Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
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- Tags
- naruto rational 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
Vecht
Self-Requested Ban
- Location
- Snarksville, Snarkland
Maybe we can be more efficient, and pay the artists to find someone to figure out what present to give Keiko.
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rkyeun
Cabbitus Maximus
- Location
- ◕ ‿‿ ◕
Keiko's gift should be a drawn conversation tree flowchart made in clear communication no jutsu and some simple cipher to disguise its nature. In it, we should simply tell her how we feel and anticipate her usual ways of downplaying them.
That's what we value her for. Being someone who can really get, appreciate, and understand us in that way.
THEN make it art.
That's what we value her for. Being someone who can really get, appreciate, and understand us in that way.
THEN make it art.
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Rihaku
The Internet
@Saint, I think Hazou might actually be the team member that Keiko is closest to, in the aftermath of her blowup making things awkward with Mari. It's definitely not Noburi, and Kagome rarely interacts with her except to give her food and occasional advice. On the other hand, Keiko & Hazou had
A) The flowchart bonding scene
B) Mutual invention of Clear Communication no Jutsu
C) Keiko showing concern to an unprecedented level when Hazou talked to Noburi and then her about switching diplomancy roles
D) Teaming up to interact with Shikamaru
E) Keiko quickly forgave Hazou for The Fuckup, the only faster forgiveness came from Kagome
These are only the examples that occurred off the top of my head, but I did get the overall impression that those two are written slightly better in mutual conversation than any other pair of characters. Not that other dialogue is poor, but their dialogue is exceptional. This makes the question of her birthday present actually very significant; Keiko values Mari's input very highly on a conscious level, but there's a distance between them due to the pedestal she puts Mari on. Hazou is the person that "gets" her the most, so if he screws up her present it could be damaging to team chemistry.
If we are committed to the overall whetstone plan, given the recent revelations about the precise nature of Hazou's artistic ability, I think we should do something like,
1) Send henge'd clones into town to hire artisans to carve one part of the whetstone
2) For the other part of the whetstone, carve it entirely with Hazou's own efforts, possibly with tuition from Kagome or local artisans (if safe). Do not use the Iron Nerve at any point.
3) The Kurosawa are the masters of replication and superficiality. The thing they find scarcest and most precious is "the genuine." At the risk of sounding like Hachiman, I feel like this will best convey significance beyond the tactical sphere, no matter how crappy the resulting carving ends up.
4) Use CCnJ to clearly explain Hazou's intentions for the whetstone. "We worked on conversational flowcharts together, but when I talk to you, I feel like I don't need one."
@faflec, Are you allowed to edit the plan in the between-update stretch, or do we have to vote for a new subplan with specific details?
@eaglejarl, I wasn't offended, but have a natural tone that sometimes makes me sound like an asshole over text. It often takes me a lot of posts to go from, "hm, this feels intuitively wrong for some reason" to "aha, there's a specific mechanical issue X which is inconsistent because of problem Y."
I have noticed you guys tend to more or less go with the dice rolls (as far as I can tell) when conflict comes up, which is only natural and fair-minded for a resolution system based on the mechanics. It's when the mechanics don't align with reasonable outcomes that this becomes dangerous, which is hard to prevent due to combinatorial complexity - mass combat scaling plus unforeseen granularity issues essentially caused TGR in the first place. For that reason I tend to lobby hard in the phase when the system can still be changed, before any dice have hit the table.
A) The flowchart bonding scene
B) Mutual invention of Clear Communication no Jutsu
C) Keiko showing concern to an unprecedented level when Hazou talked to Noburi and then her about switching diplomancy roles
D) Teaming up to interact with Shikamaru
E) Keiko quickly forgave Hazou for The Fuckup, the only faster forgiveness came from Kagome
These are only the examples that occurred off the top of my head, but I did get the overall impression that those two are written slightly better in mutual conversation than any other pair of characters. Not that other dialogue is poor, but their dialogue is exceptional. This makes the question of her birthday present actually very significant; Keiko values Mari's input very highly on a conscious level, but there's a distance between them due to the pedestal she puts Mari on. Hazou is the person that "gets" her the most, so if he screws up her present it could be damaging to team chemistry.
If we are committed to the overall whetstone plan, given the recent revelations about the precise nature of Hazou's artistic ability, I think we should do something like,
1) Send henge'd clones into town to hire artisans to carve one part of the whetstone
2) For the other part of the whetstone, carve it entirely with Hazou's own efforts, possibly with tuition from Kagome or local artisans (if safe). Do not use the Iron Nerve at any point.
3) The Kurosawa are the masters of replication and superficiality. The thing they find scarcest and most precious is "the genuine." At the risk of sounding like Hachiman, I feel like this will best convey significance beyond the tactical sphere, no matter how crappy the resulting carving ends up.
