Minato had the hat for less than two years and Jiraiya for less(?) than three months.
To be clear, I'm not saying it's a real concern, or one we should be dealing with or planning to undermine, just that it amusingly sounds evocative of dynastic beginnings.
Right, but as I said it's a matter of exclusivity, and even if they're only Hokage for a little while the fact that they were undermines any notion that the Hokage has to be a Sarutobi. Things could still end up going that way, if Asuma reigns long and another Sarutobi wins once he's out of office, and then historians would point back to Asuma being elected as a key point of progression, but I'm not too worried about that hypothetical coming to pass either.
I've gone over this before, but if you pay closer attention to the conversation with Pein it sounds a lot more like his plan is 'jack up the chakra connection until everyone's the same person'. One of his sub-points for that is that what the Sage did has only led to bad things and so he didn't go far enough, which led to a big digression on whether or not chakra has been good or bad for humanity. It's been pretty common for people to think from that digression that Pein wanted to get rid of chakra, but outside of that digression Pein makes very clear statements that he wants to merge everyone's hearts into one, whatever that means.
So the ritual's outcome could have been anything from telepathy to a hivemind? That's something I'd be very uncomfortable with in isolation, but would hands down take as an alternative to real pain. Considering the state of the MfD world I'd probably flick that switch if I was convinced it was a sound method that wouldn't just drive people mad.
IIRC the QMs have made statements to the opposite effect of this: they modeled Akatsuki based on reasonable ports of their canon selves and let things run from there, knowing full well that they were monstrously powerful and had aerial supremacy over most everyone else. I'd also recommend you give the QMs the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their integrity on simulationism; a claim like this where you say they designed Akatsuki to make Hazou look good is a pretty hefty accusation after all they go through to make the story not do exactly that sort of thing.
@No-one of Importance I don't think it's possible to actually do much of anything without making compromise with sin. Every action is going to have negative and positive aspects, if your goal is to minimize negative aspects then you're not going to be able to do much.
Consider the introduction of textile machinery. The positives are numerous, more people can afford textiles, the increase in free time lets more people get an education, etc. Consider the many downsides, children working in factories, people losing their way of life, etc.
Would you introduce textile machinery, if you had invented it? Going by what you posted, I'd guess probably not, while there are positives there are enough negatives that if you're just thinking about minimizing negatives you're not going to do it. All change is going to come with significant negatives, that doesn't mean we should stop trying to change things though.
I think that may be an ur-example. Textile machinery doesn't have to involve child labor, injuring your workers or devastating losses in livelihood if the person introducing it doesn't structure their business that way. Living wages, safer working conditions and compensatory training or arrangements could've been made for a lot of people in the industrial revolution if the society had been there for it. By my understanding it's just that a combination of the parliament voting for enclosure acts to privitise commonly held farmland and agricultural innovations lowering the demand for a rural workforce forced lots of rural laborers into the cities just as these unskilled industrial jobs were created, allowing for a very skewed market for the people with the capital to actually afford the machinery to exploit.
I think you're not taking into account exactly how much effect the environment we're in actually matters. I also think you're not understanding the positives of some of those actions, even when the positive are as simple as "We've fucked up, and we need to do this shitty thing to not start a world war".
With that in mind, I'd ask that you take a good look at the sunset racer incident, and come up with some alternative solutions that could have lead to better outcomes. For example, outright mutiny and desertion, which was discussed at great length at the time.
At the risk of sounding like one of those "hard men making hard decisions", get involved in the decision making process and try to find better solutions to the problems, because maybe you're right and the decisions don't need to be nearly this hard. That would be nice.
The sunset racer is a great way to demonstrate that, since it's one of the things I think we would have most liked to change.
Killing Minami who ordered it is the only option I see, and one worth taking. If the Jiriaya adoption's happened by the that point you could make an excuse to cover for it and try to make the case to him or Tsunade. If not you have to flee. It's worse because I don't really see stopping Akatsuki as really being worth the lives lost in the battle, let alone civilians who would have likely benefited.
Not reading through your entire wall of text post, but I'm going to note this:
Seems to be inaccurate because of the out-of-story discussion. We didn't take the mission from some snake-themed company for cash, we took the company (Edit: MISSION, fuck me) because some of the hivemind wanted to investigate said snake-themed company, and a larger portion of the hivemind desperately wanted to avoid said investigating, and so took the theft mission. I mean, just look at the winning plan that had us start the mission in the first place:
I'm not entirely sure how you're defining confrontation, but I'll point out that we made significant effort to not kill anyone when we did the burglary: Our first priority was to bluff him, our combat focus was on genjutsu + explicit statements for non-lethal takedown, and we prioritized escape unless we were engaged upon). Mari literally overwrote our plan since she was the senior ninja and this was a high-stakes situation.
