorien But there is a part of the plan which involved the whole group in the making of the plan, the bullet point above the one you quoted in fact.

Bold for emphasis.

The problem is that once we suggest "Noburi could drain them through mist" or "Misterators will let us drain people faster" the secret is out.

Lailoken · May 18, 2017

The really, truly, hilariously ironic thing here is...

Akane's father was completely right.

fiirofa · May 18, 2017

Velorien said:
Noburi and Keiko spotted the issue instantly, but by that point you'd already told Minami.

I agree with everything except this. That doesn't seem to be the implied conversation structure.

Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

with dread but cautious optimism

(Confirmed Jelly)

Vaguely Pastafarian

with dread but cautious optimism

Vaguely Pastafarian

(Confirmed Jelly)

with dread but cautious optimism