Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Yeah, I know that feeling. It's why I was able to get so far on the programming projects I started for this.
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
-
- Tags
- naruto 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 open voting
- Location
- how about no
IIRC one QM mentioned that the QM's collectively wanted feedback on whether or not we should roll back events in MfD to better balance the new world order. It seems to me that the current proposed system will massively overhaul combat in MfD (which is a good thing and has been a long time coming). However, this also necessitates reexamining the narrative as a whole since combat plays such a crucial role in the story that is MfD. Therefore after careful reflection while also reviewing and subsequently discarding many other options I recommend the following rollback:
The narrative should be reset to the Ultimate Showdown.
I realize this would undo a substantial portion of the quest. I realize that many people may find this too be too far to truly be feasible and it will upset many Story-Only readers. Hear me out.
The Ultimate Showdown between Mist, Leaf, and eventually Akatsuki has dramatically altered the story of the quest thus far, but it did so using the old combat system. If we simply gloss over the largest fight the players know of by keeping the results of the past system while implementing a new combat system it will be very difficult to achieve similar results with the characters involved in the fight since all of their abilities have been altered for said new system. By already having a result that must happen (if we choose to keep the results of the Ultimate Showdown) the QM's will be forced to either engineer all of the combatants' skill sheets so that the result turns out the same (I cannot stress how difficult this will be, if it is even possible) or ignore the discrepancy between combat before the revision and combat after the revision. With such a massive change to the systems of the quest the onerous would be on the narrative to explain why some or even all of these bad-ass S-rank characters can no longer do what they did in their epic fight.
Another main advantage of resetting to the Ultimate Showdown is that it is without a doubt one of the best stress tests we could hope for for the new system. With all of the stupidly powerful individuals in that fight we can ascertain just how useful the new system truly is. If the new system cannot survive simulating the Ultimate Showdown, what good is it anyway? Eventually (or more accurately, hopefully) Hazou will be able to participate in such fights and he may even contribute in a larger confrontation as well. This is already the third time we have had to re-balance combat, so to spare our future selves from even more preventable disruptions later on.
Furthermore, if the results of the Ultimate Showdown change (or would change) drastically due to the system change, the players need to know to plan accordingly. The easiest example would be gen jutsu and its effectiveness in the fight and in the world of MfD at large. Hopefully we can see if the pattern of gen jutsu being hit or miss would continue in the new system or if partial successes/failures are actually useful now.
I simply cannot see how MfD can retain its simulationist nature if we do not revert back to the Ultimate Showdown. Trying to recreate the results of a previous system by slowly tweaking the characters' new sheets would essentially be an exercise in futility. Simply hand-waving the discrepancies caused by accepting the previous results of the old system while implementing the new system will inevitably result in further problems in future updates. It's best to simply curtail the problem now by completely revoking the old system at its most narratively important fight and then starting with a relatively clean slate. No other fight has changed the narrative so drastically while also having a majority of the fighters survive (R.I.P. Shikigami); that's why this fight needs to be the reset point and not any other. This is simply too large to ignore and sweep under the rug.
The narrative should be reset to the Ultimate Showdown.
I realize this would undo a substantial portion of the quest. I realize that many people may find this too be too far to truly be feasible and it will upset many Story-Only readers. Hear me out.
The Ultimate Showdown between Mist, Leaf, and eventually Akatsuki has dramatically altered the story of the quest thus far, but it did so using the old combat system. If we simply gloss over the largest fight the players know of by keeping the results of the past system while implementing a new combat system it will be very difficult to achieve similar results with the characters involved in the fight since all of their abilities have been altered for said new system. By already having a result that must happen (if we choose to keep the results of the Ultimate Showdown) the QM's will be forced to either engineer all of the combatants' skill sheets so that the result turns out the same (I cannot stress how difficult this will be, if it is even possible) or ignore the discrepancy between combat before the revision and combat after the revision. With such a massive change to the systems of the quest the onerous would be on the narrative to explain why some or even all of these bad-ass S-rank characters can no longer do what they did in their epic fight.
Another main advantage of resetting to the Ultimate Showdown is that it is without a doubt one of the best stress tests we could hope for for the new system. With all of the stupidly powerful individuals in that fight we can ascertain just how useful the new system truly is. If the new system cannot survive simulating the Ultimate Showdown, what good is it anyway? Eventually (or more accurately, hopefully) Hazou will be able to participate in such fights and he may even contribute in a larger confrontation as well. This is already the third time we have had to re-balance combat, so to spare our future selves from even more preventable disruptions later on.
