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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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@Chronic Hmm, I forgot that Inoue is mainly expecting a plan of activities only extending two weeks. In that case, we need to pick an initial destination far away from the eyes of Leaf and Mist, get the hell over there, and try to train in infiltration enough to maintain a cover, and then we can start making more plans and keep mobile.

Also, any plan should carry an addendum to immediately provide full disclosure of our clan's abilities to Inoue and our team, especially the seal-copying bit. She has seriously risked a lot to pull our asses out of the firing line, and she is the biggest thing standing between us and certain death.

Edit: Later tonight, I'll come back on and either make a vote or introduce my final plan, but Land of Iron sounds good for a destination.
 
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ChronOblivion said:
Also, any plan should carry an addendum to immediately provide full disclosure of our clan's abilities to Inoue and our team, especially the seal-copying bit. She has seriously risked a lot to pull our asses out of the firing line, and she is the biggest thing standing between us and certain death.
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How about we do the reasonable thing and wait a month or two to make sure she is not delivering us to Orochimaru or something. Anko can be sneaky like that.
 
Chronic said:
It is pretty clear that she wants an actual decision from us, she can just change that as she wishes if she thinks we chose stupidly.
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That's not even my point.
We are being given the option of agency. I am using that agency to say 'hey, no, let's not go into potentially dangerous plans half prepared and get a little experience under our belt' I'm honestly not even doing anything that wouldn't be done with the other plans anyways. I have a plan, it's just flexible in case it goes bottom up, specifying that we default to Inoue sensei on a choice of action when that does happen. This is pretty much stated as part of what will happen anyways. These are bad complaints about my plan that are less actual complaints and more splitting of hairs.

I have apparently worded my plan in a way that creates a kneejerk reaction of 'no, bad plan' and I'm sorry for that, but my plan can basically be surmised as 'get good at passing ourselves off as civilians and explore the elemental nations.' It's not specific, because things change, and it makes a note that we are defaulting to Inoue's judgement on the matter when it's needed. Green genin with near to zero world experience should not be in charge of those things.
 
bluefur87 said:
Green genin with near to zero world experience should not be in charge of those things.
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I agree, but i think you misinterpret this decision.

This is a test.

Thats it. Inoue says so. She wants us to prove that we can act sensibly on limited information.

We are not in charge of where we are going. Inoue is, and as a rational character she will most likely correct any mistakes we make here. I think this is more about throwing ideas at the GMs and proving our worth to Inoue than it is about the players agency.
 
@Chronic Then vote for my plan. It proves that we can make logical rational decisions by providing multiple viable plans while allowing Inoue (i.e., the GMs) to select for us the best decision among them.
 
Velorien said:
It wasn't Jiraiya. Was it someone else, some individual encountering whom might have drastically changed things for Hidden Swamp and put them on a path to successfully dealing with Zabuza and Leaf? We shall never know.

Edit: I should probably clarify, so as not to mislead you: we at no point attempted to calculate how Zabuza would fare against a Shoggoth.
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Thank you, I'd feel a lot better if I knew that this was completely unstoppable and the village was doomed from the start

Although I had a thought, there were the escape tunnels and zubaza got the ceiling dropped on him... would staying have resulted in a quest over death or would we have escaped through the escape tunnel?
... actually did some nin escape anyways?

eaglejarl said:
Shikigami-san had a good plan
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wait, does that mean the whole thing about the suicide mission is a lie concocted by shikigami?
 
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I'm on the fence about revealing our full ability. Paranoid I guess.

But as for now, iron chunin seems to appeal to me the most. It concentrates on what Inoue asked for: a plan for the next two weeks.

So, my tentative vote will be this.

[X] Plan Iron Escorts
 
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We don't really gain anything from revealing our ability. We can reveal it later but we can't take our secrets back.

@Radvic
I suggest under a tree or something instead of a mineshaft for two reasons:
  1. A Mineshaft might have hostiles in it already.
  2. Mineshafts are very hard to escape from.
 
