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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Oneiros said:
Nah. Haru has a giant flashing button that says push here to manipulate me. Which we have avoided for some reason I guess? We just need to have Dark! Hazō give him a reason why you suck speech. Let him think that our goals are completely aligned. Tell him why Akane broke up with us. How everyone even Hazō himself is a tool to be used to further his goals of remaking the world. Talk about how Haru's rage could be harnessed to that goal. But that if that rage is unchanneled it's a danger to our dreams.
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goes down his list of moral guidelines

Where was it, where was it...
Article:
3: Cooperate when possible
...
77: Cats are to be pet
...
472: [incomprehensible gibberish]
...
869: Screaming in Kagome
Source: Excerpt from Cariyaga's moral guidelines

Ah yes, here it is: "Don't be evil."

Dunno why that's so far down the list... anyway! I don't generally enjoy reading about people explicitly exhibiting antisocial behaviour. Furthermore, Hazou threatening a fellow leaf nin would go over real well if he didn't intend to follow through on it, and... he doesn't. He's Goketsu-nee-Kurosawa Hazou, not Hivemind Puppet #1.
 
I could see how truck seal being exploded could be bad and cause an accident about like an out of control semi truck. I'm not sure about ever getting enough density to cause a chain reaction or stuff appearing being that likely to destroy more seals. If anything, I think more stuff showing up would tend to damp the reaction. This also doesn't apply to the one storage seal per squad proposal.
 
Cariyaga said:
goes down his list of moral guidelines

Where was it, where was it...
Article:
3: Cooperate when possible
...
77: Cats are to be pet
...
472: [incomprehensible gibberish]
...
869: Screaming in Kagome
Source: Excerpt from Cariyaga's moral guidelines

Ah yes, here it is: "Don't be evil."

Dunno why that's so far down the list... anyway! I don't generally enjoy reading about people explicitly exhibiting antisocial behaviour. Furthermore, Hazou threatening a fellow leaf nin would go over real well if he didn't intend to follow through on it, and... he doesn't. He's Goketsu-nee-Kurosawa Hazou, not Hivemind Puppet #1.
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Ahhh please don't stoop to calling things evil. It really lowers the tone of the debate. Now I will freely admit this is manipulative. However it's no more manipulative than Leafs own propaganda. The will of fire is all about abandoning your individuality to serve the village.

Also please don't assume that you have a perfect understanding of what Hazō would or wouldn't do. Trying to put yourself as the moral arbiter of Hazō's actions is incredibly distasteful.

I also find it interesting that you automatically assume that I would suggest physical violence. No what I was wanting to do is use our political connections to stall his career. Deny him advancement opportunities. Which honestly with as much anger and resentment he is showing he shouldn't get any till he proves he has it under control
 
Oneiros said:
Ahhh please don't stoop to calling things evil. It really lowers the tone of the debate. Now I will freely admit this is manipulative. However it's no more manipulative than Leafs own propaganda. The will of fire is all about abandoning your individuality to serve the village.

Also please don't assume that you have a perfect understanding of what Hazō would or wouldn't do. Trying to put yourself as the moral arbiter of Hazō's actions is incredibly distasteful.

I also find it interesting that you automatically assume that I would suggest physical violence. No what I was wanting to do is use our political connections to stall his career. Deny him advancement opportunities. Which honestly with as much anger and resentment he is showing he shouldn't get any till he proves he has it under control
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I'm not going to debate with you but would like to state for the record that I disagree with everything you just said.
 
Oneiros said:
Ahhh please don't stoop to calling things evil. It really lowers the tone of the debate. Now I will freely admit this is manipulative. However it's no more manipulative than Leafs own propaganda. The will of fire is all about abandoning your individuality to serve the village.

Also please don't assume that you have a perfect understanding of what Hazō would or wouldn't do. Trying to put yourself as the moral arbiter of Hazō's actions is incredibly distasteful.

I also find it interesting that you automatically assume that I would suggest physical violence. No what I was wanting to do is use our political connections to stall his career. Deny him advancement opportunities. Which honestly with as much anger and resentment he is showing he shouldn't get any till he proves he has it under control
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I don't really like where this is going.
 
charlesrwest said:
To put that in perspective, a 53' semi truck trailer can haul 3800 cubic ft (107.604 m^3) and 15,000 lb (6803.8855 kg) (Equipment, Truck Trailer Van Specifications). All of these storage seals can probably fit in a single scroll and be used/transported by a single ninja. Since storage seals can hold 1 m^3/100 kg, Hazou can turn a single ninja into the logistical equivalent of a semi-truck in about 1.3 days (30+ mph? -> 13.4 m/s).
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Just to be clear, here, you're talking about physically folding dozens of storage seals into a single box? 'Cause you can't seal an infused seal into a storage seal, active chakra messes them up.