Furthermore, if the results of the Ultimate Showdown change (or would change) drastically due to the system change, the players need to know to plan accordingly. The easiest example would be gen jutsu and its effectiveness in the fight and in the world of MfD at large. Hopefully we can see if the pattern of gen jutsu being hit or miss would continue in the new system or if partial successes/failures are actually useful now.
I simply cannot see how MfD can retain its simulationist nature if we do not revert back to the Ultimate Showdown. Trying to recreate the results of a previous system by slowly tweaking the characters' new sheets would essentially be an exercise in futility. Simply hand-waving the discrepancies caused by accepting the previous results of the old system while implementing the new system will inevitably result in further problems in future updates. It's best to simply curtail the problem now by completely revoking the old system at its most narratively important fight and then starting with a relatively clean slate. No other fight has changed the narrative so drastically while also having a majority of the fighters survive (R.I.P. Shikigami); that's why this fight needs to be the reset point and not any other. This is simply too large to ignore and sweep under the rug.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
While I disagree with the conclusions (that it's too large to sweep under the rug -- dice fall where they may, so long as it's reasonable for the previous results to have occurred, it's fine for that to remain the case), I do agree that The Ultimate Showdown would be an excellent stress test, whether made-omake or canon, for the new system.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I will discuss this with the others, but I warn you not to get your hopes up. There is zero chance that I would vote to roll back that far, so the only way it will happen is if both @OliWhail and @Velorien are rabidly in favor, and even then they'd have an uphill battle to convince me.
No matter what system is used, it's perfectly possible to design character sheets such that the results come out the same. Beyond that, the fight wasn't onscreen so none of the details would be inconsistent.
You're absolutely right about it being the ideal stress test though. Thank you for the suggestion; we'll re-run the fight to verify that we've set everyone up correctly. That is extremely unlikely to be shown onscreen, though.
I would say that the fight in chapter 1 had a much larger impact, and most of the people involved survived.
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
How is it more simulationist to change the outcome of the fight based on a change in the system? The system exists to model the reality as we imagine it. We build Jiraiya in such a way that his character sheet maximally represents his canon skills, as modified by the MfD setting (such as him being a more active sealmaster), within the constraints of the system (such as XP pools). Jiraiya the MfD character does not change when systems change. The new Jiraiya should be identical to the old, or as close as differences between the systems permit. If the new Ultimate Showdown has a different outcome to the old Ultimate Showdown, that's a conversion failure. It's decreased simulationism, because it means the course of events, as determined by the abilities and choices of agents in the setting, is being changed by game mechanics rather than simulated by them.
To give another example, back when we introduced the Multiple Combatant rules, we went back to the fight where Jiraiya meets and curbstomps the team, and realised that under the new rules, you would curbstomp him (though I forget whether we eventually changed our minds or not). This is a rules change resulting in a failure of simulationism, because I think we can all agree that Jiraiya can curbstomp a single non-combat-specialist jōnin and her three genin. Even if we were willing to roll back that far, rewriting the scene so you won would be an unambiguous mistake.
- Location
- Yes.
This would actually make a lot of sense when compared to the current system, as it would account for serious discrepencies in speed between individuals.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Would also make stuff like Syrup Trap and Lightning techiques very scary.
- Location
- Yes.
And would explain why Minato got his FoS order.
Anyway, I thought the point of that fight was that it could have gone a lot of different ways depending on the dice rolls. You could run it again using the same system you did last time and still get different results.
- Location
- USA
Revert back to chapter one, you say? Great idea!
Three weeks ago, you almost became a traitor.
[...]
But after a week's travel came the night when things went wrong. Raised voices coming from the commander's tent. The ring of steel on steel. Then, before any of you could get close, a dampened flash of light that could only have been a faltering ninjutsu. After a second's silence, the commander emerged from the tent, covered in blood. Shikigami-sensei did not.
With the entire camp watching, it was too late for damage control, so the commander told you all the truth, and showed you Shikigami-sensei's documents. He had noticed that some among your number were once problem ninja - some with exploitable histories of insubordination, others whose ambition could be reconstrued as dangerous to Mist... The details didn't matter. What mattered was that he'd intended to use a cunning forgery to convince you that your mission was a death sentence, and turn you into missing-nin for his own nefarious ends.
So you carried on your mission. It wasn't an easy choice. Shikigami might not have been working alone, and the possibility of betrayal hung over you like a miasma. But abandoning your orders now, and risking the Mizukage's ire or excommunication, would be playing into the dead man's hands.
