As a proponent of approach one, I think you're setting up a false dichotomy here. None of our long term projects required that much screentime and effort. Also our projects hadn't had any time to mature either.
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
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- naruto rationalist romance armageddon is looking better and better damn you kishimoto explosions everywhere explosives solve everyone if in doubt surrender to the mercy of zabuza it seemed like a good idea at the time looks like a really bad case of being a jōnin my god. where does the lore end? precommitting is the winning plan screaming in kagome screw the rules i have explosives something bad might still happen sometimes you gotta sociopath stabby zabby subsection c of paragraph 9 should include we can weaponize this so hard open voting
As a proponent of approach one, I think you're setting up a false dichotomy here. None of our long term projects required that much screentime and effort. Also our projects hadn't had any time to mature either.
- Location
- Yes.
Sorry, I missed this. I've attributed Shikamaru's actions here (and also regarding the wedding) to him being really fucking scared of Ami.
I mean, think about it. She's a possibly-hostile Jonin social spec who's already gotten a powerful political following in Mist despite having developed it under Yagura, she's absolutely going to run circles around Shikamaru socially and know if he's not in line with her instructions. Shikamaru knows this.
Now, think about this from his perspective. You're suddenly Clan Head after your father was killed and you're out of your depth. You know you're out of your depth. You're dealing with a potentially hostile foreigner and social spec who wants you to do a thing, she's good enough to tell if you did the thing, and she's the sort of vindictive who'll screw you in some manner if you don't do the thing.
Normally, since you're a staunch supporter of the Will of Fire and blah blah blah, you refuse anyway because aiding a foreigner is treason and you don't want to be executed as an accessory in this foreigner's dastardly plot. But...what she wants you to do isn't treasonous; at worst, it's the equivalent of a bad joke.
So why wouldn't Shikamaru follow along with Ami messing with us? Why does he take this risk by poking the Amibear, when the alternative is essentially costless?
- Location
- Omniverse #1345
*Points at literally everyone on that mission.* My point is that it seems like the only time people communicate is when it will be bad for us or when we force it. This is not natural unless we are cursed.
She had enough time and ability to set up a joke with Shikamaru but instead of telling us apparently conspired to make sure we wouldn't find out about the mission until we came looking for Keiko.
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- Location
- UK
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- He/Him
I think you are reading far, far too much into this.
Reminder: Our biggest win is to empower an entire village and creating the best army in the world to face Akatsuki. It has relatively little to do with our ability to PUNCH things.
Although PUNCHING things is a critical and important factor to our survival, so is having moar powerful meatshields.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
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- She/They
*nods*
Right. I think thats mostly it. Theres just a little bit of extra icing on the cake in this scenario that left me wondering if he was a ninja-asshole as well.
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- Location
- Omniverse #1345
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
The 'we suck at Approach 1' angle was that we'd get unlucky and die before our ambitions truly matured, and then without us there they wouldn't. It's not that we're too distracted with cool ninja stuff to build storage seal banks, it's that the storage seal bank won't amount to much if we unceremoniously die fighting a Summoner for their Scroll a year from now.
Yeah the scope of the quest has kind of grown out of control compared to those simple missing-nin days, hasn't it? An entire village to model the politics of in the aftershocks of the Akatsuki incident, the myriad ripples of each innovation we attempt to create, social games and all sorts of other actors in a game moving far too fast for the world to keep up, such that we're scrambling to juggle the ten different things we want to advance while also playing the social games and watching the geopolitics wildfire rage.
In some ways it'd be much easier if we-the-players could put most of our projects on hold until the geopolitics and Konoha politics settle down into an equilibrium again. Then you'd be able to tackle the ambitions we're advancing in a less frantic pace, and be able to give things the breadth of coverage they deserve without managing so many things that you risk burnout. I think, though, that the trouble with that is that the hivemind has been sitting on these ideas for forever and don't want to wait any longer to implement them, even if it means we're juggling.
Even now I can't help but hope that we're a few IC weeks away from things settling down into quasi-stability, to the point where none of us have to spare much thought for the geopolitics wildfire or other destabilizing revelations for like a year. We'd be able to solidify the projects we set into motion in the wake of the Collapse. We'd be able to follow up on social threads we've left fallow, or focus all of our attention on a big juicy project and cover it in proper depth. We might even have time for Sealing!