4) Use CCnJ to clearly explain Hazou's intentions for the whetstone. "We worked on conversational flowcharts together, but when I talk to you, I feel like I don't need one."
@faflec, Are you allowed to edit the plan in the between-update stretch, or do we have to vote for a new subplan with specific details?
@eaglejarl, I wasn't offended, but have a natural tone that sometimes makes me sound like an asshole over text. It often takes me a lot of posts to go from, "hm, this feels intuitively wrong for some reason" to "aha, there's a specific mechanical issue X which is inconsistent because of problem Y."
I have noticed you guys tend to more or less go with the dice rolls (as far as I can tell) when conflict comes up, which is only natural and fair-minded for a resolution system based on the mechanics. It's when the mechanics don't align with reasonable outcomes that this becomes dangerous, which is hard to prevent due to combinatorial complexity - mass combat scaling plus unforeseen granularity issues essentially caused TGR in the first place. For that reason I tend to lobby hard in the phase when the system can still be changed, before any dice have hit the table.
- Location
- UK
Project Votes For All v2
So I've been looking at and thinking about the responses to Project Votes For All, and seem to take away a few things from it.
Different people like different parts of the plan, though there are concerns primarily over complexity, which refers mostly to the two-phase approach to planning. Several people have mentioned being affected by some of the things my approach intends to solve, and there seem to be some positive opinions about the plan from everyone bar faflec.
With that in mind, the question is how we can compromise between the fully structured approach, which may introduce too much technical overhead, and the unstructured approach with the criticisms I've given elsewhere.
Here are my ideas right now about that:
{ } Your plan looks like turtles
{ } Your plan sounds like narwhals
{ } Your plan smells like buttercups
{ } Write-in
So I've been looking at and thinking about the responses to Project Votes For All, and seem to take away a few things from it.
Different people like different parts of the plan, though there are concerns primarily over complexity, which refers mostly to the two-phase approach to planning. Several people have mentioned being affected by some of the things my approach intends to solve, and there seem to be some positive opinions about the plan from everyone bar faflec.
With that in mind, the question is how we can compromise between the fully structured approach, which may introduce too much technical overhead, and the unstructured approach with the criticisms I've given elsewhere.
Here are my ideas right now about that:
- The Outline Phase and Detail Phases should not be separated.
- Splitting the vote into two phases was not popular.
- There is no official winning Outline Plan
- It is expected that Full Plans should still be designed around the highest rank plans,
- But this is a rule of convention, and can be ignored by planmakers.
- Thus Outline Plans aren't actually real votes, though perform similarly.
- This requires cooperation on part of the planmakers.
- Outline Plans get tallied into an Outline Votes section next to @MFD's normal vote tallies
- This helps the popular vote get visibility, to influence planmakers, and legitimize votes.
- Section Plans are thrown away. Full Plans are just normal plans.
- This aspect of reuse is not really needed, and nobody seemed interested in it.
- It was also a large driver of complexity.
- The addition of Outline Plans
- These are short, non-voting plans, that get tallied separately in -=PlanBot=-'s posts.
- Plan makers are expected to largely follow the winning plans most of the time.
- Adding extra information in -=PlanBot=-'s posts.
- Reminders about hours remaining to vote.
- Helpful links (how to vote, Wiki links, etc.)
- -=PlanBot=- takes on more administrative roles of handling votes
- By ending with a vote tally at the specified time.
{ } Your plan looks like turtles
{ } Your plan sounds like narwhals
{ } Your plan smells like buttercups
{ } Write-in
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Vecht
Self-Requested Ban
- Location
- Snarksville, Snarkland
Not bad. I like the general idea of having metadata as to the broad swaths, that captures more or less the direction people want to head in, but doesn't decide anything on it's own.
My hope was that grouping by goals would accomplish most of this, but there's definitely room for improvement there. I envision a system that lets people create and vote for smaller goal-focused actions, with the overall plan arising organically from the hivemind, making full use of approval voting.
Overall pretty decent suggestions. The goals here of course are to get more people involved in voting and creating plans, and reducing work required by plan makers. I expect this to be an iterative process.
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- Location
- Elsewhere
It should be noted that clones are way too dumb to do anything that complicated.
Come to think of it, wouldn't carving a whetstone make it bad at sharpening knives? We don't have to do the whetstone idea.
Vecht
Self-Requested Ban
- Location
- Snarksville, Snarkland
-=PlanBot=-
Notes:
Goals for this Voting Session:
Current Plans by Goal:
Total Voters: 1
- Keiko's Birthday (1 Plans)
Current Plans by Goal:
Plan Name: Birthday Plan: Clear Communication no Jutsu
Author: HoratioVonBecker
Voters:
Num Votes: 1
Author: HoratioVonBecker
Voters:
Num Votes: 1
Total Voters: 1
Notes:
- To have your plan registered under goals, include a parenthetical beside the plan name with a new or existing goal. Example:
- [X] Plan: Zeppelins (Research)
- Note that the goal needs to match exactly with any existing goals.
