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Can we get back to you on that?

Realistically, anything released from her storage seals would probably just have been destroyed too, but my typing ability is limited right now and I'd rather work on the bigger issues with the other QMs than do individual rules issues.

Edit: Responding to @Radvic.
 
@Velorien Say we wrote a plan to kill Kei in the middle of the night, We want to wait till she goes to sleep and give no sign that we are plotting murder. Does that plan automatically succeed because you don't get to make rolls against teammates?
 
I think you're mistaking the point of the quest. We all love Kagome, and writing him is a blast, but when we ask what he would do in a given situation, we are compelled to write him as modelled, not as would make a great narrative. And Kagome has terrible, terrible judgement.
So when it's bad for us Kagome acts as modeled, (killing our leader), but when it would be good for us (he is unable to keep a secret) he is free to go against his character?

Very rational. Much wow.
 
By the sound of it, this has become a very important question.

The natural follow-up is this: What would a practical solution look like? I don't play any other quests, so I can't envision how this quest could be less player-driven while still being appealing in the same ways.

One quest I am playing where we only get to choose from options, but the players are just as invested if not more so. It wasn't even a character, but a whole civilization. To the extent that there are characters, they only last two chapters or so.

The players make important choices that impact the trajectory of world history and the civilization in question.

So, I would argue that 'complete total control in planning' isn't necessary for the players to feel emotionally invested. Even right now, I feel intermittently stressed out about the nomadic horde returning for round two, or Not!Persian deciding to wage war. I have no expectation that the civilization in question is going to survive to modern time, because I believe that it's dependent on players making the right strategic choices, and luck.

The important ingredients:

1) Choices matter. They are not simply 'window dressing'.

2) No expectation of automatically winning.

Obviously, we're still going to retain the voting and planning format, but not being able to control-freak Hazō isn't going to diminish the investment we have with him.
 
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Well. I went through the story-only thread a bit ago and have been reading these to get a sense of how the thread culture works. This is certainly a fun update to jump into the hivemind.

And well, I have to say that with the interface presented, these sort of things will be happening no matter what. Social interaction is complicated, and plans like this don't work. Especially since we have such limited time to construct them and there's no common sense filter applied to their execution.

IC the only reasonable choice is Plan Watchtower. Hazo and Kagome are quite clearly unsuited for any situations in which conversations with people not totally trusted will be occurring. It's just fundamentally incompatible with Kagome's mindset and with our interface to Hazo.

So:
[X] Action Plan: The Watchtower

It's the only thing that makes sense IC. The two of us go back to a forest in the middle of nowhere, and make occasional contact when the rest of the team goes over to meet us. We provide them with a bundle of seals and the occasional warfare-revolutionizing innovation that they can choose to distribute as they will, they provide us with news, human contact, and luxuries we can't produce on our own.
 
I think you're mistaking the point of the quest. We all love Kagome, and writing him is a blast, but when we ask what he would do in a given situation, we are compelled to write him as modelled, not as would make a great narrative. And Kagome has terrible, terrible judgement.

You aren't compelled to do anything. There was no higher authority who was going to punish you or overrule you, and if you just decided to... not, there would have been zero consequences from anyone but your own internal sense of values.

You make a decision "the point of the quest" was what you were giving maximum priority to and you did it. A lot of people feel like crap over it. (shrug)

It's exactly how Akane would feel. Remember, she was pretty strongly personally affected when Hazō caused the whole team to be kicked out of Leaf, causing her to be left alone in hospital without him or her other friends with a serious injury, using her as a justification. And right now she's just been told that a similar misjudgement on his part has led to the death of a comrade. Is this reaction in some way inappropriate or implausible?

There is no contradiction between that and it also reading like a personal rebuke to the voters. Both can be true.
 
Yeah. Time to leave. If we can't trust our team mates then there's not a lot we can do here. Bad stuff happens sometimes, and this clearly wasn't our fault. It would have been nice if one of our team mates could have been responsible, but of course no one else here can be responsible for anything.

We need to limit what we're responsible for, limit our risk profile. Kagome obviously can't be responsible, but this is too complicated of a situation for us to handle on our own and no one else is stepping up.

Time to leave.

 
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I would like to state that these sorts of problems are definitely reasonable- we've been using this interface for a while and it's screwed us over before (see: last time we were in leaf).

The simulationist aspect was spot-on. Under the circumstances provided, this was a very reasonable outcome. This isn't like the YOUTHSUIT debacle where it was quite clearly OOC: this is something which has happened before and will continue to happen under the circumstances provided.

