Side benefit of this plan: confirmation that lunar eclipses exist in the EN! Otherwise Oro wouldn't know the phrase
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
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- 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
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Noburi and Kei both have equal or more than 6FP, which means they cannot buy any more FP.
True, yeah.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Notably, Sasuke is a ninjutsu special jonin, and a THer, so he should have high reserves. For him not to even be mentioned...
No wonder Naruto's mad at Orochimaru!
- Location
- France
Letter is getting posted soon and will have signatures (we're currently at the "alright, this is the letter that emerged from everyone's paragraphs and debates, now who wants to put their username on it" stage).
As to who wrote it ? There are 30 people in the discord channel dedicated to it (meaning "30 people joined and posted at least once since it was created in november"), and I'd say at least half of them contributed to the letter and its various drafts ? It's definitely been very collaborative and has been underway for over a month.
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- Location
- United States
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
It's okay, Tsuande. I'm sure that if Orochimaru actually thought you were in danger he would have brought you too.
- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Reaction post!
That was a doozy.
Either Naruto is principled and deeply naive, or he's making the noises he needs to make for people who need to hear them. I expect the latter - 'hey we're going to go steal a Rift to the afterlife, eventually catapulting Leaf to undisputed supremacy but calling down the might of every other nation including whichever Akatsuki members we don't kill' isn't exactly the message he wants to deliver for a half-dozen reasons.
The thing that I can't reconcile is the comment about 'needing a cover'. How does killing someone create a cover? What is the cover? It must be the fake lab, but...ah, this is too tangled for me to try to pick apart right now.
I don't think it's likely that Orochimaru merked Kabuto - he's too useful. I expect that he was experimenting on some poor missing-nin - maybe the kid that ran away when we accidentally threatened him with fish sex torture - and that some of Orochimaru's contingencies feature throwing monsters out, just like the other biosealer we took down.
Regardless, he's not going to see justice for any of this until we've revived a bunch of S-rankers, and he's going to see that coming and dip.
It's going to sting so much when he inevitably stabs us in the back.
Y'know what we should have done? Tried to pass this off as Pain, revived. This is exactly the sort of bullshit he could have pulled, and would have discouraged Moon from running to the Akatsuki.
Interesting that he didn't just lead with that, and even more interesting that Tsunade participated in any of this. My model of her needs some updating.
On a related note, why isn't Mari locking crowds down? Is that a known capability of hers? I figured that basically no one knew she could do that.
...I kinda hope someone ran into the Force Dome and then realized there was something in their way.
I hope it's worth it.
If we grab the Rift, it should be the last time we need to wage a war of aggression. We'll need to defend ourselves, but that has a different flavour. We pull Jiraiya and whoever else out, and we can maintain peace through intimidation at first, and then - hopefully - good public policy.
Pain. That's who. Can we spend an FP to declare that Mari's implanted memories are Pain-themed? I want to do that. Is it too late? It would have been a good idea.
Regardless: we ball, and we ball hard.
That was a doozy.
Yeah, Orochimaru is 100% going to answer for his crimes. He's going to quietly submit to Leaf's justice. He isn't going to be a linchpin of our defense against AMITY and whatever remains of the Akatsuki.
Either Naruto is principled and deeply naive, or he's making the noises he needs to make for people who need to hear them. I expect the latter - 'hey we're going to go steal a Rift to the afterlife, eventually catapulting Leaf to undisputed supremacy but calling down the might of every other nation including whichever Akatsuki members we don't kill' isn't exactly the message he wants to deliver for a half-dozen reasons.
I mean. Orochimaru was already repatriated and his crimes were already basically discharged, and we didn't have this issue. Seemingly, at least. So I'm not super-duper worried about that. The rest of it...well, good points, but all points which assume we're going to resume normal relations with the rest of the ninja world after this is over. Which we aren't - every Leaf nin is going to be kill- or capture-on-sight once word of the Rift gets out, whether they're missing or in good standing.
And we still won't be after he gets back, because he'd need to level ES quite a bit for that and his XP rate is probably going to be depressed for a while.
...why burn the chakra? Couldn't Orochimaru just...stand in front of us? Does he really doubt his ability to keep us safe? I guess we're going full threat-minimization, but it seems a bit odd. Maybe it's a subtle manipulation.