Now you remain a loyal Mist-nin. After three weeks of travel, you've reached the outskirts of the contested territory, and established a place of operations. Your perimeter is secure for now, your supplies are adequate, and between your twenty-four genin, your ten chunin and your five jonin, you have a good range of skills and expertise. But both parties in the local conflict have hidden agendas, and if your mission is to be a success, you must tread carefully.
The clock is ticking. What path will you choose to thrive?
Fake edit: Now that I typed all that, I notice that that was technically chapter zero OH WELL
- Location
- Yes.
@Velorien @OliWhail @eaglejarl
Thought: re-running (not resetting to) the Ultimate Showdown might make a good stress test for the simulationist quality and stressfullness of the systems you're considering.
Marked for Death as FATE Mechanics Thoughts
@eaglejarl
@OliWhail
@Velorien
Hope some of these suggestions help.
Stress Tracks:
Physical
Mental
Chakra
A note on Social Combat:
Social stress track is dropped in favor of more narratively tracking relationships. When dealing with NPCs with whom Hazou has a close personal relationship, normally the GMs will eschew rolls in favor of simulating relationships. When dealing with convincing other NPCs, socials are usually a straight opposed roll (usually versus Rapport, Empathy, Deception, or Willpower) to impose an Aspect on the NPC that you then compel using your free tag to make them do what you want. GMs may choose to have the NPCs resist the Aspect if it is strongly against their interests, in which case Hazou will be given a Fate point as his "compel" was refused. Hazou and NPCs are disallowed from taking Mental stress or Mental Consequences as a result of social rolls under all but the most extraordinary circumstances... resisting torture or similar. Normally social situations are not high stakes enough for that sort of thing.
Skill List
Removed from DFRPG:
Driving
Scholarship (Took medical knowledge aspect into its own skill and the rest is not that relevant to most of the game.)
Resources (prefer to track more specifically)
@eaglejarl
@OliWhail
@Velorien
Hope some of these suggestions help.
Stress Tracks:
Physical
Mental
Chakra
A note on Social Combat:
Social stress track is dropped in favor of more narratively tracking relationships. When dealing with NPCs with whom Hazou has a close personal relationship, normally the GMs will eschew rolls in favor of simulating relationships. When dealing with convincing other NPCs, socials are usually a straight opposed roll (usually versus Rapport, Empathy, Deception, or Willpower) to impose an Aspect on the NPC that you then compel using your free tag to make them do what you want. GMs may choose to have the NPCs resist the Aspect if it is strongly against their interests, in which case Hazou will be given a Fate point as his "compel" was refused. Hazou and NPCs are disallowed from taking Mental stress or Mental Consequences as a result of social rolls under all but the most extraordinary circumstances... resisting torture or similar. Normally social situations are not high stakes enough for that sort of thing.
Skill List
- Alertness - As per DFRPG book. Spot things and also determines initiative.
- Athletics - As per DFRPG book. Your all around climbing/dodging/jumping skill. Very similar to TacMov in old system.
- Administration - Covers knowledge of business, economics, and running large organizations. Can help cut through paperwork and shortcut regulations.
- Chakra Capacity - Determines how much chakra you have in your chakra stress track and how many jutsu you can support.
- Chakra Control - Similiar to "Discipline" in DFRPG, this is the skill you use to control jutsus and use your chakra efficiently. (Emotional control aspects go to Willpower.)
- Chakra Lore - Similiar to "Lore" in DFRPG. Understand how chakra works to craft seals or hack jutsu.
- Contacts - As per DFRPG book. Who you know and how good you are at getting answers or spreading rumors. NOT SURE ABOUT KEEPING THIS ONE.
- Craftsmanship - As per DFRPG book. How good you are at building stuff.
- Deceit - As per DFRPG book. Lying and disguises for fun and profit!
- Empathy - As per DFRPG book. Understand what other people are thinking and feeling and learn their aspects.
- Endurance - As per DFRPG book. How physically tough you are and how long you can perform at peak. Controls physical stress box.
- Fists - As per DFRPG book. Many ninja will enhance this skill with stunts representing specific fighting styles or even Chakra Powers that key off Fists. Can be used to parry other Fist attacks, but not weapons or jutsu... those you must generally dodge with Athletics. (Though stunts can fix this.)
- Infiltration - Covers what would be both "Burglary" and "Stealth" in DFRPG, as I think it's appropriate to combine them.
- Investigation - As per DFRPG book.
- Medicine - Medical knowledge. Can be used to craft poisons or medicine and crucial for a successful med-nin.
- Might - As per DFRPG book. Raw physical power.
- Performance - As per DFRPG book. Also used in crafting convincing genjutsu.