The QMs have stated that it's common for ninja who are able to make explosive tags and/or storage seals take early retirement and just make seals all day, just as you've proposed. I'm pretty sure most (if not all) chuunin squads do have at least one storage seal, likely 1+ per person - they're moderately expensive, but as you lay it out, very useful. It's just that only squads with sealmasters end up with the dozens of scrolls of stuff that Team Uplift carries :p.

charlesrwest said:
What do you guys think?
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I think you've done an excellent job deducing a piece of worldbuilding that was already in place, and agree that if we don't come up with anything more ambitious pumping out seals can be an ok backup cash source. Then again, if you look at the discussion on the last few pages... ambition isn't something the thread's lacking ;).
 
charlesrwest said:
Just to throw my two cents in with uplift/long term goals...

We are sitting on a very transformative tech which which has certainly not been utilized to it's full potential and could have profound effects on society.

I speak, of course, of the humble storage seal. Transport is one of the foundational services of society. So is storage. The storage seal trivializes both (particularly if we could make ones that store more, see Dreaming of Sunshine for example). Given sufficient storage seals, one man can carry more than a freight train (large scroll). Bulk goods could be moved at Ninja speeds. All food can be preserved. All evidence of murder can be wiped away. With Skywalkers, really heavy things can be be dropped from really high.

This could be an insanely transformative technology, given sufficient supply. So let's look at the supply side. Hazou can pop out a storage seal at about 1 per 5 minutes. Let's say he can work productively for 7 hours in a day (30 min for lunch, 2 15 min breaks and 8 hour working day, standard for USA). That's 84 seals per day.

To put that in perspective, a 53' semi truck trailer can haul 3800 cubic ft (107.604 m^3) and 15,000 lb (6803.8855 kg) (Equipment, Truck Trailer Van Specifications). All of these storage seals can probably fit in a single scroll and be used/transported by a single ninja. Since storage seals can hold 1 m^3/100 kg, Hazou can turn a single ninja into the logistical equivalent of a semi-truck in about 1.3 days (30+ mph? -> 13.4 m/s).

Let's compare this to the current state of the art. I'm having remarkable trouble finding the exact specs on what medieval carts can carry but I'm going to guess it isn't much more than a Subaru with the seat folded down since it is being drawn by horses on crappy roads (https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/subaru/outback/interior). That's 73.3 cubic feet (2.07 m^3) moving at something like a human walking pace on a good day (1.4 m/s, Walking - Wikipedia).

So logistically, a modestly applied Hazou equipped ninja is semi-equivalent to 497 wagons hauling stuff around (not counting the advantages of reduced capital investment, quicker deliveries and much better security). And capacity could be improved just by adding more seals to the scroll (or making a better storage seal). These calculations have some estimation, but indicate that we could SIGNIFICANTLY improve one of the pillars of society right now.

Likewise, how much would the performance of the Leaf rank and file improve if every squad had a storage seal? How much more essential equipment could each squad carry. I don't remember the exact numbers on how many squads there were in Leaf, but how much political capital could be gathered by gifting squads with a storage seal? There have been many references to how they are too expensive for most to afford. That just makes them that much better of a gift (and whets the appetite for further use of them).

Furthermore, we could extend the economic lead of our clan by simply selling them. The whole merchant council debate got kicked off with the simple observation that Hazou should be able to make bank by selling storage scrolls. Presumably with time to process and our clan in a favorable political position, we should be able to sell storage seals to our fellow ninja (civilians can't make them almost by definition).

This could be turned into a second revolution by making a civilian usable version. This would be incredibly useful for them and for the first time give civilians access to "ninja magic" which would be a transformative change for this society as well.

Lastly, the storage seal is suppose to be one of the easier ones to create (hence being widely used). It would support the aforementioned revolutions if the clan started training more ninja to be able to produce storage seals (and just storage seals) and make the price come down by having more sellers (so things don't stop if the clan dies or gets busy).