Twofold seems opposed, but the 'gets us doing something interesting' seems pretty damning about the thread's mood to me? Given the loss of life involved in pretty much ninja activity doing any more than necessary for collective self defense seems almost automatically a bad thing. Continuing the mission after it was clear there was active ninja peer opposition was worse as it specifically put the nearby civilians in danger. Using genjutsu doesn't really solve that problem unless you know your opponent can only retaliate in kind.
The First ended the Warring Clans period when he founded Leaf, thereby inspiring others to form their own villages.
The Second rebuilt Fire after the First World War, as well as engaging in international diplomacy to keep things calm.
The Third attended the armistice that ended WW2. He trained Tsunade as a ninja and supported her in her medical training, thereby causing medical knowledge to leap forward by decades and averting multiple plagues. He rebuilt Leaf after the Nine-Tails attack. He worked his butt off engaging in international diplomacy to hold off WW3. He greatly increased the infrastructure and economy of Fire.
The Fourth was only Hokage for two years before he killed himself saving the entire population of Leaf from a rampaging monster.
The Fifth retrieved Naruto and the other jinchūriki and stopped Akatsuki from a plan that would have affected every living human to some unknown end.
If the Third has successfully maintained almost world peace that would significantly raise my value of Asuma's diplomacy. However I'm not sure how to judge the current shadow wars compared to a ninja world war. All the ninja seem traumatised and the civilians fear ninja. If scorch squads operate then that explains things, but if he'd kept peace for decades since WW2 I'd expect the current crop of younger adults to have significantly fewer damaged ninja than they do. I assume that means there's been wars involving Konoha and other Major Villages, just not a general war?
I don't want to go down a philosophical rabbit hole, but I can't resist one comment: The problem with virtue ethics, and with deontology, is that they have no fundamental grounding within their own system. There's no way to evaluate whether something is a virtue/vice (virtue ethics) or an appropriate rule (deontology) without looking at what the consequences of embodying that virtue / following that rule will be. Consequentialism, on the other hand, has no problem defining itself recursively.
Of course, there is the tangential point that any moral system must have an axiomatic foundation. Fortunately, all three of the above-mentioned ones chose "promotes human weal".
So...consequentialism? People can't see into your heart, so they are limited to reviewing your actions.
My position's roughly that things that encourage good conduct and will in others and yourself are the most impactful thing. Getting or keeping people pro-social heads off the worst of their potential crimes and suffering. That applies more the closer to humans you are and the more it relates to trust, violence and basic needs. Some abstract tasks like road placement could be handled on material consequentialism and some situations like medical triage or warfare can use utilitarian methods in the short term but that's only as loss management. Those methods are basically spending that built up trust to keep people alive in those contexts.
"Capsize" has a specific definition. It refers to when a boat flips over such that the underside is up. The Sunset Racer was not capsized, it was blown up and sunk.
I'd honestly forgotten about the boat and mixed that up with Hot Springs thinking a lot more people died there. Noumero explained that content and linked to the Murder chapters. It's an awful thing.
I look at the difference between the joy and excitement over the chapters and chapters of Chunin Exams victories and emotion invoked by the paragraphs of Keiko coming back or Panda coming out with horrific revalations about the Pangolin imperialism. One demands a lot more imagination spoons to grasp than the other, and more than it strictly needs to from a story telling perspective.
Inferno Vulpix explained that point. They were more planning telepathy or a hive mind, which probably wouldn't have been a net negative in my mind if they had researched it enough to execute as planned. Did you ever read another rational story call Three Worlds Collide by Eliezer Yudkowzky? If you know the comparison then I'd say becoming a Super Happy would be good if you were in chronic pain or misery or fear and want that to stop or bad if you were happy as you are but don't want to change. For the vast majority of the elemental nations population, the civilians, a change either stopping the Ninja from abusing them forever with empathy power or turning them into a cohesive hive mind would probably stop more pain than cause ennui.
For the PC that doesn't feel like an out. Team Uplift ran the operation, Hazou offered to help but Kagome was the one to pull the trigger. It seems like Hazou had full agency bent towards 'completing the mission'.
There really needs to be more agency from the other summon clans about that too. If the Pangolins are known get a world shaping advantage off their summoner and/or seals then others should be reacting to get a supplier to counter. The situation can't just be 'insert war crimes and guilt, get money and power'. That doesn't give the Summons any personhood.
I see that as a whole other layer of crime. The whole set of incentives is frankly sickeningly close to the effect of the Atlantic slave trade on west African states. The summon clans who don't get guns (seals) get conquered. To buy guns you need gold. To get gold you have to conquer and enslave your neighbors, which you do with guns. Now every Summons clan needs Seals, and they need to pay their contracter to get them off their village's sealmasters. That income stream and the risk of losing their summons to conquest gives a whole new cause for war in the human world too.
