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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Velorien said:
"However, there will be dangers you need to consider. You can safely assume that the combined information from both Paths has pinpointed the Gōketsu as dangerously powerful sealmasters, or will soon. You can safely assume that we will be considered priority targets by our enemies: exceedingly valuable to capture or at least kill, yet with limited power to defend ourselves. The Human Path counts down to the Fourth World War. The Seventh Path now counts down to the Pangolins' defeat, whereupon the hostile summoners and their clans, including those made hostile by the Pangolins' warmongering, will be free to turn their attention to us.
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My immediate reaction to this is that we should become dangerously powerful sealmasters. Fast track the testing of stacked implosion seals, and show Leaf what happens when the Gōketsu are given time to do nothing but sealing research. Use that to argue that we should be protected by Leaf as befits our value, rather than as a group of fresh chunin. At some point show a nuke off to the world, and imply that we always have contingencies set up when we're on missions so that any assassination/kidnapping attempt would be a suicide mission at best.

I think that overall the problem is more with us being treated as valuable by our enemies but not by our village. If we show Leaf how valuable we are (or get our Hokage candidate picked) then Leaf should put enough effort into protecting us to make assassination/capture infeasible.

Velorien said:
"Please accept my sincere gratitude for your support. You will regret it."
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:rofl:

Lord Marshal said:
Change of plan, we say it's Leaf fault, under situation we are not allowed to talk about because of OPSEC.
hint it's also thanks to Jiraiya death (Something something he invented/made these things), therefore we are physically incapable of keeping the deal.(Why he didn't gave such seals to the Toads?)
We leak words of such to the Snakes, that will consider any leaf ninja untrustworthy(Aside from us, Not leaf ninja)and this plus our "alliance" will make them choose us.
Noburi can confirm it when he becomes the Toad summoner.
In short, it's all Leaf (And our father dying) fault, and we physically incapable of keeping the deal, not our fault.
We still have some reserve of seals that we are going to give them in case they need to protect themselves, FOR FREE, but otherwise we well keep them because everyone is trying to kill us.
Sounds like a plan?
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I fully support this idea.
Note that we did in fact lose one third of our sealing capabilities (or more if you count seals known) so we wouldn't even necessarily have to lie when we say that our ability to deliver seals has been heavily impacted.
 
So uh... Tower prices don't really correlate to market prices. Things like Storage and Explosive seals we can sell to others (at least a fixed amount of -- presumably for higher prices). It's just that we legally can't sell 5SB or Skywalkers to anyone but the Tower.

Storage and Explosive seals are still probably reasonably expensive on the market due to restricted supply, if you consider that the people who can make them likely aren't going to be making them in large quantities since they can make unlimited quantities of other seals to sell to the Tower.
 
eaglejarl said:
HDK, but it's reasonable to assume that they are setting prices that will allow them to actually pay for a very high number while still being interesting to sealmasters.

Also, note that these prices are fixed by the Tower without regard to outside influences, and that the Tower has a monopsony on skywalkers.


You did? Didn't the negotiations happen after the clan was formed?
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If the Tower does indeed mark up seals by extreme amounts, and this bridges the gap between what they pay sealmasters and the implicit market rate as shown by IC depictions of the value of these seals, then it becomes a lot more relevant how many seals we can sell directly to ninjas.

If the Tower buys explosive seals for, say, R50, and sells them for R1,000, then a single explosive sold at market rate directly to ninjas is worth to us 20 explosives sold to the Tower, and the vast majority of our income from selling explosives would come from the direct-to-ninja sales.

As a consequence of this, if Skywalkers are priced in relation to the other Tower prices, and we aren't allowed to sell Skywalkers to anything that isn't the Tower... there's no reason to make more Skyalkers than the minimum donation. If a Skywalker sells for R100 per element, then selling Explosive seals directly to ninjas is 10 times more profitable to us. Even factoring in that half of our explosives have to be sold to the Tower (as per our license last I checked), basic explosives would still earn us five times more money than making Skywalkers, so why ever do it?

