Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Didn't Hinata ask him to refer to her by her given name back at the barracks?
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
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- 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
- Location
- Yes.
Ah, I see. Was a bit confused because the wording of that chapter made it sound like the Lightning team was the last team we fought.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
- Location
- USA
Huh, I'm actually really curious how this plays out in Japanese culture - what if you're dealing with say twins in the same class, etc.?
- Location
- The Deep Blue Sea
Maybe say the full name? Dunno
- Location
- Potato land
I feel like my brain isn't quite working correctly and I'm missing the obvious here. Does this mean that we're about to present the idea of spying on proctors once we agree what each team does to get secret words?
zap lunch
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- Location
- USA
Or threaten to destroy them, not like they can do anything if their word-half is destroyed
- Location
- Snakesden
Ren is also a newly-minted kage on shaky ground. The blood-ties Mist-Leaf alliance thing is a potential big win for her, esp since she can spin it as something only she could have done (both because Kurosawa and because diplomat). My guess is her ideal outcome here would be winning concessions from Jiraiya re: alliance, with hostility-as-usual being a backup plan.
Winged_One
Head Engineer of ATHENA
- Location
- Low Earth Orbit
Is there some particular reason why Neji can't receive a field promotion? By which I mean "Faked field event leading to a promotion". If he cares that much about it, we could maybe get him one, being Hokage kids and all.
What the hells is Jiraya doing? He knew all this. None of this is relying on new information. This means that he consciously decided to send us to the exams instead of, say, letting us work on new seal ideas. How many revolutionary seal ideas we could have made in two months of uninterrupted work with access to Leaf sealing corps (if those exist), literature Leaf has on sealing, Kagome's expertise, Leaf sealing facilities (bound to be easier to make a great sealing lab from a good sealing lab than from a random chunk of forest) and Leaf ninja to use for various set-up utility jutsu like MEW? 5? More? Showing a bunch of seals that change the layout of war to the same magnitude that Skywalkers did at the end of his Hokageship would seem to be the best possible argument for what he did. "Hey, remember those missing-nin you were pissed at me for taking in? Yeah, they invented these 5 different ways to turn groups of enemy ninja to dust from kilometers away using nothing but a pair of pliers, a stick, a can of paint, a kitten and these 5 standard defensive seals we had for the last 50 years. In two months. Now tell me I was wrong for taking them in, go on."
Given all this, I can only conclude that he has some brilliant plan for getting out of this situation. Brilliant enough he doesn't much care about the possibility of 5 new Skywalker-class ideas and is fine with us just participating in the exams instead. Personally I'd bet on him either having contact with Itachi regarding Naruto, or an almost-finalised agreement with Orochimaru about selling immortality seals to Leaf.
- Location
- Yes.
@Winged_One I'm pretty sure Jiraiya's plan was to make Mist his bitch, or otherwise put them into a subordinate position relative to Leaf.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Neji getting promoted via the chuunin exams given his antisocial mien is exceedingly unlikely. Frankly, I would be surprised if he was at all.
We should write up an analysis of our fellow leaf genin to hand in to Jiraiya.
I must admit, I always roll my eyes when the thread starts puffing itself up about "ideas". Ideas are as common as sand. Turning them into something that's practical is what's worthy of admiration. Any unbiased observer would say that the Skywalkers are mostly Kagome's doing.
Anyway, here's a theory about what Jiriaya is doing. He's realized that the group that took Naruto is after jinchuuriki, and he has some reason to believe that they need to get them within a short time period. So he's laying a trap using Mist's jinchuuriki since Leaf no longer has one of their own to serve as bait. In other words, he expects an attack at some point during the exams.
- Location
- Potato land
Keep in mind that Itachi may simply not know where Naruto is being kept. If Pein follows decent infosec practices, Naruto's location should be need-to-know only. Unless, that is, they're planning to extract the Kyuubi soon-ish, and have to move him somewhere specific for that.
But... they already have Yagura. I don't think Mist has another Jinchuuriki?
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Winged_One
Head Engineer of ATHENA
- Location
- Low Earth Orbit
Kagome just did the drudge work. You don't get to start doing drudge work before you have the idea. That's like saying that a chess match is mostly won by moving fingers around, or that a novel plane is constructed mostly by beating steel with hammers. Mist doesn't have their jinchuuriki, IIRC-it got captured at the same time as Naruto. And Jiraya doesn't need us for this, we are no match for Akatsuki.
Well, then it's the orochimaru thing. Otherwise Jiraya would have told us to stay in the village.
Or alternately, any fool can have an idea for the plot to a novel, but it actually takes a writer to write one. Anybody can sketch out a building, but it takes architects and engineers to turn the vision into reality.