The Iron civilians there just wanted to learn to defend themselves didn't they? Wasn't that what the ninja were going to kill them for and why they could destabilise the continent? That's literally what Hiashi and the Inuzaka are being hated for. "It's best the civilians don't get ideas, that's bad for us and them". IIRC that was Jiriaya's whole angle when sending the team in, then they happened to come across a creep who recognised Mari and disappearances of the most talented which outed it as a disposable asset op by someone.
I think I retract that from chapter 23. Jiriaya just says the organisation is a danger, which might mean he was onto the puppet nature of it. (And if it was a Mist op then wtf was Yugara doing with those chakra-capable civilians? They hate ninja so he was either running them as a deniable asset cell kept completely ignorant of their true master... or they were the raw material for his ninja breeding programme. That's not a pleasant thought.
Allow me to say this politely: You are wrong on this point, and deeply mistaken about how the quest runs overall.
We set up the dominoes and started them falling; we had no idea how things would turn out or if there was a way for the players to save the day. We were perfectly fine with Akatsuki winning, and perfectly fine with the quest ending if Akatsuki won. We had and have plenty of ideas for followup projects if the players either win or lose this quest.
I'm not invested in convincing anyone of that point, but even believing that you believe that I still suspect 'wow, wouldn't that be cool for the story/players' plays a role in what is suggested and approved. Things like Sand's gliders and similar going away while Skywalkers stay, the new Mizukage being Hazou's aunt and getting adopted by Jiriaya to catapult into interacting with canon characters and world politics.
It's true that they have not interacted with Hiashi at all, which honestly surprises me a bit. As to interacting with Akatsuki...how would Hazō even find them? They don't exactly have a forwarding address.
I won't comment on the majority of this, as I'm only here to correct factual statements. The only points I will note are:
Jiraiya didn't "basically" threaten to murder Hiashi, he said it in so many words.
Jiraiya did not "steal the election". He demanded power for a period of three months so that he could take care of a major strategic threat to the village (Naruto's kidnapping) and he agreed to step down after that period regardless of whether Naruto had been rescued or not.
The Senju and the Uzumaki are not dead clans unless and until the Clan Council decides they are. For now, they are living clans who have earned their vote many times over.
The Gōketsu are not a made-up clan. They are recognized by the Clan Council as a non-founding clan, with all the rights and responsibilities thereby entailed.
It also really, really, seems like that compromise was Shikaku's work. The section with the scroll seemed like an outright grab. "The last Hokage said I'm Hokage, I don't need the Clans to support me."
"Now, here's what's going to happen next." He tossed the scroll that Isobe had given him to Nara, then pulled a storage seal out of his pocket and unsealed a hat.
Hazō couldn't stop himself from gasping at the sight of the hat. A wide-brimmed conical hat with bits of veil on the sides. A third of it was burned away and the rest was discolored, but it was without a doubt the Hokage's hat. Jiraiya put it on with a grim expression.
"That scroll"—he gestured to the one that Nara had now opened and was currently reading—"is the last will and testament of Sarutobi-sensei. In it he declares his desire that I succeed him as Hokage. I will be doing that. Leaf's resources—"
"Are you insane?!" snapped Inuzuka, bristling. "You come back from a mission where the Hokage and everyone else conveniently end up dead and say you're now Hokage? I don't think so!"
Jiraiya leaned forward, both hands on the table. Black fire washed out of his body, the scent of brimstone and the distant screams of the damned whispering on the air as his killing intent surged. "Say that again, Inuzuka," he said quietly, a feral smile spreading across his face. "Tell me to my face that you think I killed the closest thing to a father that I ever had. Tell me that I somehow disposed of my godson, the last link I have to the student that I loved like a son. Say it, I dare you."
Inuzuka paled and leaned back in her seat.
"I don't believe you did that, Jiraiya," said Yamanaka calmly. "However, many people will think it and the doubt it brings will make it difficult for you to be effective as a leader."
"I honestly don't give a shit," Jiraiya said. "I'm taking the hat so that I can organize the search for Naruto. I'm sure as hell not trusting any of you to do it—half of you would be too busy empire building here in Leaf, the other half don't know shit about intelligence work, and there's no way I'm going to fuck around asking for permission to do things or requisitioning resources. Anyone who has a problem with it or with me can get out of the way or die, simple as that.
"Now, some other things that are going to happen. That lot there"—he tossed his head towards Hazō and the others—"are now my clan. I'm marrying Inoue Mari, the redhead, and adopting the rest. As of this minute they are Leaf nin with clean records and will be treated as such. All of you are going to say 'yes sir' and then sign the paperwork when Isobe brings it in."