Baller move. They could have definitely picked a last name at some point. 'Fuck you, I'm not just clanless, I'm a mudfoot' is a flex.
So, we know that Konan and Kisame showed up and looked through a few of Orochimaru's labs. We also know they had some pretext for being there - it's unclear if this was 'Orochimaru did a crime against humanity' or 'we need to make sure his research is above board'. Comments he made indicate that it leans to the latter but I don't trust them: he's the only source of information we have on the topic and he's not so socially inept as being incapable of noticing that we're not exactly comfortable with crimes against humanity.
The thing that I can't reconcile is the comment about 'needing a cover'. How does killing someone create a cover? What is the cover? It must be the fake lab, but...ah, this is too tangled for me to try to pick apart right now.
I don't think it's likely that Orochimaru merked Kabuto - he's too useful. I expect that he was experimenting on some poor missing-nin - maybe the kid that ran away when we accidentally threatened him with fish sex torture - and that some of Orochimaru's contingencies feature throwing monsters out, just like the other biosealer we took down.
Regardless, he's not going to see justice for any of this until we've revived a bunch of S-rankers, and he's going to see that coming and dip.
What's our excuse? The Hokage gave us orders, that's our excuse. Where does she get off? We didn't want to leave, but when the Hokage gives you an order, you follow it, even if it leaves your honour in tatters.
Small typo here - probably meant to be 'oro doesn't give enough of a fuck about anyone else'.
No, Tsunade, it isn't different except with respect to scale. You did kill - those people are never going to be alive again. The individuals are to their clan what clans are to villages what villages are to shinobi-kind as a whole. The only difference here is scale. You're allowed your own personal line in the sand, but let's not pretend it isn't arbitrary.
This is pretty delicious. We are worthy of her respect, and it's nice to have someone else acknowledge it.
It's going to sting so much when he inevitably stabs us in the back.
Runic arrays? Is she just confused?
Y'know what we should have done? Tried to pass this off as Pain, revived. This is exactly the sort of bullshit he could have pulled, and would have discouraged Moon from running to the Akatsuki.
This also feels pretty good. Yeah, you should give Mari her dues. No, she isn't on our level, but she's no slouch.
This...the math isn't mathing, for me. What's described here isn't a month of time, which means that Hazo is going to need to be sitting back at Leaf, ready to deploy defenses. In the meantime, we're doing what? Anxiously awaiting Orochimaru returning with the Rift? That, uh. We trust him with that? I have a weird feeling that if we leave him alone with that thing, we aren't going to see him again. Is there a plan for that, or...?
Yeah, this was 100% bullshit on Orochimaru's part. He always intended to slaughter the civilians. I guess Tsunade is just a bit shocked and working things out, but 'I didn't plan on leaving any ninja behind' has such obvious objections that Orochimaru obviously foresaw them and always planned to kill the civvies.
Interesting that he didn't just lead with that, and even more interesting that Tsunade participated in any of this. My model of her needs some updating.
So we've gone from 'Hazo should shut up, why is he here, proposing mercy' to 'Hazo is right, you need to shut the hell up, Orochimaru'. Very interesting. I'm chalking a lot of Tsunade being impulsive and not thinking things through to her horrified reaction to what we're proposing and general tension/stress. I hope she's normally a bit more clued-in than this. If not...maybe she's just used to being able to punch her way through problems? Maybe she shouldn't have been Hokage after all.
tfw you don't have any useful Summons.
tfw you can only make one SC
Nice of Snuncle not to fully whammy us and nice to realize it's been a minute since he's even tried.
Yeah, he's gonna be back. Like, he knows all the associated risks, and it's just...he's only so crazy. We're his family, even if he doesn't think we're his family any more.
Huh. This is an interesting way to handle the conflict with canon, and...I'd like to see some of the stories where they got their names, I think.
I get the impression forehead protectors are pretty tightly-controlled resources. You can't just grab one. Kakashi would have only been a Summoner under Hiruzen, maybe Minato, so they'd have probably let him grab a couple, but this is a Big Deal. Cool thing to bring in.
Baller. This is what we're here for,
Yeah, uh...probably not, and not just because of metaphysics or whatever. Possession is nine-tenths of the law and 'we brought your ass back' is the other fraction.
It's a real pity that I don't know these guys are going to be much use. Hopefully at least one of them gets to see some action and feels like they avenged Kakashi. I don't know that I personally want them as Summons, if only because we'd be compared to Kakashi and come up wanting forevermore, but they seem like they need this.
