Note that the air dome is still up. You literally cannot jump right now. If you want to jump you'll need to destroy the seals that are generating the air dome, which will give your team a chance to respond. If you just want to suicide then you can stab yourself in the throat with a kunai or turn your not-suicide belt around and trigger so it splats you but no one else.
I am in definitive agreeance with all that have thus far expressed appreciation for your work on this quest. I will continue following it regardless of what happens, though I might be slightly less involved in plan-making. I am quite fond of the regulars here, and certainly of you guys, @eaglejarl@Velorien@OliWhail. Thank you very much for these many months of entertainment.
I am in definitive agreeance with all that have thus far expressed appreciation for your work on this quest. I will continue following it regardless of what happens, though I might be slightly less involved in plan-making. I am quite fond of the regulars here, and certainly of you guys, @eaglejarl@Velorien@OliWhail. Thank you very much for these many months of entertainment.
Thank you for your support. Also thanks to everyone else offering words of encouragement. I'm evidently way too disorganised to keep track of everyone I'm grateful to the way @eaglejarl does, but I do appreciate it. Lots.
If there is one thing I wish the QM's had done differently its not in this update, if they could have seen that we were slowly starting to misinterpret his charectar I would like it if they had confronted us with this either in or out of character so that we realised that we were on the complete wrong track.
The alternative would be that they accept that Hazou being his own character runs both ways. Its unfair to simultaneously ask us to completely understand there universe and at the same time prevent us from fully applying our knowledge of our own. If Hazou needs inspiration before he can apply our ideas then by the same token he should dismiss plans that are going to inevitably end poorly.
For all the first time posters and delurkers, I'd like to say welcome! Also, voting in this quest is a little different than voting in other quests. Primarily, because you can vote for multiple things! This means, for instance, if you don't want Hazou to kill himself, then you could vote for:
[X] Lore Update
which asks the QMs to write a non-plot relevant interlude instead of a story update, hopefully allowing us more time as players to rethink what we're doing. You can also vote for
[X] Kagome Must Die
Which, doesn't actually necessarily result in Kagome dying, and certainly isn't suicide. Heck, you can vote for
[X] Action plan: Stutter, stammer and otherwise babble incoherently for a few moments. Error, rebooting.
if you just don't want Hazou to kill himself. Similarly, if you find yourself thinking "maybe I don't want Hazou to kill himself" but have voted for him to do so in the past, you will need to unvote for you suicide vote. This means doing the following:
[-] Action Plan: Commit Suicide
I hope that if you're voting in this update you will also vote in the next one
Here's a current tally:
-=PlanBot=-
Voting ends on Saturday, May the 20th at 01:00 PM (UTC), in 40.4 hours.
Now the real question is: Once we get this situation sorted (assuming this doesn't end in fatal voter dropoff or suicide) what happens next? Because we're either dead ninja walking or we go back, have this whole thing covered up, and feel like shit for the rest of the quest when absolutely nobody allows us to forget what terrible players we are.
I left after we got kicked out Leaf because most every other character was trying to make us players feel terrible (regardless of the fact that it was deserved, this is ultimately a fictional setting. I shouldn't have anxiety because fictional characters hate me ((not that I do, but I would if I was taking this as seriously as the QMs seem to want))), and I came back when they got over it and we resolved to have a better life. Now this happens again, and our choices are to either die or go back to being the worst for...what? A hyper-powered failure brought upon by the shortcoming of the interface?
This is might sound too much like a victim, but I have faith someone can turn this around.
I don't quite understand the spagetti posting rules, so I'm putting the rest of my response below. I want the QMs to know that I appreciate the work they've put in thus far, and I don't regret my previous patronage of Velorien. With that said...
This is the sticking point for me. I get where you're coming from, but wouldn't quest difficulty just vanish if you had an IC hivemind to go with the OOC one?
