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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Restinan said:
I mean, people's actual arguments for Hazou's ideas having value is that they do a good job of enabling execution.

I disagree with calling Kagome's portion of the contribution 'grunt work', or implying that it wasn't critically important. But, back during that whole debate, given that Skywalkers also needed Hazou to come up with the precise idea of what seals to combine in order for the execution stage to be possible, I disagreed with the idea that Hazou's contribution had been useless. Honestly, I made this whole massive wall of text about how thinking of things as either only execution mattering or only ideas capable of enabling execution mattering was flawed, and that you should instead think about which of those two things was missing before something could be done, and which was more replaceable at that time. I did come down on the side of Hazou's contribution to skywalkers being more of a bottleneck to getting flight seals than Kagome's sealwork, because there were many people who could have combined air domes with a chakra adhesion trigger, but none who had thought of the idea. But that was a specific position on one specific problem, not a general statement about the value of ideas versus the value of execution.

I might be remembering incorrectly, but I'm pretty sure you're the person who brought up the whole "ideas or execution, which one actually matters" dichotomy in the first place. Before that, the thread was more specifically talking about Hazou's ideas about Skytowers and Skywalkers being valuable, and that those ideas showed we had a track-record for coming up with valuable ideas. I'm sure there were definitely some people talking about how execution was worthless. But I'm also pretty sure that a lot of them were just defending the claim that ideas could be valuable, and that more specifically those two specific ones had been. Thinking that that must mean the thread as a whole thinks ideas are the only valuable thing and execution is worthless is an inaccurate understanding of the thread's actual collective beliefs.

"Ideas can be valuable," is not the same statement as, "Only ideas can be valuable," or, "Execution is always and everywhere less valuable than ideas."

Honestly, I might be being too charitable to the thread, or just plain old misremembering. But I don't think so.
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While I agree wholeheartedly with your position on ideas v. execution, I would like to add that I don't think it was wrong (or at least OOC) for Hazou to make those 'execution is trivial, ideas are what matter' thoughts. Reflective of thread attitude or not, Hazou prides himself for his ability to come up with ideas, and it makes sense for him to harbor a little lingering resentment at Jiraiya's perspective that ideas are worthless.

It's not the sort of thing that would express itself meaningfully, Hazou understands the reasoning behind Jiraiya's point of view (even if he may not quite agree with it) and probably gets that the situation is more than just a dichotomy, but put Hazou in a situation where he's extremely grumpy and uncharitable and it makes sense that we'd see him assembling an opinion on the matter that befits his grumpiness.

Like most other things Hazou thought and did this update, I expect him to largely regress to baseline after a week or two to get it out of his system. This is not the True Hazou manifesting himself now that his outer mask is out of the way, it's Hazou's pain and hurt expressing itself by twisting his thoughts to be similarly hurtful, whether he truly believes them or not.
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
Like most other things Hazou thought and did this update, I expect him to largely regress to baseline after a week or two to get it out of his system. This is not the True Hazou manifesting himself now that his outer mask is out of the way, it's Hazou's pain and hurt expressing itself by twisting his thoughts to be similarly hurtful, whether he truly believes them or not.
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Precisely. Poor kid just had his first breakup, and it was an unusually long (like a year or two IIRC) and close relationship for a 14 to 15 year old. Or course he's gonna be moody and grumpy and generally lacking in social graces. I don't think any of the characters in universe will get too upset at him for being weird, and if they do they won't stay upset at him.

Let's cut the dude some slack. We don't need to worry too much about his current weirdness, it'll pass with time.
 
MadScientist said:
Yeah, well when I wrote that it wasn't canon. @eaglejarl, is this going to cause consequences, or is it just stress? (new post because edits don't ping)
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Just stress. He bit his cheek or something like that.

Restinan said:
"I mean, people's actual arguments for Hazou's ideas having value is that they do a good job of enabling execution.
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That was not the sense I got, but I would happily agree with that statement.