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Sigil said:
We don't really gain anything from revealing our ability. We can reveal it later but we can't take our secrets back.
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Well, we do gain something. By doing that we make it an actual priority for Inoue to acquire a Sealmaster to teach us. Otherwise it is likely that she is never even going to look into getting one. After all, we are a small Missing Nin team. We don't really need a Sealing expert unless we get a huge benefit from it that outweights the hassle of finding a Missing nin Sealmaster willing to teach us.
 
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@Chronic
We need to be more powerful in order to acquire a seal-master in the first place, let's wait until we trust her a bit more first at least.

Really what we need is a sealing beginner, someone who could train us only in how to make explosive tags would (presumably) be much less well protected, while still increasing our combat and economic options hugely.
 
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Sigil said:
Really what we need is a sealing beginner, someone who could train us only in how to make explosive tags would (presumably) be much less well protected, while still increasing our combat and economic options hugely.
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Just imagine the amount of explosive tags we could pump out. I can already hear the explosions. It sounds beautiful! :cry:
 
Wow, that's a lot of discussion. Cool. Okay, responses:


First: you have about 17 hours to vote on your plan. If there is not a winning plan, or if the winning plan has < 3 votes, then I'll do whatever I like because there was clearly no consensus. A few random facts that I would like you all to remember:
  • I'm writing the next update
  • I'm a lazy author and prefer to have a basic direction provided to me by the player vote. Not having such a direction means I have to do work, and work is irksome
  • I was really stoked about the Hidden Swamp storyline
  • I was sad that I didn't get to write it because y'all chose Mist -> Fire
  • I was thinking that if you all died I might start a new quest that explored what would have happened with Hidden Swamp if you'd chosen differently
  • I am never happy unless I've feasted on the sweet, sweet tears of rage that players shed when horrible and/or fatal things happen to their characters, mwahahaha.
As I said, these facts are absolutely uncorrelated.


Dictator4Hire said:
[] Plan Meta-Planning
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faflec said:
[] Merchant time: Rivers, Waterfalls, Iron
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faflec said:
[] Plan Coil
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Orisha91 said:
[ ] Plan Iron Chunin
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You need an 'X' in those brackets or it won't count as a vote. Apparently *everyone* has forgotten that all at once...?


MadScientist said:
@eaglejarl said that the lives of non-ninja non-nobles sucks arse and we could easily convince a handful of commoners to give up their sucky lives and come be the minions of ninja.


What if we just find a low-budget/no-ninja caravan, be all like "Yo, we're ninja! Wanna be our minions?",
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Yes! The players are doing something constructive, something that will be the first step on a path to improving the world, something that isn't evi--

MadScientist said:
and kill them, steal their cargo, and find another caravan if they disagree.
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Damnit.


Dictator4Hire said:
How about instead of trying to make a detailed plan on what to do, we make an outline and run it by Inoue. After all, running from Swamp was her idea in the first place and she is not the type to act without considering the consequences of said actions. Why not find out what her plan is and go from there?
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This is a test -- she's looking for you to come up with a plan, recognizing that you don't have all the information. The In-Universe Knowledge document is there to represent (among other things) the info you'll get by asking her questions.



Chronic said:
I agree, but i think you misinterpret this decision.


This is a test.


Thats it. Inoue says so. She wants us to prove that we can act sensibly on limited information.


We are not in charge of where we are going. Inoue is, and as a rational character she will most likely correct any mistakes we make here. I think this is more about throwing ideas at the GMs and proving our worth to Inoue than it is about the players agency.
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This.


Although yes, it's also to give you agency.


mrttao said:
Thank you, I'd feel a lot better if I knew that this was completely unstoppable and the village was doomed from the start
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Once you chose Mist -> Fire it pretty much was. None of the GMs realized that at first, and we worked really hard to find a way around it, but there just wasn't one. So, no, there was nothing you could have realistically done to prevent what happened.


mrttao said:
Although I had a thought, there were the escape tunnels and zubaza got the ceiling dropped on him... would staying have resulted in a quest over death or would we have escaped through the escape tunnel?
... actually did some nin escape anyways?
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You have no way of knowing.



mrttao said:
wait, does that mean the whole thing about the suicide mission is a lie concocted by shikigami?
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Would we do that to you?


