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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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To everyone saying that we shouldn't go into Leaf because we'd never be able to accomplish Hidden Heaven (and related -change the world- things)...

There's nothing stopping us from gaining S-rank over the next several decades of Konoha-assisted training and studying, and then going missing-nin in order to accomplish said goal.
 
faflec said:
To everyone saying that we shouldn't go into Leaf because we'd never be able to accomplish Hidden Heaven (and related -change the world- things)...

There's nothing stopping us from gaining S-rank over the next several decades of Konoha-assisted training and studying, and then going missing-nin in order to accomplish said goal.
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Yeah, we can pull a light-side Orochimaru! :p
 
faflec said:
There's nothing stopping us from gaining S-rank over the next several decades of Konoha-assisted training and studying, and then going missing-nin in order to accomplish said goal.
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Accomplishing our goal requires having an assortment of novel inventions that no other village has prepared for. Further, joining the Leaf makes an unstable power balance far worse; I think giving Skywalkers alone to them would be a very bad idea for global welfare. Giving them a dangerous repertoire of seals just as good as that would be a disaster.
 
QMs enjoy watching us run around like chickens with our heads cut off way too much. We should get our vengeance with more sealing ideas.
 
Dissonance said:
I'd like to echo the arguments from about a hundred or so pages back in the thread.
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Holy mother of Jashin, it's been that many already?

MMKII said:
This is ignoring the possibility that some Leaf blackops faction doesn't take an interest in us and do something nefarious to us and/or our team and/or our mother (who we have explicitly taken an interest in recovering in front of J and ANBU members) in order to gain our compliance.
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The way to avoid being blackmailed by tactics like this is to make it more costly for the blackmailers to make good on the threat than they hope to gain.

Roughly this translates to something like
  • Expressing willingness to cooperate in good faith, demonstrate such, and always do so,
  • Unless any attempt at blackmail or coercion is made. Then you refuse to cooperate until the situation is again equitable and based on good faith interaction
I know this might seem highly unintuitive, but it is backed up by decision theory. The way to ensure your life or livelihood, and that of those you care about, is to be unflinchingly and unhesitatingly willing to sacrifice them in the event they are threatened.

The payoff matrix for your opponent looks like:
  • Cooperate: Keep a an innovative nascent sealmaster happy and reap the benefits
  • Defect (any blackmail or coercion): Never get anything again from that resource, and have to expend unnecessary effort killing or torturing them and/or their families and friends when you know nothing will come of it
This only works of course if you can really convince your opponent that you really would sacrifice everything if threatened and there is no outcome down that path that is profitable for them.

There are details I'm glossing over, but I think it's firmly in the realm of doable to get what we want out of Leaf.

Izicata said:
Leaf, they're going to figure out how good IR is for reproducing seals, and any of our descendants who aren't prime ninja material might be pressured into being sealing sweatshop workers.
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Hidden assumption: we won't have changed the political landscape and incentive strucutes by the time that matters. In that case, we've already lost.
 
Kiba said:
Really? Bazooka and gun are just internal names for the projects that the hivemind use. I didn't think that you were going to make Hazou use them as names.
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Keep in mind that all dialogue in MfD is being translated from ElementalNationsese to English. Hazō didn't literally say 'gun' or 'bazooka', but @Velorien translated it that way.

faflec said:
@eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail When is the voting deadline (normal time?), and if it's still Saturday can it be delayed due to the late update?
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Let's push it back a day: Sunday, 9am New York time.
 
Maybe we should try to practice politics in hidden mountain. The balance of power is much more in our favor than in leaf.
 
I am firmly in the camp of attempting to bargin with Leaf for citizenship and access to resources that we won't be able to get otherwise without a crazy amount of luck and planning. We will likely not have a better opportunity than this.

Leaf doesn't have to be our allies or friends. We just need to enter into an mutually beneficial agreement. We can be smart about this, and make the best of the situation.

However, the immediate issue is what we tell Inoue--or rather, Mari, and how we deal with that. We need to reassure her that she has been a positive influence and a great teacher, and that we hope to see her continue that path.