Restinan said:
"Ideas can be valuable," is not the same statement as, "Only ideas can be valuable," or, "Execution is always and everywhere less valuable than ideas."
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I hope I've been clear that I agree with you. After that discussion I amended my position from "ideas are worthless" because I was convinced by the arguments. I now accept that ideas are in fact valuable, but IF AND ONLY IF they are executed, and only to the extent that they enable that execution or make it more efficient. My / your brain state is worthless by itself.

And yes, I do believe that people in that discussion were trivializing Kagome's contribution to skywalkers, although that might be uncharitable and inaccurate recollection.
 
Personally I'm not considerably worried about Hazous mentality per se as of the last update, its more how this could be a nice springboard to fix related issues.

Ex: I dont think the thoughts about Tsunade were totally along the direction of "Bwa ha ha, must manipulate to MY own ends because ME AM IMPORTANT, and disregard what she wants because MY PLANS!" in a vacuum, but I think its still something we need to have the kid be cognizant of.

(Being charitable, this at least calls into question how much he's internalized the "respect the agency of others" thing.)

Perhaps others dont see this as a problem, but its at least worrying to me from a strategic planning perspective that some of our double think is leaking through to him. A large advantage we have as quest voters is that we can have Hazou do a particular action (such as the Akane Conversation with Nobby/Jiraiya) in character for a purpose HE thinks its for (getting advice in this instance) but really its a vehicle to accomplish something WE want (Hazou realizes his ass got dumped). Having him be aware of any or all of the minutiae or reasoning behind plans like that might be very detrimental. Additional caution may be required.

From another perspective: It would be great if we can start climbing the Staircase of Social Competency Character Development. Even if its just one step.
 
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MMKII said:
From another perspective: It would be great if we can start climbing the Staircase of Social Competency Character Development. Even if its just one step.
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The current XP plan is to allocate a portion of our XP to Empathy once we get out of the tourney, which is a good mechanical support for narrative endeavors like that, but I agree that there's little harm in starting earlier.
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
The current XP plan is to allocate a portion of our XP to Empathy once we get out of the tourney, which is a good mechanical support for narrative endeavors like that, but I agree that there's little harm in starting earlier.
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And I agree with this.

I think that we will need to dedicate considerable narrative weight to this issue as well. Just throwing XP at it isnt going to be enough IMO.

Hazou should totes pick up reading Jiraiyas novels btw. Pretend to be Kakashi for a day?
 
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eaglejarl said:
In other news: We're looking at slightly reforming the terms of the Gōketsu seal license. Having learned from past experience, we'd prefer to have one person look it over before throwing it to the crowd. Who wants to sanity-check us?
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I'd be willing.

eaglejarl said:
Glad to hear it. Personally, I'm still very much of the belief that this is a stupid and arrogant idea, that execution is what is valuable, with ideas having value only insofar as they enable or influence execution. Still, during the earlier discussion on the topic there were multiple people chiming in to support the "someone's brain state alone is worth paying for" and few or no people objecting, so I went with it.
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Hey now, the other side of that argument was mostly "Given the population size and tech level, simply having the idea is a major part of enabling it to be performed."
 
eaglejarl said:
Yes, and you convinced me. To the extent that Hazō's ideas end up being executed upon, they are valuable. *Simply having them* is not.
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This business of "are ideas valuable" and "is execution valuable" and "is it valuable to simply have an idea" seems, to me, to be missing the point. Which is, ultimately, how much should Leaf be willing to pay for Hazou to do nothing but sit on a chair all day doodling in a notebook thinking of ways to do things with seals and technology and what not. Given his track record, I'd say that should be quite a fair amount.
 
@eaglejarl

The link "popcorn munching crowd" in the last chapter does not work (at least for me).
 