Twofold said:
Just imagine the amount of explosive tags we could pump out. I can already hear the explosions. It sounds beautiful! 
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This made me laugh. Thanks. :>

EDIT: Formatting.
 
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Hmm, two week plan, eh?

Edit: changing this up a bit to be a bit more compatible with @Radvic 's plan, in case Iron isn't the frozen hellhole from canon. 01/16/2016 00:11 EST

[X] Learn how to manage a caravan wagon and go to River.

Get enough training under our belts to act like travelling merchants, particularly in the realm of repairing and maintaining a wagon (by abusing Iron Nerve and memorizing fabrication and repair of the important parts) and maintaining long term cover identities. <This part can be done in Iron if it's not too inhospitable to our genin team>

River seems a relatively minor nation where we can avoid heat long enough to get our feet, and has enough woods to have a logging industry. This puts us near-ish the sea, allowing us to dip into the shipping industry when we're ready. We have some capital in the storage scroll we have to get us started.

Longer term goals:

Finding people we can trust with some of our secrets.
We're ninja, and we're eventually going to encounter something that requires our incredible lethality (compared to a civilian). If our travelling group consists largely of people that we can trust (for certain values of "trust"; we're still ninjas), we'll have less to worry about our cover being blown. Additionally, we're going to have to be treated by a medic eventually, so finding (or making) one we can trust is be important. Selling points for people in our group include cheap ninja protection detail, excellent food storage, supply chain management and replacement part fabrication.

Establishing trade good sources
If we're trading, we'll eventually need to buy things to trade. Having good sources for trade items will help us continue to build our funding. While it's not an immediate priority, paying enough attention to any opportunities that come up is worthwhile.

Establishing caches, boltholes and other "safe" locations
If this works, eventually we'll have more resources than we can easily transport in a wagon. Having moderately secure locations where we can store goods (or potentially, ourselves) is useful. Again, not an immediate priority, but one to keep in mind.
 
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Sigil said:
@Radvic
I suggest under a tree or something instead of a mineshaft for two reasons:
  1. A Mineshaft might have hostiles in it already.
  2. Mineshafts are very hard to escape from.
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I'm on board with that, I suppose abandoned mineshafts are probably a good place for monsters to hold up in. That said, we need some kind of shelter. Also rotating watches. I've edited my original plan.

Upon reflection, I think we're best off interacting with people rather than merely holing up somewhere - at the very least it'd be more fun. I'm also on board with doing something merchanty, so long as we've thought about it. Now that there's a few comments and ideas out there, here's another plan (that I like better than Iron Chunin)

Edit: 1/15/16 6:55 PST - removed telling about seals because it might be better to wait a while first.
Edit: 1/15/16 8:25 PST - added to benefits and downsides after discussion.

[X] Plan Iron Escorts
General idea of the plan is to move to Iron, where we won't have much competition, and we'll be some of the deadliest things around. This means we can have the most impact there, and other nations shouldn't care that much about us regardless, at least, until we do international things (which will be quite a while)
  • Discuss plan with the other three and ask for revisions or suggestions (obviously)
  • Travel to Iron
  • While traveling, level
    • Awareness 5
    • Stealth 5
    • Deception 2
    • Transformation 2
  • When somewhere safe, reveal bloodline abilities relevant to seals, tell others to keep their eyes out for relevant opportunities to exploit.
  • Once we have a camp, the next day contact a town and offer our services as escorts - without a ninja village, they don't have the capability to do anything between towns, they must need some supplies. Use the steelback bristles as proof of competence and barter materials for supplies (e.g. tent, medical supplies).
  • If doing so does not substantially reduce our combat capability, be henged when introducing ourselves to the village.
  • Generally reduce use of obvious bloodline abilities around town
  • Escort traders to a nearby village for trading
  • If the town doesn't want escorts, offer our services as ninja, for very cheap (some basic supplies, news of the area, whatever money they can afford). This could be hunting, gathering resources, message delivery, etc. If they have nothing for us, just leave and go somewhere else.
I assume that Iron country has slightly harder than normal wildlife (because they don't have a ninja village to keep them tame), but probably not as bad as swamp of death, so the wildlife should provide some XP, but shouldn't be dangerous to us. Also, since they don't have a ninja village, they won't have any police we need to look out for, and we should be able to take general bandits, though ninja might prove slightly troublesome. Also, since they don't have a ninja village, escorts are likely in high demand for their economy, as should be any other service we can provide them.

