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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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MMKII said:
You wouldn't really need to do anything too complicated actually as far as parameters go.

"Modular Zalgo Shuffle" would just perform a Casesar cipher (shift every letter to the right by a few, wrap back around) and then turn everything into incomprehensible gibberish. This seems mildly possible, if not super difficult to pull off with one seal.

But you don't even need to do that, really.

Ideally, you just have a seal that scrambles an already coded message with weird creepy text to further prevent codebreaking. And a companion seal that undoes this. This way your code is doubly secure unless someone cracks your crypt-decrypt seal.

It's pretty much 2 factor authentication actually. This is a pretty good idea.
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Why do you even need seals for this? Unless you want the seal application to be properly one-way, it doesn't really add any value other than convenience. At a guess, even a relatively secure symmetric cipher immune to chosen-plaintext attacks should be a major improvement for the Elemental Nations. Unlike asymmetric ciphers, something like RC4 with a smaller state should be both doable by hand and highly resistant to analysis by hand.

If we assume that Vigenere ciphers are known to hidden village cryptographers, then it's not a huge conceptual jump from that to stream ciphers. After all, all the weaknesses of Vigenere ciphers come from keys of insufficient length and randomness; having a way to generate a good key at will from a small amount of entropy isn't that strange of an idea, and it basically results in modern symmetric ciphers.
 
Roomba said:
Why do you even need seals for this? Unless you want the seal application to be properly one-way, it doesn't really add any value other than convenience. At a guess, even a relatively secure _ cipher _ attacks should be a major improvement for the Elemental Nations. Unlike _ ciphers, something like _ with a smaller _ should be both doable by hand and highly resistant to analysis by hand.

If we assume that _ ciphers are known to hidden village cryptographers, then it's not a huge conceptual jump from that to _ ciphers. After all, all the weaknesses of _ ciphers come from _ having a way to _ at will from _ isn't that strange of an idea, and it basically results in _ ciphers.
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This is what your post looks like once you redact all the concepts -- not the words, the concepts -- that the EN lack.
 
eaglejarl said:
This is what your post looks like once you redact all the concepts -- not the words, the concepts -- that the EN lack.
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Well, duh. Most of these concepts were only developed in the second half of the XXth century in our world. The Nara are unreasonably overpowered, but developing the idea of a stream cipher without computation theory would be a tall order even for them.

Are you sure that Vigenere ciphers don't exist, though? Those were developed midway through the 16th century, and shouldn't be that much of a challenge for the thinker bloodlines. Especially given that hidden villages are confirmed to employ dedicated cryptographers.
 
Kiba said:
I suspect that if they try to train, they will reinjure their legs.
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They'll just do Ami/Gai style "I shall run a thousand laps on my hands!" training :p

1234qwerty said:
Did the quest lose a bunch of tags or is it just me? Maybe something to do with the mod rolling by?

Edit: I see, all the other tags were cannibalized by the new romance tag.
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MMKII said:
The tags! The tags!! They have been destroyed! :cry:
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Yeah we're not sure wtf happened there

MadScientist said:
A few hours ago, the tags were as follows:
  • it seemed like a good idea at the time
  • precommitting is the winning strategy?
  • psuedo-code simulator
  • rational
  • rationalist
  • romance
  • screaming in kagome
  • screw the rules i have explosives
  • something bad might still happen
  • subsection c of paragraph 9 should include
  • table flip isn't the normal plan?
  • things have probably gotten out of hand
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Our savior!
 
I note that all of the quotes earlier about what math exists in the EN were from my chapters. This is a frequent source of embarrassment to me -- I let some anachronistic terms slip in or put in some modern reference because it's cool and then we're stuck trying to reconcile it with the world.

Roomba said:
Well, duh. Most of these concepts were only developed in the second half of the XXth century in our world. The Nara are unreasonably overpowered, but developing the idea of a stream cipher without computation theory would be a tall order even for them.

Are you sure that Vigenere ciphers don't exist, though? Those were developed midway through the 16th century, and shouldn't be that much of a challenge for the thinker bloodlines. Especially given that hidden villages are confirmed to employ dedicated cryptographers.
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That's 400 years after the tech level we're going for, but I'll talk to the others about it.

Also, note that the existence of cryptographers does not mean that they are dedicated. It might, but it's not essential.
 