If the Tower is trying to convince sealmasters it's worth their time to make more Skywalkers for them, then I don't think the system works as currently stated without seals being suddenly as cheap as the Tower buys them from us for somehow. There's no market rate for Skywalkers but it still has to compete with the market rate for other seals if the Tower wants to make an incentive for Skywalkers. If the Tower's just fine with sealmasters donating the required 100 a month and isn't particularly concerned with any inflows other than that, then this would still make sense but I'd be a bit squinty eyed at the Tower not wanting more than the absolute minimum of its paradigm-changing superweapon.
 
eaglejarl said:
Also, note that these prices are fixed by the Tower without regard to outside influences, and that the Tower has a monopsony on skywalkers.
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What about other seals that they don't enforce monopsony on though? If skywalkers are 150% of the second most expensive seal then all other seals are being bought by the Tower for cheaper than that.
But if, as you said, skywalker prices are artificially kept low due to monopsony, that means that all the other seals of interest, that are both not monopsony regulated and by necessity still bought by the Tower for cheaper than skywalkers at all times, then it makes no sense to sell any seals to the Tower that are in any way rare or valuable while also on the open market.
Walter said:
All that 'gokage aren't dressed without 500 seals', 'we keep a basket by the door' , 'we throw them in the backyard constantly ' stuff isn't simulationist worldbuilding, it is comedic beats, it is meme-ing. It doesn't have to cohere with the new economic mini game
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I strongly object. The whole challenge and goal of running a rational quest is to maintain an internally coherent world where things don't just happen purely because "the plot demands it" or "the players need a challenge". If the economy right now doesn't make sense I'd rather either see our economic troubles lessening due to the previously established fact that we have two sealmasters with above average output, or a retroactive explanation that makes the past and the present make sense, or even another retcon/shift.

It is perfectly normal for the QMs to make occasional miscalculations due to regrettably still being at least partially mortal beings. But expecting them to just give up on this would be uncharitable IMO.

By the way, regarding the previous prices of bread and such, we already established that each country has their own currency with unequal values. It would be no surprise to learn that Iron ryō is highly inflated.
 
faflec said:
Wait, if we have those notes can't we just skip the middleman and ask the QMs?
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Yes.

@Everyone

Yes, the economics have inconsistencies. We aren't economists or historians and we have very limited time to work on this quest outside of the ~10 hours a week spent just writing. We aren't going to always get it right -- most likely, we will often get it wrong. We have a very strong commitment to simulationism, but perfectly modeling a feudal economy is simply beyond us.
In particular, we aren't going to be able to patch the historical stuff.

If y'all want to help, please figure it out. We've been trying to for a week and it's not happening, so we need to outsource.

If you don't want to or aren't able to help, please sing the MST3K song and then follow this advice:
 
eaglejarl said:
Yes.

@Everyone

Yes, the economics have inconsistencies. We aren't economists or historians and we have very limited time to work on this quest outside of the ~10 hours a week spent just writing. We aren't going to always get it right -- most likely, we will often get it wrong. We have a very strong commitment to simulationism, but perfectly modeling a feudal economy is simply beyond us.
In particular, we aren't going to be able to patch the historical stuff.

If y'all want to help, please figure it out. We've been trying to for a week and it's not happening, so we need to outsource.

If you don't want to or aren't able to help, please sing the MST3K song and then follow this advice:
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I already made an estimate for the price of salt:

Kiba said:
100 kg of salt is enough to feed a common laborer for ~14 days according to this source.

Assume a common laborer earns 10,000 ryo a month divided by 30. Each day, our laborer earn 333 ryo. So, 14 * 333 ~= 4666.67 ryo per 100 kg of salt.

So, a storage seal of salt is worth around ~4500-5000 ryo.
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Please note the dubious nature of the source I am using, which is from quora. Also, the Romans have great infrastructure though technology for making salts likely hadn't changed for millennia.

Edit: It appeared that whatever answer was originally here was either deleted or changed.
 
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Edit: I wrote this before eaglejarl's latest post. The new question becomes how much is open to retconning in the name of making the economy work.

@eaglejarl @Velorien @OliWhail
What is the Tower price for explosive seals? What is the Leaf open market value for explosive seals?
If you have the spoons for it, the market prices (if known) for Air Domes and Usumatsu's would also be nice to have.
Vecht said:
You'd fall back on this after exhausting your license limits for other seals.
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I'm pretty sure there isn't one. Not according to the license info post at least.
 
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Vecht said:
You'd fall back on this after exhausting your license limits for other seals.
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Looking at what I'm pretty sure is the most recent seal license, the Tower has right of first refusal for military seals like explosives (I was using the older version for my previous post, apologies), and if they don't purchase them then we can sell them at market prices. If that situation happens with any kind of regularity, and the extreme markup exists, the majority of a sealmaster's profit should still be direct-to-ninja sales once the Tower's declined to purchase them at hyperdeflated Tower rates.