We need to discuss with her (and the rest of the team), the cost-benefit analysis of this decision, and get their opinions. And we need to come up with a damn good plan to get the best deal we can out of Leaf. This might mean not trying to cash in immediately -- or then again, it might.

As @Cariyaga has pointed out multiple times, we aren't going to be able to keep skywalkers a secret from Jiraiya and Leaf for long. Best to make sure any exhange of information happens on our terms and that we're well prepared for it. And if they're going to get them anyway, we better get as much for it as we can.

There's also the issue of Keiko's present:

Radvic said:
What if for Keiko's birthday, we got her citizenship to Leaf :V

Who needs a drawing of Tenten and Keiko when we can just get Keiko tenten?
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Leaf citizenship is a trap. We would just be a cog in the elemental nation war machine. We need to be an outside context problem if we want to instigate real change.

Leaf can be allies. But there goals are not there's.

The only thing I would be willing to trade seal designs for is endo tensie techniques.
 
Oneiros43 said:
We would just be a cog in the elemental nation war machine.
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...Like almost everyone else? Like from where almost every world player in this setting started out? As opposed to... missing-nin with no resources and limited prospects. Have we forgotten that we're actively being hunted down by ninja that could literally kill us blindfolded with their hands tied?

Cog in the machine is a step up in the world.
 
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Okay: Given that we probably won't be able to keep Skywalker Seals secret (seriously, what is our opsec?), and that Jiraiya will be able to make them himself once he realises what we're doing, we pretty much have to do one of two things:
  • Bargain Skywalker seals for something good (Leaf Citizenship or something equally shiny),
  • Or hide from Jiraiya until we have actual opsec so he won't just steal it anyway.
Otherwise we're just wasting capital.

Given that we can't guarantee that we can hide from J for long enough to learn to keep secrets from him (jonin probably fail at this), and a lot of people feel very anti Leaf-Citizen, what other things do people think we could ask for?

(Ninja'd by @Oneiros43)

I'm still on the fence about what we should do here, but I think it would be a good idea to explore our options. Maybe J could give us a shiny that makes HH easier?
 
eaglejarl said:
Keep in mind that all dialogue in MfD is being translated from ElementalNationsese to English. Hazō didn't literally say 'gun' or 'bazooka', but @Velorien translated it that way.


Let's push it back a day: Sunday, 9am New York time.
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For the record, I imagine Hazo making sound noise in English in that particular instance.

Oneiros43 said:
Leaf citizenship is a trap. We would just be a cog in the elemental nation war machine. We need to be an outside context problem if we want to instigate real change.

Leaf can be allies. But there goals are not there's.

The only thing I would be willing to trade seal designs for is endo tensie techniques.
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If Jiraiya want us to do more mission for Leaf, he'll need to work with us. Either giving us more tools for survival, or figuring out how to help us achieve the team's goal.

MadScientist said:
Okay: Given that we probably won't be able to keep Skywalker Seals secret (seriously, what is our opsec?), and that Jiraiya will be able to make them himself once he realises what we're doing, we pretty much have to do one of two things:
  • Bargain Skywalker seals for something good (Leaf Citizenship or something equally shiny),
  • Or hide from Jiraiya until we have actual opsec so he won't just steal it anyway.
Otherwise we're just wasting capital.
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We use them to cross borders to do our missions(but not his) and don't mention it to J as much as possible if we are forced to use our seals.
 
Vecht said:
I am firmly in the camp of attempting to bargin with Leaf for citizenship and access to resources that we won't be able to get otherwise without a crazy amount of luck and planning. We will not have a better opportunity, and we would be delusional to believe otherwise.
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Our bargaining chips aren't going away. IMO bargaining now just means we won't have enough capital to push for terms I'd actually be happy with, so fundamentally our opportunity will just keep getting better over time.


As @Cariyaga has pointed out multiple times, we aren't going to be able to keep skywalkers a secret from Jiraiya and Leaf for long.
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I disagree. We can definitely hide Skywalkers. We just need to try.
 
