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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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I would be open to moving away from Deceit and Roki iff we can get a Taijutsu style passed by the QMs using the other (Presence or Empathy) that works out.

E: I will also note that Deceit could be useful in social situations still, just not the ones we currently seem to be facing usually.

E2: That or the Hivemind would feel squeamish about using Deceit on friendlies.
 
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MMKII said:
I would be open to moving away from Deceit and Roki iff we can get a Taijutsu style passed by the QMs using the other (Presence or Empathy) that works out.

E: I will also note that Deceit could be useful in social situations still, just not the ones we currently seem to be facing usually.

E2: That or the Hivemind would feel squeamish about using Deceit on friendlies.
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A big factor here is that a large chunk of social conflicts are resolved narratively, based on the characterizations of the people involved. That isn't a bad thing, but it does mean that in those situations stats are only important insofar as they guide characterization.

High Deceit can be very useful in social situations that get resolved narratively, but only if they influence how Hazou narratively behaves. The core conflict of Deceit is that Hazou's characterization includes something to the effect of 'earnestly honest', which means high Deceit levels have minimum effects on Hazou's actual deceptiveness. As such, we may find Hazou getting more benefit out of high skills in a stat which doesn't conflict with other aspects of his characterization, like Rapport.
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
Those of us in the shadow cabal discord group were just discussing Hazou's future social growth, and I thought I'd summarize it here for more discussion.

Hazou's current three-stat social build (Deceit, Empathy, Resolve) is alright, but doesn't really suit Hazou well. In particular, his earnest sincerity runs totally counter to a Deceit focus and he's lacking any 'leadership' stats like Rapport or Presence. Narratively, this shapes Hazou for a future where he's got all these skills for lying that he never uses and meanwhile his skills as a 'natural leader' stagnate since he has trouble getting people go along with him unless they're already so inclined.

Under the proposed social stats system, we have two ways to change Hazou's build to get a leadership stat. We can switch out Empathy for Presence, or we can switch out Deceit for Rapport. Neither of those look good. We need Empathy because a lack of it is at the heart of a lot of Hazou's character troubles right now, and we can't dump Deceit because we need it for Roki.

But what if we could dump Roki and switch to another fighting style? You need a 'unique advantage' in order to get one, and Roki is built on using the Iron Nerve to help us make feints. If nothing else, we could take after Akane and develop a Physique-based fighting style leveraging our Pangolin Training Jutsu as our unique advantage (addendum: if we asked Akane about this right now it'd be heckin awkward but we're in no rush. We can wait a year and copy her fighting style once things have settled down between us), but we might have other options too. An Empathy-based fighting style based around the Iron Nerve might be workable, and we may be able to copy Kagome's Explosion Master fighting style too, but the important part is that we have options.

So the question is this: is it worth it to change our fighting style and dump Deceit? We'd leave Deceit higher leveled than the average dump stat, but I don't think we should underestimate the power of an Empathy/Rapport combo for connecting to people and inspiring them to follow you. It also leaves us with a three-stat social build that covers all our bases, so beyond the XP sunk into Roki we don't hit any inefficiencies. Any thoughts?
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While you are absolutely right regarding that Hazou's present earnest sincerity works against his deceit score I would say his sincerity can work against fulfilling uplift. I would say it is next to impossible to get all those in power (clans, ninja) on board with our plans for uplift as it does not benefit them directly and can decrease their power in the short term.

So his best chance on bringing them aboard is to convince them of his plans is to convince them that it will benefit them, which will need deceit.

What I am trying to say that it'll work against us to be completely honest about our good intentions. So while it is important to make people believe that we understand them and have good intentions it's probably good to be able to fudge a few things here and there. Essentially a benevolent and principled politician. (edit: somewhat like a not evil fanon Dumbledore)

This is all from a story telling perspective. Probably shouldn't have tried to write this at 6AM without having slept.
 
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This is so silly...

Talk no Jutsu
Prerequisites: Iron Nerve or some other way to think of things to say while simultaneously fighting.
Cost: Level 20 or 30 stunt probably?
The user can make a Rapport check as a supplemental action each round without penalties. Physical consequences dealt by the user in the same round are taggable for these Rapport checks. The user can hypothetically end combat by convincing the opponent to surrender and become the user's friend.
 
Cariyaga said:
This is basically the problem. Deceit is much less... prosocial than empathy or rapport.
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While I agree in general, I still think it bears mentioning, since it is a meta-reason.

There is nothing wrong with Deceit/Empathy/Resolve other than that Presence would be good to have narratively. But could we make up for that by putting the Big Nice Speeches in our plan? I don't know how much (if any) of the narrative is indirectly influenced by these stats, and how much of it is actually just the characterization. I think spending time to get the stats up would improve the characterization a bit, but would it be enough in a vacuum? I don't know.