Winged_One
Head Engineer of ATHENA
- Location
- Low Earth Orbit
Yeah our ideas tend to get turned into reality for some reason. -_- Almost like we are good at coming up with good ones. -_-
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- Location
- Potato land
Befriending Haru, the direct approach.
Brief character analysis:
Haru hates clan privilege, with a very emotional anger that he struggles to contain. His thoughts about Kiba suggest a less than wealthy background. Civilian born, perhaps? His anger could be a result of slowly accruing resentment, but apparently he also lost both his original teammates over the past few years. Him blaming their deaths on the village not providing enough support is a better explanation for the intensity of his emotions. Interestingly, he appears to have a very positive opinion of Mari. This is partially due to her having helped Sakura prepare for the spar, which suggests he's capable of accepting help without seeing it as a handout, but he also seems to approve of her personality and teaching methods. He should react well to a direct, or even aggressive approach, anything that puts him on the level of his interlocutor and sidesteps differences in social status; conversely, he'll react poorly to condescension, pity, indirect attempts to influence him, appeals to authority.
Rationale:
- Getting Haru to trust Hazou through normal means is going to be an uphill battle. As far as Haru is concerned, Hazou is just another spoiled clan kid, and Haru likely sees Hazou's unconventional plans as attempts to cheat and advance through privilege, rather than hard work. Hazou has a kind of in via Akane, but Haru has only known her for a few weeks, and has no particular reason to trust her. Furthermore, he will really hate the idea of Hazou trying to influence him through Akane, if he catches wind of it.
- Hazou and Haru actually have a fair bit in common, and should bond naturally once they get past their mutual distrust. Hazou's background should evoke some sympathy from Haru, and the idea of having no support as a missing-nin, having to work hard for everything, all the while being constantly hunted, should earn his respect. Furthermore, Haru's anger at the injustice of clan privilege is not so different from Hazou's feelings on ninja privilege over civilians - Hazou is less angry because he doesn't have a personal stake in the civilian problem.
- Because of this, we should confront Haru directly. Hazou saw Haru's mask slip this update, and has good reasons to be concerned. The Superteam is fragile as is without people blowing up at a bad moment. We should be forceful and not let Haru downplay the event, in the hopes of having his composure crack again.
- Hazou needs to show sympathy for Haru's overall sentiment without taking any undeserved shit. Haru will likely try to take all of his anger out on Hazou; Hazou shouldn't just accept this, and should become angry himself at Haru dismissing our team's struggles and hard work as mere privilege.
- Sympathy and understanding are nice and should solve the short-term problem, but Haru will want some kind of commitment towards improving the clan/clanless disparity. Hazou should make this commitment. This will pay dividends later.
Basic Plan:
- Confront Haru about his slip in private. The conversation might take a while, so look for a good opportunity. Prefer not to just call him away from a large group.
- Be direct and forceful. Hazou knows Haru hates the seal trail plan. He wants to understand why, and whether it's going to be a problem. Don't accept any deflections, this is important. Aim to get to the root of the problem.
- Aim to establish some rapport and mutural respect. At minimum, we want Haru to see Hazou as someone he can honestly talk to without suffering any negative consequences.
- Broadly speaking, Hazou should sympathize with Haru's resentment towards clan privilege and bring up his own experiences to demonstrate his sincerity.
- With that said, he should firmly push back against claims of his own privilege, even to the point of becoming angry (utilize Deceit? Not really in Hazou's nature to be angry about something like this). Team Uplift bled, struggled, and risked their lives for all of their "unfair" advantages, and Hazou won't let Haru dismiss that just so he can feel better about himself.
- If Haru wants Hazou to put his money where his mouth is, promise to talk more constructively later (not in the middle of the exam), and bring his concerns to the Hokage.
- The seal trail plan isn't the problem here, but if Haru wants to discuss it, challenge him to come up with something better. If he can't, he should recognize that this is just a personal bias of his. As ninja, we have to take the most effective course of action, even if we might not always like it.
Specific Responses:
- OPSEC: We might need to reference various events from our missing-nin days here to illustrate our points. Keep in mind all the rules pertaining to that and don't volunteer any identifiable details. Prefer not to talk at all about the most sensitive topics, like Cold Stone Killers or Hidden Mountain.
- Sealcrafting: If Haru thinks Hazou is privileged for being able to learn it, challenge him to do the same. After all, it should be much easier for a village ninja in good standing, compared to a hunted missing-nin. If he actually wants to, we can set him up with Kagome, even.