Though if the extreme markup exists, I don't know why they would. It's free money after all, lots of it, unless they can't sell it anytime soon, and if the Tower can't sell them at market rates then the sealmaster would probably fail too.

So... I think in theory that might work? A sealmaster in practice only ever sells to the Tower because the Tower's always happy to have free money and never declines to buy the seals? And thus the valuation of Skywalkers as 150% of the next highest-value seal in their arsenal does indeed incentivize making more Skywalkers. It still feels a bit unstable though, because sealmasters would very much want to sell their seals at market rate somehow. I'm not saying there'd be a black market, but this sounds like the conditions that would create a black market.

eaglejarl said:
Yes.

@Everyone

Yes, the economics have inconsistencies. We aren't economists or historians and we have very limited time to work on this quest outside of the ~10 hours a week spent just writing. We aren't going to always get it right -- most likely, we will often get it wrong. We have a very strong commitment to simulationism, but perfectly modeling a feudal economy is simply beyond us.
In particular, we aren't going to be able to patch the historical stuff.

If y'all want to help, please figure it out. We've been trying to for a week and it's not happening, so we need to outsource.

If you don't want to or aren't able to help, please sing the MST3K song and then follow this advice:
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Click to shrink...

Gotcha. I'm trying to explore the full ramifications of your ideas to see where they hold up and where things might not sync up right. If I may, what backed your reasoning to keep prices low? The simplest rendition of this situation is the Tower buying seals at or near market rate, so there was probably a good reason to lower the Tower rate well below that, and we could help more if we knew what you were thinking.
 
AFAICT, the QMs are in a double bind right now.

Either Leaf has less than 1 sealmaster per ten thousand people (at which point the Gouketsu sealing expertise is ludicrously valuable and a major strategic resource), or Storage seals are cheap enough for even clanless D-rank Genin to be able to afford twenty of them. (Which is inconsistent with the model they were previously using.)

If Leaf has 30 Sealmasters and each sealmaster spends 2 hours a day drawing storage seals until the market is saturated, that's 8*30 = 240 Storage seals a day. In one month, Leaf will produce 7,200 storage seals.
 
Evenstar said:
AFAICT, the QMs are in a double bind right now.

Either Leaf has less than 1 sealmaster per ten thousand people (at which point the Gouketsu sealing expertise is ludicrously valuable and a major strategic resource), or Storage seals are cheap enough for even clanless D-rank Genin to be able to afford twenty of them. (Which is inconsistent with the model they were previously using.)

If Leaf has 30 Sealmasters and each sealmaster spends 2 hours a day drawing storage seals until the market is saturated, that's 8*30 = 240 Storage seals a day. In one month, Leaf will produce 7,200 storage seals.
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I was working under the former assumption, or something close to it. Sealing has always been made out to be a ridiculously rare and dangerous craft.
 
Prooobably shouldn't be blaming this on J-man/ Leaf interactions no matter what route you take here.
For one thing we don't know what his exact relationship with the toads (as an individual) was and adding a surprise element may change their perception of that relationship enough to be a detriment to the new toad summoner (Noburi, his adopted son).

It also avoids essentially none of the problems Keiko mentioned as any benefit gained by shifting the blame to a dead man is kind of counteracted by appearing to be a 'weak' summoner who cannot properly represent the summons interests on their path, and the other problems will occur independently of whoever is blamed for the incident.

Finally its essentially kicking the bucket down the road and hoping the Pangolin(or Toad) don't find out the truth before we either become valuable enough that discovery of deception could have no proper consequences leveraged against us, or we have ceased interacting with the clan and as such any fallout from the discovery of deception would be at least one step removed. (and Leaf might be proper pissed if they find out later that their rep was somewhat poisoned with the Pangolin by making them the uncaring third party in this interaction, even if they would have actually done that in this scenario)

By making Hazō the fall guy you can then use his eventual removal as clan head (since Naruto is taking it) to reopen negotiations with the Pangolin as the Goketsu without that sitting between them. It'd just mean Hazō's relationship with the Pangolin, personally, takes a huge dive while the clan can rebound if they so wish.
(Possible downside coming into play mostly if Hazō does become the Snake summoner and you try for the alliance. But at least at that point you're dealing with problems attached soley to you and not any you may have created from Jiraiya's past like some Frankenstinian diplomatic inheritance. You'll get enough of those without throwing something into the pot)

That's my read of the situation anyway. If i'm missing any crucial points or making any judgement errors feel free to point them out.

