I'm going to try not to go into a rant here, because rants are unproductive and also because I'm aware that a few nights of poor sleep have likely taken a toll on my capacity for equanimous self-expression. However, the criticism of the way I handled the last chapter is starting to get to me, and I feel a need to respond. All of this is my personal perspective and not to be taken as a comment on the other QMs' thoughts or feelings.
I'm responding specifically to the recurring issue of "Why didn't Hazō do better?", as opposed to broader concerns of adversarial player-QM relationships, short versus long plans etc. Here are some of the purely practical problems with the ideal scenario where each plan is run through a thorough Hazō/Keiko/Noburi optimisation process by a QM before implementation, as opposed to the basic "Would they catch this error?" and "Is there an obviously better alternative to this idea?" check I use now.
1) I have to use up a lot of spoons which are needed for writing, spoons of which the players have far more than I do.
2) I have to make sure that the plan is optimised to the standards of an intelligence collectively much greater than my own, because if Hazō fails at something, there will inevitably be people who say, "Why didn't he do X?" or "Why didn't Keiko/Noburi catch X?", and it'll be my fault.
3) I have to optimise the actions of other agents to a similar level, because it will be both unfair and unsimulationist if Hazō achieves superior results because I invested all this effort in modelling him but not them. In this instance, I would have had to ask questions such as "What would the assailant do to counter the kind of precautions they'd expect Hazō to make?" This would only amplify both of the problems above, because the next question is, "Assuming the assailant is not significantly smarter than Hazō, why didn't Hazō anticipate those possibilities as well?", and then I have to conduct an arms race in my own head.
4) I have to do additional on-the-spot worldbuilding to figure out what a ninja would do with this plan based on the level of training available to them. Now, simulationism does demand that I do a certain amount of this, but when players complain that unlike Hazō, they do not possess insider knowledge of ninja SOP, it should be remembered that QMs don't either. I'm a translator with some background in theology and social science. I can fill in gaps relating to Hazō's knowledge of the setting, and I can adjudicate whether a tactic or technique will be effective, but I am not going to automatically be better at coming up with ninja tricks than the players just because I'm on this side of the screen.
In an ideal Marked for Death, every ninja would at all times be as competent as you'd expect from a death world survivor who's spent at minimum half their life receiving elite training, and the players could devote all their time to thinking up high-level strategies and outside-context solutions instead of low-level optimisation. I would love to have the intelligence, time, energy and motivation to write that Marked for Death. I don't.
With that in mind, to those who are patient with the present status quo, thank you. To those who actively enjoy it, you perplex me a little, but thank you as well. And to the vocal minority who won't stop asking "Why didn't Hazō do better?", I understand your frustration, and I might well feel the same way were I in your shoes. But unless you think yourself capable of overcoming all of the above problems while still delivering MfD-quality content within a 36-hour deadline every week, kindly have a sense of moderation.
