Remove ads

Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

Reader mode
Dissonance said:
Even as a casual, come-and-go reader here, I really like this idea.

Other ideas I like include, but are not limited to, leveraging UNU.
[](/twioohshiny)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

An interesting idea and I'll have to look into it more. At a glance though (and I sincerely hope this is surmountable), I don't see a way to explain why one votes the way he does using Unu, just that he does so. Also, in open-ended situations like: "You are in Leaf, what do you do?" It's really hard to come to a consensus without explaining what it is you want to accomplish by doing certain actions.

For example, I believe the vast majority of this thread's participants want Hazou to not throw away his life needlessly and, from what I've seen about Unu from their site, Unu would reflect this. However, if the reasons why some people wanted Hazou to live differed substantially enough then we would get into awkward situations once we ended up in a situation where those motivations actually mattered. As another example we would have one camp of voters who want Hazou to live so that he can build a chakra-punk society, whereas in another camp there are those who want Hazou to live so that he can achieve lasting international peace. This aren't mutually exclusive and so for the most part we would consider ourselves in harmony when it comes to most votes, but once we find ourselves in a situation where we have to choose between favoring one option over the other lest we lose both outcomes... Unu will be quite sporadic if we rely on it too heavily and therefore forego talking about why we want what we want.

This gets even more ill-defined when we go another layer back to people's overall goals for this quest, like @Radvic mentioned in his post. There are many steps that need to be taken in character in order to fulfill these desires since we can't simply fast-forward to whatever it is we are really interested in without risking those larger things not happening quite as we expected.

So for our resident physics abuser to get his ideal updates in MfD, he has to:
  1. Find a way to convince most of us that the apocalypse is really the best use of Hazou's time (OOC justification)
  2. Find a way to circumvent Hazou's own internal struggles with mass murder (IC justification) and overcoming any insane teammates, or worse, the Watchers, who might try to dissuade him from his one true purpose in life (NPC obstacles)
  3. Propose and execute at least one plan that not only lists all of the necessary preparations for a nuclear winter, but also ensures there are no slip-up's or loop holes the QM's can use to postpone Armageddon (admittedly, simply lighting all of our seals in an enclosed space would probably work, but if we want a truly memorable boom it's gonna take a lot of R&D to get right (after all, how do you explain all of the panicking seal-masters who, when cornered, unleashed their full arsenal rather than be taken alive by their enemies? Surely there must be an irradiated wasteland somewhere nearby if it were that easy))
Do note though, that none of this requires keeping Hazou alive in the long term, which would by itself require many more steps than simply planning and setting off the mother of all explosions. Dying in a grand finale is easy, but surviving and accomplishing numerous long term goals is much, much harder.

I just don't see how Unu can help us with our ideals for this quest in Unu's current, single instance/topic form. MfD requires long term planning in the form of multiple: "I want Hazou and Co to do this, for the sake of this eventual goal, so that I can derive my preferred form of entertainment from this quest".

I could see it replacing polling though. That would be simple enough.
 
Dictator4Hire said:
Ah good, consistency is wonderful trait, highly underappreciated, in my humble opinion.

I would suggest, though, linking your own quoted post in your sig. It would help to assuage more people's quibbles with your own enjoyment of the quest and it helps plan makers design plans in such a way that tries to win your vote by intentionally adding in extra amounts of your favored traits of said quest. Rather than remembering each regular's most likely most important deciding factors in voting for a plan, simply having a list of each person's most desired preferences for a plan should make voting easier on both of you. It should certainly help with all of the pandering we tend to do as we edit our plans before the votes...

Hmm.

There's no reason why we shouldn't all do this and compile a list on a google doc for easy future reference. Since anyone should not be trusted with the power to misrepresent anyone else in the thread (or at least be tempted by it) we could have mandatory hyperlinks to posts in this thread to make sure everything on the document gets posted verbatim. If we all plainly state what it is exactly we want out of this entertainment as you did planning should be simplified down to creating a plan that you know will directly incorporate as many people's non-conflicting desires as possible. We'd still have to make it logically consistent, but that's what voting is for anyway in the face of fundamental disagreements. It would certainly take most of the guesswork out of plan-making with regards to 'are people actually going to vote for this?'. There will probably be some miscommunication if the plan-maker does not fulfill enough of what the regular truly wants in said regular's preferred type of plan, but all of the future plans shouldn't be so controversial to the point of being appalling (or at least being so controversial without a very good explanation).

This wouldn't replace the need to actually vote for something, but provisional... heuristic voting (name and patent pending further review) might make us more efficient with using our time in our voting time-frames in the long run.

I think it's worth a shot. Now to think of what I consider to be most important when it comes to this quest, specifically so that it can be kept in mind for plan-makers so they can count on my vote, but also what I will use to distinguish between two or more similar yet competing plans even with approval voting...