- Pangolin Summoning: If Haru thinks someone just gave the scroll to Keiko, he's an idiot. She risked her life for it, as did the rest of us.
- Bloodlines and Clans: Hazou can spill all his bitterness at the Kurosawa clan and what they did to his mother. Admit to being forced to gamble to pay the bills, and getting in trouble for it. The Bloodline is good to have, but it comes with its own problems, which Hazou isn't comfortable discussing.
- Goketsu Clan Wealth: We were recently forced to do C-rank missions to pay off the clan residence mortgage. We would appreciate if Haru didn't talk about it to anyone, it's a bit of an embarassing secret. (Are we willing to volunteer this? Our financial problems are solved, so it doesn't matter that much if he talks.)
- Goketsu Clan in General: Challenge him to think about how easy it is for missing-nin to be adopted into the Hokage's clan and whether he really wants to count that as our privilege.
- Clan Privilege: Agree, but also bring up just how bad civilians have it compared to ninja, and our commitment to change this. Still, we were missing-nin up until recently, and Jiraiya himself comes from no clan, so we can sympathize with the plight of the clanless.
- Teammate Deaths: Hazou hasn't seen any of his teammates die, and admits it was mostly down to luck. Akane nearly died when we first visited Leaf, and we've had several really close calls against superior enemies. Hazou remembers how scared and angry he was when Akane's life hung in the balance, and he feels for Haru's pain and anger.
Mechanics:
I need to think this through a bit more, but we should use Empathy for the relevant segments, Deceit to appear angry and serious, and maybe Rapport somewhere in there?
Failure modes:
There are two major ones. Haru can refuse to rise to the bait and stonewall us completely. I don't think this is likely, as he seems to be barely keeping himself under control, and shouldn't be able to ignore a serious push. If he manages, though, we're not really much worse off, and can try again later. The other one is that he has an angry outburst and then storms off without listening. In this case, at least we let him release some of his pent up pressure, and can follow up later - when he calms down, he should realize he made an ass of himself and be more willing to talk.
- Location
- USA
The key, I think, is that our ideas have some of the sticky bits hammered out already (and are therefore much more actionable).
Idea anybody could have: "Seal that makes you walk on air".
Idea that only a specific sort of anybody could have: "Seal that makes you walk on inverted Air Domes that are toggled with your feet."
I think that was pretty good Roomba. One point:
My read was that Haru got angry not at the idea of leaving a trail of seals, but at the notion of just 'buying' the seals. If Hazou made them that would be fine, a ninja using his skills to compete. Buying them is unearned privilege, using the money of being a clan heir to solve a problem and give yourself a leg up, however minor, that you didn't earn.
EDIT: By the way, this suggests he would react poorly to finding out that Hazou didn't make the goo bombs himself or that Hazou is otherwise using seals he himself can't make.
My read was that Haru got angry not at the idea of leaving a trail of seals, but at the notion of just 'buying' the seals. If Hazou made them that would be fine, a ninja using his skills to compete. Buying them is unearned privilege, using the money of being a clan heir to solve a problem and give yourself a leg up, however minor, that you didn't earn.
EDIT: By the way, this suggests he would react poorly to finding out that Hazou didn't make the goo bombs himself or that Hazou is otherwise using seals he himself can't make.
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- Location
- Potato land
I'm not sure if I can justify Hazou reading so much from Haru's reaction. I also feel like our team throwing seals around left and right in general tends to be interpreted the way Hinata did during the spar - as a demonstration of wealth. I suspect Haru was internally seething the moment Hazou brought up seals again (and we also got some weird looks from others that I'm not sure how to interpret), and Shikamaru's casual proposal to just throw money at the problem simply sent him over the edge.
A use case for Deceit, how nice!
On a related note, since you seem to have a good understanding of FtD, how would you frame trying to get Haru to drop his mask in terms of social combat? Not sure which skill it should be, or what Aspect for that matter.
We shouldn't tell anyone that, I think - risks making the Hokage's clan look weak. If we were having the conversation a few years down the line, it could work for self-deprecating "look at all these problems we had", but right now we're too precariously placed politically for it to be worth it.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This happens to be something of a hot button of mine, so I figured I'd chime in.
It is my experience that people consistently overvalue ideas and undervalue execution. If you go out to Silicon Valley and talk to any VC / angel investor / incubator, they will all tell you the same thing: They don't care about ideas, they care about the team in particular and execution in general. Sure, the idea has to be minimally viable -- no one is going to invest in a business that intends to make hibachis intended to be used by SCUBA divers. Beyond that, the investors don't care too much. What they want to know is:
- How many co-founders are on the team? ("1" and "4+" are both dispreferred, although 1 is less so.)