What stat would govern this, and what would be to stop the players from immediately maxing it out to the point of rendering it irrelevant?That's already an option. The issue is that the QMs can't keep track of habits easily, so somebody would need to a) write them up and b) put them in plans so the QMs never forgot they existed. I think there's been some vague activity regarding a), but as yet no b).
I want to make something very clear, but I don't want to inconvenience others or come across as more angry than I am, so I put it in Spoilers:
WE'RE NOT PLAYING DARK SOULS, YOU SHOULDN'T WORRY ABOUT COMPROMISING THE DIFFICULTY.
To answer your second question, INT is exactly what I use in a tabletop game if I think my players are doing something catastrophically dumb without realizing it. There's a difference between letting us make mistakes, and Bolt of Retribution-ing somebody because a failure of the interface.
Well, why do you think no voters brought that up and argued against the reveal? Serious question, and this one isn't even on you. What is it about the way voters in this thread do things that made such a seemingly obviously conclusion slip underneath everyone's radar?
I'll not bring up the fact that it literally has, because both you and another poster did already, but did you ever acknowledge that it was a mistake before now?
If you hadn't, would that not set a precedent that would let us catch things like this?
I know you weren't talking to me, but I actually am. I was a Patron of one of the QMs specifically for this quest and some nostalgia regarding a previous fic of theirs. However, much like I don't buy books from authors who series take a direction I don't like, I'm pausing my pledge. I'm not going to throw my toys out of the pram and cancel it, but if this turns into MiseryQuest then I won't pay to support it.
Kagome stopped being a party member and became an enemy combatant as soon as he planned to murder a team member. No way we shouldn't have gotten a roll to find that out.
That is the more cogent argument I've seen, and I think two things:
1. It's entirely fair to the character that Kagome came up with and executed his assassination while everyone was asleep.
2. That sounds a lot like a punishment railroad kicked off by a potentially reasonable failure to be called out on, sanely, later.
If Kagome had been targeting a teammate, the case could have been made. But Minami was an outsider to the group - you would have been allowed social rolls against her if necessary.
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)
There is no contradiction between that and it also reading like a personal rebuke to the voters. Both can be true.
Amusingly, back when the quest was started we had one person say "You're updating Thursdays and Sundays? I don't want to play in a quest with such a slow update schedule."
If you vote yes on this though, you do not get to bitch at all when we apply a GM override. You can ask for an explanation if we forget to provide one, but you need to be polite about it.
Seriously, people: Velorien and I and OliWhail are each working a part-time job -- about 20 hours per week -- keeping you entertained. For the last three weeks I've been working a full-time job, caring for a parent who just went through life-saving spinal surgery, and still keeping the update schedule. Please stop whining.
I stopped reading at this point because nothing that comes after is going to be something that I can engage with.
Here's the thing: you're making this personal and it's not. We aren't "punishing you". We're not in competition here, and if you think we are then I don't know that you and I can meaningfully engage. Please go back and examine the bolded sections and see if you can wrap your head around the fact that they simply aren't the case. We aren't punishing you and we're playing as fair as we know how. If you can't agree with that then I get it and that's fine, but I can't help you. If you can, feel free to post something new and I'll be happy to engage -- hopefully we'll be able to work something out that we're both happy with.
You know what they say about glass houses. Go back to the bolded sections and realize that using aggressive language and sarcasm is not unique to us, so you shouldn't get the right to ignore someone's post they put work into because they used wording you didn't like.
For all the first time posters and delurkers, I'd like to say welcome! Also, voting in this quest is a little different than voting in other quests. Primarily, because you can vote for multiple things! This means, for instance, if you don't want Hazou to kill himself, then you could vote for:
[X] Lore Update
which asks the QMs to write a non-plot relevant interlude instead of a story update, hopefully allowing us more time as players to rethink what we're doing. You can also vote for
[X] Kagome Must Die
Which, doesn't actually necessarily result in Kagome dying, and certainly isn't suicide. Heck, you can vote for
[X] Action plan: Stutter, stammer and otherwise babble incoherently for a few moments. Error, rebooting.
if you just don't want Hazou to kill himself. Similarly, if you find yourself thinking "maybe I don't want Hazou to kill himself" but have voted for him to do so in the past, you will need to unvote for you suicide vote. This means doing the following:
[-] Action Plan: Commit Suicide
I hope that if you're voting in this update you will also vote in the next one
Here's a current tally:
-=PlanBot=-
Voting ends on Saturday, May the 20th at 01:00 PM (UTC), in 40.4 hours.