Benefits of this plan:
  • Doesn't require disguising ourselves as civilians
  • Shouldn't lead to people in other nations to investigate us
  • Provides social interaction and ability to level social skills
  • Provides source of XP (escorting or other tasks village asks us to do)
  • May lead to some fun situations
  • Provides some news (though probably not much)
  • Avoids problems from interacting with a strong established village
Downsides:
  • Generic small risks of TPK that always exist because ninja-deathworld
    • Missing-nin (though there's not really anything there for them)
    • Informants (though it seems unlikely any village would really want informants in Iron, and unless they are Mist, they really shouldn't care about us, and even if they're Mist, they should only care about us if they figure out exactly who we are)
  • If it's winter we freeze to death
  • Higher chance of meeting missing-nin
 
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Radvic said:
When somewhere safe, reveal bloodline abilities relevant to seals, tell others to keep their eyes out for relevant opportunities to exploit.
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I think we should keep quiet about this. Secrets don't stay secret if you tell about them. For example our dear mommy has judged it better to keep her mouth shut about this, even though she could have used sealing work to improve our the monetary situation after dad died. If we have to give our teammates a reason to look for a sealmaster just use Keiko's bloodline as an excuse.

Another thing, how long are we planning to stay in Iron? A week? A month? Till we are chuunin? Jounin? Traveling around got quite a bit of support earlier, although that was before we got a better picture of how limited travel was for civilians.
 
Infodoc updated.

If you would, please put questions at top. I almost missed a couple of them. (There's a couple still not answered until I talk to the other GMs.)
 
dwibby said:
Hmm, two week plan, eh?

[X] Go to River and learn how to manage a caravan wagon.

Get enough training under our belts to act like travelling merchants, particularly in the realm of repairing and maintaining a wagon (by abusing Iron Nerve and memorizing fabrication and repair of the important parts) and maintaining long term cover identities. River seems a relatively minor nation where we can avoid heat long enough to get our feet, and has enough woods to have a logging industry. This puts us near-ish the sea, allowing us to dip into the shipping industry when we're ready. We have some capital in the storage scroll we have to get us started.

Longer term goals:

Finding people we can trust with some of our secrets.
We're ninja, and we're eventually going to encounter something that requires our incredible lethality (compared to a civilian). If our travelling group consists largely of people that we can trust (for certain values of "trust"; we're still ninjas), we'll have less to worry about our cover being blown. Additionally, we're going to have to be treated by a medic eventually, so finding (or making) one we can trust is be important. Selling points for people in our group include cheap ninja protection detail, excellent food storage, supply chain management and replacement part fabrication.

Establishing trade good sources
If we're trading, we'll eventually need to buy things to trade. Having good sources for trade items will help us continue to build our funding. While it's not an immediate priority, paying enough attention to any opportunities that come up is worthwhile.

Establishing caches, boltholes and other "safe" locations
If this works, eventually we'll have more resources than we can easily transport in a wagon. Having moderately secure locations where we can store goods (or potentially, ourselves) is useful. Again, not an immediate priority, but one to keep in mind.
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My main problem with this is the initial stages seem dangerous. If River finds us, we're likely in trouble (note that Iron doesn't have any ninja). Ultimately, I think both our plans have the same long-term goal, I just think that it'd be easier to find people willing to trust us desperate people in Iron than in River. If we want to hide as members of the merchants, but with people we trust, it's fine if our initial contact is as ninja. The merchants we travel with can teach us how to merchant if we want to disguise ourselves as them.