It should have been impossible, but Hyūga's spine straightened even more and his face became even more frozen and contemptuous. "Jiraiya, I will not question your story—"
"Story?" Jiraiya asked dangerously.
"Fine, your report about how our Hokage died, nor will I question your loyalty to Leaf. I absolutely support your desire to track down Sarutobi's killers and the kidnappers of our jinchūriki, and I will gladly offer my clan's ninja to the effort. I will not, however, support inducting people into Leaf's forces who have already betrayed one village before this and threatened one of our senior doctors the last time they were here. Furthermore, if you actually believe this to be a good idea then I question your ability to lead. You are letting your feelings for this woman blind you to the dangers she brings."
Jiraiya studied the other man calmly, head cocked as though in curiosity. "Hiashi," he said at last. "You are a fucking prig, and you have always been a fucking prig. You are obstructionist and far too focused on your privileges and the good of your clan as opposed to the good of Leaf. Now, I've had a really shitty couple of days and I am just itching to kill something. So go ahead, get in my way. See how that works out for you."
Hyūga was on his feet, the veins around his eyes bulging as he activated his bloodline. "You traitorous—"
"He's right about one thing," Nara said calmly, leaning back and tapping his fingers together in thought.
I mean if there's hundeds of ninja veterans in the clans on one side of the vote and dozens on the other with equal weight even the Founding Clans have to have thoughts about democratic mandates. I expect the S-Rank weight of Tsunade and Naruto shift that in favor of them though.
IIRC Naruto said they'd made a deal with Hiruzen's help to disband the Uzumaki and form the Goketsu so the voting blocs wouldn't change. The Clan exists, sure, but it's still vote stacking to make more 'districts' like that.
I am reasonably confident that both IC and OOC decisions to be working with Jiraiya/Leaf and choosing to sell Skywalkers to them instead of to any other village were motivated by the knowledge that Leaf is the "good one". @faflec, do you recall any chapters/discussions that would serve as strong evidence for that?
That said, you're right: neither Rock nor Cloud are evil incarnate, and if we had a unique opportunity to sell them superweapons in exchange for giving us notable influence on their politics, we would have likely taken it. I predict that our behaviour subsequent to our exaltation would have been different, though, with a lot more focus on trying to influence the village's internal politics.
Interesting. Akatsuki were far from being good people as defined by virtue ethics. Does this mean that, in the hypothetical Pain Quest, assuming we've had strong reasons to believe that we'll be able to destroy all chakra, you would have cheered us on even as we befriended mass murderers and ordered kidnappings and torture?
I don't think Akatsuki were good people, and their behaviour is one example of way I see this going. They had a good uplift goal, but because they went about it in a bad way everyone saw them as threats and they died achieving nothing but killing a lot of people. As Pain I wouldn't pursue that ritual through kidnapping the demon hosts. His befriending of the mass murderers would be a good thing if it inspires them into better conduct as it did. (Which is what I want to see.)
@No-one of Importance the only thing of actual value I have to add to this conversation is the observation that isolationism is virtually an inherent net negative from an economic and thus uplift-centric point of view. It's essentially fracturing the market, and larger more unified markets tend to be better for all parties.
I don't think that political isolation necessarily leads to economic isolationism in this case. I don't see how Hiashi could reasonably expect to pull off becoming a hermit kingdom when Fire is the food supplier to many of the other nations and cutting off that supply would force them to invade. The geography makes Fire the route between a lot of nations too. At a minimum he has to allow trade posts on the borders and some flow of goods between them.
Although I disagree with most of what you've said, I do agree that interludes featuring the common folk of this world (regardless of if they're being helped or hurt and who by) would add narrative and moral weight to the quest without sacrificing simulationism. However, it would sacrifice player agency in setting interlude focus and would probably be a lot more spoon heavy for the QMs, which is especially problematic because interludes are generally for when the QMs are low on spoons.
I understand what you're saying, but it is still very uncomfortable to see 10,000 words spent on playing RPGs with the priviliged leaders and heirs of the nobility and no 1,000 word interludes on the sick little girl waiting for daddy to come back from the Sunset Racer with the money to get out of the slums.
don't think that political isolation necessarily leads to economic isolationism in this case. I don't see how Hiashi could reasonably expect to pull off becoming a hermit kingdom when Fire is the food supplier to many of the other nations and cutting off that supply would force them to invade. The geography makes Fire the route between a lot of nations too. At a minimum he has to allow trade posts on the borders and some flow of goods between them.
1) I think it's hugely optimistic to assume Haishi can pursue political isolationism without causing economic effects on some level. Even if he's not outright raising tariffs he won't be helping us to send emissaries to spread the message of Uplift, he won't be helping us spread the economy improving technologies or practices we're working on, because spreading those will cause the rise of populations which means more ninja that could oppose Leaf.