Just from me to you, if you feel like it'd be better for the quest experience overall for us to try and keep from starting new projects for a few more weeks IC, for us to try and minimize the juggling we need to do, until things have a chance to settle down, I'd be inclined to push for that to the rest of the hivemind. Stresses are high and frustration is rising, but I think if we prune our perspective and focus on getting through the turbulence until we can look around again without overloading us or you, that might be better than what we're currently trying.
Emstar
The Shining One
- Location
- Trapped in an extradimensional rift.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Can we fix this with necromancy?
Maybe we should go missing-nin again.
Mari has had some experience setting up one Noodle Incident. She can probably triple our ROI on the next one!
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
The scale's a couple orders of magnitude higher this time though, and we're also not just dealing with getting the local superpower to be nice to us, we're dealing with the geopolitics of the entire Elemental Nations. It's undoubtedly a lot harder.
- Location
- Omniverse #1345
The second part of that was inevitable regardless of the intent. It's just what happens when you build a nation, small or not.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
I mean, imagine what would happen if we were Hidden Swamp and saw events much like what happened with us on our canonical path. We'd be worried, make predictions about the balance of power, but ultimately we'd bide our time and see how things shake out and just be ready to jump ship if needbe. Instead, here in Leaf, we're directly interfacing with these events and Leaf's desperate responses to them, which involves a lot more in-depth simulation on the part of the QMs and a lot more direct action on the part of the players.
- Location
- Omniverse #1345
As Swamp we would have been utterly destroyed or subsumed by virtue of being in the middle of the land Rock wants.
- Location
- UK
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- He/Him
You're slowly taking over a global superpower. There are subtle differences.
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
Certainly. I, personally, much prefer Approach 2, but Approach 1 isn't bad per se, and fully committing to it would definitely be better than the status quo.
Immediately after the Collapse, we could have:
- Integrated ourselves into ISC's dynamic by extensively helping them, taking some of the load off of Shikamaru in particular.
- Fought Ami over the control of KEI instead of letting her fully suborn it.
- Investigated the cause of the Collapse.
- Did something to put Rock ninja off-balance.
- Collaborated with Orochimaru on something in a time of chaos.
- Negotiated with a voting clan for seals/jutsu/favours in exchange for seals/jutsu/favours/assistance.
- Etc.
Yep. We engaged in sealing research to develop a superweapon and used it to buy our way to the top of Leaf's hierarchy, greatly empowering our new home at the same time. It's one of the most Approach 2 things we ever did. You can tell by how no-one stared at us in confusion thinking we're a bunch of weirdos because of it.
Approach 1 vs. Approach 2 isn't "impersonal power" vs. "personal power", it's "small global changes over a large period of time" vs. "major changes over a short period of time".
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- Location
- Omniverse #1345
I mean, it kinda seems like Ami is taking over a second global superpower and we're just along for the ride.
It sounds like Ami is unique in that she is a thinker clan bloodline without the bloodlines drawbacks. If so, her results are very believable. Although then there is a question of how improbable is it that Ami is the only one who circumvented her thinker bloodline.
long term approach thoughts:
0th step we need to get the quick and important info available to us. we haven't been doing that (understandably due to requisite QM drain and players might find it too boring to vote for)
even if we go for personal power we still want to set up personnel (secretaries plz). Look at Oro. He went personal power path and still wants Leaf resources.
we should actually use the resources Leaf provides. We in Leaf, besides the security we haven't tried to benefit much from it's resources yet.
is this confirmation that the physics of the EN is ruled by air pressure, and not sky spirits?
long term approach thoughts:
0th step we need to get the quick and important info available to us. we haven't been doing that (understandably due to requisite QM drain and players might find it too boring to vote for)
even if we go for personal power we still want to set up personnel (secretaries plz). Look at Oro. He went personal power path and still wants Leaf resources.
we should actually use the resources Leaf provides. We in Leaf, besides the security we haven't tried to benefit much from it's resources yet.