It sucks and makes for a kinda stupid story, but it fits the characters as described.
 
I'm also going to reread the quest from the very beginning to see if we always had this issue of lacking common sense. My intuition is yelling at me that the problems started right as we entered Leaf, but I might be wrong. Either way, we might need to retcon a whole lot in order for this to work at all. Worst comes to worst, we might just want to take a different character and let Team Uplift's large events run in the background (Liberator mission, Summoner mission, the Tea incident, Cold Stone Killers, skywalkers).
 
Edit: I mean we could start over planning everything but even that doesn't work. When Noburi was getting his medic training we were supposed to be wearing mask under our henge. You guys ignored that contingency. So who's to say you won't ignore anything else that you find annoying. That's on top of plans that are already fairly long having to become longer. It feels to me that this should be a collaborative effort with the QMs acting in good faith. Giving us info both in and out of character that will keep us from making simple fuck ups like this.
Hahawhat.

So to clarify, this quest not only has a GM wanting you to cover for every goddamned alternative in votes, but also sometimes ignores parts of the vote for no good reason?

Isn't this the very definition of a terrible GM, good grammar and evocative language or no?

Welp, only one path now!

[X] Action Plan: Commit Suicide

The Ultimate Solution.
 
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You know, I used to get really upset about trolley problems. I was imagining a trolley bearing down on five people tied to a track and I'd have to push my mom in front of it to save them, but I couldn't imagine doing that but also it was obviously the option that led to the greatest number of survivors, and I just felt horrible and paralyzed.

It took me a while to remember that trolley problems are fictional.

There's a part of me that says that we have a responsibility to stay here and fix the problems we've caused, that we're the cause of this and we just have to do better, put our nose to the grindstone and put in the work to be perfect.

There's another part of me that gently slaps that first part on the head and reminds it that this is fictional entertainment.

Reality does not grade on a curve. Heroic responsibility means nobody else can possibly be responsible for anything, and you have to manage all your everything because otherwise terrible things will happen.

But Marked for Death is words on a page. It does not deserve that level of effort, and it is unreasonable to expect it from people's free time. So that first part of me is just sitting there going "oh ... yeah. Of course it's just a quest and nothing actually bad has happened."

I think that's how it feels to stop caring about a story.
 
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I would like to state that these sorts of problems are definitely reasonable- we've been using this interface for a while and it's screwed us over before (see: last time we were in leaf).

The simulationist aspect was spot-on. Under the circumstances provided, this was a very reasonable outcome. This isn't like the YOUTHSUIT debacle where it was quite clearly OOC: this is something which has happened before and will continue to happen under the circumstances provided.

It sucks and makes for a kinda stupid story, but it fits the characters as described.

I agree that under the way the game work, this is a perfectly reasonable thing to happen and that it will keep happening again.

The hivemind is incapable of preventing these mistakes from creeping into action plans. We will always be handicapped by the lack of context of the MfD.

For example, I didn't feel that it was really important that people really do despise missing-nins. It was staring right in our face.
 
Just want to point out that there was apparently a huge fuck-up even in the most recent plan.

"You're the Cold Stone Killers!"

Oh, Sage's blood. It was them. She was surrounded by the Cold Stone Killers. The infamous pack of ruthless missing-nin who had violated a demilitarised zone, targeted a civilian leisure site and murdered a jōnin, not caring how many people got caught in the crossfire. The villains who had all but delivered Hot Springs into Mist's hands.

And now her unthinking outburst had drawn everyone's attention. The Cold Stone Killers were all looking at her. They had her surrounded. Were they going to kill her for finding out their secret?

"It was an accident," Kurosawa said softly. "Nobody was supposed to get hurt."

Kurosawa's tone was, as far as Nikkō could tell, genuinely regretful. Her panic stepped down a notch. Obviously, them being the Cold Stone Killers wasn't a big, terrible secret. Kurosawa wouldn't have spilled something like that by accident. And the Hokage must have known when he adopted them, mustn't he?

Ha-ha, no Minami! That probably was meant to be a huge secret, and it was just another Hazou fuck-up to casually let the 'Stone Cold Killer" business slip like that. Because we players have zero sense for what is supposed to be a secret and what isn't. Absolutely zero.

If Kagome didn't kill her, guarantee the thread would be full of recriminations over that reveal and figuring out how to deal with the consequences. It was maybe more recoverable, but still another instance of Hazou's big old loose lips putting holes in the bottom of ships.