To me, some of th shock is the impact of the operational security needed within the team, because a functional village of mixed clans needs to be able to communicate details of capacities (and only keep the level of detail needed to learn them as secret). There is the appearance of a matrix management system in place with clans on one axis, and village on another. Knowing how that works should have been part of that prep, and there should be measures that make information sharing possible, or villages with strong teamwork or a leader strong enough to force sharing secrets will have an ongoing tactical advantage at the squad level.
More generally, there does seem to be a pattern of a stray comment in a plan pushing things in a wild direction due to a mismatch between the paranoia level of the plan writers, and the simulation of the world by the QMs. I appreciate their efforts, but I'm not happy with the way this disconnect seems to be going as only an occasional commenter.
If there is one thing I wish the QM's had done differently its not in this update, if they could have seen that we were slowly starting to misinterpret his charectar I would like it if they had confronted us with this either in or out of character so that we realised that we were on the complete wrong track.
Do you mean misinterpreting Hazō's character? Because I don't think the players have done that in any systematic kind of way.
The alternative would be that they accept that Hazou being his own character runs both ways. Its unfair to simultaneously ask us to completely understand there universe and at the same time prevent us from fully applying our knowledge of our own. If Hazou needs inspiration before he can apply our ideas then by the same token he should dismiss plans that are going to inevitably end poorly.
This is the issue we're working on with the new poll. If the player base decides it wishes to surrender some amount of agency to Hazō-the-character in the name of drawing on his personal common sense, then that is something that is likely to happen. Probably in some pretty strange ways that will take time to smooth out, since I for one find the idea deeply alien from a QMing perspective and will have to work to get my head around it.
This is the issue we're working on with the new poll. If the player base decides it wishes to surrender some amount of agency to Hazō-the-character in the name of drawing on his personal common sense, then that is something that is likely to happen. Probably in some pretty strange ways that will take time to smooth out, since I for one find the idea deeply alien from a QMing perspective and will have to work to get my head around it.
You should seriously consider reading one of the many other quests on this board and seeing how other QMs do it. Might help you get your head around it.
This is the issue we're working on with the new poll. If the player base decides it wishes to surrender some amount of agency to Hazō-the-character in the name of drawing on his personal common sense, then that is something that is likely to happen. Probably in some pretty strange ways that will take time to smooth out, since I for one find the idea deeply alien from a QMing perspective and will have to work to get my head around it.
Is it really so strange to have "If this option is obviously stupid from an IC perspective, don't do it"?
It shouldn't cause any significant differences in ~90% of the plans that I've seen thus far, and would only ignore a few lines here or there.
There is an important case to consider though: when an entire plan is entirely unusable due to said common sense overriding an obviously integral part of the plan, then having to modify the entire thing wouldn't really make sense.
In that case perhaps just default to a lore update? If ~30% or more of a plan is invalidated due to common sense, then just skip that update and force the players to come up with a better plan. Just do a lore update instead.
Now the real question is: Once we get this situation sorted (assuming this doesn't end in fatal voter dropoff or suicide) what happens next? Because we're either dead ninja walking or we go back, have this whole thing covered up, and feel like shit for the rest of the quest when absolutely nobody allows us to forget what terrible players we are.
