Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

Oneiros · May 28, 2017

faflec said:
This looks like the sort of thing that we-the-hivemind have to make, not we-the-Hazou. I dunno.

Obviously but this gives in universe reasons why Kei will develop the style we come up for her. So we plant the seed here then brainstorm styles for her then when we get GM approval for whichever style they want boom it's developed and we can spend exp on it.

faflec said:
Clarification: Does Hazou know about guns and gun types? I mean, this might just be ignored due to lack of knowledge...

Hey Kagome you ever notice how explosions cause shrapnel to go every where? I was wondering if we made a tube and had an explosion on it maybe we could target that better. Do you have any thoughts?

faflec said:
We're in a tiny hill in the Land of Wind, I think (not 100% since it's not stated outright) we're in the desert? Desert picnics don't seem romantic to me because the sand just gets everywhere.

Sand dunes where you can see vast landscapes and scenic views. Also just do a flat MEW so you aren't on the sand

Inferno Vulpix · May 28, 2017

This is the perfect opportunity to find out what those Mountain seals do, and by that I mean if we think there's better stuff to do now, when we have spare time to analyze but no facility to research, then we'll never get to them once we're in Leaf with a full Kagome-approved research facility and five projects to juggle.

It shouldn't take very long, especially if we can convince Kagome to help us despite his overall lack of interest in them. If even one of them holds the same potential Elemental Mastery did, we'll be glad we finally got around to it.

Enjou · May 28, 2017

faflec said:
Discuss the Mist Drain Situation.

Minami knows Noburi's ace-in-the-hole, and has the ability to use this as leverage against Jiraiya's clan.

HALP

I would mention that we think that she's not particularly likely to use the knowledge against us. I would also ask what type of systems the clans of Konoha have in place to deal with clan members who learn secrets of other clans - it's going to happen given that people will use clan secrets in combat, and killing eachother over it would be a good way to start a civil war.

faflec · May 28, 2017

Oneiros43 said:
Obviously but this gives in universe reasons why Kei will develop the style we come up for her. So we plant the seed here then brainstorm styles for her then when we get GM approval for whichever style they want boom it's developed and we can spend exp on it.

Would rather wait for some ideas before adding this because otherwise it feels like we're foisting things off on the GMs.

Oneiros43 said:
Hey Kagome you ever notice how explosions cause shrapnel to go every where? I was wondering if we made a tube and had an explosion on it maybe we could target that better. Do you have any thoughts?

Oh that's what you meant. I'll add it in.

Oneiros43 said:
Sand dunes where you can see vast landscapes and scenic views. Also just do a flat MEW so you aren't on the sand

Vast landscapes of...sand?

I dunno, I'm the not-romantic type but it seems boring to me.

Inferno Vulpix said:
This is the perfect opportunity to find out what those Mountain seals do, and by that I mean if we think there's better stuff to do now, when we have spare time to analyze but no facility to research, then we'll never get to them once we're in Leaf with a full Kagome-approved research facility and five projects to juggle.

It shouldn't take very long, especially if we can convince Kagome to help us despite his overall lack of interest in them. If even one of them holds the same potential Elemental Mastery did, we'll be glad we finally got around to it.

Added to the list.

Enjou said:
I would mention that we think that she's not particularly likely to use the knowledge against us. I would also ask what type of systems the clans of Konoha have in place to deal with clan members who learn secrets of other clans - it's going to happen given that people will use clan secrets in combat, and killing eachother over it would be a good way to start a civil war.

Um, the retcon'd chapter argued that Minami could use this knowledge as leverage against us?

Oneiros · May 28, 2017

faflec said:
Would rather wait for some ideas before adding this because otherwise it feels like we're foisting things off on the GMs.

Ok then let's get started. I like the idea of Rerolls for Kei's style. Basically she can read the flow of battle and can intercede when people fuck up. Would probably let her cause 1 reroll per 10 points in the style. Then she can add a bonus to the reroll based on the degree of failure. So the worse we fail the more she adds to the reroll

Anyone else have any thoughts?

Cariyaga · May 28, 2017

Oneiros43 said:
Ok then let's get started. I like the idea of Rerolls for Kei's style. Basically she can read the flow of battle and can intercede when people fuck up. Would probably let her cause 1 reroll per 10 points in the style. Then she can add a bonus to the reroll based on the degree of failure. So the worse we fail the more she adds to the reroll

Anyone else have any thoughts?

Rather than 1 reroll per 10 points I would just significantly increase the attribute cost of the style and maybe make the amount of the bonus also dependent on the level of the style.