2) You seem to think that the Akatsuki succeeding would've been good, because of the huge benefits it might entail. This, despite all the evils they've done, and this despite the fact that they'd be fucking with folks' heads without their consent (I kind of dislike the term "mindrape" for various reasons but it fits here). Which, I mean, I could make an argument for but it would have to rely on extreme utilitarianism. This seems like it conflicts with the more deontological positions you have seemed to prioritize elsewhere, and to a massive degree.
3) I"m pretty sure we'd be dead or at least not in a position to change anything whatsoever if the thread as a whole shared your moral philosophy. MFD is just a really really shitty world and you can't really get anything done without power, because, as in the real world, there are always very powerful people with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo no matter how many other people suffer. If one can't gain their own power or leverage the power of others one will either be completely ineffectual or one will be utterly crushed.
There is only one real way I could see your basic goal of "avoid causing any conflict and suffering unless necessary for self-defense" (and forgive me if this is a misunderstanding) working, assuming we actually cared about improving things rather than just surviving. That would be to just lighthouse for years until we come up with seals powerful enough that we can threaten everyone into behaving well through sheer force. Which uhh, well it's hard to argue with that position if one assumes that stopping the Akatsuki was actually a bad thing.
Getting or keeping people pro-social heads off the worst of their potential crimes and suffering. That applies more the closer to humans you are and the more it relates to trust, violence and basic needs. Some abstract tasks like road placement could be handled on material consequentialism and some situations like medical triage or warfare can use utilitarian methods in the short term but that's only as loss management. Those methods are basically spending that built up trust to keep people alive in those contexts.
As someone who knows your ground rules on this point and trusts you to have followed them, I feel you're underestimating how legitimate @No-one of Importance's reading is. The story did present the alternative as 'you didn't invent Skywalkers so the quest is over, GG', and whether or not that would be truly adhering to simulationism, it certainly would have not felt like it. This colours how the actual path gets read, even if you didn't intend it that way, even if the presented alternative is not the actual alternative, and even if the readers know in their thinky part of their brain how the sausage is made.
If you hadn't invented the skywalkers, Leaf would not have precipitously set the trap for Mist that resulted in two Tailed Beasts being exposed in the field with the majority of their supporting forces wiped out. Who knows what might have happened in a counterfactual universe while Akatsuki had to spend yet more months or years waiting for such a perfect opportunity.
So far as I'm aware, there has never been a time when you weren't eager for the current arc to be over.
@No-one of Importance : When posting huge things like this where you are responding to multiple points, could you please ensure that there is enough context inside *your* text so that if I quote it it will be clear what it refers to? When you quote me and then I quote you the original context is lost, so unless your text references the original it's really hard to respond.
IIRC the QMs have made statements to the opposite effect of this: they modeled Akatsuki based on reasonable ports of their canon selves and let things run from there, knowing full well that they were monstrously powerful and had aerial supremacy over most everyone else. I'd also recommend you give the QMs the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their integrity on simulationism; a claim like this where you say they designed Akatsuki to make Hazou look good is a pretty hefty accusation after all they go through to make the story not do exactly that sort of thing.
So, the QMs -- who, I might add, are in the best position to know -- have said that the quest is simulationist, not narrativist. We've said that we were perfectly happy to let Akatsuki win. Other players have said "That is absolutely the way it is, as confirmed by literally years of QM statements and events in the 1.25 million words of the story." Your response here boils down to "I don't believe you and I don't care if I can convince you but I'm going to publicly state my disbelief." That about right?
I think that may be an ur-example. Textile machinery doesn't have to involve child labor, injuring your workers or devastating losses in livelihood if the person introducing it doesn't structure their business that way. Living wages, safer working conditions and compensatory training or arrangements could've been made for a lot of people in the industrial revolution if the society had been there for it. By my understanding it's just that a combination of the parliament voting for enclosure acts to privitise commonly held farmland and agricultural innovations lowering the demand for a rural workforce forced lots of rural laborers into the cities just as these unskilled industrial jobs were created, allowing for a very skewed market for the people with the capital to actually afford the machinery to exploit.
This argument amounts to "If people at that time had had the benefit of a century of experience with labor regulation and the abuses of unregulated capitalism, and if everyone were unselfish and caring, then they could have prevented the abuses of unregulated capitalism."
If the Third has successfully maintained almost world peace that would significantly raise my value of Asuma's diplomacy. However I'm not sure how to judge the current shadow wars compared to a ninja world war. All the ninja seem traumatised and the civilians fear ninja. If scorch squads operate then that explains things, but if he'd kept peace for decades since WW2 I'd expect the current crop of younger adults to have significantly fewer damaged ninja than they do. I assume that means there's been wars involving Konoha and other Major Villages, just not a general war?
