Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

[Emstar]

It's less clear to me that the counterfactual of "proactively volunteer for vivisection" strategy would have fared better.

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I contend that the issue is less "This counterfactual would have been better" and more "Literally anything other than 'pretend this problem isn't something we have to deal with, go try to fiddle around with something else and hope it won't bother us' would have been better." The thing is, that's mostly... exactly what happened with respect to the Orochimaru Problem. Some folks proposed the voluntary vivisection as a potential solution, but I am fairly certain that they would have been onboard with the general solution space of "Okay, let's just try to suss this one out somehow." since its at least in the ballpark[1].

[1] I could be very wrong about that, since a large portion of the playerbase can be incredibly "My way or the highway" with respect to things they want to do. This is why planmaking is sort of shitty and exhausting, since with any meaningful decision that doesn't have pseudo-unanimous support, it is an exercise in frustration to deal with the flood of haggling and nitpicking. :/

 

[Sir Stompy]

The natural counter-point is "The thing that ruined don't poke Oro strategy was directly poking Oro". You can't really say that getting caught on fire was inevitable if you're on fire because jumped into the fire drenched in gasoline.
"We knew this was going to happen" is simply not true? the problem we had was "Oro is maybe interested in us and we should move first", the chapter quite clearly showed that no, Orochimaru was not interested in us. Because what was proposed as "What to do" was "Poke Oro directly and ask for a vivisection" not "Go to Asuma and prepare a strategy" as an actual back-up would be.

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Basically this repeated 100x. The "don't poke Oro" strategy was working and would have continued to work until Hazoupilot poked him. Everyone saying not to confront him about the GS was just vindicated, Hazou had no business talking to Oro about it in the state he was in.

Frankly, if we look at the actions we actually took, we tried your way through and through, and yet here we are, having gained nothing for the attempt except being put on the back foot, trying to implement the plan we've been advocating all along because we correctly believed the situation was unsustainable.

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I don't think the belief that conditional vivisection was inevitable is remotely correct. If Hazoupilot hadn't gone off wilding without hivemind input the second he saw Oro we could have defused the situation. Hazou was not the right person to confront Oro and any reasonable plan would have had him running off to Mari. Who can handle Oro, as evidenced by the fact that she did. The fact that we did not get to vote in a plan for the Oro conversation severely hurt us here.

For one thing, I expect Naruto/Tsunade to be MUCH more sympathetic and willing to help us in this situation versus the situation where we've decided to go in for vivisection of our own volition. Especially considering that Tsunade's only advice was "don't be interesting"; we would be explicitly ignoring her exact advice at the same time as we ask her for a favour to execute it.

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This is also my reasoning as well. No one in their right mind would volunteer for this unless the alternative was worse. We (probably) have far more support than in the counterfactual where we go to Oro unprompted. I did not think we could possibly get Tsunade and Naruto onboard and now I think we actually have a good chance. That consideration is massive.

 

[Oneiros]

I think that the most fundamental thing that this incident has shown that as a community we are far to reactive. Almost all of our greatest successes have come about from when we have gone out of our way to handle our own goals. We constantly put ourselves on the back foot by ignoring the long term future instead of always focusing on the move immediately in front of us. The Oro situation is just another example of the long list of time we have been reactive instead of proactive

This also shows another flaw within the playerbase. Constantly solutions or ideas will be proposed to immediately be shot down with people claiming it is a terrible idea. Then they refuse to spend time proposing alternative solutions. Maybe going under the knife wasn't the right call but instead of just yelling that people could have offered alternative solutions.

 

[Lord Marshal]

I contend that the issue is less "This counterfactual would have been better" and more "Literally anything other than 'pretend this problem isn't something we have to deal with, go try to fiddle around with something else and hope it won't bother us' would have been better." The thing is, that's mostly... exactly what happened with respect to the Orochimaru Problem. Some folks proposed the voluntary vivisection as a potential solution, but I am fairly certain that they would have been onboard with the general solution space of "Okay, let's just try to suss this one out somehow." since its at least in the ballpark[1].

[1] I could be very wrong about that, since a large portion of the playerbase can be incredibly "My way or the highway" with respect to things they want to do. This is why planmaking is sort of shitty and exhausting, since with any meaningful decision that doesn't have pseudo-unanimous support, it is an exercise in frustration to deal with the flood of haggling and nitpicking. :/

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This is a fair criticism and one i find myself agreeing. But to be fair we were extremely busy with multiple Kaijus and Hazou being half dead, still, generalized solution in case there is disagreement are probably a good idea to create. Good is better than an impossible perfect after all, especially if there two perfect solutions according to the people voting

Basically this repeated 100x. The "don't poke Oro" strategy was working and would have continued to work until Hazoupilot poked him. Everyone saying not to confront him about the GS was just vindicated, Hazou had no business talking to Oro about it in the state he was in.

