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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Radvic said:
Wow there, it's fine that you no longer find the story interesting and don't want to play anymore, but could you quit in an either less or more destructive way? Like, don't just commit suicide, murder our teammates in their sleep then go on a suicidal rampage across the EN stopping when the entire world is destroyed. Or roll with the punches and plan around our last mess. Or just stop reading and posting.
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It's not that I don't find the quest interesting, but I think we should mulligan at this point.


Going Leaf to Mist would make for a better story, I bet.
 
This CAN'T go to trial--it'll be the end of J.

[X] Action Plan: A Minor Retcon
  • Dispel
  • Retcon so only Kagome caught the leak
  • Give us a roll to notice him
 
[X] Plan: A fate worse than death.

The playerbase cannot do social modeling consistently over time, and we are always lacking context. We tried to make effort to model characters. And there has been arguments on what to say. Etc. etc. etc.

But when things keep going wrong because of Hazō saying dumb shit.....

I don't know how am I going to keep playing. It's simply beyond our abilities.
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
A question for everyone.

The 'spirit of the quest', as described by the QMs, gives us total control over Hazou. What we say, he does. And that opens up doors for us, letting us tell Hazou to do unintuitive things because we know we'll get something good out of them. But it also causes this.

So, my question is this: Should the spirit of the quest be changed?

Clearly, the spirit of the quest exists to serve the enjoyment of the playerbase and the QMs. If we collectively feel that we'd enjoy the quest more by giving Hazou's common sense more power, I think that the spirit of the quest should then change to accommodate that.

Personally, I feel much more frustrated by Hazou messing up like this than I would be if Hazou was less receptive to our plans, so I vote to update the spirit of the quest.

[X] Poll: Change it (Spirit of the quest)
[] Poll: Don't change it (Spirit of the quest)
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By the sound of it, this has become a very important question.

The natural follow-up is this: What would a practical solution look like? I don't play any other quests, so I can't envision how this quest could be less player-driven while still being appealing in the same ways.
 
how about

every time hazo would do stupid shit

he does not do stupid shit

just an idea

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Nolrai said:
But I don't think it's a fun way to run this quest. It causes mistake after mistake that just aren't reasonable in the fiction, and are a form of "fake difficulty", i.e. difficulty from the interface not the problem.
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OH GOD, THAT'S WHAT IT IS. We're playing NINJA QWOP.

[edit] PERMADEATH NINJA QWOP.
 
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(In this post by "you" I mean the QMs)
I guess I understand your philosophy of "doing what the plan says no matter what."

But I don't think it's a fun way to run this quest. It causes mistake after mistake that just aren't reasonable in the fiction, and are a form of "fake difficulty", i.e. difficulty from the interface not the problem.

Now difficult interfaces can be fun. But in this quest it feels distracting and unfair and drives the players into modes of play that both you and they don't enjoy.

I mean given what happens in this quest the hard part isn't planing tactics, or dealing well with a complex world, or anything about being rational, but rather is managing this Ooc interface screw that has us acting like someone with way less knowledge and experience then we have. But only sometimes.

I think the solution is you have to treat us with a bit of kids gloves. People never chose the kids gloves when asked, but often need it.
 
Velorien said:
By the sound of it, this has become a very important question.

The natural follow-up is this: What would a practical solution look like? I don't play any other quests, so I can't envision how this quest could be less player-driven while still being appealing in the same ways.
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This is the only quest I play but I don't have a problem with Hazou getting common sense or even rolls to notice things. We didn't get any sign in Eaglejarls chapter sunday that kagome was plotting anything. We don't get to roll to notice it. Like you are actively limiting Hazou's agency because of the limited information we have.

Edit: I mean we could start over planning everything but even that doesn't work. When Noburi was getting his medic training we were supposed to be wearing mask under our henge. You guys ignored that contingency. So who's to say you won't ignore anything else that you find annoying. That's on top of plans that are already fairly long having to become longer. It feels to me that this should be a collaborative effort with the QMs acting in good faith. Giving us info both in and out of character that will keep us from making simple fuck ups like this.
 
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Velorien said:
By the sound of it, this has become a very important question.

The natural follow-up is this: What would a practical solution look like? I don't play any other quests, so I can't envision how this quest could be less player-driven while still being appealing in the same ways.
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Wasn't there a bloodline option that would cause the character to explicitly hear the hivemind? Like, actual voices in his head?