Oneiros · May 28, 2017

Cariyaga said:
Rather than 1 reroll per 10 points I would just significantly increase the attribute cost of the style and maybe make the amount of the bonus also dependent on the level of the style.

I don't want her to constantly causing rerolls but agree with the other 2 points

Cariyaga · May 28, 2017

Oneiros43 said:
I don't want her to constantly causing rerolls but agree with the other 2 points

By "significantly" I mean something like .25 times Int.

e: However, if we were to go for a reroll style I would like for someone to do a probabilistic analysis of the effects.

Restinan · May 28, 2017

Diplomacy isn't really an EXP sink. Half of the costs of upgrading it to a certain level are attribute costs, and those piggyback off of Deception. Getting Diplomacy 16 and Deception 24 only costs 26% more than just Deception 24 on its own.

We don't want to spec heavily into Diplomacy, but putting points into it is the mechanical representation of Hazou spending time and effort on it. Half of the 600 EXP we sunk into Deception was spent on attributes, and we can piggyback off that earlier spending to get Diplomacy 16, double what we currently have, for only 100 EXP. At this point the alternatives to that as far as Hazou's specialties go are 1.5 points in Sealing or Taijutsu or 1 point in Deception. Outside of his specialties, Hazou has a number of supplementary skills like TacMove, Awareness, and Stealth that we also put some EXP into. For the same price as 8 more dice in Diplomacy we could gain 5 in TacMove, 4 in Awareness, or 7 in Stealth. I could see it being higher priority to get higher Stealth, and it's absolutely a higher priority to get Roki to 12, but our social failures have caused us a lot of problems, and leveling Diplomacy such that we spend 5% of our total EXP on it isn't actually a large investment.

Hazou now has increased agency to stop the Hivemind from making stupid mistakes but that increased agency only works inasmuch as Hazou is skilled enough to notice those mistakes, and by and large he isn't socially skilled enough to do so. We have to actually try to solve this, and the way we do that isn't just repeating things that didn't work before. We've tried getting "training" from our teammates without any EXP investment, and it didn't actually help. The way to achieve actual success is not to just do more of the same thing that hasn't worked before. Meanwhile Keiko, who had the same problem as Hazou, has paired training and EXP investment and has largely grown out of it. Hazou isn't going to get more socially skilled if we don't actually invest EXP in making him so, the same we he wouldn't get better at punching things if we had him get lessons in it but didn't actually invest any EXP in Taijutsu.

The immediate utility of marginal EXP investment is higher in Roki than in Diplomacy, and in my estimate also higher in Stealth. But Hazou's lack of social grace has been a significant problem, and we have it in our power to ameliorate it. I think that, after getting Roki to 12 and Stealth to effective 15 or so we should put some EXP into Diplomacy.

We have enough EXP to get Roki 12, Stealth 12eff15, and Diplomacy 12 right now. I think we should do so.

Oneiros · May 28, 2017

Restinan said:
Hazou now has increased agency to stop the Hivemind from making stupid mistakes but that increased agency only works inasmuch as Hazou is skilled enough to notice those mistakes, and by and large he isn't socially skilled enough to do so. We have to actually try to solve this, and the way we do that isn't just repeating things that didn't work before. We've tried "training" from our teammates without any EXP investment, and it didn't actually help. The way to achieve actual success is not to just do more of the same thing that hasn't worked before. Meanwhile Keiko, who had the same problem as Hazou, has paired training and EXP investment and has largely grown out of it. Hazou isn't going to get more socially skilled if we don't actually invest EXP in making him so, the same we he wouldn't get better at punching things if we had him get lessons in it but didn't actually invest any EXP in Taijutsu.

My argument against these things is that they are not diplomacy based things at all. We are want to hide secrets better and not give up information. If we do give up information we want to be able to use misdirection to have people look for the wrong things. So instead of levelling diplomacy I would argue that we need to level deception higher if we want to not give away info.

edit: I also don't think you are wrong in any sense. I personally think our risk of dying is much greater from combat then from social situation. So personally want to get the team up to taking down 60 dice Jounin safely and then we can worry about social.

As a second note if we ever manage to save Hana we can learn the Kurosawa secret social techniques. So once again personally want to be in a position to accomplish that mission

Raxner · May 28, 2017

Jello_Raptor said:
If it's counterproductive, it's not clever.

Well, yeah, but people naturally tend not to think things through fully. Looks clever? Good, let's get those xp! Counterproductive? Whoops, pity we didn't think of that earlier.

Restinan said:
Diplomacy isn't really an EXP sink. Half of the costs of upgrading it to a certain level are attribute costs, and those piggyback off of Deception. Getting Diplomacy 16 and Deception 24 only costs 26% more than just Deception 24 on its own.