What do you guys think?
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Having more sealmasters making more seals is definitely going to be very valuable to a ninja village, but given the already-existing paradigms of 'stay at home, sell seals, be rich' for sealmasters (and, if you listen to Kagome, sealing sweatshops) it would be hard to truly revolutionize anything with just a handful more dedicated sealsmiths. Further, supposing we managed to minimize the cost of transport, we may just run up against other trade limits such as 'stuff to trade in the first place'. If the farms don't produce enough food to feed many craftsmen, miners, etc. then you won't have many of them and as such you won't have many trade goods. If we can help the farmers produce more crops (a topic which ranges from 'farming tech' to 'walls on their settlements so they die less') then we can increase how much trade Fire Country can engage in, which may be an easier and more effective goal than reducing transport costs (emphasis on 'may', we'll need to weigh our options).

Oneiros said:
Nah. Haru has a giant flashing button that says push here to manipulate me. Which we have avoided for some reason I guess? We just need to have Dark! Hazō give him a reason why you suck speech. Let him think that our goals are completely aligned. Tell him why Akane broke up with us. How everyone even Hazō himself is a tool to be used to further his goals of remaking the world. Talk about how Haru's rage could be harnessed to that goal. But that if that rage is unchanneled it's a danger to our dreams.
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Setting aside the morality for a moment, Dark!Hazou has only ever appeared once so we're far from him being able to call that mode of thought up at will. Either we'd need Haru to provoke Hazou so hard that he's overcome with negative emotions enough to retreat to a clinical uncaring mindset, or we'd need others to do the same enough times for the mental grooves to be worn.

We could always Iron Nerve up some Dark Hazou, but without the actual lines of thought behind it we won't be nearly as imposing.

e: my point is not that this is impossible, but that we do not yet have the means to do it. Further, getting the means will not likely be simple as we can't simply tell Hazou to go get traumatized.
 
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Oneiros said:
I also find it interesting that you automatically assume that I would suggest physical violence. No what I was wanting to do is use our political connections to stall his career. Deny him advancement opportunities. Which honestly with as much anger and resentment he is showing he shouldn't get any till he proves he has it under control
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No, that's what everyone who remotely knows Hazou would think after the chuunin exams, and it pattern matches almost exactly to "I'd go pretty damn far for [Akane]" in such a way that regardless of your intent, it would seem deliberate from Jiraiya's perspective.

And to be clear: Saying don't be evil was tongue in cheek and not intended to reflect badly on you in any fashion. To expand out on that post a bit:

I see manipulating Haru in such a way to be defecting on social norms in a destructive manner, and beyond that, something that I don't think Hazou is capable of at this point in time. I don't think he's nearly cynical enough to do so without being goaded into it, as IV mentions.

Furthermore, taking that tact kind of "sets" what kind of person Hazou is to be around Haru in the future in such a way as to be deceptive, and it strikes me as really awkward to have to deal with that kind of deception.

That said, I do like the idea of targetting the "I hate clans and everything their hegemony stands for" button, but it'd also feel really bad to me to do so in that way.
 
Personally the main reason I haven't wanted to push for more Haru interaction is because it's been pretty tense, borderline hostile, each time, and so unless a key opportunity presents itself it is valuable to wait for him to cool down a little between attempts. If we push Haru too fast under our current methods he's more likely to wind up rejecting everything we have to say out of hand, so our only options are to change our methods (such as Dark Hazou) or to be patient. Currently I'm in favour of patience, but only because we don't have any other viable methods to pursue.
 
[✓]Interlude: Haru reacts to Hazou's performance in the chuunin exams.

Specifically, the part where he maimed, deafened and stole the word half of the clanless Leaf nin who wasn't useful to his plans.
 
Briefvoice said:
Don't you folks ever get a little exhausted and disillusioned by all these wild ambitions?

I just see it over and over and over in the thread, this conviction that some day this will turn into a dramatically different quest where the PC is leading huge organizations and reshaping society. I just don't get why you continue to fervently believe this is the quest for that, despite all evidence to the contrary. I mean, sure the QMs are pretty good about, "We won't stop you from doing whatever you can logically make a case to do," but I have never quite gotten why this particular quest out of so many is the one where you have all chosen to pour those ambitions.
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You've got a valid point here, but I'll note that you have recently become the son of the Hokage and are about to be promoted to chūnin, at which point you have some authority within the ninja forces and some extra respect from civilians. Furthermore, Jiraiya has seen that you have good ideas and is more likely than any other Kage to listen to your suggestions and act on them.

You're not going to be running organizations by this Sunday, but you are moving into the level of society where you could.