There are lots of wounded ninja because this world is dangerous. If nothing else, chakra beasts are a constant threat and medical ninjutsu isn't powerful enough to fix major injuries.
As to wars...what counts as a war? There's constant low-level poking at each other via raids, scouting one another's territory, espionage, etc. There haven't been any mass mobilizations where hundreds of ninja were sent out with orders to go kill the other guy.
My position's roughly that things that encourage good conduct and will in others and yourself are the most impactful thing. Getting or keeping people pro-social heads off the worst of their potential crimes and suffering. That applies more the closer to humans you are and the more it relates to trust, violence and basic needs. Some abstract tasks like road placement could be handled on material consequentialism and some situations like medical triage or warfare can use utilitarian methods in the short term but that's only as loss management. Those methods are basically spending that built up trust to keep people alive in those contexts.
So you agree that consequentialism is the correct moral system when dealing with economics and medicine. That's a start.
As to this: "My position's roughly that things that encourage good conduct and will in others and yourself are the most impactful thing", you have yet to explain why consequentialism does not do that.
I look at the difference between the joy and excitement over the chapters and chapters of Chunin Exams victories and emotion invoked by the paragraphs of Keiko coming back or Panda coming out with horrific revalations about the Pangolin imperialism. One demands a lot more imagination spoons to grasp than the other, and more than it strictly needs to from a story telling perspective.
Inferno Vulpix explained that point. They were more planning telepathy or a hive mind, which probably wouldn't have been a net negative in my mind if they had researched it enough to execute as planned. Did you ever read another rational story call Three Worlds Collide by Eliezer Yudkowzky? If you know the comparison then I'd say becoming a Super Happy would be good if you were in chronic pain or misery or fear and want that to stop or bad if you were happy as you are but don't want to change. For the vast majority of the elemental nations population, the civilians, a change either stopping the Ninja from abusing them forever with empathy power or turning them into a cohesive hive mind would probably stop more pain than cause ennui.
It sounds like you're saying that, even though neither the players nor the characters know what Akatsuki was doing (aside from Pain's cryptic reference to "Once our hearts are one"), Akatsuki winning would have been a good thing. Is that correct?
There really needs to be more agency from the other summon clans about that too. If the Pangolins are known get a world shaping advantage off their summoner and/or seals then others should be reacting to get a supplier to counter. The situation can't just be 'insert war crimes and guilt, get money and power'. That doesn't give the Summons any personhood.
I see that as a whole other layer of crime. The whole set of incentives is frankly sickeningly close to the effect of the Atlantic slave trade on west African states. The summon clans who don't get guns (seals) get conquered. To buy guns you need gold. To get gold you have to conquer and enslave your neighbors, which you do with guns. Now every Summons clan needs Seals, and they need to pay their contracter to get them off their village's sealmasters. That income stream and the risk of losing their summons to conquest gives a whole new cause for war in the human world too.
I agree that the Sunset Racer was a very dubious situation. It's possible to argue that it ends up being a net-positive action when the indirect effects are taken into account, but I definitely would not want to try that case in court.
You have a whole bunch of responses to my various "Hazō didn't do that", but there's not enough context for me to sort out in a set of quotes this long, so I'm not going to try. If you want responses, please go back and reorganize with appropriate context in your text.
I mean if there's hundeds of ninja veterans in the clans on one side of the vote and dozens on the other with equal weight even the Founding Clans have to have thoughts about democratic mandates. I expect the S-Rank weight of Tsunade and Naruto shift that in favor of them though.
IIRC Naruto said they'd made a deal with Hiruzen's help to disband the Uzumaki and form the Goketsu so the voting blocs wouldn't change. The Clan exists, sure, but it's still vote stacking to make more 'districts' like that.
The above were points #3 and #4 in your text, but they got renumbered when quoted.
I have no idea what point #3 (here #1) referred to since you didn't supply the context.
As to point #4 (here #2)...I have no idea what the hell you're talking about, because this isn't even coherent. You state in your first sentence that one clan [district] was going to end and another clan [district] was going to begin. i.e., the number of clans did not change. How can you say that and then, in the very next sentence, claim that this was a case of 'make more districts'?
I understand what you're saying, but it is still very uncomfortable to see 10,000 words spent on playing RPGs with the priviliged leaders and heirs of the nobility and no 1,000 word interludes on the sick little girl waiting for daddy to come back from the Sunset Racer with the money to get out of the slums.