'Too fat'? Bruh. Bruh. Bruh. He obviously has a complex about it. Not cool, Kakashi. Not cool. Maybe we can make friends with Bull.
Both of those sound like they'll be pretty useful. If we can save even one Sannin clone from getting whammied, that's very worthwhile, and we need some way of dealing with the...Rain nin, Jashin cultists, whoever's showing up as cannon fodder.
Okay seriously: where's Kurenai? 'Hazo deployed some really busted seal array' is a pretty reasonable excuse. 'Shut the fuck up and don't ask any questions' is an appropriate command. Maybe she just wouldn't be that useful because genjutsu is one-on-one, but...I feel like she probably would have helped? Maybe less than her chakra would have helped a Sannin make a bunch of clones.
On a related note, why isn't Mari locking crowds down? Is that a known capability of hers? I figured that basically no one knew she could do that.
It's nice to see our gear field-tested, even if it's a little horrifying. It's very cool to see that it just isn't going anywhere despite presumably-desperate attempts. Maybe these are chuunin as opposed to jonin, who I assume are honourably standing their ground and providing us with their delicious delicious chakra, but, still.
...I kinda hope someone ran into the Force Dome and then realized there was something in their way.
Yeah, this is...a lot of moral weight. No one's ordering us to do this. If we hadn't brought it up, they'd probably still be alive. This is worse than Akane burning that village. Better than Isan, but not by much.
I hope it's worth it.
Yeah. This is...yeah. We have done what every vaguely-rational protagonist does: ranked our values and sacrificed one in service of another. It's inevitable, but it never feels good.
I really, really hope so. I really hope so.
If we grab the Rift, it should be the last time we need to wage a war of aggression. We'll need to defend ourselves, but that has a different flavour. We pull Jiraiya and whoever else out, and we can maintain peace through intimidation at first, and then - hopefully - good public policy.
Thank fuck. This will probably further muddy the waters, too. Who shows up, sucker-punches every ninja, and then saves civilians?
Pain. That's who. Can we spend an FP to declare that Mari's implanted memories are Pain-themed? I want to do that. Is it too late? It would have been a good idea.
So, is this...a good result, a bad result, middle of the road? I have no real context.
So, two days? Honestly I think we just tie them up and keep them down. They're going to figure out they got hit with a Wakahisa pretty quickly if they're allowed to maintain consciousness. Drugs, jutsu, draining, whatever. Keep them down and carry them like sacks of potatoes.
RIP. Hopefully not a decisive factor.
That checks out - it generates some amount of force and stalls after that. It's nice to know that we can get a few meters: that isn't going to defeat a sensor-type, but it's something.
Yeah, again a big RIP, and hopefully we can mostly avoid this by kicking a bunch of Leopard ass and ending the war.
Presumably they're pretty big badasses, but they're not currently on his sheet. Is this intentional?
Regardless: we ball, and we ball hard.
That...seems like a lot. @Sir Stompy can you link your post doing the math? I want to see how well we did, over all.
- Location
- United States
We definitely want to hear your thoughts as well! I just created a group PM with you guys where you can check it out. If any other people on the forum want to be added, please let me know with a ping so I can add you as well.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
This is a topic that got covered in the letter that we composed, but I think it might be worthwhile to zoom in on it for its own post.
A few weeks ago, I coined a couple terms in the player-only thread: "high-res" and "low-res", as applied to MfD simulationism. Put plainly, high-res is everything that we see on-screen, everything covered by the narrative and explicitly fact-checked by the QMs, while low-res is everything else, the background events and facts of the setting, that may one day enter the realm of high-res themselves.
The reason for the distinction is, of course, that high-res simulation is costly and only so many things can be subjected to it, while low-res simulation works fine for everything else. This leads to, say, a foreign essie having the broad strokes of their build specced out, but not directly written as a FtD charsheet until they need to actually get into an onscreen fight.
But the reason this is a topic of contention is that, inherently, high-res simulation and low-res simulation work differently. To be a little poetic, low-res is the world as it ought to be, the greater vision of Marked for Death in your head, while high-res is the world as it needs to be, the cold iron chains of the simulation. Framed that way, it maybe makes some sense when I say that it feels like high-res simulation is more restrictive than low-res simulation.