This is going to take some thought.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Ooh, I like this game.

I will vote for any plan whose sha256 hash (interpreted as a UTF 8 string) contains my name.

E: I will also vote for any plan that does something absurd, with no real risk but also no immediate payoff. Can be done with a goal in mind, or just for the lulz; however, I reserve the right to abstain if it's halfhearted or uninspired. This one's more subjective than the other, but the weirder and more troll potential, the more likely you are to win my vote!
 
Last edited:
Vecht said:
E: I will also vote for any plan that does something absurd, with no real risk but also no immediate payoff. Can be done with a goal in mind, or just for the lulz; however, I reserve the right to abstain if it's halfhearted or uninspired. This one's more subjective than the other, but the weirder and more troll potential, the more likely you are to win my vote!
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

So basically, have Hazou be surreal like HPMOR's protagonist, right?

I'd be okay with this, so long as Hazou does not become Harry 2.0.
 
Dictator4Hire said:
So basically, have Hazou be surreal like HPMOR's protagonist, right?

I'd be okay with this, so long as Hazou does not become Harry 2.0.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Er, well, there is definitely a common element, but I don't know if I'd classify that as a central example.

E: Also I'm not necessarily considering Hazou as an independent character here, nor do I particularly care about him acting consistently "surreal".
 
Last edited:
ThrawnCA said:
Nah, Hazou doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who makes lives surreal on purpose. He just has so many voices in his head that his team mates get jealous about being left out.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

So if we ever were to successfully influence Hazou so that he would stop trying to eat his own feet all of the time, what character flaw would he have left? His naivety will wear off eventually as he grows up soon or later as well. Turning him into a Gary Stu would take too much life out of the quest, in my opinion.

Being detached from his peers due to the voice in his head makes having him play partially the part of a politician (as a member of a newly founded noble clan and the nephew of another Kage) almost impossible.

Vecht said:
Er, well, there is definitely a common element, but I don't know if I'd classify that as a central example.

E: Also I'm not necessarily considering Hazou as an independent character here, nor do I particularly care about him acting consistently "surreal".
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

If I had to describe Hazou's personality's creation, I would describe it like creating a canal. We, the thread participants, started out by designing him and then only once we had laid the foundation for his character did the QM's start filling it with water, where water equals person-hood, life, etc. From there we've been continually improvising as we go along and so sometimes the water doesn't completely follow our intended course for it, but we still have a large amount of control over where it is the water will go next, even if it isn't complete, fine control.

Now to make Hazou an interesting character with lofty goals who is somewhat alien to his comrades but most importantly isn't an expy of HPMOR, I think we should have him embrace the mastermind persona Shikaku mistakenly type-casted Hazou as. Hazou doesn't have all of the rationality training Harry had, but Hazou does have the uncanny ability to think of highly detailed plans in the blink of an eye and implement them immediately. We can use that not just to prank people, but also to mess with their heads as our incredibly clever thoughts prove that we aren't crazy, just ridiculously talented in ways mere mortals will never be able to comprehend.

I firmly believe the hivemind would adore trouncing Shikaku and his son so much that we have them second-guessing themselves about Hazou's true identity and capabilities over and over. Having your allies think that you always have at least one master plan slowly coming to completion as you do inane acts that can always be explained later would be quite original as far as protagonists go. The closest example I can think of would be a sane and moral Light from Death Note who didn't become drunk on power and ultimately succeeded once he built his better world.

To much of fiction has been about defeating the BBEG, saving the princess, and then living happily ever after. I would much rather read and help create a story about defeating universal foes like scarcity of any kind and entrenched international distrust through building things which the world has never seen before. We'll still have to knock down old institutions that get in our way so there will still be plenty of punching, but I can think of zero fictional stories about establishing a benevolent, functional bureaucracy. Which, to me, is quite a shame since the creation of the United States's Constitution is such a fascinating story to build a nation.

So in a nutshell, I'd like Hazou to play the part of the cunning mastermind always playing every battle of wits at one level higher than his opponents. His goals would be to become the founding father of a system far better than the hidden villages, except not only would he be a statesman, but also an inventor who ushers in a new age of prosperity to the residents of the Elemental Nations through both chakra-punk innovations (hopefully leading to space travel and colonization) and a rationalist philosophy which promotes good will to all of mankind, ninja and civilian alike.

I think I would enjoy that immensely.
 
Hazou does not, canonically, as far as I am aware, have voices in his head, as much as we might joke about it.

e:

Dictator4Hire said:
His naivety will wear off eventually as he grows up soon or later as well.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Also, I object to this notion. Sure, the unknowing naivete might, but this very idealism is what has won him some of his greatest allies. Kagome, Jiraiya (in part -- I doubt he'd have been so eager to pick us up if not for our speech in Leaf before), even your choice, Ino.