Briefvoice said:
Any one of you could start a quest right now, on this very board, about reshaping society. It could even be set in Naruto-world if you want. It would be a quest about doing those things explicitly, and you could do it with a set-up that started in the very first game post, no waiting, no having to slowly work your way up from a literal outlaw child. Yes, I get the appeal of working your way up from the bottom, but on the other hand there's the appeal of actually getting to do all this stuff instead of talking about it endlessly for over two years. Turn one could be asking whether you want to establish a spy network or a mechant empire, and there could be a few rolls, and you could do it with a little roleplay text for flavor. That's exactly how many of the civilization-building, CKII-style quests on this very board handle it.
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I'd play that. Why don't you start it?

Briefvoice said:
So this quest has just spent about a year of real time and nearly fifty chapters (albeit with a hiatus for the mechanics adjustment) on this Chuunin Exam arc, and the arc isn't even over yet. One of the reasons it's been like that is lots of detailed scenes of character interaction, lots of very detailed and specific strategies, and lots of slow development of relationships through detailed conversations. None of that is a bad thing or worthy of criticism; it's just how this quest is written. A different quest could have done the Chuunin Exams in four or five posts and a handful of dice rolls.

But then i look at how this quest is paced and run and then I look at the ambitions that posters have been talking about for over two years and come on. Come On. Building an airship or a spy network isn't going to be abstracted away in a handful of dice rolls. Nor will it go uninterrupted by some other urgent matter that requires addressing some issue or another. How long can the quest even realistically run, anyway? Another three years won't get halfway to the ambitions that posters have spent so very, very long going over.

You ask what the alternative is. Hell, I don't really know. I think the best we could do is look for small opportunities to make peoples' lives better as they appear and act on those opportunities whenever possible. Do enough of that and maybe they'll someday add up to some big opportunity. I think the conversation where Hazou reached out to Neji when Neji was at his lowest point was one of the more meaningful actions to improving someone's life that Hazou has taken in the entire quest. Behind only how he helped Akane and Kagome.

This quest just doesn't seem to me to have the type of pacing that is suited to big, large scale projects that take months or years of dedicated effort. Personally I have severe doubts it will get beyond Hazou's sixteenth birthday or so.
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It sounds like you're not having fun anymore. Did something specific change for you, are you simply having a bad day and feeling irritated, or is this something that's been building up and is only now being expressed?
 
So, if I need a knife I could just go to the store and buy whichever kind of knife I need and it'd get the job done and I could go on with my life. On the other hand, I could do what a friend of mine did and take up the art of blacksmithing to the point where he can handcraft exactly the knife that he would like to have.

There's nothing wrong with either approach, but we just happen to be in the middle of a blacksmithing class in this thread, that's all.
 
Chances are we aren't even going to break even, but I'm fairly sure we could if there was unanimous thread approval. It'd involve taking risks though.

Highest impact things we could do that have large positive impacts, without a huge amount of delay:
  • Clear huge areas of chakra beasts with The Power of Love and Totally Not Nukes.
  • Prevent ninja war with Overwhelming Kindness and Totally Not Superior Weapons Technology.
  • Civilian-usable sealtech with, uh... Civilian Sealtech and Totally Not Eldritch Horrors?
  • (Maybe) remove key tyrants with Mutual Respect and Totally Not Broken Game Mechanics.
Here are some that would take more effort, but are still feasible:
  • Construct some kind of peace among the nations.
  • Structured ninja-aided construction projects for civilians (trenches, housing, roads).
  • Farming projects for high-output food production, likely with ninja aid.
 
Day 592:

Despite it's various criticisms and (sometimes particularly vocal) detractors, MFD remains a fun and engaging quest. Since joining, I have read every update within a day of it being posted, and enjoy participating in the thread, both for planning and for random, day-to-day discussions.

Day 593:

[...]
 
Oneiros said:
I will never understand why you guys took the hot springs mission. Way to risky for my taste
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!!!!!!! LUPCHANZ!! GIVE US BACK ONEIROS, YOU STINKER !!!!!!

Oneiros said:
I'm actually thinking we can get the ball rolling on recruiting Hidden Mountain right now. Anyone know where in Tea it's located?
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Roughly in the middle vertically and slightly west of center, IIRC.

Cariyaga said:
Actually, I would like QM word on that too.

@eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail can we get a timeline on Warring Clans Era -> Village era?
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Leaf was founded about 100 years ago.

Veedrac said:
Chances are we aren't even going to break even,
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Break even on what?
 
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