We don't want to spec heavily into Diplomacy, but putting points into it is the mechanical representation of Hazou spending time and effort on it. Half of the 600 EXP we sunk into Deception was spent on attributes, and we can piggyback off that earlier spending to get Diplomacy 16, double what we currently have, for only 100 EXP. At this point the alternatives to that as far as Hazou's specialties go are 1.5 points in Sealing or Taijutsu or 1 point in Deception. Outside of his specialties, Hazou has a number of supplementary skills like TacMove, Awareness, and Stealth that we also put some EXP into. For the same price as 8 more dice in Diplomacy we could gain 5 in TacMove, 4 in Awareness, or 7 in Stealth. I could see it being higher priority to get higher Stealth, and it's absolutely a higher priority to get Roki to 12, but our social failures have caused us a lot of problems, and leveling Diplomacy such that we spend 5% of our total EXP on it isn't actually a large investment.

Hazou now has increased agency to stop the Hivemind from making stupid mistakes but that increased agency only works inasmuch as Hazou is skilled enough to notice those mistakes, and by and large he isn't socially skilled enough to do so. We have to actually try to solve this, and the way we do that isn't just repeating things that didn't work before. We've tried getting "training" from our teammates without any EXP investment, and it didn't actually help. The way to achieve actual success is not to just do more of the same thing that hasn't worked before. Meanwhile Keiko, who had the same problem as Hazou, has paired training and EXP investment and has largely grown out of it. Hazou isn't going to get more socially skilled if we don't actually invest EXP in making him so, the same we he wouldn't get better at punching things if we had him get lessons in it but didn't actually invest any EXP in Taijutsu.

The immediate utility of marginal EXP investment is higher in Roki than in Diplomacy, and in my estimate also higher in Stealth. But Hazou's lack of social grace has been a significant problem, and we have it in our power to ameliorate it. I think that, after getting Roki to 12 and Stealth to effective 15 or so we should put some EXP into Diplomacy.

We have enough EXP to get Roki 12, Stealth 12eff15, and Diplomacy 12 right now. I think we should do so.

I think you make a solid argument that Diplomacy needs some xp pronto. I'm not sure why it is lower-priority than Roki and Steath. Those things are nice to have for sure, but failures in social skills have come close to resulting in story wipeouts on three separate occasions that I can think of offhand. (Discovering printing press, I'll go pretty far, and share secrets with Minami.) Let's deal with the thing that could get us all killed at any time first, huh?

As for the math, I don't really understand the mechanics of it--I don't have any gaming background, and haven't put in any effort to understand it in this story--so I won't comment on that.

Just--yeah, let's make Hazo better at Diplomacy and other relevant "soft skills" the way it counts, with xp, and let's make that top priority.

Enjou · May 28, 2017

faflec said:
Um, the retcon'd chapter argued that Minami could use this knowledge as leverage against us?

Yes, Kagome argued that she could have, and he argued that in the new, now canon timeline as well. But "could" and "is likely to" are two entirely different prospects. I mean, you could take a hammer and go smash the crap out of the windows of your neighbor's house, but are you likely to do that?

My read on Minami is that she's not likely to abuse her knowledge of the clan secret. She seems like a pretty decent person, and fucking around with Jiraiya's clan secrets would be a bad idea in general. I was just thinking that Hazou says something along the lines of "I don't think you're the backstabby type who will use this secret against us, but we still need to know what the etiquette is when this kind of thing happens", though in a more thought out manner.

faflec · May 28, 2017

Enjou said:
Yes, Kagome argued that she could have, and he argued that in the new, now canon timeline as well. But "could" and "is likely to" are two entirely different prospects. I mean, you could take a hammer and go smash the crap out of the windows of your neighbor's house, but are you likely to do that?

My read on Minami is that she's not likely to abuse her knowledge of the clan secret. She seems like a pretty decent person, and fucking around with Jiraiya's clan secrets would be a bad idea in general. I was just thinking that Hazou says something along the lines of "I don't think you're the backstabby type who will use this secret against us, but we still need to know what the etiquette is when this kind of thing happens", though in a more thought out manner.

IIRC it was Keiko who pointed out that there would be leverage against us? I mean, if Keiko believes it was a serious possibility we should probably account for this.

Cariyaga · May 28, 2017

So, some advice from Radvic on discord as to things to talk to the team about (and should probably discuss amongst ourselves, for that matter) now that we're away from Minami:

What secrets we can and cannot address
Honest conversations with Minami gone.
Any plans we might have for our clan
Discussion of how much we do or do not trust Jiraiya and Leaf
Conversations about Mari's potential health.
Discussion about if we want to try to do more than just contact Jiraiya's people near Mist, or ask about our families.