I left after we got kicked out Leaf because most every other character was trying to make us players feel terrible (regardless of the fact that it was deserved, this is ultimately a fictional setting. I shouldn't have anxiety because fictional characters hate me ((not that I do, but I would if I was taking this as seriously as the QMs seem to want))), and I came back when they got over it and we resolved to have a better life. Now this happens again, and our choices are to either die or go back to being the worst for...what? A hyper-powered failure brought upon by the shortcoming of the interface?
This is might sound too much like a victim, but I have faith someone can turn this around.
I don't quite understand the spagetti posting rules, so I'm putting the rest of my response below. I want the QMs to know that I appreciate the work they've put in thus far, and I don't regret my previous patronage of Velorien. With that said...
I want to make something very clear, but I don't want to inconvenience others or come across as more angry than I am, so I put it in Spoilers:
WE'RE NOT PLAYING DARK SOULS, YOU SHOULDN'T WORRY ABOUT COMPROMISING THE DIFFICULTY.
To answer your second question, INT is exactly what I use in a tabletop game if I think my players are doing something catastrophically dumb without realizing it. There's a difference between letting us make mistakes, and Bolt of Retribution-ing somebody because a failure of the interface.
It might be obvious now, but it seems you were incorrect. Or, to put it more eloquently;
I'll not bring up the fact that it literally has, because both you and another poster did already, but did you ever acknowledge that it was a mistake before now?
If you hadn't, would that not set a precedent that would let us catch things like this?
I know you weren't talking to me, but I actually am. I was a Patron of one of the QMs specifically for this quest and some nostalgia regarding a previous fic of theirs. However, much like I don't buy books from authors who series take a direction I don't like, I'm pausing my pledge. I'm not going to throw my toys out of the pram and cancel it, but if this turns into MiseryQuest then I won't pay to support it.
That is the more cogent argument I've seen, and I think two things:
1. It's entirely fair to the character that Kagome came up with and executed his assassination while everyone was asleep.
2. That sounds a lot like a punishment railroad kicked off by a potentially reasonable failure to be called out on, sanely, later.
And regarding your response:
Since when is our Team Leader, especially whom we've been explicitly trying to befriend, not count as a Teammate?
Also highlighting this, because I agree strongly.
You know what they say about glass houses. Go back to the bolded sections and realize that using aggressive language and sarcasm is not unique to us, so you shouldn't get the right to ignore someone's post they put work into because they used wording you didn't like.
I am not the person you're talking to, but I want to point out that some of these feel like attacks intended to barb and wound, rather than convey ideas in a constructive manner, particularly that bit about MiseryQuest and your italics. I'm feeling defensive reading this, and it wasn't even directed at me.
This is my mistake copying as its sort of left without context. What I meant it that the fan base have slowly been transfering Kagomes designation from unhinged lunatic into comedy team mate. I would have like for Kagomes antics to not be played for laughs or excessive paranoia just once or twice so that we actually remembered that he's not as harmless or predictable as we were coming to belive.
. I didn't expect it but it kind of shows how badly we understood the rational!Naruto world we've been playing in as well as the teams comedy member in that we completely forgot he is a deeply traumatised PTSD surviving soldier.
If there is one thing I wish the QM's had done differently its not in this update, if they could have seen that we were slowly starting to misinterpret his charectar I would like it if they had confronted us with this either in or out of character so that we realised that we were on the complete wrong track.
This is the issue we're working on with the new poll. If the player base decides it wishes to surrender some amount of agency to Hazō-the-character in the name of drawing on his personal common sense, then that is something that is likely to happen. Probably in some pretty strange ways that will take time to smooth out, since I for one find the idea deeply alien from a QMing perspective and will have to work to get my head around it.
Sit back and think how dangerous and detailed the world you QM's has crafted is.
Its basically impossible for any of us players to grasp it to the same extent as you do or as Hazou would. Of all the bizarre mistakes Hazou has made since the start of the quest virtually all of them can be attributed to the fact that his actions are not being controlled by people who have years of training to draw upon.
If this quest were more forgiving then I wouldn't think we'd need it, however how many times have we been nearly screwed over because the player base forgot something that would be second nature to a professional ninja like Hazou?
