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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Velorien said:
I increasingly feel that we should have more participation from the other QMs but @eaglejarl doesn't have time right now, so that's an argument for putting this discussion on hold.

I will note this, however. Yes, Hazō spent two years training with Mari. The players chose to make him a taijutsu spec with Deception for Roki and low socials elsewhere. You can't have it both ways.
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Take a break if you need to; your mental health is important.
 
Oneiros said:
Yes but you have also said that if we actually invest experience into leveling socials it wouldn't necessarily fix our social problems since characterizations trumps stats. Really feels like we're in a catch-22. No matter what we do Hazō will be a social push over.
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Can you remember when that statement was first made? Paging @faflec just in case, but I don't actually expect anyone to dig that deep into the thread.

Characterisation trumping stats is a non-straightforward issue since, as we've pointed out before, players tend to overlook any actual steps we take to make Hazō's behaviour closer to his theoretical capabilities (notably with regard to OPSEC). Sometimes the endeavour can feel pointless. Hazō has been manipulating people six ways to Sunday in regard to things like pangolin armour and no one's commented. Hazō resisted Ami's seduction thanks to Mari's training and no one commented. Hazō picked up on Noburi being deceptive, and the response was "Is that all?"

It is entirely possible that, had the hivemind chosen to pursue the Tao of Mari in their planning (together with relevant stat investment), Hazō' s characterisation would have shifted in that direction naturally. Of course, that would have had its own opportunity costs since physical survival was still an issue.

MMKII said:
@eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail

There's a closing ceremony thingamajig to formally end the exams, right?
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Oh, yes.
 
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Velorien said:
I will note this, however. Yes, Hazō spent two years training with Mari. The players chose to make him a taijutsu spec with Deception for Roki and low socials elsewhere. You can't have it both ways.
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Level 10 is the point at which you're good enough to teach a skill to someone else. Hazou doesn't have any low socials except Intimidation. And Deception/Deceit was initially pursued for social reasons -- to make him harder to deceive, not for Roki (which didn't exist at the time that we decided to invest a large chunk of his build into Deception).

So I don't see being frustrated that Hazou is the only one who can't see through a deception to be "trying to have it both ways".
 
Velorien said:
Can you remember when that statement was first made? Paging @faflec just in case, but I don't actually expect anyone to dig that deep into the thread.

Characterisation trumping stats is a non-straightforward issue since, as we've pointed out before, players tend to overlook any actual steps we take to make Hazō's behaviour closer to his theoretical capabilities (notably with regard to OPSEC). Sometimes the endeavour can feel pointless. Hazō has been manipulating people six ways to Sunday in regard to things like pangolin armour and no one's commented. Hazō resisted Ami's seduction thanks to Mari's training and no one commented. Hazō picked up on Noburi being deceptive, and the response was "Is that all?"

It is entirely possible that, had the hivemind chosen to pursue the Tao of Mari in their planning (together with relevant state investment), Hazō' s characterisation would have shifted in that direction naturally. Of course, that would have had its own opportunity costs since physical survival was still an issue.

Oh, yes.
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In the interests of being charitable: I'm fairly certain most of us have actually commented on the Pangolin Armor thing and the seduction thing in a positive manner. In fact, I recall @MadScientist specifically being like "Wow, that went really well!" and "Oh fuck yeah, you go kid!" on those respectively.

Your response to my question fills me with the usual feelings of dread and doom. I can't wait!
 
MMKII said:
In the interests of being charitable: I'm fairly certain most of us have actually commented on the Pangolin Armor thing and the seduction thing in a positive manner. In fact, I recall @MadScientist specifically being like "Wow, that went really well!" and "Oh fuck yeah, you go kid!" on those respectively.
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Fair enough. I guess reinforcement bias works in both directions.

MMKII said:
Your response to my question fills me with the usual feelings of dread and doom. I can't wait!
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Me neither. Try not to die or get kicked out or what have you before then.
 
MadScientist said:
In fairness to @Velorien, I don't specifically remember whether I said those things here or on discord.
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MadScientist said:
So that worked much better than expected, and I'm now much less wary of allowing Hazou to do social ops.
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The other comment was in your (now gone) Ami analysis.