- Provocation - As per "Intimidation" in the DFRPG book. Some ninja can use this to project Killing Intent and make mental stress attacks. It also covers shit-talking and taunts, allowing you to enrage opponents and tempt them to foolish action.
- Ranged - Ranged attacks such as throwing. Also certain jutsu that are physical ranged attacks can be aimed with this instead of Chakra Control.
- Rapport - As per DFRPG book. Talk in a friendly fashion.
- Survival - As per DFRPG book. Life in the great outdoors.
- Weapons - As per DFRPG book. Many ninja modify this with stunts.
- Willpower - Combines what was called "Conviction" and "Presence" in DFRPG. Determines your number of mental stress boxes. Rolled to resist pressure and to shut down and refuse to give things away to social probing.
Removed from DFRPG:
Driving
Scholarship (Took medical knowledge aspect into its own skill and the rest is not that relevant to most of the game.)
Resources (prefer to track more specifically)
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Considering Taijutsu currently controls for melee use of kunai, I think it should be a little more reasonable to parry weapons and SOME jutsu.
e: Otherwise, looks good!
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- Location
- Yes.
It does? I thought that was governed under Melee Weapons?
Well I think it's fair game that when Zabuza swings his sword, you don't try to parry that thing... you dodge! Unless you're someone who can parry big huge weapons with a kunai, of course. But I could see it either way. It's really about what kind of advantage you want to give to the Weapons skill to make it worthwhile for at least some ninja, but not all.
Note that: You can use Fists instead of Weapons for a small selection of weapons is a basic Fists Stunt.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Maybe not parry it in the "block his sword with your weapon" way, but with a sword as big as that cleaver, you can deflect it with a hand on the flat
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- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Wow, cool. Thank you for this, it looks really good. DF appears to be the leading candidate at the moment, so this is timely.
We've been talking about how to handle chakra, actually. A stress mechanic could work, although I'm more enamored of it as a resource that you spend. One idea I'd had was "you have N shifts of chakra that you can allocate among your jutsu; if you want an 8-shift fireball then you burn up 8 shifts from your chakra pool and when the pool is empty you can't do ninjutsu". There would also need to be some rules about the maximum you can put into one jutsu, how / when it refills, what happens if you run out -- unconsciousness at 0? Death at 0? Slightly random cost so you can't predict exactly when you'll run empty and you need to be careful about pushing too hard? etc. A lot of ways we could play it.
What we don't have is a good take on seals at this point. If anyone wants to make a suggestion we would be very interested.
Just to be clear: DF hasn't actually been chosen. The list at this point is DF, Champions (+ Ninja Hero, presumably), and Mutants and Masterminds. All the discussion over the last couple days has been around DF, though. GURPS has been ruled out as more complicated than we want to deal with, and BESM didn't do what we needed.
Please bear with us. We're trying to get a choice made ASAP, but it's complicated and we don't want to have to change again in the future if the one we choose turns out not to work for some piece of the system that we hadn't considered.
I tend to think that chakra cost should come in two varieties.
1. I can do this all day. (Henge. Spamming a weak ninjutsu attack. Running for hours at top speed.)
2. I can only do this a limited number of times a scene and then I need to recover my chakra.
SEALING PROPOSAL
Let's start with how seals are supposed to work.
You have to research a seal.
You have to draw the seal blank.
You then have to infuse the seal.
You then have to trigger the seal.
Infusing a seal can require a very high degree of skill and it's possible to fail with dangerous consequences, though it gets easier the more you try it. Making a seal blank can be failed, but if you screw it up you can just try again under you succeed. No consequences. So that's primarily about moving up and down the time chart (page 315). So let's put all this together:
1. To do sealing, a ninja first requires a basic education in how to construct seals. You must take a Stunt, "Sealcrafter".
2. Sealing largely keys off a skill I called "Chakra Lore" but which we might want to rename to "Chakra Sense" or something similar. it's not purely academic; it's about how good you are at understanding the flow of chakra.
3. Seals are learned individually. Each seal produces a single specific effect every time it is used. You can learn a seal either by learning an existing seal or creating your own.
4. A seal has a base value called Complexity. Complexity can be mechanically determined to a certain extent, but a GM always needs to give it a final pass of "is this reasonable" to see if the numbers work.