Edit (or if that was a joke and I just didn't get it ha ha )
 
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Cariyaga said:
I was working under the former assumption, or something close to it. Sealing has always been made out to be a ridiculously rare and dangerous craft.
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I estimated that each sealmaster can produce 200,000 seal elements if they don't do any research, don't bother teaching new apprentice, or supervise tests, and have a reasonable workhour of 40 per week and no vacation.

Edit: This is incorrect.
 
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Evenstar said:
AFAICT, the QMs are in a double bind right now.

Either Leaf has less than 1 sealmaster per ten thousand people (at which point the Gouketsu sealing expertise is ludicrously valuable and a major strategic resource), or Storage seals are cheap enough for even clanless D-rank Genin to be able to afford twenty of them. (Which is inconsistent with the model they were previously using.)

If Leaf has 30 Sealmasters and each sealmaster spends 2 hours a day drawing storage seals until the market is saturated, that's 8*30 = 240 Storage seals a day. In one month, Leaf will produce 7,200 storage seals.
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eaglejarl said:
Only ~1500 ninja in Fire (all based in Leaf although some have long-duration assignments in major cities/towns)
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eaglejarl said:
Nitpick: There's 30 sealmasters in Leaf. There may or may not be more in Fire.
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Yeah...Sealmasters are around the order of 1:50 or something like that.
 
Evenstar said:
AFAICT, the QMs are in a double bind right now.

Either Leaf has less than 1 sealmaster per ten thousand people (at which point the Gouketsu sealing expertise is ludicrously valuable and a major strategic resource), or Storage seals are cheap enough for even clanless D-rank Genin to be able to afford twenty of them. (Which is inconsistent with the model they were previously using.)

If Leaf has 30 Sealmasters and each sealmaster spends 2 hours a day drawing storage seals until the market is saturated, that's 8*30 = 240 Storage seals a day. In one month, Leaf will produce 7,200 storage seals.
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That is a problem.....


Kiba said:
I estimated that each sealmaster can produce 200,000 seal elements if they don't do any research, don't bother teaching new apprentice, or supervise tests, and have a reasonable workhour of 40 per week and no vacation.
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12 * 40* *52 =25,000ish, so you're wrong.
 
Wait! We don't have to blame Leaf or the Goketsu at all! Blame the Nara instead.

Say it with me guys: Shikamaru's problem now.
 
Cariyaga said:
I was working under the former assumption, or something close to it. Sealing has always been made out to be a ridiculously rare and dangerous craft.
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Yeah, I assumed Sealing was insanely dangerous to learn without guidance, and required both a specific knack/mindset AND a personality type suited to it. Early sealmaster attrition rates when they were first figuring sealing out must have been insane.

Maybe Kagome's emphasis on safety has just made him a much, much better teacher than we realised, and most new sealing students are expected to die pretty quick?

EDIT: Could it be possible for there to be some sort of attrition of storage scrolls, or some other force that's taking them out of the available pool? Some ongoing process that most scrolls have to go towards, and can't be reclaimed from?
 
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Okay, so based on my previous speculations that the Tower not only sets an artificially low price for seals but almost never declines to purchase them, I speculated that a black market might arise but there's actually a solid countermeasure against that:

Seals are effectively 'signed', the design is unique to a given sealmaster and so if you find a seal on the black market you know who scribed it. This makes any hypothetical black market sealing extremely dangerous because with a bit of research you could be outed and prosecuted even if you take care to conceal everything else.

This whole hypothetical paradigm, where the Tower forces sealmasters to sell them seals for super-low prices and only ever declines if there's already no market, smacks of sealmasters being dealt a pretty raw deal by the Tower, but I'd be willing to accept that if it's what finally makes the books balance.
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
Okay, so based on my previous speculations that the Tower not only sets an artificially low price for seals but almost never declines to purchase them, I speculated that a black market might arise but there's actually a solid countermeasure against that:

Seals are effectively 'signed', the design is unique to a given sealmaster and so if you find a seal on the black market you know who scribed it. This makes any hypothetical black market sealing extremely dangerous because with a bit of research you could be outed and prosecuted even if you take care to conceal everything else.