As much idealism as Hazou can realistically get away with is exactly what I would like to see of Hazou.
 
Last edited:
On another note, I'm pretty sure something like this is how Swamp of the Underworld works. Can techniques be made as a combination of two different elements? Like, not combined in the sense of water + wind = ice or whatever, but in the sense of using different elements together in the same technique?
 
Cariyaga said:
On another note, I'm pretty sure something like this is how Swamp of the Underworld works. Can techniques be made as a combination of two different elements? Like, not combined in the sense of water + wind = ice or whatever, but in the sense of using different elements together in the same technique?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Wiki says the user turns the ground into mud to create the swamp, so...??
 
Interesting discussion. Though it might change in the future, what I've tended to enjoy seeing in this quest is...
  1. Hazou trying to change the setting's genre from "struggle for survival on Catachan meets the cold war" to something more along the lines of "chakrapunk utopia does The Culture".
  2. Hazou doing terribly clever things that people in-universe didn't see coming, and generally being an outside context problem.
  3. Escalation to higher-tier problems (going from "chakra voles plz don't eat me" to "international politics is hard", for example).
  4. SCIENCE!
 
Cariyaga said:
On another note, I'm pretty sure something like this is how Swamp of the Underworld works. Can techniques be made as a combination of two different elements? Like, not combined in the sense of water + wind = ice or whatever, but in the sense of using different elements together in the same technique?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Personally I hope you can do that with high enough Technique hacking (combining elements that is), but to be fair I don't think it's always necessary to combine two elements to have a similar effect because:

Akane can make ice with a fire jutsu by removing heat, Noburi can make a werid sticky substance with syrup trap, Keiko can make ultrasound and Hazou can already turn earth liquid with HlaM.

So controlling mud or creating a mud like substance out of chakra seems pretty simple to me,without mixing elements I mean. I am curious if we can make a pseudo-lava jutsu with an earth element technique like Gazhan from Legend of Korra though:

 
Last edited:
So, if Hana's going to be a Mist nin still, then she won't teach us Kurosawa Diplomancy. Meaning we have to work it out ourselves.

@eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail

I don't suppose we can do what Kei's doing and have an "Iron Nerve" skill that we can use as an attribute for bloodline based skills?

Something like...

Iron Nerve
(Dex*1, Wit*2, Res*2)
Used as attribute.

Body Language Control
(Iron Nerve*1, Man*2, Pre*2, Com*2)
Add BLC level to social rolls.
 
AugSphere said:
Sure, you could eventually carry a lake or a hill with you, but you'd have to find a master-level teacher willing to teach a missing-nin his secrets, survive the learning process, and then find the time to design a seal that does what you want it to.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

eaglejarl said:
Your team has one storage scroll between you. It can hold one item and that item cannot be larger than 1m^3, heavier than 100 kg, or alive.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Hmmmm. Did we ever research anything bigger than 100 kg?
@eaglejarl ,@Velorien
What's the biggest storage seal we've ever heard of? Do we know how big the biggest one Jiraiya knows/has is? Surely he has bigger variants. Wasn't there an interlude where he used one?


MadScientist said:
Hana's going to be a Mist nin still, then she won't teach us Kurosawa Diplomancy
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I wouldn't be very surprised if she taught us it anyway, or convinced Ren to let her teach it to us in exchange for some concession from us.
 
Last edited:
Kylinger said:
I wouldn't be very surprised if she taught us it anyway, or convinced Ren to let her teach it to us in exchange for some concession from us.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Hana did say:

OliWhail said:
"Of course I'm going to say yes, silly," she chided him. "But up until I actually agree, I have some leverage over her, and I'm going to milk it for all it's worth."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Inter-Clan marriages must always have revealed some secrets to the other clan (not a lot but some), so maybe she can convince Ren that Hazou learning things that only a Iron nerve user can utilize, isn't really a huge loss.
 
Hello all, our apologies for the confusion around voting, that was a reflection of some comfusion in QM chat about who was available to write when. We'll call voting closed now, and I'm gonna be doing my best to get the chapter out by tomorrow. This weekend's update may be short or an interlude since y'all will almost certainly have a short voting period.
 
OliWhail said:
Hello all, our apologies for the confusion around voting, that was a reflection of some comfusion in QM chat about who was available to write when. We'll call voting closed now, and I'm gonna be doing my best to get the chapter out by tomorrow. This weekend's update may be short or an interlude since y'all will almost certainly have a short voting period.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Given how prolific a writer you are, I will be surprised if it isn't done in half an hour. :p
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top