Vecht
Self-Requested Ban
- Location
- Snarksville, Snarkland
No, and yes, lag. To be kind to SV servers, it caches everything but the current page, and only refreshes once every couple minutes. The entire cache is flushed and refreshed once every hour or two (timers are random).
Also, for now I set it to send the updates to me via smtp when the page it's watching is full, or when there's a new page without an update. So unless that is solved, expect a few minutes delay in the post.
Yeah, I'm planning on putting it up after I've had the chance to clean it up a bit. Right now it's barely more than a functional prototype, and I would not inflict that on anyone.
- Location
- A Table Near You
Well, if the last sealing failure was any indication it's bound to be an interesting death, at least.
Say what you want about being dragged outside of space and time to be made the plaything of some kind of extradimensional horror for all eternity—at least you're dying with style. Far better than getting offed by some random kunai. I know it's how I'd want to go.
Say what you want about being dragged outside of space and time to be made the plaything of some kind of extradimensional horror for all eternity—at least you're dying with style. Far better than getting offed by some random kunai. I know it's how I'd want to go.
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Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
So... it occurs to me that it's possible that the Pangolin might be willing to keep the skywalkers to themselves if we wanted to go that route. I'm not... particularly happy about the whole keeping Hazou in Leaf all the time, even if it's for his own safety, thing. But then, it probably is safer, and for more than Hazou.
Vecht
Self-Requested Ban
- Location
- Snarksville, Snarkland
If we got Hazou a summoning scroll before dealing with Leaf, we could get him out if necessary, yeah? Summon something, get reverse summoned to the Seventh Path, then reverse summoned back to wherever your original summon was.
If it works like canon at least.
Edit: There might be easier ways, but this one seems fairly robust to being stopped by anyone.
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Summoning cannot be used as a method of travel.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
It can be, IIRC. Although I think QMs weren't entirely sure of the mechanics of it as travel method, last I checked.
Vecht
Self-Requested Ban
- Location
- Snarksville, Snarkland
Erm... now that I think about it, how does coming back after being reverse summoned work? Is there anything stopping someone from covering the spot you left with explosive tags in a 100m radius, waiting until you come back, then blowing you to pieces?
Or maybe something less deadly (so as to not damage the scroll...). Point is, it sounds absurdly risky to ever participate in summoning, unless the method sticks you somewhere nondangerous.
Or maybe something less deadly (so as to not damage the scroll...). Point is, it sounds absurdly risky to ever participate in summoning, unless the method sticks you somewhere nondangerous.
- Location
- A Table Near You
Summoning scrolls were explicitly stated by Jiraiya to be very rare. I don't think we'll be finding another one.
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Vecht
Self-Requested Ban
- Location
- Snarksville, Snarkland
Jello_Raptor
(Confirmed Jelly)
- Location
- Left of Center
I am all for floating balloon ubiquitous surveillance if it'll let us a find a summon scroll.
- Location
- The Deep Blue Sea
Eh? You go back to the same spot you got pulled away from. If you were reverse summoned from Leaf, you pop back up in Leaf.
Vecht
Self-Requested Ban
- Location
- Snarksville, Snarkland
Hey! All the better if we actually can contrive for them to be reverse summoned in an exposed location, and set up an ambush for when they return.
I smell a plan cooking.
- Location
- US
I apologize in advance, this post grew long. Then got longer.
As an exercise, I imagined Jiraiya's response to learning Team Uplift has skywalker seals, under the context of my (somewhat canon influenced) model of his character.
I predict he will be upset, but not for the obvious reason.
I do not believe Jiraiya will be angry that we have the seals - he is a master of his craft, and should generally be ecstatic at the brand new avenue of exploration opened up by the "elegant" discovery.
I do not believe he will be angry that we could be planning to use the technology against Konoha - he has had ample opportunity to discern that we are sincere in our desire to attain peace, and seems to be generally helpful as a result (with obvious exceptions, though there are at least generous interpretations for those exceptions)
I do not believe Jiraiya would be angry that we did not share the technology with Konoha - he realizes that there are malevolent actors in Konoha that would abuse the seals as well.
I believe he will be angry that we invented the seals, and have displayed little to no ability to maintain operational security. We are one accidental exclamation, one mis-guided use away from someone finding out that seal-based "flght" is a possibility. Once the possibility is known, the EN seal-making engine will search the possibility space, and will eventually find a similar solution. Suddenly, war is both more deadly, and more inevitable. This runs counter to Jiraiya's stated goals, which is why I model that he will be upset.