Restinan · May 28, 2017

Raxner said:
Well, yeah, but people naturally tend not to think things through fully. Looks clever? Good, let's get those xp! Counterproductive? Whoops, pity we didn't think of that earlier.

I think you make a solid argument that Diplomacy needs some xp pronto. I'm not sure why it is lower-priority than Roki and Steath. Those things are nice to have for sure, but failures in social skills have come close to resulting in story wipeouts on three separate occasions that I can think of offhand. (Discovering printing press, I'll go pretty far, and share secrets with Minami.) Let's deal with the thing that could get us all killed at any time first, huh?

As for the math, I don't really understand the mechanics of it--I don't have any gaming background, and haven't put in any effort to understand it in this story--so I won't comment on that.

Just--yeah, let's make Hazo better at Diplomacy and other relevant "soft skills" the way it counts, with xp, and let's make that top priority.

It's lower priority than Roki because right now 33 EXP in Roki increases our number of combat dice by three, which is a really good ROI. After Roki is at twelve it's priority goes down considerably. Stealth is up there because of how cheap more dice in Stealth is at the moment, although with more thought I think I'd put investing EXP in stealth as next on the list after Roki 12 and Diplomacy 16, rather than between them.

Oneiros · May 28, 2017

Restinan said:
It's lower priority than Roki because right now 33 EXP in Roki increases our number of combat dice by three, which is a really good ROI. After Roki is at twelve it's priority goes down considerably. Stealth is up there because of how cheap more dice in Stealth is at the moment, although with more thought I think I'd put investing EXP in stealth as next on the list after Roki 12 and Diplomacy 16, rather than between them.

Stealth is up there cause we can get the full bonus that skywalkers grant when we get stealth 15. So can essentially buy 6 dice for the price of 3 right now.

faflec · May 28, 2017

@eaglejarl Did we do training plans last update?

Restinan · May 28, 2017

Oneiros43 said:
Stealth is up there cause we can get the full bonus that skywalkers grant when we get stealth 15. So can essentially buy 6 dice for the price of 3 right now.

I didn't actually know this.

Oneiros43 said:
My argument against these things is that they are not diplomacy based things at all. We are want to hide secrets better and not give up information. If we do give up information we want to be able to use misdirection to have people look for the wrong things. So instead of levelling diplomacy I would argue that we need to level deception higher if we want to not give away info.

edit: I also don't think you are wrong in any sense. I personally think our risk of dying is much greater from combat then from social situation. So personally want to get the team up to taking down 60 dice Jounin safely and then we can worry about social.

As a second note if we ever manage to save Hana we can learn the Kurosawa secret social techniques. So once again personally want to be in a position to accomplish that mission

Deception is really expensive. We can get 8 more dice in Diplomacy for the same EXP cost as 1 more die in Deception. If getting 8 more dice in Deception also cost 100 EXP, I'd be arguing for that instead. And persuasive ability in general is really useful. Eight additional dice in Diplomacy won't do that much good purely in helping us keep secrets, but it will do a lot in terms of Hazou's social competence, which is big. Hazou's verbal incompetence could easily get the team killed, and 8 more Diplomacy is a better option for ameliorating that than 1 more Deception.

Oneiros · May 28, 2017

Since you guys want social training and we have a chance to do it time to write new training plans. Not going to do one for Akane cause she's missing several exp rewards.

[x] Training Kei: Stealthy Ninja
Stealth 12 (12)
Stealth 13 (25)
Stealth 14 (39)
Stealth 15 (54)
Save 33 exp

[x] Training Noburi: Stealthy Ninja
Stealth 12 (12)
Stealth 13 (25)
Stealth 14 (39)
Stealth 15 (54)
Save 23.5 exp

[X] Training Hazou: Stealthy Ninja
Stealth 11 (11)
Stealth 12 (23)
Roki 10 (33)
Roki 11 (44)
Roki 12 (56)
Diplomacy 9 (65)
Diplomacy 10 (75)
Diplomacy 11 (86)
Diplomacy 12 (98)
Save 1 exp

Edit: Character sheets haven't been updated for the last update so everyone has 4 more exp

Enjou · May 28, 2017

faflec said:
IIRC it was Keiko who pointed out that there would be leverage against us? I mean, if Keiko believes it was a serious possibility we should probably account for this.

And I'm not saying we shouldn't. I'm just saying that Hazou can say that his impression is that Minami isn't the type who would likely use it against us, though he still recognizes the importance of addressing the issue.