It might be better to kill this character off and go with one with that feature. At least then he'd be an otherwise normal ninja who had a clear understanding of what parts of his cognition were external and should be ignored when they conflicted with his internal knowledge.
 
The problem with "Hazou does exactly what plans says" is that Hazou does not, in fact do everything he's told to do, and occasionally goes against the plan. See library incident.

I wish we could pick either 'his own person wit hopinions and extra head voices" or "literal meat puppet, as far as plans are concerned" and stick with it.

Cause I keep getting surprised.
 
Velorien said:
so I can't envision how this quest could be less player-driven while still being appealing in the same ways.
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It can still be player driven, but you could

  • Give our team mates more agency, so they're more likely to stop us when we make a mistake. This wouldn't have happened if anyone on the team had brought up operational security.
  • Let us make rolls against common-sense/ninja-training when evaluating plans. My DM has said "You're doing what? Make an int roll".
  • Let us instill habits. Like "follow operational security, as outlined in that meeting where the team discussed opsec". We may not have the time to go into depth about what actually took place in that meeting, but we should still have meetings like that (like we did with our hand signs and the like, I presume we don't actually have a document detailing our codes somewhere..) and adhere to the results even if they took place off screen.
 
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FeepingCreature said:
how about

every time hazo would do stupid shit

he does not do stupid shit

just an idea
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I wouldn't say EVERY time. There should still be room to make mistakes. Maybe something like "if we say Hazou should do a thing, and anybody with ten minutes of ninja training would not do the thing, Hazou does not do the thing (unless we're explicitly overriding best practices, e.g. 'cause a deliberate seal failure, ignoring the usual injunctions against seal failure')".
 
[X] Kagome Must Die
  • Deceive Kagome (and the rest of the team)
    • Let out an initial burst of anger and exasperation at the situation
      • Expletives!
      • How could this happen? Things were going so well!
    • Take a moment to breathe, try to relax, and "process" the emotions
      • Express regret at our screw-up and state how we didn't consider that we were letting clan secrets slip.
      • Breathing, pacing. More expletives.
        • Make sure we are between Kagome and Keiko.
      • While looking straight at Keiko, angrily ask why NO ONE ELSE thought to stop Hazou before he suggested the plan, or to otherwise hide the details of Noburi's technique from Minami. This whole situation could have been easily avoided had SOMEONE had just spoken up to keep him from putting his foot in his mouth again.
        • Catch Keiko's eyes and wink. Give her the least visible and most natural-looking intra-team signal that means anything like "danger", "be ready to attack", "on guard", or "be wary". If possible, angle so that Akane can see as well, but not Kagome.
      • Allow the team time to retort.
        • If Keiko responds, or if anyone butts in, stay silent, and grudgingly accept their chastisement. Apologize for the outburst. This is just a bad situation and there's a lot to process.
        • If no one says anything, just take a moment to pace some more and let out an exasperated sigh.
    • Turn our attention to Kagome, and help him to his feet (if he isn't already standing).
      • Assert that he was just doing his best to protect us.
      • If anything, this is -our- fault; we should have known better.
      • This is a mess, yes. But Noburi is right; Kagome is one of us. If we could help him to understand how to act now that we aren't missing-nin, and make something out of this terrible situation without having to betray a teammate, then we owe him that much. We might not have great ideas at the moment, but remind everyone that we still have a mission to complete. Despite what Keiko said, we still have more time to think of a solution.
      • What would we do without Kagome-sensei, anyway? Of course we can't exile him. He's always been there for us, always done his best to protect the team. We trust him with our lives, and he would be lost without us as well. We couldn't bear the thought of him having to go back to living in the woods.
      • Thank Kagome for doing his best to protect the team, like always. Apologize that we've put him in such a bad situation. Give him a hug.
  • While Kagome is distracted, signal Keiko (and Akane, if she saw the first signal) to attack.
    • Activate a Misterator
    • Go full chakra boost and pin Kagome. Call out to Noburi (and Akane) to help, if they haven't sprung into action already.
    • If the fight isn't over immediately, attack Kagome with full intent to kill.
  • If we manage to subdue Kagome without killing him (and aren't dead ourselves), then maybe we can discuss further. Otherwise.. thoroughly dispose of the body and move on to the next location. Still have to complete the mission.
 