This is not, to be clear, an accusation that the players are receiving unfair treatment. Interestingly, it is a perfectly undirected trend that only coincidentally disadvantages the players. It just so happens, after all, that we're the ones on-screen most of the time. So Hazou, Team Uplift, and even the rest of Leaf spend far more time under high-res simulation than the rest of the Elemental Nations, in decreasing order of severity.
But backing up, what do I really mean by "the difference between high-res and low-res"? Is there really a difference? Keeping the disparate parts of the setting coherent is of course a major QM simulationism goal, after all. I'll try and go over some things the players have observed that seem to suggest there exists a meaningful difference.
The first one, and one that seems to stick out the most to various players, is the apparent results of exploration and adventuring. Our sample size is limited, of course, we have not done much adventuring in the grand scheme of things, but the sales pitch has been pretty impressive so far: it is said that the Sannin got as strong as they did by going on such adventures, and that Itachi found his deep lore of the world through similar means. It makes sense, from the low-res simulation, that such things might happen. But high-res might disagree. Consider the chakra water cave we went to: I do not dispute the material powerup it represented (I honestly think it's pretty good), but on the lore side of things we mostly just found a single carving that might, unbeknownst to Hazou, be related to the Otsutsuki. And that's reasonable, high-res says. What did we expect, a lockbox of hidden scrolls in the depths of the cave? Why would that be there? Why would it have lasted centuries, why wouldn't anyone else have looted it by now? It makes total sense that only a wall carving would survive all this long, so that's all we get. That's just the one cave, of course, but shouldn't the same reason apply to the next hidden cave we find too? If there are supposed to be secret scrolls lying around, where could they still exist at this point? If there aren't, where did Itachi get his secrets from?
From our perspective, it feels like a strange game of whack-a-mole. Each adventure spot carries the implicit promise of potential for lore, but those expectations come from the low-res simulation, which says that such things are the way lore is obtained. Each box we open, each mole we whack, yields a high-res result saying "when you think about it, there obviously wouldn't be any secret scrolls here".
And again, this is extrapolation from limited evidence. Maybe the chakra water cave was just on the low end of things, maybe we just need to do more adventures. (Crimson State Island honestly sounds like a much more tempting possibility, one that even high-res might be lenient about) Maybe there were secrets hidden at the bottom of the Honey Cave, just waiting for us to get past the vine golems and whatever deeper threats lay behind them. Or maybe, we'd go there and high-res would say "what did you expect?". There's clearly lore out there, there must be for all these worldly essies to have unearthed it, for them to advise us to do the same (as if to say that they believe they have not depleted the last remaining caches), but if the high-res simulation objects to random lore scrolls lying around in adventure spots then no matter where we look for this vaunted lore we simply won't find it. It'll always be "somewhere else".
Another angle is the contentious topic of character competence. While I will be the first to admit that Ami is a showwoman who specializes in making her works seem effortless, the fact that she's rarely on-screen seems to correlate with the way she seems much more effective at being a social-spec than Mari. Low-res simulation says that it's reasonable for Ami to build up these favour networks like the AMI and KEI, to stay on top of them, balancing all sorts of politics and personalities, to coup a Kage and negotiate directly with the Akatsuki so as to create world peace. I'd even agree! Social-specs are meant to be awesome at this kind of thing, and Ami is herself awesome, so her list of achievements makes a lot of sense. And Mari too, behind the screen, is said to deftly manage the Goketsu politics and run circles around her various foes, a less glamorous but still undoubtedly herculean task. Even Kei, who is known to be a fine leader for the KEI, mostly does so off-screen.
Ami can think circles around her foes. Mari can do the same. Figuring out people, predicting their behaviour, and plotting out the best way to manipulate them, they can do this stuff in their sleep. Ami in particular seems to thrive on doing this in real-time, dancing on the razor's edge and following an ever-evolving model as she speaks. But when we sit down for a meeting (as, alas, meetings are the most efficient way to communicate necessary information to the players), that edge feels absent. The most distinct example in recent memory being Mari's expressed inability to model Orochimaru. Even accounting for the fact that Orochimaru is a famously unusual individual, even accounting for Mari's personal struggles, it feels odd that she struggles so much. If it's not too self-aggrandizing to say, we-the-players feel like we have a pretty good read on him, barring pretty absurd "one level higher than you" ultra-deceptions. If there exists enough information for us to reach a model like this, shouldn't the extremely competent Mari be able to achieve something similar, if not greater? Would Ami be able to do better? She negotiated directly with him before, after all, off-screen in the realm of low-res. Or, if we had Ami missing with us and in these same meetings, would she be there with Mari warning us that she can't even begin to predict how he'd behave?