Deceit has been pretty useful for us so far. Roki aside, we used a lot of deceptive tactics throughout the exam that played out in our favor. I would in general like such an option to be open to us, since I think it will often be the case we may need to use more "offensive" social strats to our advantage in accomplishing our goals, by the crapsack nature of the setting.

Inferno Vulpix said:
A big factor here is that a large chunk of social conflicts are resolved narratively, based on the characterizations of the people involved. That isn't a bad thing, but it does mean that in those situations stats are only important insofar as they guide characterization.

High Deceit can be very useful in social situations that get resolved narratively, but only if they influence how Hazou narratively behaves. The core conflict of Deceit is that Hazou's characterization includes something to the effect of 'earnestly honest', which means high Deceit levels have minimum effects on Hazou's actual deceptiveness. As such, we may find Hazou getting more benefit out of high skills in a stat which doesn't conflict with other aspects of his characterization, like Rapport.
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I think I would be more supportive of changing Hazou's characterization rather than his build, if we are playing Character Sheet chicken on the matter. I think we all have expressed significant frustration that - while this cripplingly sincere honesty can be a good thing- Hazou's "Open mouth, insert foot." gives us more trouble than its worth as his trouble.
 
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Velorien said:
Suddenly, despite being prepared to murder her an hour earlier, Kei felt as if she and Hana could become friends after all—or what passed for friends when one person was thrice the other's age and very indirectly their stepmother, while the other was so incompetent at friendship that post-Uplift scholars would doubtless write entire treatises analysing it.
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So, a couple things. First, in the quote above...

D'awwww, she believes in Uplift even in her internal monologue.

Second: She is capable of optimizing enemies' plans for her benefit.
 
MMKII said:
While I agree in general, I still think it bears mentioning, since it is a meta-reason.

There is nothing wrong with Deceit/Empathy/Resolve other than that Presence would be good to have narratively. But could we make up for that by putting the Big Nice Speeches in our plan? I don't know how much (if any) of the narrative is indirectly influenced by these stats, and how much of it is actually just the characterization. I think spending time to get the stats up would improve the characterization a bit, but would it be enough in a vacuum? I don't know.

Deceit has been pretty useful for us so far. Roki aside, we used a lot of deceptive tactics throughout the exam that played out in our favor. I would in general like such an option to be open to us, since I think it will often be the case we may need to use more "offensive" social strats to our advantage in accomplishing our goals, by the crapsack nature of the setting.



I think I would be more supportive of changing Hazou's characterization rather than his build, if we are playing Character Sheet chicken on the matter. I think we all have expressed significant frustration that - while this cripplingly sincere honesty can be a good thing- Hazou's "Open mouth, insert foot." gives us more trouble than its worth as his trouble.
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We can have this recent blowup lead to a change in characterization and then use that change to influence our build.

I mean the last update just gave us a nice little plot-point about the currently brittle eq everyone's got now. On top of that, Hazou's bound to be confronted with what Kei just did and he'll probably be upset with himself for being somewhat blind and in a tough position between 2 moms. This is when we can have Hazou teach Hana the clear communication no jutsu and have her decompress to him. This should result in Hazou getting the motivation from there for a more EQ/social based development. I mean maybe we can work on our social flow charts for the next update as well on top of using clear communication jutsu.

That should cover the characterization part.

When it comes to Hazou's build, from what Hana said, I'm guessing she'll use performance + Iron Nerve on game night to light everybody up somehow. Sounds like it'll be interesting enough to inspire Hazou ideas on style changes.
 
Orisha91 said:
We can have this recent blowup lead to a change in characterization and then use that change to influence our build.

I mean the last update just gave us a nice little plot-point about the currently brittle eq everyone's got now. On top of that, Hazou's bound to be confronted with what Kei just did and he'll probably be upset with himself for being somewhat blind and in a tough position between 2 moms. This is when we can have Hazou teach Hana the clear communication no jutsu and have her decompress to him. This should result in Hazou getting the motivation from there for a more EQ/social based development. I mean maybe we can work on our social flow charts for the next update as well on top of using clear communication jutsu.

That should cover the characterization part.

When it comes to Hazou's build, from what Hana said, I'm guessing she'll use performance + Iron Nerve on game night to light everybody up somehow. Sounds like it'll be interesting enough to inspire Hazou ideas on style changes.
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I dont quite agree, but I do agree that upping socials will at least mitigate things.

The characterization part isnt just stat related though, its his Trouble causing events that color his characterization.

"Hazou's social inneptitude" is a difficult issue to unpack my thoughts on. In part because I agree with some facets of it, disagree with other facets of it, and remain indifferent on the rest. In part because I think that the playerbase is quite divided on how to handle it and what the percieved end goal should be.

Perhaps I will be able to unpack them later, perhaps not.
 