[X] Action Plan: The Great Reveal
At this point I'd like to make things interesting at least. I don't think I can follow this quest, at least not to with the same closeness as before.
It's like being in a relationship- I need some space, cause it hurts to be with you.~
Sadly there's no Action Plan: Armageddon. It would be nice to finally give in to destruction- a nice, proactive approach, instead of all this passive-aggressive "gonna kill myself now, mph!".
Is it really so strange to have "If this option is obviously stupid from an IC perspective, don't do it"?
It shouldn't cause any significant differences in ~90% of the plans that I've seen thus far, and would only ignore a few lines here or there.
There is an important case to consider though: when an entire plan is entirely unusable due to said common sense overriding an obviously integral part of the plan, then having to modify the entire thing wouldn't really make sense.
In that case perhaps just default to a lore update? If ~30% or more of a plan is invalidated due to common sense, then just skip that update and force the players to come up with a better plan. Perhaps do a lore update instead.
I believe the QM's point is that is unfair to interpret plans poorly on behalf of the playerbase. I would like, in that regard, some specification regarding the library incident, where (from what I recall) behavior that deviated from the voted plan resulted in consequences for the playerbase.
I would also invite anyone to talk me out of my current vote. As the situation is currently miserable for Hazou, I am finding suicide to be in-character for him.
Sadly there's no Action Plan: Armagedon. It would be nice to finally give in to destruction- a nice, proactive approach, instead of all this passive-aggressive "gonna kill myself now, mph!".
Yeah, I think the QM's have a big problem with thinking they've communicated a situation to the playbase, that there's only one obvious way the world works. That's because they have access to lore and to people who they sit down and work these things out with. In order for the world to be obvious to us, the players, we'd need to spend a lot of time on lore updates and asking questions in character. It seems to me like asking questions in character is somewhat discouraged also...
As a rationalist, the obvious answer to misreading situations like this is to set down and read a bunch of books on operational security and the like. But unless the QM's want to write a bunch of books on how operational security works in the ninja world, I can't do that. Which is why I default to real-world opsec like informing my commanding officer of the full capabilities of my team as accurately as I can.
And I thought that was more or less what we did with all that extra social training. I mean, why did we put all those points into social if it isn't going to help us navigate the differences between ninja social norms and our social norms?
Sadly there's no Action Plan: Armagedon. It would be nice to finally give in to destruction- a nice, proactive approach, instead of all this passive-aggressive "gonna kill myself now, mph!".
I was about to ask if we have a ready made Armageddon plan, just sitting around, waiting to be implemented.
Either way:
[X] Action Plan: Armageddon Initiative
(is it necessary to edit my previous vote for it to not count?)
One of the first things that struck me since starting the reread is that we are not even close to professional ninja. Right now we're a nutcase 13 or 14 year old that trusted his teacher to not do stupid shit, and then woke up to his teacher doing irreversible stupid shit. A breakdown is very much in order, plus or minus everyone stopping to think for several moments. I can probably be convinced to do that as a stalling update past the lore update.
I was about to ask if we have a ready made Armageddon plan, just sitting around, waiting to be implemented.
Either way:
[X] Action Plan: Armageddon Initiative
(is it necessary to edit my previous vote for it to not count?)
I would also invite anyone to talk me out of my current vote. As the situation is currently miserable for Hazou, I am finding suicide to be in-character for him.
Obviously staying around won't work for Hazou, but he doesn't seem like a quitter, and he still believes that he can be useful to the team.
Just not by being with the team.
He and Kagome are unfit for society. Thus, they leave society.
[] Action Plan: The Watchtower
does exactly this. Suicide doesn't help at all, but he would (correctly) assess that being with the team is hurting them more than helping. His usefulness has been primarily in his seal ideas, and he doesn't need constant contact with the team to get those. Maximum usefulness to the team while minimizing the harm that he can do.