Just one example, of course, and a very anomalous one, but it's the kind of concern that weighs on our minds. Are our allies being sabotaged, being prevented from living up to their full potential, by living under the harsh spotlight of high-res simulation and its increased scrutiny? Are we being held back by the chains of the world as it must be, rather than flourishing in the world as it should be? It's uncomfortable to think about, especially as we consider that it's hard to claim "we are being unfairly disadvantaged" without seeming like, if I may be frank, salty entitled powergamers. Even now, writing this, I sort of flinch as I create a framing that says "Mari should be able to outmaneuver Orochimaru" because, like, the alternate IV who only pretends to care about simulation coherency and actually just wants to maximize player power might say the same thing. But this is what weighs on my mind, my true worry about how the parts of this setting fit together as we play it.
Minato can create a whole new sealing style from scratch, fueled by sheer genius and inspiration. Hazou invented a new sealing style by closely studying the Sage's creation until we learned its secrets. Any would say that our accomplishment is still impressive, but I'm left wondering if Minato's accomplishment could have ever been replicated in high-res. If, in an alternate reality where we never heard of Minatosealing - let alone obtained his notes - but still had the same crucial insights about TH and chakra threads, and also leveled our stats to the same level as he did, would it have been an option for us? Or would it have just been a closed door, because high-res simulation says that there's no way to do that kind of research without instagibbing yourself? We look around at the various essies of the world and their many assorted S-rank tricks, sharing little to no overlap with each other. Some of them inherited their powers, others invented it themselves, but the picture painted is that virtually everyone carves their own path to S-rank, that if you're good at TH it's simply possible to make a paper jutsu like Konan's, or a whatever-the-heck-it-was jutsu like Kakuzu's. And yeah, these are the peaks of the setting and Hazou has no special TH advantages, it's not like we're purusing a path where we'd even put that question to the test. But I'm left to wonder, if we did have TH that high, if we did get to the point where we approached that door, would it be closed or open? Would high-res agree with low-res, would there be a way for us to carve our own path to S-rank, or would we be locked out in the game of whack-a-mole, promised that the loot must exist somewhere, if only we go find it, yet invariably absent each time we look?
And again, even now this feels bad to say, because not even in the worst case of these fears have you ever made an unfair decision. High-res is the world as it must be, and that's simply true. It's also the part of the world that you put the most effort into, making sure all the fiddly little details line up and don't blow up in your face hundreds of chapters later. Making sure the potrait that is Marked for Death withstands even the intense scrutiny of dozens of players with years of experience playing this game. And what am I to recommend in response? Butcher the low-res simulation until it better lines up with the high-res one? The low-res simulation is the world as it should be, it's the cool ideas and the plot twists, the sparkling promise of adventure and glory. Am I to say that such things should be torn down if they can't keep up with the high-res scrutiny? It's not an easy question, even if everything I've said is on-point.
And I must also acknowledge that we have made it remarkably far ourselves. Even just now, Orochimaru himself praised our capabilities. The lack of hax-overlap between essies suggests in its own way that Hazou's already obtained the only essie hax he can ever expect to get his hands on, that these sorts of things aren't easy for even essies themselves to get, that Itachi couldn't just snowball his way into reinventing Konan and Kakuzu's signature jutsu once he knew they could be achieved. It feels audacious to stand there and say that we're still being held back, that we still deserve more, and that's not the angle I'm trying to approach this from. As a player it behooves me to ask what the optimal plan of action is, to accurately model both what we have and what we stand to gain. And we know that we should be running around doing cool adventure stuff, delving for secret powerups and lore and stuff just like Itachi and the Sannin. But we're starting to hesitate: is our model wrong? Are we just playing that game of whack-a-mole, led around by a sincere promise that what we seek must be out there somewhere, yet never where we look for it? Or, when we look at our allies, our resources, and our talents, is our model wrong? The things they were purported to do, that we heard but not saw, can we rely on them when the spotlight starts shining? Or will we climb all that way only to find a closed door and the cold chains of the world as it must be?