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fiirofa said:
That sounds AWESOME!
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Yes. I remain stunned that it wasn't chosen just for the amusement value, much less the power differential. That it also neatly solves this entire problem which has a dozen people voting to pop the main character's head open like a hamster in a microwave would seem to cinch it.

Let's just change the game so there is a clear, solid line between the hivemind and the character such that the hivemind are directly talking too the character and the character is explicitly capable of saying, "No, that's crazy, I'm not listening to this obviously stupid suggestion unless you do a much better job of addressing my concerns about it and convincing me."
 
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Velorien said:
By the sound of it, this has become a very important question.

The natural follow-up is this: What would a practical solution look like? I don't play any other quests, so I can't envision how this quest could be less player-driven while still being appealing in the same ways.
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Most other quests have significantly less detail in plans than MfD has. This means that the authors determine a lot more about what the main character does, allowing them to make the character act in a way consistent with the world they live in, even if the players aren't. Here are a couple practical ways people do that:

  1. Provide example options representing what a character would naturally think of to do (e.g., have one of Hazou's example options be "mitigate the lack of opsec he observed to pull this plan off")
  2. Make plans only encompass broad strokes of what characters do (e.g. "accept the mission" or "don't accept the mission"). Let the thread argue for "how to implement the plan," and then use the dialogue in thread to determine what Hazou specifically does.
  3. Provide feedback during the planning phase to players on what the main character thinks.
  4. Allow the main character to explicitly override options the players voted in for personal reasons (e.g. "Hazou cannot execute this portion of the plan, he's too tired or finds it too repugnant" or "Hazou didn't bring this up because it would violate his friend's secrecy which he cares about")
 
Velorien said:
By the sound of it, this has become a very important question.

The natural follow-up is this: What would a practical solution look like? I don't play any other quests, so I can't envision how this quest could be less player-driven while still being appealing in the same ways.
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Look at it this way. If a Plan said that Hazou flexed his legs and jumped over all the Elemental Countries in a single bound you wouldn't let it go by just because it was in a plan. You would say it fails because it's not possible. When the thread has tried to have Hazou come up with a germ theory of disease or similar, you haven't been shy about saying there's no way he would know that, so it's not happening. So in the same way that Hazou can't think of things he would have no way of knowing about just because the thread knows them, he also shouldn't forget things he obviously would know about just because the voters completely forgot about them.

I don't know anything about "appealing in the same ways"; that's a question the QMs and the voters can only decide for themselves. But if you haven't played other quests, I can say that a lot of them are more... "curated" I think is the word I would use. Most of them do not have every single vote be a write-in, and even those that do use write-ins "open plans" extensively usually involve the QMs taking the plan and interpreting it through the lens of who the character actually is.

Recent example "Skye will go to arcade and play Dance Dance Revolution," responded to with something along the lines of, "Skye goes to the arcade, then realizes that the tentacles she has in place of legs aren't going to make a very satisfying DDR game, so she doesn't do that. Instead she (PLOT)."
 
traverseda said:
It can still be player driven, but you could

  • Give our team mates more agency, so they're more likely to stop us when we make a mistake. This wouldn't have happened if anyone on the team had brought up operational security.
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This is the sticking point for me. I get where you're coming from, but wouldn't quest difficulty just vanish if you had an IC hivemind to go with the OOC one?
traverseda said:
  • Let us make rolls against common-sense/ninja-training when evaluating plans. My DM has said "You're doing what? Make an int roll".
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What stat would govern this, and what would be to stop the players from immediately maxing it out to the point of rendering it irrelevant?
traverseda said:
  • Let us instill habits. Like "follow operational security, as outline in that meeting where the team discussed opsec". We may not have the time to go into depth about what actually took place in that meeting, but we should still have meetings like that (like we did with our hand signs and the like) and adhere to the results even if they took place off screen.
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That's already an option. The issue is that the QMs can't keep track of habits easily, so somebody would need to a) write them up and b) put them in plans so the QMs never forgot they existed. I think there's been some vague activity regarding a), but as yet no b).
 
I don't feel like Hazou having common sense violates our agency, for the same reason that I like not having to consciously micromanage my breathing lest I suffocate.

If Hazou-the-character, with his IC perspective and common sense, thinks a minor plan detail is dangerous then I would rather he not do it unless we specifically say "yes, we realise this looks dangerous, but do it anyway".
 
How about instead of going harakiri, we go

[X] Action Plan: Panic Attack

That at least would be more interesting :p
 
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