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MMKII said:
I dont quite agree, but I do agree that upping socials will at least mitigate things.

The characterization part isnt just stat related though, its his Trouble causing events that color his characterization.

"Hazou's social inneptitude" is a difficult issue to unpack my thoughts on. In part because I agree with some facets of it, disagree with other facets of it, and remain indifferent on the rest. In part because I think that the playerbase is quite divided on how to handle it and what the percieved end goal should be.

Perhaps I will be able to unpack them later, perhaps mot.
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Fair enough.

I do have to wonder about Hazou's social lists not saving us from some pitfalls. Maybe we should make it as explicit and integral to our regular plans as we do with making sure OPSEC is observed.

That's a good end goal IMO.

We'll call it EMSEC (Emotional Security).
 
I hope Hazou finds out about, uh, any of these conversations.

It'd be nice to commisserate with Hana over how amazing Keiko is.
 
Oneiros said:
Literally everyone we interact with was or is a child soldier.
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Not everyone! There's Akane's parents, Honoka's parents, the Merchant Council guy who took your license request, Isobe (Hokage's secretary), and probably more.

But, yes. You're essentially correct. God, this is such a crapsack world.

Sampatrick said:
Also Mari is legitimately a pretty messed up human being.
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...
A million words in and now he notices. Eesh. :p


MMKII said:
@eaglejarl @OliWhail @Velorien

So uh, how're those jutsu approvals coming along?
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I'm traveling, @OliWhail just finished a grant application, and @Velorien has been a bit buried, so I don't think there's been a lot of progress. Sorry for that. It's still in the hopper.


Someone whose name I lost said:
If we stop leveling those stats and start putting XP into other things
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The discussion about stats has been sincerely interesting, but it makes me want to post the standard disclaimer again:

Technically, the players do not and never have had control of anyone's character sheet aside from Hazō. That said, we nearly always do what y'all suggest because y'all collectively have a lot more time and energy that the three of us (especially lately), and you make smart, sensible decisions about training. We deeply appreciate the help, but it does occasionally feel like a good idea to restate this situation and remind everyone that the QMs do reserve the right to refuse training suggestions for the NPCs.

Note that I'm not speaking to your post at all -- I don't know what situations would cause us to reject a training plan, it just seemed like it would be a wise choice to mention it.

Adept_Woodwright said:
For 3 skills in the 80s, we need 2 in each lower decile
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You mean 3, right?

Cariyaga said:
On the note of the rules:

@eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail Any progress on the next release of them?
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It's been 95% done for months, waiting for one of us to push it across the finish line, and I think I have gotten to the point where the nagging frustration of having it sitting there outweighs my lack of energy. I'll take responsibility for getting a release done by the end of October at the latest. That seems like a long time, but rules issues require consensus instead of the simple majority that we do with most questions, and coordinating the three of us across an ocean can be challenging.

Inferno Vulpix said:
High Deceit can be very useful in social situations that get resolved narratively, but only if they influence how Hazou narratively behaves. The core conflict of Deceit is that Hazou's characterization includes something to the effect of 'earnestly honest', which means high Deceit levels have minimum effects on Hazou's actual deceptiveness. As such, we may find Hazou getting more benefit out of high skills in a stat which doesn't conflict with other aspects of his characterization, like Rapport.
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Note that Hazō's deceit allows him to see through the lies of others, makes him hard to lie to, and has been useful on several occasions over the Chūnin Exams Arc.
 
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I get that this is supposed be a serious, dramatic conflict for keiko...but i'm too busy pitying the waitstaff of konoha.

I find keiko unsympathetic. Despite being a social cripple, or perhaps because of it.
 
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dragon said:
I get that this is supposed be a serious, dramatic conflict for keiko...but i'm too busy pitying the waitstaff of konoha.

I find keiko unsympathetic. Despite being a social cripple, or perhaps because of it.
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I have enoughh sympathy in me for everyone, but the waitstaff got little enough screentime for me to not care much for them.
 
dragon said:
I get that this is supposed be a serious, dramatic conflict for keiko...but i'm too busy pitying the waitstaff of konoha.

I find keiko unsympathetic. Despite being a social cripple, or perhaps because of it.
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I wonder if civilian service workers are given training for when ninja obstruct their jobs. Politely and firmly try to get them to stop. If it fails bend or do anything else to keep the ninja happy.
 
I do think we should do something interesting with the Yabai Café. Buy them? Try to revolutionize the world of culinary with the help of Kagome and Panjandrum? Use them to circumvent the Merchant Council somehow?

As it is, we send them some mixed signals. Each time a Gouketsu comes in[1],[2],[3,4]​, they act abrasive and sarcastic, criticizing the food, bemoaning the fact that they're dining there, terrifying the staff. Yet they keep coming back, keep eating their meals, keep improving their reputation.

It's like our clan is tsundere for them or something.
 
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