Thus, high-res and low-res. Player ambition and fear of disappointment. Mismatched models and a dire coincidence of earnest efforts. Hard to articulate, hard to speak of without sounding like shameless powergaming or an accusation of malfeasance. A problem measured in patterns and negative space, the dissonance between the titles of the story and the lines within. Ephemeral enough that even now I can't be sure how much is real and how much is hallucination, my own biases tinting my perspective. And yet I still think it's worth saying, not to seek more power or to point a finger and assign blame, but because if it's true then we're not on the same page even when we're all being honest, and no matter what direction that goes it'd be nice to have more accurate models.
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- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
For this matter, specifically, I am leaning more the former ("new answer that's relatively close") than the latter ("reroll with new distribution"). A new answer, designed by a QM, that is closer to the spirit of "intending to retain 'fun' but still similar to the rolled answer" feels like it would provide more consistently positive results than "reroll with new distribution bars."
It also "honors" the original roll by choosing a similar answer, rather than a complete rewrite. This honestly doesn't matter as much, to me, but I can see how it might appeal to a certain mindset.
It should be posted in ~6 hours, give or take some time. To my understanding, the letter is more or less in its final form, and the delay is just to give people time to submit their final thoughts.
The cover story is 'unspecified seal arrays', got it. Quite sensible.
And I see Naruto is on board with the general plan we suggested.
IMO if the Rift hadn't changed the game, false-flag attacks along those lines were one of the two big faultlines that would've made AMITY unviable in the long term anyway (along with villages the ~1 new S-rank nin per major village per decade and occasional Akatsuki death meaning that eventually they won't hold enough power to deter a coalition of several major villages)
Umehisa mentioned! (For those who don't recall, he was the first of the clanless jōnin who challenged Ritsuo)
I have a have a perhaps disproportionate fondness for him and Miyajama Ema, considering that they appeared in a single paragraph each, due to the fact that they were going to feature in an omake I was working on a while ago but never finished.
But the question is, who?
I'm hoping for Kabuto. Firstly, we always thought might be a traitor. Secondly, he's too cool with the whole biosealing and vivisection thing. Thirdly, OOC info suggests he's dangerous in general and might try something when it comes to necromancy in particular.
Better than I hoped for, honestly; I'm glad Tsunade cares enough to insist on a certain level of mercy.
Perhaps we can come up with some deniable way to help out the civilians after the rift battle, though I wouldn't bet on it. Maybe tip off Mist to take over the place?
So if we ressurect Kakashi, and then there are two simultaneous living people who have signed the Dog Scroll, does it undergo a Sage-level sealing failure?
'I think in this case we are the weaker allies; good to have you with us.'
Final techniques are a bit of an oddity; one has to wonder why people invent and level them. My guess would be that most of them are take-the-limits-off variants of normal non-final techiques, but it doesn't fit easily into normal ninjutsu design in this system.
...it'd be funny if after we get rift retrivals streamlined enough re-useable final techniques became somebody's speciality.
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Without contradicting your points, which are interesting and noteworthy, I should mention that the high-res/low-res division also advantages the players in a variety of contexts. The other Leaf clans, for example, are at a massive competitive disadvantage because they are usually stuck in low-res mode, and don't all get to develop and react to their circumstances over time in the same way that the Gōketsu do. Likewise, we can barely keep up with designing new runes and ninjutsu as the Gōketsu obtain them. Other ninja tend to be out of luck unless we have a concrete reason to work on their character sheets, even if high-res would give them some significant advantage (e.g. other sealmasters having a chance to invent powerful original seals in the background because they're conducting research on a daily basis, or somebody else discovering Earthshaping or an equally impactful counterpart).
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
Yeah, and we've definitely been doing our best to make the most of our opportunities. Ultimately the core problem with high-res/low-res dissonance isn't the end-state it puts us at, the ledger sheet of advantage and disadvantage, and more the ambiguity it introduces into our models of the world. We're doing our best to understand this world and make the best choices within it, as is the purpose of this quest, and if there are persistent mismatches between how we think things work and how things actually work then even when we do win it gets harder for our victories to feel satisfying.
- Location
- United States
Very well put, @Inferno Vulpix.