I think it's lovely that you have these feelings. Please attempt to comprehend the explanation you have been given about why reality works the way it does, because what you are saying here comes across as very disrespectful on first reading -- "Oh, well, even when you're too tired to do something serious, you should do something serious." When I re-read looking for charitable versions, what I get is "You should occasionally either write more than you have energy for or you should take wordcount away from what the players are trying to do, thereby slowing everything down, and devote it to something the sole purpose of which is to make them feel bad, just so that they will feel bad."
I mean...I get it. You want there to be real stakes, you want the players to see the misery they cause, you want more angst in the story. Still, you're being more than a little tone deaf.
On the topic of consequences of our actions, I am often reminded of Tanaka, Jiraiya's agent whom we've burned in Ise essentially by being impatient and wanting to get the info to Leaf as soon as possible. That wasn't really the players' decision, but the result was Tanaka himself presumably being tortured to death, and the fate of his daughter, who he wanted to move to Leaf, remaining unknown.
Personally, I'm very in favour of at least symbolically taking responsibility for some of these effects, it would likely do Hazou and the rest of the clan some good. So, try to find Tanaka's daughter and actually grant what ended up being his dying wish. Get in (discrete) contact with the mayor of Sarubetsu and apologize for not getting back to her after capturing Arikada. Are we even certain Honami and her child are dead? I know that's the default assumption, but I don't recall ever confirming either way.
I keep harping on this point, but for me, Hazou is the hivemind's most precious resource, and whenever these "hard man" decisions come up, I'm always concerned about how they will impact him, all other consequences aside. As a corollary, I'm in favour of moves whose impact is limited materially, but which provide a significant morale boost. People aren't machines, they need more than utilitarian goals and WMD designs to live.
Sure, or some equivalent. Last time we tried the beach it was... very contentious for some reason. And I don't think we have a pool. It'd be great if we could take the whole clan, civilians included, so no travelling to the sea at ninja speeds. Maybe just a nice picnic?
And I don't think we have a pool. It'd be great if we could take the whole clan, civilians included, so no travelling to the sea at ninja speeds. Maybe just a nice picnic?
The door slammed far more forcefully than it should have. Hazō looked up as Mari stomped into the room, radiating fury.
"What?" he said, setting his paperwork aside.
"The Uchiha gutted the deal," she spat.
"What?"
"Yeah. I didn't even have time to start talking about the amendments you wanted. They kept me sitting for an hour before I was led to the regent's assistant's office. His assistant's office! The bastard wouldn't even talk to me himself!"
Hazō blinked. "What?!"
"Yeah. Something happened behind the scenes, I don't know what. Probably that bastard Hyūga; now that he's out of the hospital I'm sure he's moving fast to lock down as many votes as he can. The Uchiha are still willing to abstain on the Hokage's vote, but the rest of the deal got eviscerated."
Hazō took a deep, steadying breath and let it out slowly. "Okay...what have we got now?"
"After much negotiation: We take two dozen of their civvies, none of whom are economically useful. We pay them a million up front, then five hundred thousand per month for the following eleven months, or four million up front. That's the total extent of it."
"Huh."
"Yeah."
"What about the women, and the babies, and all that?"
Mari snorted. "Screw that. They wanted to rebuild their clan and get hold of our bloodlines, but they aren't willing to give us major political favors and long-term revenue? They can go howl."
Hazō very carefully kept his sigh of relief internal-only. That deal had squicked him from the start.
"Well," he said at last, "it could be a lot worse. The part we really cared about was getting them to abstain."
"No, the part we really cared about was tying them to us for the long term and gaining control of their vote on major issues so that we could shape the policy of Leaf for the next decade."
"Well, it is what it is," Hazō said, carefully avoiding what would clearly have been a tar pit of argumentation. "On first blush, I'm inclined to take the deal. Comments?"
Mari sighed. "Yeah. It's worth it. We really need the votes." She frowned. "Also...things feel weird out there. I saw a lot of formal-robed clan members moving around, from clans who don't often dress formally. They weren't going towards specific estates, so there's probably closed-door meetings happening on neutral ground. Also, I saw a group of clanless nin walking and talking in a sneaky way, but they all shut up as I passed by. I wouldn't think too much of it, except I saw another group huddled in the back of a tea shop and looking around like they were on mission protocol. Could just be that they are fresh back from the woods, but it stood out."
"Hm. Okay, well, let's get the others and talk about the new Uchiha deal."
Get Support. The Plan Cache is for ideas that already have support of a sizeable chunk of the playerbase, not for ideas that someone wants to advocate later. For a benchmark, your idea should have enough support to be in one of the major plans of a cycle if there was room in the plan.
Short-term. The Plan Cache is for ideas that we intend to implement in the next few updates, or more loosely within the same rough story arc. If you have an idea beyond that temporal scope, I have another post storing those ideas so ask me to put it there instead of cluttering up our short-term storage.