MadScientist said:
a lot of people feel very anti Leaf-Citizen
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I agree that we should explore options as a matter of principle, and would like to see cooperation towards that end. However, I'm still going to be creating/voting for plans in favor of Leaf citizenship, unless convinced otherwise by information and arguments I currently do not believe to exist. This is what voting is for.
 
Veedrac said:
Our bargaining chips aren't going away. IMO bargaining now just means we won't have enough capital to push for terms I'd actually be happy with, so fundamentally our opportunity will just keep getting better over time.
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Vecht said:
We need to discuss with her (and the rest of the team), the cost-benefit analysis of this decision, and get their opinions. And we need to come up with a damn good plan to get the best deal we can out of Leaf. This might mean not trying to cash in immediately -- or then again, it might.
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Vecht said:
I agree that we should explore options as a matter of principle, and would like to see cooperation towards that end. However, I'm still going to be creating/voting for plans in favor of Leaf citizenship, unless convinced otherwise by information and arguments I currently do not believe to exist. This is what voting is for.
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Yeah that is what voting is for. And even though I will be voting against any plan that at the moment would be binding us to leaf I will still work on them if that is the way we go.
 
Vecht said:
...Like almost everyone else? Like from where almost every world player in this setting started out? As opposed to... missing-nin with no resources and limited prospects. Have we forgotten that we're actively being hunted down by ninja that could literally kill us blindfolded with their hands tied?

Cog in the machine is a step up in the world.
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It's not, in the long term. Sure it is now at the moment, but given another few months it wont be. As soon as we aren't running scared from random Chunin mooks, and can actually pile up some resources and hidey holes through the EN, we are good. Once we have access to more of J's infrastructure, we are set from a resource perspective. We can go hang out in the middle of some random minor country and train/get some allies. There is an elasticity of movement and actions we can take as missing nin that we simply don't get with the Leaf headband.

At worst, we could table this option and return to it in a year or two?

We don't have to draft ourselves into the Leaf command structure semi-permanently to start making waves. This is an okay last resort option if we feel we can't hack it. I'd prefer to come back to this when we can actually come to the table on more equal footing than what we currently have.
 
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I don't think it's likely that Leaf would betray you if, and only if, you actually do get full naturalized citizenship out of the bargain. At that point you are defended not just by your personal value but by the entire weight of the Leaf Social Contract. No ninja village can afford to too reliably screw over their own citizenry because the citizenry is their source of power. If they killed you, they would set the precedent that

1) Leaf Citizens are not safe from their own government and
2) Leaf is not a reliable village to defect to.

Both are enormously punishing perceptions to be afflicted with in the great game. Sure, they would try to cover it up but information proliferates far more easily than energy. A decision-maker looking at the action from a position of uncertainty would have no choice but to view it as a massive risk in the CONS column.

If the Skywalker seal can actually purchase full unconditional Leaf citizenship, Jiraiya should not think of you as an asset to be leveraged but rather as one of the Leaf citizens he has committed his life to protecting.

That said, you should definitely negotiate some clause along the lines of 'stupid things I say can't be held against me;" just as Kagome frequently got away with threatening all and sundry, you should be extended the same leniency. Perhaps your social maladaption is not as visible as his, but it is not less dangerous if unaccounted for.

There is one major reason why I think going to Leaf would be the smarter choice: under the new system, if the team gets into a fight with even one jounin, the most likely outcome is that Inoue and Kagome survive and all the genin get completely slaughtered.

Hazou should understand his relative capabilities and therefore weigh this appropriately. Combat should be avoided at all costs and being chained to a desk means avoiding combat.

There is some small but non-negligible chance that this is a test. We should have Hazou give a full political analysis of the situation to Inoue just in case. However, since the crux point is "The Skywalker Seals' value to Jiraiya," something Inoue postulated and which we have limited ways to verify out of the game, it's not really a test we as players can pass or fail.
 
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