Though it occurs to me that I misunderstood what you're proposing. You want to talk to the team about this while Minami is out. I want to talk to her about it when she's back - she's the one who would know how Leaf's clans handle this kind of thing, because clan secrets almost certainly get exposed to teammates and comrades on occassion. Keiko and Noburi might know how it's handled in Mist, though given cultural differences I'm not sure how relevant that would be.

PurposefulZephyr · May 28, 2017

faflec said:
IIRC it was Keiko who pointed out that there would be leverage against us? I mean, if Keiko believes it was a serious possibility we should probably account for this.

Minami doesn't have to tell anyone about this secret. Not willingly, that is (barring a sufficient threat or incentive, like threat to her clan).
But if she's captured and forcibly interrogated, or has this information ripped out of her mind (Yamanaka or other mind-divers), or is trapped in good enough genjutsu to believe she's safe to share this secret...
She's a living container of information. She's like a safe containing a secret file. Safe can be opened, cracked, or broke open.

faflec · May 28, 2017

PurposefulZephyr said:
Minami doesn't have to tell anyone about this secret. Not willingly, that is (barring a sufficient threat or incentive, like threat to her clan).
But if she's captured and forcibly interrogated, or has this information ripped out of her mind (Yamanaka or other mind-divers), or is trapped in good enough genjutsu to believe she's safe to share this secret...
She's a living container of information. She's like a safe containing a secret file. Safe can be opened, cracked, or broke open.

So you're saying that Kagome was right and Minami should be killed ok.

PurposefulZephyr · May 28, 2017

Well... it's an argument for disposing of her... though she could be mind-probed/being convinced in Sand as we speak.
If anything, that just highlights how bad our OPSEC failure was. And one more argument for Kagome.

Raxner · May 28, 2017

PurposefulZephyr said:
Minami doesn't have to tell anyone about this secret. Not willingly, that is (barring a sufficient threat or incentive, like threat to her clan).
But if she's captured and forcibly interrogated, or has this information ripped out of her mind (Yamanaka or other mind-divers), or is trapped in good enough genjutsu to believe she's safe to share this secret...
She's a living container of information. She's like a safe containing a secret file. Safe can be opened, cracked, or broke open.

faflec said:
So you're saying that Kagome was right and Minami should be killed ok.

Also, she might willingly tell someone, when it's in her interest to do so, or the interest of her clan.

Kagome was wrong to act without the consent of the team, but it's not like anyone disputes that telling Minami about Vampiric Dew was an InfoSec foulup of the first order. A foulup doesn't become not a foulup just because Kagome responded to it wrongly.

T_of_A · May 28, 2017

Plan: Darude

General:
- Avoid Henge (except for Noburi and Kagome), but conceal (veil) our faces "to keep the sand and sun out" - we aren't covert ops, and we don't want to seem too suspicious.
- Always have someone on watch, for Minami (who may be in the air if it's an emergency) and other ninja. Don't assume incoming ninja are inherently hostile unless it's obvious.
  - Tell Kagome this.

Research and training:
- We don't want to be seen doing obvious seal research.
  - Ask if anyone needs more basic seals. If yes, make some more.
  - Wait until we're out of Sand before researching anything difficult. Maybe start on the party trick seals or even the basic seals if Kagome thinks that a few MEWs and a clone to substitute with is enough for something apparently so basic.
    - If he wants the whole deal with multiple rows of MEWs and explosives, don't do it.
    - Ask Kagome about the weaponisation of the "Force Walls to channel the explosion" we used back in the cave.
- Ask Noburi for help learning the incredible art of talking diplomatically.
  - Stay polite even if he isn't.
  - If it goes well, mention some of our long-term sealing ideas. Politely, without seeming like you're condescendingly granting wisdom from on high.

If Sand-nin arrive:
- Be polite. Don't attack first. We have the flag, and a legitimate reason to be here.
- Let Noburi and Keiko do most of the talking.
- Watch Kagome. Agree with him on all this beforehand. Make sure that he hasn't made it entirely impossible for them to approach of they need to.

Keiko and the Pangolins
- Ask Keiko if she wants to go and talk to the Pangolins about her political situation.
  - Advise her not to be too long - aim to finish by the time Minali gets back, or within a half a day.
  - She doesn't have to do it all in a day. Getting started today (or just asking Pandaa about it and the overall Pangolin situation) would be a good start.
  - If she says yes, ask her to keep in mind the fact that we're interested in the jutsu they gave Akane. No need to act on it just yet, but it's something to remember just in case.

Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

Handsome Gentleperson

Handsome Gentleperson

The most dangerous man in an empty room

Handsome Gentleperson

The most dangerous man in an empty room