Twofold said:
I think we should keep quiet about this. Secrets don't stay secret if you tell about them. For example our dear mommy has judged it better to keep her mouth shut about this, even though she could have used sealing work to improve our the monetary situation after dad died. If we have to give our teammates a reason to look for a sealmaster just use Keiko's bloodline as an excuse.

Another thing, how long are we planning to stay in Iron? A week? A month? Till we are chuunin? Jounin? Traveling around got quite a bit of support earlier, although that was before we got a better picture of how limited travel was for civilians.
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Basically, by telling them, we get a little higher likelihood of finding a seal-master and more of their trust. We're in a different situation than mother because we're no longer in a ninja village. By telling our friends, we're basically committing to not joining a ninja village in the near future (which I don't think people have been proposing anyways). I'd also prefer having TOO many levels of paranoia surrounding our friends. They ultimately have little to gain from betraying us, and I'm pretty ok with committing to them in a visible way, by sharing secrets about ourselves. It may also lead to some quid-pro-quo from Noburi or Keiko about their bloodlines.

On how long we stay, I'd rather not commit to a set period of time. My thoughts are that we stay until we get bored, have nothing left to learn, or are competent and knowledgeable enough to have a feasible world traveling plan. I see Iron Escorts as leaving the following possibilities:
  • Improve Iron and lead a nation (or at least a village)
  • Make a legitimate traveling merchant band (which we're the primary muscle for)
  • Learn merchant abilities and then apply them elsewhere
  • Learn how to interact with villages in general and then use that knowledge to make future plans go more smoothly
  • LEAVE AND NINJA-PIRATE! ARRR! (Iron does have a coast line :p)
 
Radvic said:
I'd also prefer having TOO many levels of paranoia surrounding our friends. They ultimately have little to gain from betraying us, and I'm pretty ok with committing to them in a visible way, by sharing secrets about ourselves. It may also lead to some quid-pro-quo from Noburi or Keiko about their bloodlines.
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Oh I don't really think Keiko or Noburi will necessarily betray us. At least not very soon. I'm really more worried that Inoue might sell us to Orochimaru or something, but that worry should be alleviated by time.

I'm not saying that we should never tell them, but how about we wait for a few months? That would give Inoue time to show her true colors and would also lessen the chances that anyone gets grabbed by Mist Hunter Nin. I'm just worried that our mommy might get in trouble if Noburi spills the details on sealing while they are peeling his skin off. The fact that we trust our teammates with our life doesn't mean we trust them with our mom's life.

EDIT: Oh yeah, if you don't want to commit to a time period with Iron, make a note in the plan that the time frame is open and we will make a decision once we have more info.
 
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Radvic said:
My main problem with this is the initial stages seem dangerous. If River finds us, we're likely in trouble (note that Iron doesn't have any ninja). Ultimately, I think both our plans have the same long-term goal, I just think that it'd be easier to find people willing to trust us desperate people in Iron than in River. If we want to hide as members of the merchants, but with people we trust, it's fine if our initial contact is as ninja. The merchants we travel with can teach us how to merchant if we want to disguise ourselves as them
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See, I see Iron as dangerous for different reasons. From canon, it appears to be very rugged terrain, especially with Iron on our map being the unnamed country with Madara's Mountains' Graveyard hideout from canon in it. It may not be very hospitable terrain for us to recover and build our strength.

Add in the lack of any ninja/chakra user oversight, and it seems like it'd be a place where dangerous people congregate. Are we ready to stumble upon openly operating S-Class Threats? Or even openly operating B-Class threats? If every missing-nin has the great idea that Iron has no Hidden Village, it could be a very dangerous place for us.
 
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If Iron Country harbored so many missing-nin every single hidden village would all converge to level the country. If there are so many missing-nin there there's no way one of them doesn't slip and set armies against them.
 
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