Velorien said:
Fair enough. I guess reinforcement bias works in both directions.

Me neither. Try not to die or get kicked out or what have you before then.
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You are absolutely correct in spirit: that we end up bitching and moaning talking about this with high frequency. I think we do this once a month or once every two months on average.

That said, I do think that it should be noted that "X is a teenager" is oft a double edged sword in such discussions. On one side: less total life experience means there usually won't be enough maturity or a sufficient pile of personal experiences to draw from to assist you in any given scenario. On the other side: its much easier to change when your bad habits don't have as much inertia behind them as those of a certain 50 year old doctor who has spent roughly a third of her entire life behind a bottle. That, and it does bring up a whole slew of tangential issues (namely: at least in my experience, average teenage social awkwardness is pretty trivial to solve if you make an actual effort to do so, though it will be extremely uncomfortable and painful at first ) that muddy the waters, or so I feel.

OliWhail said:
That's certainly one thing the closing ceremony will do.
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Okay. Begin the battle prep, folks.

Let's get armed to the teeth before the inevitable invasion /betrayal.
 
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@Velorien, is this an acceptable way of making Hazou realize that Keiko and Tenten are romantically involved?:

  • In light of recent events, consider Keiko's character in more depth.
    • Noburi had a peculiar reaction to your "Keiko wouldn't hide improvements in her relationship status from us" line. What was it about?
    • She evidently isn't dating Shikamaru... but Noburi wasn't very surprised about her dating someone.
    • Try to recall times when Keiko seemed to care about other people.
    • She reacted surprisingly strongly when Team Gai was killboxed. Surely it's neither Neji nor Lee, which leaves...
Velorien said:
You are being given power over space and time; do not abuse it, lest it be turned against you
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What if we want it to be turned against us? Adversity breeds opportunity, after all. Being opposed by an acausal anomaly would make said acausal anomaly part of our world, and anything which is part of our world could be exploited. Even if it'd cost us a village or two, I'm game.
QTesseract said:
We should really try and find a summoning clan we can get along with, or at least Coup the pangolins.
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We need to catch the Condor Boss Summon and mindrape it into obedience do diplomacy to it. Stupid Akatsuki with their stupid omnicidal (?) plots getting in the way of enhanced history lessons.
OliWhail said:
MMKII said:
There's a closing ceremony thingamajig to formally end the exams, right?
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That's certainly one thing the closing ceremony will do.
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Aww, a missed opportunity. You should have said "that's certainly one thing the closing ceremony will end", not "do".
 
Noumero said:
@Velorien, is this an acceptable way of making Hazou realize that Keiko and Tenten are romantically involved?:

  • In light of recent events, consider Keiko's character in more depth.
    • Noburi had a peculiar reaction to your "Keiko wouldn't hide improvements in her relationship status from us" line. What was it about?
    • She evidently isn't dating Shikamaru... but Noburi wasn't very surprised about her dating someone.
    • Try to recall times when Keiko seemed to care about other people.
    • She reacted surprisingly strongly when Team Gai was killboxed. Surely it's neither Neji nor Lee, which leaves...
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The general concept is sound. However, your main problems are threefold.

1) The idea of Keiko secretly dating someone is a priori utterly bizarre and difficult to imagine given her personality, mental health, social skills, self-isolation and overall aversion to displays of affection, especially but not exclusively physical.

2) The idea of her dating Tenten is even worse, given that Keiko communicates verbally and loquaciously and is bad with anything else, while Tenten hardly communicates at all as far as Hazō's concerned.

3) Much of the evidence concerning Tenten (e.g. Keiko's reaction during the Neji debacle) is just as plausibly attributable to her being overprotective of the only friend she's ever made on her own initiative, and of her relationship with same.

These are considerably worse obstacles than when he was trying to understand Mari's position, and I think you'd need to hit Hazō with an evidence hammer to get past them, or at least bring him to a point where he has the conviction to ask Keiko directly. Not saying it's impossible, but mere accumulation of small details is unlikely to do it.
 
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