- Location
- USA
Orochimaru may have been repatriated, but there was no story that he wasn't a missing-nin all along. He got a blanket pardon from Jiraiya after Jiraiya was too dead to face the political consequences, and right after Hiashi confirmed that pardon, Hiashi also ended up too dead to face the political consequences. The Collapse also gave Orochimaru a fair bit of cover.
Yes, that was the intention.
Why wouldn't you trust him to take the Rift to Leaf? Surely you're not accusing Orochimaru of being anything less than a perfectly loyal Leaf ninja?
Orochimaru's "kill all the civilians" option helped price-anchor Tsunade to accept the nicer path. See, Orochimaru really does look out for the civvies! (Alternately, Tsunade isn't planning on letting the captured ninja go free at the end).
You don't think Kakashi was the kind of person to pull a heist for his canine companions?
What does she bring to the table that Mari does not?
Tsunade's being conservative, because she doesn't think that it'll be necessary to overpower Moon.
Almost certainly! But they wouldn't be nicely lit up they way jutsu are.
My intention was that Mari was doing it discreetly, not actively pulling civilians out of burning buildings. That would probably put the Gouketsu on people's radar, once the story spread to the EN.
Naruto saying "Hazou's just below Minato, the guy that disappeared Tailed Beasts and teleported across countries" does kind of leave open a lot of options for what's possible.
Well, AMITY doesn't need to stand up to decades, it just needs to hold long enough that Pain can come back and use it as a basis to usher in a new era of world peace!
- Konan
Would the Sage really build such a failure-prone system?
Unfortunately, the process of practicing suicide techniques has claimed many a ninja life.
Very enjoyable reaction posts, both of you. Please take +1 XP each to a character of your choice (chosen randomly by 1d3 among the PCs if you do not pick within 24 hours) as thanks.
- Location
- Yes.
So what you're saying is that Orochimaru did the Collapse. Huh.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I'll vote for any plan that has us do this. We need that chakra.
I just want to say here that I am so glad that Tsunade vetoed murdering the entirety of Moon. I ... honestly wasn't sure that would be worth it even if it was the only thing we could do to get the extra chakra. There's a thin line between us and Pain, and that would put us on the other side of it, I think.
It's different if you think of institutions (and families, because that's what clans are) as things which matter intrinsically in themselves, which is a view relatively uncommon in the modern Western world but (as I understand it) widely held historically. Tsunade is thinking "well, people died, but the people were going to die anyway; the institution of the clan lived on". Given that it's common for cultures that hold this view to raise people to value the wellbeing of their family or institution above their own, it makes perfect sense to view wiping out an entire institution as worse than killing the same number of people spread across different institutions; the members of the institutions themselves would agree with that view, insofar as the total damge dealt to instutitions by killings scattered across many is far lighter than the total damage dealt from the complete destruction of one.
The idea that institutions exist only to serve their members is (as I understand it) not the norm, historically. I think it's correct - though of course I would, being raised in a culture that holds that view - but it's important to understand that most of the people of the Elemental Nations probably don't think that way.
... We're all going to die.
Oh well, at least we'll get to find out what the other Paths are like after our mind is translated into our chakra and smeared evenly across the universe to silently scream for all eternity.
- Location
- The Soviet Republic of Canuckistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hazo, please and thank you.
Another genjutsu-capable jonin SC user is another genjutsu-capable jonin SC user. Genjutsu appears to be pretty much perfect for this mission: you lock anyone dangerous down for the half-second it takes a Sannin to crash into them and render them harmless.
~29% of available ninja are dead. Sure, some of these were genin, but some of them were high chuunin or jonin. I'm not going to ask you to crunch the numbers on the net chakra gain from having increased our capture effectiveness from 70% to something like 95%, but it seems like it would have been meaningful to me without significantly increasing the degree to which we wound up implicated.
On an entirely different note, the next threadmark will be the thousandth threadmark. Wild.
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- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Amusing choice: does the Battle for the Rift happen on the thousandth threadmark, or on chapter 700?
redzonejoe
Vaguely Pastafarian
- Location
- Canada
We must simply find and remove a threadmark to resolve this issue.Amusing choice: does the Battle for the Rift happen on the thousandth threadmark, or on chapter 700?
Edit: Or that. ^
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- Location
- Yes.
Or perhaps this one, which is labeled as an Omake.
- Location
- United States
Mari, you're giving off more warning signs than I am comfortable with…