This whole hypothetical paradigm, where the Tower forces sealmasters to sell them seals for super-low prices and only ever declines if there's already no market, smacks of sealmasters being dealt a pretty raw deal by the Tower, but I'd be willing to accept that if it's what finally makes the books balance.
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Sealmasters could (and would, in that case) research a second explosive seal for use on the black market, though. Same thing just different design.
 
Falconis said:
Prooobably shouldn't be blaming this on J-man/ Leaf interactions no matter what route you take here.
For one thing we don't know what his exact relationship with the toads (as an individual) was and adding a surprise element may change their perception of that relationship enough to be a detriment to the new toad summoner (Noburi, his adopted son).

It also avoids essentially none of the problems Keiko mentioned as any benefit gained by shifting the blame to a dead man is kind of counteracted by appearing to be a 'weak' summoner who cannot properly represent the summons interests on their path, and the other problems will occur independently of whoever is blamed for the incident.

Finally its essentially kicking the bucket down the road and hoping the Pangolin(or Toad) don't find out the truth before we either become valuable enough that discovery of deception could have no proper consequences leveraged against us, or we have ceased interacting with the clan and as such any fallout from the discovery of deception would be at least one step removed. (and Leaf might be proper pissed if they find out later that their rep was somewhat poisoned with the Pangolin by making them the uncaring third party in this interaction, even if they would have actually done that in this scenario)

By making Hazō the fall guy you can then use his eventual removal as clan head (since Naruto is taking it) to reopen negotiations with the Pangolin as the Goketsu without that sitting between them. It'd just mean Hazō's relationship with the Pangolin, personally, takes a huge dive while the clan can rebound if they so wish.
(Possible downside coming into play mostly if Hazō does become the Snake summoner and you try for the alliance. But at least at that point you're dealing with problems attached soley to you and not any you may have created from Jiraiya's past like some Frankenstinian diplomatic inheritance. You'll get enough of those without throwing something into the pot)

That's my read of the situation anyway. If i'm missing any crucial points or making any judgement errors feel free to point them out.

Edit (or if that was a joke and I just didn't get it ha ha )
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Velorien said:
"You would do this for me?" Keiko asked disbelievingly. "But I have already told you that summons hold contracts sacred above all else. They are one of the few institutions mandated directly by the Pantokrator—excuse me, the Sage of Six Paths—as opposed to being interpretations of his teachings by his contemporaries. To terminate such unilaterally is regarded in much the same light as divulging clan secrets is on the Human Path.

"You cannot afford to do this, Hazō, not if you intend to later resume your work on the Seventh Path through Noburi and the Toads. Please, allow me and me alone to pay the price for my actions."
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As Keiko kindly explained, Contract are sacred for all summons, not just the Pangolins.
Hazou taking the fall mean the Toad won't trust us with anything, means that becoming the Snake summoner will be extremely difficult and so on.
On top of that....

Velorien said:
"However, there will be dangers you need to consider. You can safely assume that the combined information from both Paths has pinpointed the Gōketsu as dangerously powerful sealmasters, or will soon. You can safely assume that we will be considered priority targets by our enemies: exceedingly valuable to capture or at least kill, yet with limited power to defend ourselves. The Human Path counts down to the Fourth World War. The Seventh Path now counts down to the Pangolins' defeat, whereupon the hostile summoners and their clans, including those made hostile by the Pangolins' warmongering, will be free to turn their attention to us.
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We need to do something about this.
Giving away the information that Jiraiya created the seals could make the other powers assume it was him the dangerous and powerful sealmasters, and that we were taken in for other reasons, like the Pangolin scroll.

How the Toad will take it, or the fact that they have a way to disprove our claims is a problem, i hope that the Toad and Pangolin are not really in stable alliance, and the Toad would just assume the Pangolin are lying.(We should check Jiraiya notes)
If they ask Noburi, he can just explain them that Jiraiya did so to not endanger the Toad and himself...or something.
I admit the problem, but the consequences of taking the fall are massive.
We could just, leave Jiraiya out of this and just say it's Leaf fault?
 
Oh, the license also notes that sealmasters can freely sell to their own clan.

This means that even with the Tower massively underpaying them compared to market rates it's probable that sealmasters supplement their income by selling direct-to-ninjas within their own clan. In this way sealmasters would be a focal point of the wealth of the clan, with many of the clan members paying them somewhat-less-than-market rates for their seals while also being limited to the wealth of the personal members of the clan free for such expenditures.
 
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