I believe he will be angry that we invented the seals without any means to prevent people discerning their mechanism upon our capture or death. Regardless of OPSEC, we are an unfortunate accident away from the leakage of information to all and sundry. For similar reasons, as in the OPSEC case, I model that he would be upset.
We are working on OPSEC, both through planning and through potential seal research. We need something, whether mechanical device or seal, that destroys the skywalker seal upon either capture/defeat (like a dead-man switch, only less suicidal), or upon someone trying to tamper with the apparatus. If people intended to include this sort of thing under the umbrella of OPSEC... I guess that is a nuance I missed.
I am additionally concerned by the "malevolent actor" in Konoha theory, be they foreign spies or indigenous bad apples (like Danzo, who is secretly Itachi, who is pretending to be Orochimaru, but was Zabuza all along)
I believe this means that the technology would be kept secret, and our current identities would need to be swept under the rug for our assimilation to Konoha. I, personally, would rather make a really good trade to advance a critical sealing requirement (anti-tamper seals/devices), demonstrate our good faith, and keep our autonomy outside of Leaf.
Because of the secrecy needed to keep the tech outside of the hands of "malevolent actors" I do not consider the risk of war via proliferation to Jiraiya as being high. Admittedly, the risk is greater than if we keep it to ourselves, but the aggregate risk of keeping it without having better OPSEC/Anti-tamper is worse, in my opinion.
Edit: I am personally surprised that there was not more explicit warning against using the observation towers too much - as soon as someone else sees it and intuits their function, that is one less nation that it can be used against in a time of crisis for Konoha. Considering our demonstration of OPSEC, the warning probably wouldn't have been too out of place.
As an exercise, I imagined Jiraiya's response to learning Team Uplift has skywalker seals, under the context of my (somewhat canon influenced) model of his character.
I predict he will be upset, but not for the obvious reason.
I do not believe Jiraiya will be angry that we have the seals - he is a master of his craft, and should generally be ecstatic at the brand new avenue of exploration opened up by the "elegant" discovery.
I do not believe he will be angry that we could be planning to use the technology against Konoha - he has had ample opportunity to discern that we are sincere in our desire to attain peace, and seems to be generally helpful as a result (with obvious exceptions, though there are at least generous interpretations for those exceptions)
I do not believe Jiraiya would be angry that we did not share the technology with Konoha - he realizes that there are malevolent actors in Konoha that would abuse the seals as well.
I believe he will be angry that we invented the seals, and have displayed little to no ability to maintain operational security. We are one accidental exclamation, one mis-guided use away from someone finding out that seal-based "flght" is a possibility. Once the possibility is known, the EN seal-making engine will search the possibility space, and will eventually find a similar solution. Suddenly, war is both more deadly, and more inevitable. This runs counter to Jiraiya's stated goals, which is why I model that he will be upset.
I believe he will be angry that we invented the seals without any means to prevent people discerning their mechanism upon our capture or death. Regardless of OPSEC, we are an unfortunate accident away from the leakage of information to all and sundry. For similar reasons, as in the OPSEC case, I model that he would be upset.
We are working on OPSEC, both through planning and through potential seal research. We need something, whether mechanical device or seal, that destroys the skywalker seal upon either capture/defeat (like a dead-man switch, only less suicidal), or upon someone trying to tamper with the apparatus. If people intended to include this sort of thing under the umbrella of OPSEC... I guess that is a nuance I missed.
I am additionally concerned by the "malevolent actor" in Konoha theory, be they foreign spies or indigenous bad apples (like Danzo, who is secretly Itachi, who is pretending to be Orochimaru, but was Zabuza all along)
I believe this means that the technology would be kept secret, and our current identities would need to be swept under the rug for our assimilation to Konoha. I, personally, would rather make a really good trade to advance a critical sealing requirement (anti-tamper seals/devices), demonstrate our good faith, and keep our autonomy outside of Leaf.
Because of the secrecy needed to keep the tech outside of the hands of "malevolent actors" I do not consider the risk of war via proliferation to Jiraiya as being high. Admittedly, the risk is greater than if we keep it to ourselves, but the aggregate risk of keeping it without having better OPSEC/Anti-tamper is worse, in my opinion.
Edit: I am personally surprised that there was not more explicit warning against using the observation towers too much - as soon as someone else sees it and intuits their function, that is one less nation that it can be used against in a time of crisis for Konoha. Considering our demonstration of OPSEC, the warning probably wouldn't have been too out of place.
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- Location
- Snakesden
I like the whetstone idea in general, but I feel like it's not quite her. It actually works pretty well as a response to Mari's current funk, especially if there's a precious stone at the core or something like that. Haven't been able to come up with an alternative I really like (besides Indicated for Termination), but I'll try and write something up tomorrow.