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- Location
- UK
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- He/Him
Where do you think air pressure comes from?
Edit: This also applies to the EN.
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Are you saying that in the EN the only way the sky spirits alter the world is in such a way that the results look exactly the same as if you were only accounting for the laws of air pressure and ignoring sky spirits?
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- Location
- USA
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- He/Him
Honestly, the most challenging part right now is the background simulation.
Hidden Swamp was going to be built on thirty or forty people, with you in the initial role of junior gofer, rising through the ranks over time. That would have been entirely manageable. Leaf is 30,000 and you're in the class that is second in authority only to the Hokage. Plus, you're directly involved in international politics and tangentially involved in interdimensional politics. That's enough to make our heads explode, but we are doing our best. If we miss a step here and there, don't be surprised. Feel free to ping us with suggestions, but have a little sympathy if we don't get it exactly correct.
In comparison to everything else that's going on, many of the players' plans are actually pretty relaxing. When you go off into the wilderness and build salterns, that's one or more updates where we don't have to think about cloakroom politics among superstitious and aggressive supersoldiers.
YES! That would be amazing! You guys off in the woods, just half a dozen characters to simulate, the occasional contact with civilization in which you hear rumors of the latest disaster... Oh, how wonderful it would be.
It's confirmation that that is what Hazō believes to be the case.
- Location
- Kiev, Ukraine
Hey, all kaijus are in your hands - just destroy Leaf with most of its people and we'll go missing-nin automatically!
- Location
- Omniverse #1345
I mean I think part of it is I believe you are simulating the ENs as being far too active - if this level of activity was at all normal the entire EN would have been dead decades ago. And while the fallout of the BotGs explains some of it, things were too active from the very start by my reckoning of what is sustainable enough to only cause a slow decline.
- Location
- Potato land
I find it difficult to see this as anything but the Shikaku Move - establish dominance in a relationship while preserving plausible deniability for it. Shikaku worked hard to keep Hazou off-balance during their first meeting, and it was all brushed aside as him actually giving Hazou credit by expecting him to keep up. Similarly, Shikamaru shows us how much better informed he is about the affairs of KEI while hiding behind Ami's supposed command.
Rationally, there is no reason to do this. It's a waste of very precious time for both himself and Hazou, and it accomplishes little except making Hazou angry. I could, maybe, somehow, be able to see this as a bit of needling between friends, warped and twisted by Shikamaru's social awkwardness, but I have trouble believing he's that awkward and oblivious. It's really not a very funny joke.
W can potentially test this, though. Just try to spend more time with him. If he actually enjoys Hazou's company, we'll probably know one way or another.
I disagree. If the approaches were contradictory, the choice would be much simpler. The reason is that ultimately, everything we do has to lead back to Approach 1 if we're going to be serious about achieving our goals. There is a limit to how much you can strongarm people into becoming better, and that's ultimately what this comes down to. Ultimately, the big, abrupt changes have to work as enablers for the small, gradual ones. Becoming S-rank and OmniKage won't allow us to force ninja to be less bigoted against civilians, just to hide it better; it will, however, allow us to introduce much more effective measures aimed at reducing this bigotry over time.
So, the problem is really that Approach 2 usually helps build foundations for Approach 1. Look at Skywalkers - if we didn't sell them to Leaf, we wouldn't be in the position to make all these effective Approach 1 plays. I think you have the risk/reward analysis right for each approach individually, the really difficult part is knowing when to pivot. When have we gained enough from high-risk/high-reward plays and can start playing the long game in earnest?
The answer to that question mostly comes down to the specifics of our goals, I think. If you want to have a post-scarcity utopia and mass resurrections in a decade, you have to pick Approach 2 every time, there's simply no other way. If you're satisfied with a more progressive society in a geopolitically stable and relatively peaceful world in the same timeframe, you'll mostly want Approach 1.
You're not going to get the playerbase to agree on this, because, ultimately, we do have different goals. All these goals lie along a similar axis, so we agree on the general direction, but their magnitude is very different. Some people want to go very far very quickly, and need to strap rockets to their boots for that.
"Underneath the underneath."