Winged_One said:
This business of "are ideas valuable" and "is execution valuable" and "is it valuable to simply have an idea" seems, to me, to be missing the point. Which is, ultimately, how much should Leaf be willing to pay for Hazou to do nothing but sit on a chair all day doodling in a notebook thinking of ways to do things with seals and technology and what not. Given his track record, I'd say that should be quite a fair amount.
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Our problem at this point is more about overcoming simple organizational inertia then it is to think of uses for various tech.
 
Kiba said:
Our problem at this point is more about overcoming simple organizational inertia then it is to think of uses for various tech.
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Our problem is really that Hazou's sealing stat is so low, otherwise he could just do it all himself instead of trying to convince people,getting funds and filing a bunch of paperwork etc.

Have you seen how long the Necromancy Authorization form is? No wonder Orochimaru went missing nin!
 
Can Hazou write two seals at the same time using two hands?

Also if Hazou learns to use an ink brush with a chakra String would the iron nerve help him remember it?
 
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We maybe should/maybe could (probably) pay a decent amount of XP (75-100?) for an "Ambidextrous Writing" stunt that doubles his sealing rate.

E: Probably should require a minimum Calligraphy level though.
 
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DAKKA! said:
Can Hazou write two seals at the same time using two hands?

Also if Hazou learns to use an ink brush with a chakra String would the iron nerve help him remember it?
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Not at the moment. If you want to practice it, you can try. If he ever managed to pull it off then he's be able to do it consistently in the future, provided that he had brush, ink, and other environmental factors that were sufficiently similar.

I look forward to the results if you put this in a plan.
 
eaglejarl said:
Not at the moment. If you want to practice it, you can try. If he ever managed to pull it off then he's be able to do it consistently in the future, provided that he had brush, ink, and other environmental factors that were sufficiently similar.

I look forward to the results if you put this in a plan.
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What if we just had him practice writing with his off hand for a few hours a week, for a few months before trying it?
 
A sealmaster can inspect the seal before infusing it, right?

I believe in the past, you stated that it takes a sealmaster far longer to inspect a seal then it is to actually to draw it.
 
To be clear:

While I am absolutely aware that there is a class of things (whipguns, spontaneous actions that rely on Godlike control over nervous system, balancing on a ninja wire tightrope in the middle of a hurricane, etc) that the Iron Nerve absolutely shouldnt be able to actually do because of external factors and how precise these actually need to be (that end up being proposed all the time regardless)...I dont actually see why "Writing seals with your offhand." is automatically in this category, and not something thats on the scale of... lets say a couple hundred XP into a specific stunt for this purpose, and done in a way that requires merely heavy amount of practice in addition to
any bloodline bullshit (and a good Calligraphy stat of course. Probably some heavy penalty there regardless).
 
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eaglejarl said:
Personally, I'm still very much of the belief that this is a stupid and arrogant idea, that execution is what is valuable, with ideas having value only insofar as they enable or influence execution. Still, during the earlier discussion on the topic there were multiple people chiming in to support the "someone's brain state alone is worth paying for" and few or no people objecting, so I went with it.
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I doubt anyone was suggesting just hoarding the brainstate, lol.
 
If I approach learning to write seals with both hands in parallel, similarly as I would approach learning to write with both hands simultaneously. It would essentially involve the following steps.

  1. Learn to write with just the off hand (and infuse if hand dominance also affects ability to mold chakra). This is the easiest part as it's just grinding the required fine motor skills.
  2. Practice writing with both hands simultaneously while mirroring or exactly replicating the movements of the main hand. This will require more mental effort but if it works out we would now be able to write two seals of the same types at once.
  3. (Optional) Practice using both hands simultaneously with each hand writing a different seal. This is in my opinion not worth the effort as it would involve significant mental effort and does not add much utility over step 2.


Say we do the above then would XP be required to get the skill of dual wield seal crafting?
I only recently began following this quest and am not very familiar with Quest or RPG mechanics of this quest or any other.
 
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