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faflec said:
So @eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail In the original version of the rules Keiko's Monomanical (from Frozen Skein) was used on Summoning, allowing her to purchase levels in the skill with (Int x 3) instead of (Int x 1). But in the new rules there seems to have been no equivalent of an XP bump for Keiko, either in the Summoning Stunt (she still spend 250XP) or the Summoning Skill (she still spends 2x normal XP). Is there some other buff that was alloted to her so that she uses Monomanical for Summoning that I'm missing?

Also, is there any particular benefit to leveling the Summoning Skill? FMPOV the skill is just an XP sink since it doesn't seem to give Keiko anything...
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Bumping for @eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail
 
Cariyaga said:
Nah, Velorien's just quick to catch them. I know, because I obsessively refresh the thread and occasionally see one fixed in real time. :p
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Hmmm. How should I feel about this?

Shoulder devil: "He knows too much. You know what must be done."

That seems rather extreme. I should get a second opinion.

Other shoulder devil: "Yesss. Let's see how they fare without their voice of moderation..."

Well, my conscience has spoken.
 
eaglejarl said:
I note that all of the quotes earlier about what math exists in the EN were from my chapters. This is a frequent source of embarrassment to me -- I let some anachronistic terms slip in or put in some modern reference because it's cool and then we're stuck trying to reconcile it with the world.
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Don't be too hard on yourself; it's very difficult to write how people actually talked about mathematics (and science in general) pre-Enlightenment. Even Newton's Method of Fluxions is a very difficult read by our standards, in spite of the material only covering college freshman level analysis.

eaglejarl said:
That's 400 years after the tech level we're going for, but I'll talk to the others about it.

Also, note that the existence of cryptographers does not mean that they are dedicated. It might, but it's not essential.
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Eh, you put in the telescope merchant, and telescopes were invented around the start of the XVIIth century as well. Ciphers are, for the most part, purely conceptual, and have direct military applications, so it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if the Nara, Mori, and their equivalents in other villages, moved ahead of the setting's overall tech level on that front.

Just to be clear, I'm not trying to argue this for any practical reason; I think we have much more impactful ways of leveraging our knowledge than improving MfD crypto. It's just an idle observation.
 
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Roomba said:
Eh, you put in the telescope merchant, and telescopes were invented around the start of the XVIIth century as well. Ciphers are, for the most part, purely conceptual, and have direct military applications, so it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if the Nara, Mori, and their equivalents in other villages, hadn't moved ahead of the setting's overall tech level on that front.
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Pointless pedantry on my part: There's no reason to assume the tech base of MfD-verse is advancing in step with our own technological development.No reason that a few 17th century technological devices can't appear in a 12th century world. It's not necessarily a huge step from eyeglasses (~13th century) to telescopes, and the printing press didn't come about in Europe til the 15th century, yet it wasn't reliant on any large advances in science or engineering beyond being a very clever idea (indeed, similar versions of movable type printing presses were invented in east Asia a few hundred years before).
 
I had an idea for getting off explosions faster. Tie an explosive seal to the Kunai. Then attach one side of the LBF to the kunai pouch, and one side to the explosive seal. The link between the LBF gets broken when you draw the Kunai. We might have to make a special pouch.
 
MMKII said:
Pointless pedantry on my part: There's no reason to assume the tech base of MfD-verse is advancing in step with our own technological development.No reason that a few 17th century technological devices can't appear in a 12th century world. It's not necessarily a huge step from eyeglasses (~13th century) to telescopes, and the printing press didn't come about in Europe til the 15th century, yet it wasn't reliant on any large advances in science or engineering beyond being a very clever idea (indeed, similar versions of movable type printing presses were invented in east Asia a few hundred years before).
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Yeah, I absolutely agree. XIIth century tech with telescopes isn't really at all anachronistic, and it's the same with a lot of simple cryptography. It's only post-Enlightenment that scientific discoveries and inventions started to become truly interdependent. That's part of the reason I think the idea of developing computers using some clever chakra-based computational medium within Hazou's lifetime is insanity.
 
Immortal Lurker said:
I had an idea for getting off explosions faster. Tie an explosive seal to the Kunai. Then attach one side of the LBF to the kunai pouch, and one side to the explosive seal. The link between the LBF gets broken when you draw the Kunai. We might have to make a special pouch.
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We'd definitely need to make a special pouch, or somehow avoid jostling the kunai at all. We don't want this accidentally going off from us running around.
Could we reuse the LBF seals that aren't exploded?
 