Page 264 of Dresden Files Your Story gives the basics of how to determine Complexity, but important modifiers are:
1. How many targets does it affect?
2. How long does it last?
3. Do you need to overcome some kind of resistance?
Examples:
Standard Explosive Seal: Set difficulty of Attack at +3 (cannot be blocked, only dodged), Weapon 2 attack = 5 Complexity
Storage Seal: Stealth at +2 to conceal the item, Might at +2 to carry it, +10 extraordinary duration, +5 for turning it on and off, ad hoc -5 for cannot affect living beings, ad hoc -5 'tweaked by generations of sealmasters to be easy as possible due to its insane usefulness' = 9 Complexity
Kagome's Bang Box: Set difficulty of attack at +4 (cannot be blocked, only dodged), Weapon 4 attack, attacks every target in a zone (+2) = 10 Complexity
Air Dome: Good Block (+3), covers multiple people (+2), lasts a few minutes (+3 to get from a few moments to a few minutes) = 8 Complexity
Skywalkers: Might Roll of +3 to hold up a laden adult carrying another adult (page 321 YS), ad hoc +5 for being able to turn it on and off repeatedly, lasts 15 minutes (+4 to get from a few moments to 15 minutes) = 12 Complexity
Skytower: Might Roll of +3 (normally multiple skytower seals are used to brace the tower), lasts a day (+9 to get from a few moments to a day) = 12 Complexity
Bind Bijuu into a human host: 14 to beat best resistance roll possible, 21 to burn through all the bijuu's consequences, 19 to go from a minute to a human lifetime = 54 Complexity (this is obviously a wild guess)
You can see that as intended in the narrative, Skywalkers are a cheat... a mere 12 Complexity seal (not all that much as these things go) that allow travel through the air!
Seal Blanks
Seal Blanks take a base of 15 minutes to create, after which you roll Craftsmanship - Calligraphy (restricted (YS 214) by Chakra Lore) against a difficulty of the Complexity/4 (not sure about this number- might need to change after trying it out). For each step up or down the time chart, you can decrease/increase the difficulty by 1. So if you increase the difficulty by 4, you can write a seal in a single action. Increase it by 5 and you can write a seal blank and infuse it in the same action. That is part (though not all) of how Minato could legendarily plant a seal with a touch. Failure means it's ruined, try again.
Anyone with the Sealcrafter stunt can learn to draw any seal blank with some practice. Technically you don't even need to have awakened chakra, though you suggest to a sealmaster having his seal blanks drawn by civilians and see what expression his face shows.
Infusing Seals
So how do you infuse a seal? Assuming that you know how to do it (because a sealmaster who knows the seal has explained it to you or because you have researched it) then it's simple. If you are a sealcrafter in the first place (remember all of this is stunt restricted) you roll your Chakra Control, modified by your Chakra Lore skill, against the Complexity of the seal. Then you roll your Chakra Capacity against the complexity of the seal, and take the difference in the roll in chakra stress. Easy! Well. Okay, the first few times infusing a seal are rough. Normally you stack up a bunch of maneuvers, spend some fate points, then then take stress to improve the results of your roll 1 for 1.
Every time you try to infuse a seal, the effective complexity goes down by 1 for your next attempt. It can go to a minimum of Seal Complexity/Chakra Lore skill, round down. So if you had a Chakra Lore skill of 3 and a Complexity 13 seal, you could take it down to a Complexity 4 to infuse. A Complexity 5 seal (like say your standard explosive seal) would be a mere Complexity 1 to infuse.
Infusion always takes some nominal amount of chakra... have to let GMs determine how much and how to track how many seals you can infuse before getting tired.
Researching Seals
1. Determine base seal complexity.
2. Add "research factors". If it's totally unrelated to any other seal effect you know, +10 effective complexity. If it's a space-time seal, add +5 because screw that. If it's a minor tweak on an existing seal, -5. GMs really got to go wild here. If it affects a living being with chakra +5. If you know it's possible and are trying to duplicate an effect you've seen it's easier, etc.
Researching is a multi-roll process in which you're trying to build to the total effective research complexity of the seal. Each roll takes a baseline time increment of 1 week, and you can choose to attempt up to your Chakra Lore rating in progress every week. So if Hazou had a "good" (+3) chakra lore, he could try for 3 complexity of progress every week. To make progress you roll Chakra Control, modified by your chakra lore skill against your target. Failure is a sealing mishap.
It is possible to reduce the research time increment to "a few days" by taking a -2 to your rolls, or to "a day" by taking -4 to your rolls. Kagome will never recommend this. Jiraiya thinks he's good enough to do it all the time, and given that he has all sorts of Stunts and Powers boosting his rolls, maybe he is.
If you research a seal, you are considered to know it inside and out, and the infusion difficulty is automatically reduced to the lowest possible level. We do have some pity after all.
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