- What skills does each co-founder bring?
- How much experience do they have at starting and running companies?
- How much domain expertise do they have?
- What comparative advantage do they have over their competitors?
- How well prepared are they? Do they know their market, have valid strategies for customer acquisition and growth management, have plausible timelines for profitability, etc?
Similar example in a different field: I read a piece by one of the editors at Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine (Gardner Dozois, maybe?) talking about what it was like to be an editor at a major SF magazine. He stated that they regularly got letters coming over the transom that said things like "I've got an idea that's so awesome I can't tell it to you or you'll steal it. Give me a $50,000 advance and I'll write it and we can all make millions." They didn't bother replying to those letters.
Ideas have literally zero value until they have been executed. Lots of people throughout history must have said "Boy, wouldn't it be great if there was something you could eat or drink or whatever that would keep you from dying of smallpox?" That was a common idea and it had zero value until Edward Jenner came along. His vaccine had value, and the science that was derived from it has value, but the idea of a vaccine was and is literally worthless.
You might want to consider how many ideas have been proposed in the thread, how many of those have been immediately shot down within the thread itself, then how many of the remainder have been shot down in-story by {Keiko,Noburi,Jiraiya,Kagome,Mari,etc}, then how many of the remainder have actually come to fruition. Then think about the ratio. If you still feel that 'your ideas in general' tend to get turned into reality, you might want to consider if there's a little survivorship bias in your estimates.
It would be an Empathy roll to get him to open up and admit to the Aspect of his character that makes him dislike clan kids, opposed by his Deceit (if he tries to play it off and lie) or his Rapport (if he tries to go sullen and resist admitting anything). Note that making an Empathy roll will require an empathetic approach, something along the lines of, "Come on, man, we won't get anywhere if you keep dancing around this." You could also use Provocation, but that would be to needle him into blowing up and admitting it... something that would leave him angry and afraid afterwards. So don't take that approach!
Hazou isn't great at Empathy, but on the other hand Haru must have shit Deceit or he wouldn't keep blowing it with these obvious displays of anger. Getting Haru to admit to his dislike should have the mechanical effect of us knowing the Aspect and getting a free invoke on the Aspect for having discovered it by a roll.
After that, Hazou can make a Presence or Rapport roll to try to get through to Haru. Presence would be if Hazou wants to make a speech about he knows that clanless ninjas have it tough, and he wants a village where they are valued like all other ninjas, will of fire rah-rah, won't you help Hazou take the first step? Leadership and charisma, basically. Presence would be opposed by Haru's Presence or Resolve. Hazou could also use Rapport, making the case that Hazou is "one of the good ones" and is willing to be a sympathetic ear for Haru's problems. That would be opposed by Haru's Empathy. As Hazou has a 15 in Presence but only a 10 in Empathy, he will probably want to to the leadership angle. This also allows Hazou to spend a fate point to invoke the "Idealist" part of his High Concept in addition to invoking Haru's Aspect.
Note that Hazou is not required to succeed at his Empathy roll to learn Haru's aspect to proceed on. It simply means that he will be proceeding blindly and risks have misinterpreted the situation if he didn't correctly guess Haru's issue.
Hardly anyone will voluntarily take social consequences rather than give in, so it's likely that if we overload Haru's mental stress boxes he will immediately concede the conflict and decide to trust Hazou. If we don't do some mental stress but not enough, repeated rolls may be required and he'll have an opportunity to counter-attack and hit Hazou's mental stress boxes. (Conceding being that we give up on the argument and don't bother him again.)
Note
Social skills are always mediated by the GM's judgment of what is plausible and reasonable. Using Empathy to get someone who is infiltrating as a mission to open up will likely not get you a confession, but at most some twitches and give-aways. But in this case, Haru is presumably just a kid with emotional issues who can be convinced to talk if given the opportunity.
EDIT:
Just to point out, but Haru personally witnessed Hazou making seals by the dozens in the fort. That likely softened his seeing them as a demonstration of wealth, since now he understands that Hazou is personally making the seals his team is using. (Knowing nothing about sealwork like most people, Haru has no idea how difficult any given seal might be and just assumes that if Hazou has seals he must have made them.)
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Follow-up:
We could double-team this with Noburi, who has some decent Empathy and Rapport... but remember that if you leave it in the hands of an NPC, even a teammate, and they'll do what they want to do. Hazou will generally do what we vote him to do.
We could double-team this with Noburi, who has some decent Empathy and Rapport... but remember that if you leave it in the hands of an NPC, even a teammate, and they'll do what they want to do. Hazou will generally do what we vote him to do.