This is why I'm voting for suicide. Start clean. End the pain.
 
Alright gonna side with Velorien here.

You guys proposed a plan to Minami. Then Noburi used his mist in the update. In that order. It stands to reason that we proposed using the mist in the plan if the plan involved using the mist.

"But OpSec and implications and clever reasons for retcon because i don't like this!"

After seeing Noburi use his mist, and before Minami became salsa, we had another voting period. Nobody raised OpSec concerns then.

The very obvious implication of on-screen events is exactly as depicted, and nobody objected until after it was shown to be a problem.

So maybe Hazou can justify his actions and whatnot. But He didn't, and Kagome obviously was on a different wavelength and caught us all by surprise.

Fuck your attempts at retcon, this happened.
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.
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+.

Thank you all for the support.

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.

If you ask Keiko, she will point out that Jiraiya cannot afford to not cover this up. Jiraiya just burned every scrap of goodwill he had with the clan leaders; if it is shown that adopting all of you was a really bad idea then he is ruined. All of the tentative support he's currently getting will dissolve into civil war and he won't be able to focus on finding Naruto. Likewise, Nara Shikaku will have to support you because allowing Leaf to devolve into civil war would destroy Leaf. Neither of them will be happy and there will definitely be consequences, but they will work to cover this up.

(How did none of our teammates catch that? That is, I'd expect them to hear us reach the part where we say "drop Misterators in" and immediately gag us for being morons. I recognize that my thought process there is rather motivated, though.)

@Velorien mentioned this above, but just to reiterate: Keiko and Noburi caught it instantly but didn't want to cause a scene in front of Minami until they'd had a chance to bring it up with the team in private. Kagome realized it later.

I will also note that when Noburi had his pissing match with Minami (chapter 125) he carefully did not mention draining through mist or having misterators, despite providing every other detail of his bloodline and his seal loadout. Nor did he disclose the Iron Nerve's ability to record and copy seals -- he called it just "an amazing kinesthetic sense that makes him a monster at taijutsu."

I am confused. In chapter 125 Hazou reveals his ability to copy seals in front of Minami, yet Kagome doesn't seem to care? What's going on?
He simply said that he had a trick for recording seals quickly.

I've never seen a quest where the QMs heap abuse on the voters quite this much.

"Why didn't you remember X? You're stupid! You have a big mouth! How dare you not recall that something treated forever as not a great secret at all was supposed to be this great secret in-game."

You really do like to get ad hominem, don't you? I seem to recall you doing the same thing during YOUTHsuit-gate. I suggest that this attitude is not going to get you what you want. We have never said any of those things, nor anything like them. Please either make calm and well-reasoned arguments or leave the quest; accusations and ad hominem attacks just waste electrons.

Now I'm sure that probably somewhere back in the early mists of the quest it was revealed that:
1.Wakahisa can carry chakra in a barrel = everybody knows
2. Wakahisa can drain people through mists = deep dark uber-secret

But who can remember that?

I mean, what the thread discussion was actually concerned about was that using the Misterators would give the game away that a Wakahisa was involved because "everybody knows the Wakahisa can drain people through mists". It was clearly in most voter's heads that this was common knowledge rather than a clan secret.
Given your combative attitude I really should let this go, but:

1) The fact that most voters had a mistake in their head does not change the fact that it's a mistake.

2) Multiple people have said that they side with us on this being a fair interpretation and at least one has said that zie saw the issue at the time but didn't speak up.

3) "Clan secrets" has been referenced again and again. Even if you know nothing about canon the idea of clan secrets should not be new.

4) As to "how should we have known this is a clan secret?!?/111?!" Here's the first example that comes to mind -- this is from the chapter where Noburi told everyone that he'd discovered the technique:
Hazou gaped in shock at Noburi's news.

Noburi's expression labeled him very clearly as Smugley Smuggington, King of Smugton. "Yep," he said, hitching his thumbs inside his lapels and rocking back and forth on his heels. "Legendary clan technique. Kids my age think it's just a story that the adults are making up. Figured it out all my own."

Note about whether this was a fair interpretation of the plan:
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 was nothing in here about running the plans by the team before blurting them out to Minami.

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

As mentioned in the update, everyone was waiting until they could address the issue in private. Noburi and Keiko's definition of "address the issue" was "talk to the whole team while Minami is in Sand." Kagome's was "wait until she's asleep and I'm on watch."

There is no suggestion in the plan that anything should be run past the rest of the team before bringing it up with Minami.
This. And, as I quoted above, it explicitly stated to present both options to Minami.