Sometimes when we're making a plan we have a good idea that's just outside the temporal scope of the update, but we don't want to cut it from the plan because we might forget by the next cycle. This adds unnecessary words that could have been spent fleshing out the rest of the plan, and may outright cost XP in the worst cases.
This plan cache will hold these subsections so they don't fall into the void between planning cycles. Just ping me with the subsection and, unless it's wildly unreasonable, I'll edit it into the post. I'll keep them there for a while until they either make it into a winning plan, fall out of favour, or the context significantly changes. Depending on circumstances, they might end up in my Side Project Cache, or they might be dropped, and I'll make sure to be transparent about what I'm doing.
I'll do my best to quote this post after every update, so that planmakers can get an easy reminder about what we never quite got to last cycle.
IIRC the plan is to leave the Ino and Chouza scenes off-screen as relatively generic keeping on top of things/condolences and then have a more in-depth conversation with Asuma about what Hiashi's been up to and whether anyone on our side is at danger of flipping and other such matters.
"Also...things feel weird out there. I saw a lot of formal-robed clan members moving around, from clans who don't often dress formally. They weren't going towards specific estates, so there's probably closed-door meetings happening on neutral ground. Also, I saw a group of clanless nin walking and talking in a sneaky way, but they all shut up as I passed by. I wouldn't think too much of it, except I saw another group huddled in the back of a tea shop and looking around like they were on mission protocol. Could just be that they are fresh back from the woods, but it stood out."
See, everything's fine. We don't get the long-term influence, but humans don't think in the long-term anyways, so we can literally worry about that later.
Okay, well I'm sure the Goketsu won't be negatively impacted by us not really having the manpower to negotiate on a lot of fronts at the same time. Right?
Also, I saw a group of clanless nin walking and talking in a sneaky way, but they all shut up as I passed by. I wouldn't think too much of it, except I saw another group huddled in the back of a tea shop and looking around like they were on mission protocol. Could just be that they are fresh back from the woods, but it stood out."
It's fine. We should close our eyes, answer "Yes!" to any question or suggestion Mari gives us, and everything will remain fine. I trust her wholeheartedly*.
It's fine. We should close our eyes, answer "Yes!" to any question or suggestion Mari gives us, and everything will remain fine. I trust her wholeheartedly*.
I think that may be an ur-example. Textile machinery doesn't have to involve child labor, injuring your workers or devastating losses in livelihood if the person introducing it doesn't structure their business that way. Living wages, safer working conditions and compensatory training or arrangements could've been made for a lot of people in the industrial revolution if the society had been there for it.
I don't have time to get into the rest of your post today, so sorry if I'm mischaracterizing you due to that, but I don't think the person who actually figured out some new aspect of textile machinery had that much control over how it was deployed, or what effects it had on society. That's what I was trying to communicate when I said I thought you were underestimating the effects of the environment/culture we're embedded on.
I'm trying to put into words the game-theoretic mechanism that makes it so that you have to use the underhanded/evil tactics of your neighbors if you want to compete. I remember a number of years ago there were a bunch of news stories about a board game that simulated the (textile? clothing?) industry in a developing world, and even people who wanted to provide the best standard of living they could were eventually forced to change their policies so that they were only a little bit better then their peers. Can't find the article today, although it would be the perfect example of the thing I'm trying to get across.
When scorch-squads are a tactic everyone else uses, not using scorch-squads means your nation needs to be really powerful in order to keep up. You have to compromise with sin, especially if your powerless, but you can at least try to minimize and direct that compromise. You can't just not be evil though, not if you want to compete with people who are evil.
The Uchiha are still willing to abstain on the Hokage's vote, but the rest of the deal got eviscerated."
Hazō took a deep, steadying breath and let it out slowly. "Okay...what have we got now?"
"After much negotiation: We take two dozen of their civvies, none of whom are economically useful. We pay them a million up front, then five hundred thousand per month for the following eleven months, or four million up front. That's the total extent of it."
Mari sighed. "Yeah. It's worth it. We really need the votes." She frowned. "Also...things feel weird out there. I saw a lot of formal-robed clan members moving around, from clans who don't often dress formally. They weren't going towards specific estates, so there's probably closed-door meetings happening on neutral ground. Also, I saw a group of clanless nin walking and talking in a sneaky way, but they all shut up as I passed by. I wouldn't think too much of it, except I saw another group huddled in the back of a tea shop and looking around like they were on mission protocol. Could just be that they are fresh back from the woods, but it stood out."
This, on the other hand, is terrifying. Sounds like either Hiashi is forcing the vote, right now, without telling us, or he's getting ready to assassinate us. Or both.
Regardless of what it is, we need to find out, FAST.
