- Location
- how about no
I agree with this sentiment. It's been over a year and I can't say I've ever seen the hivemind actively pursue a goal without any leads beforehand. Everything we've done has had some prompting in some way from plot hooks or small details we've found over the course of the simulation. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; trying to ignore all of our pressing concerns in favor of something we would have a very hard time justifying in character isn't easy to pull off. As others have pointed out we have had a ton of responsibility dumped on us as well since we joined Leaf: we traded absolute freedom for a new place to call home. This mission is taking forever OOC though and I am tempted to speed it up in favor of advancing the plot to something more palatable to us (the two major reasons why I haven't been contributing as much as I used to is that I know that we basically have to follow the mission and following all of the discussion just to vote to follow the mission is too large of a time sink to me at the moment).
However, there is a third option: we can split the difference. While we complete this now-extended mission like the good little murder-wizards we aspire to be we still have a ton of time spent running/sky-walking to each of our destinations. That's a ton of time Hazou has to think about anything IC and now since Hazou has more agency to pick and choose ideas he wants to follow we can bounce 'random' ideas off of him to see how he responds to them before bringing them up to his teammates. We can also prompt our teammates to think about their own mid to long term projects as well. For example:
Hazou knows that Keiko has been for all intents and purposes engaged with the Nara as a way to further Jiraiya's and the Nara's political ambitions. Hazou also knows that Jiraiya, even as the Hokage, cannot afford to piss off the clans too much as evidenced by Jiraiya's rant about controlling the Minami. Since Hazou is also now an adopted child of Jiraiya and Jiraiya can use all of the political capital he can get, Hazou may be asked/told by Jiraiya to accept a political pairing from his clan head for the good of his new clan. If this were to happen, how would he feel about it and how would he approach this topic with his current girlfriend?
For another teammate, we could have Hazou ask Akane to tell him what, if anything, she has since learned with her Mechanical Aptitude skill and if she is able to do anything new with it. Then we can discreetly discuss with her what she thinks of Zeppelins or even starting a completely mundane Industrial Revolution in Leaf (provided Hazou has learned enough from all of those books we had him read back in Leaf). Noburi can be prompted about his ideas for medical research and what he's thinking he wants to use Hazou's favor for. Keiko can be quizzed about her upcoming engagement (unless that's classified as clan secrets/agenda so we can't speak about it in front of Minami) or her assessment of her current summons and how they can be better optimized for the next engagement. We can inquire about our defenses and what we can do to help with Kagome since we are now land-bound. Do we still use MEW for structures if we are trying even harder not to leave a trace than usual? As for Minami we can ask what her plans are for the future since I honestly have no idea what she plans to do after this mission is over. The more we know about how she will (or she may choose not to) use Kagome's skills the better we can plan around and prepare for it.
At this point I think it would be better to simply bounce money-making ideas off of our teammates to see what they think will work in universe. I have to admit I'm rather intrigued by how Keiko would appraise my old ideas for setting up a Merchant Empire and whether or not we could still do while we are employed as 'official' Leaf ninja. We probably don't have the time for it but we might be able to set up a an ice-producing company in Leaf if given the chance.