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.
"...be annoying and because kids aren't good at keeping secrets."

Also by that logic the Byakugans ability to see chakra would be a huge secret.
I don't see the parallel…?


This is a paramilitary where apparently, it is high treason to brief your commanding officer.
No. It is excessively unwise to disclose clan secrets to an outsider. This was a big deal (among other times) when Keiko was talking about joining the Nara clan.

I understand your rules about faithfully interpreting the action plans of players. But I feel I can no longer play a quest where even the tiniest and the most innocent seeming mistake blow up in our face.
I hope you find something else that you prefer.

Wasn't there a bloodline option that would cause the character to explicitly hear the hivemind? Like, actual voices in his head?
I would have no problem with that, with the understanding that it means your character is a complete meat puppet. You would be able to use OOC knowledge but you don't get to cry "Wait! Someone who grew up in this world wouldn't do that!"

Give our team mates more agency, so they're more likely to stop us when we make a mistake. This wouldn't have happened if anyone on the team had brought up operational security.
Had you spoken to them before disclosing the plans to Minami they would have.

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.
Let's take a poll. If there are at least 15 voters then we will abide by the consensus. Here are the options:

[X] Poll (Agency): Yes, I want to give up some control of Hazō such that he will generally follow the plan but the GMs will make him do whatever they think is sensible whenever we (the players) vote in something that they (the GMs) think is inappropriate for Hazō-the-character to do. I fully understand that "inappropriate" and "whatever they think is sensible" are subjective and might not be things I approve of or would prefer and I promise not to complain about it in those cases.

[X] Poll (Agency): No, I do not want to give up any control of Hazō and I am willing to accept the fact that he will sometimes do things that I feel someone who grew up in this world wouldn't do because we (the players) voted for him to do so.
 
I would like to state that these sorts of problems are definitely reasonable- we've been using this interface for a while and it's screwed us over before (see: last time we were in leaf).

The simulationist aspect was spot-on. Under the circumstances provided, this was a very reasonable outcome. This isn't like the YOUTHSUIT debacle where it was quite clearly OOC: this is something which has happened before and will continue to happen under the circumstances provided.

It sucks and makes for a kinda stupid story, but it fits the characters as described.
Oh yeah, I definitely agree here.

The thing that I'm concerned about is that these issues will keep happening simply because we do not live in the world of Marked for Death; it would be difficult at best and near-impossible at worst to internalize the social structures in place when we do not live them. Imagine trying to learn a language and culture when your only exposure to it is biweekly chapters -- because that's what the issue is, it seems to me.

On a different note, can we PLEASE be kind?

I like that the thread regulars are keeping calm and collected, but some of you are making incisive and unkind remarks consistently. That is not acceptable.
 
But Marked for Death is words on a page. It does not deserve that level of effort, and it is unreasonable to expect it from people's free time.

Yeah, I've got a contract I could be working on right now. It's unreasonably to expect the player base to really put in that level of effort. So...

[X] Poll (Agency): Yes
 
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[X] Poll (Agency): Yes, I want to give up some control of Hazō such that he will generally follow the plan but the GMs will make him do whatever they think is sensible whenever we (the players) vote in something that they (the GMs) think is inappropriate for Hazō-the-character to do. I fully understand that "inappropriate" and "whatever they think is sensible" are subjective and might not be things I approve of or would prefer and I promise not to complain about it in those cases.
 
Chapter 128 was an excellent read and an eminently fair interpretation of the plan.

Conspiracy theory: Jiraiya The Hokage sent us, a functional but insular team, out on a this quest with a third-party leader as a Batman gambit specifically because he doubted Minami's loyalty but couldn't address it directly because of clan politics. The letter we gave the shopkeeper probably explained the situation and detailed a mission that we wouldn't be able to refuse specifically designed for Hazou to make this very error, resulting in Bad Things happening to Minami. Far from being upset, he'll be glad that we full-out killed her. Not only will he cover for us, he'll be upset if we did anything with Kagome because Leaf could really use such a sealmaster.

Hazō's not a Yamanaka

Yet. Growth mindset!
 
[X] Poll (Agency): Yes, I want to give up some control of Hazō such that he will generally follow the plan but the GMs will make him do whatever they think is sensible whenever we (the players) vote in something that they (the GMs) think is inappropriate for Hazō-the-character to do. I fully understand that "inappropriate" and "whatever they think is sensible" are subjective and might not be things I approve of or would prefer and I promise not to complain about it in those cases.
 
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