If we can miniaturize the LBF sufficiently, we can install them on two ends of a hollowed rod that we insert into a hollowed Kunai handle. Leave a hole on the handle where a finger can go through and break the LBF line of effect.

We know that hollow-handle Kunai have been made, even if not preferred due to limited perceived utility for the extra manufacturing complexity/cost.
 
eaglejarl said:
Also, note that the existence of cryptographers does not mean that they are dedicated. It might, but it's not essential.
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No, but if I may pull a @faflec, Kagome's backstory shows dedicated crypto to be pretty much a thing:

eaglejarl said:
"Um...," Kagome said, awkwardly holding the chocolate out as it melted around his fingers. "Yeah? They do? Five years in the crypto department, right?" His eyes flicked to the side and the fingers of his free hand started twitching, plucking at the edge of his sleeve. "Black clearance, but only grade two.
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Not to mention things like T&I being a standard department title, etc. I suppose people likely have other duties alongside their crypto work, but there's clearly a dedicated study of it.
 
Erolki said:
Not to mention things like T&I being a standard department title, etc. I suppose people likely have other duties alongside their crypto work, but there's clearly a dedicated study of it.
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That's all I meant -- having professional crypto guys doesn't mean they are full-time. But yes, good clarification.

In other news, we have sent the final Chūnin Exam scores and tournament info out for independent review. Assuming our reviewer find no issues, we will publish it to the thread.
 
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eaglejarl said:
That's all I meant -- having professional crypto guys doesn't mean they are full-time. But yes, good clarification.

In other news, we have sent the final Chain Exam scores and tournament info out for independent review. Assuming our reviewer find no issues, we will publish it to the thread.
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It's a good thing you haven't let your proofreader come into contact with the hivemind. We're downright predatory when it comes to getting new people to break the setting create nukes overthrow all known laws of aviation ... have fun with.
 
eaglejarl said:
In other news, we have sent the final Chain Exam scores and tournament info out for independent review. Assuming our reviewer find no issues, we will publish it to the thread.
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Glad to hear it! Thanks @eaglejarl @Velorien and @OliWhail for all the work you likely put into that, by the way. Trying to figure out sensible score info from a simulationist perspective and checking it over for mistakes and whatnot was probably very time (and spoon) consuming.

(As an aside, I hope that my earlier piles of math on this topic do not cause any salt by adjusting everyone's expectations in a certain way. I have since edited these posts with a cautionary statement that they are not to be taken as absolutes due to possibly (coughlikelycoughcough) false assumptions on my part at the time of the original post. Sincerest apologies from me if this was in fact the case.)
 
MMKII said:
Glad to hear it! Thanks @eaglejarl @Velorien and @OliWhail for all the work you likely put into that, by the way. Trying to figure out sensible score info from a simulationist perspective and checking it over for mistakes and whatnot was probably very time (and spoon) consuming.

(As an aside, I hope that my earlier piles of math on this topic do not cause any salt by adjusting everyone's expectations in a certain way. I have since edited these posts with a cautionary statement that they are not to be taken as absolutes due to possibly (coughlikelycoughcough) false assumptions on my part at the time of the original post. Sincerest apologies from me if this was in fact the case.)
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Thanks! It was quite a lot of work, yes. First there was a lot of writeup in text form, and then I ended up doing a complete spreadsheet for all 72 contestants. Not all of them ended up getting names or full scores, since it clearly wasn't going to matter, but at least 1/2 of them did. Then there was a lot of effort making sure that we had the right number of people from each village and that they were teamed up in ways that made sense based on MfD canon.

MMKII said:
I personally would find tremendous humor in literally handing our QM's an actual grant proposal to this effect.
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My cofounder has literally spent the last year writing a grant proposal. If you want to do a full grant proposal that is completely in accord with...let's say the NSF's...guidelines, and the contents are up to spec for a real grant proposal, I will happily award a whole bunch of XP.



Also, someone (I forget who) was asking if it's a mistake that the bonus XP for short plans is going in the regular pile. Yes, it is. It will be corrected at some point once there are spoons. All of us are very short on those at the moment. Given that it's only a handful of points, I don't see it being an issue if this isn't resolved soon, so I wouldn't worry about it.
 
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