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Respectfully disagree, we can't really say the "don't poke Oro" strategy was the best, when the result is this. The result is not everything of course, but we should learn something regarding making our position fool-proof from unforseen problems.

 

[Inferno Vulpix]

I'm confident in saying that an answer such as "Well, regardless of the reasoning only the result matter" is a completely sterile answer. By the same escaping the Swamp was a mistake, because this is the result. It's a completely sterile argument that adds nothing to the table.
I'm not saying that this was the best way to deal with the problem, nor that it's what i would have done or would do, what i'm saying is that going "This completely unforseen thing that happened was clearly predictable and people were idiots" is not fair to discourse in the passing months because it characterize one side as a bunch of idiots that should have known better.
It's like going to Hiruzen and saying "You're an idiot because the Akatsuki attacked at the showdown". There could have been better choices? Yes. Is it fair to let our frustation take control and say "Hiruzen was stupid"? No.

EDIT: I mean, this whole tangent is basically quietly going "I told you so" and personally i disagree for various reason. First of which it's not useful to anyone. Second that a reasoning can be sound even if it's doesn't bring you to a positive result. If Hazou-pilot blabbed about Seal Memory during the surgery(In the hypothetical "voluntary vivisection universe")and Oro decided to escalate, would it be fair to say "The plan was stupid"? Personally i would say "No, the reasoning was sound, regardless of the result".

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I made my post in response to a post from you about how 'it would have worked if factors outside our control were more favourable', which is also a sterile answer, since all failed plans fail because of factors outside their control and so saying that 'it only failed because things didn't go according to plan' adds no useful information over 'the plan was a failure'.

Moreover, this outcome was, in fact, predictable. What actually happened bears a striking resemblance to the Orochimaru genjutsu Mari cast on us way back when. A chance encounter with Orochimaru puts our friends in danger of being Orochimaru'd (Kagome, in the genjutsu. The party-goers, in reality), forcing Hazou to put himself on the line to keep his family safe. I have distinct memories of on multiple occasions pointing out that what we saw was entirely plausible and it or something similar could very well happen at any time. This wasn't a black swan beyond our ability to predict, this was predicted, and ignored, and then it happened.

I don't mean to characterize you as idiots as a result of this, I mean to characterize you as wrong. If you wish to see overlap between those two categories, that's up to you but personally I don't see it that way. Everyone here has made inaccurate predictions about the quest before, and all of you are brilliant people and a credit to the quest. It just happened to be this prediction that you were wrong about.

 

[Velorien]

Everyone here has made inaccurate predictions about the quest before, and all of you are brilliant people and a credit to the quest.

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I wish to affirm both parts of this. I don't think anybody in the hivemind will ever make as inaccurate a prediction as @eaglejarl and I did when we first thought about how this quest was going to go.

 

[ting]

I don't mean to characterize you as idiots as a result of this, I mean to characterize you as wrong. If you wish to see overlap between those two categories, that's up to you but personally I don't see it that way. Everyone here has made inaccurate predictions about the quest before, and all of you are brilliant people and a credit to the quest. It just happened to be this prediction that you were wrong about.

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Re: right vs wrong: I think if you're of the opinion that Proactive Voluntary Vivisection was NOT feasible for the reasons discussed above, then it's still not clear that Don't Be Interesting is worse. I think it's plausible that a lot of people recognised Don't Be Interesting as an objectively shitty strategy, but still relatively better than the alternative and therefore the right decision to take. I don't believe that most proponents of Don't Be Interesting considered it such a good strategy that we explicitly shouldn't spend time thinking up a better one. Rather, I think the thread's attention wasn't able to sustain enough continued ideation about Orochimaru countermeasures to generate more than those 2 plans, and many people believed (and still believe) that for all of it's faults, Proactively Volunteer Vivisection was a worse idea.

I can personally say that, I'm in that camp, mostly because I think we would not be able to get the S-rank support needed if the vivisection was voluntary since Naruto doesn't like us very much and Tsunade was the one who told us to do the "don't be interesting" strategy. I agree with you that there may have been ways to work around that or come up with a 3rd strategy!

 

[Sir Stompy]

Respectfully disagree, we can't really say the "don't poke Oro" strategy was the best, when the result is this. The result is not everything of course, but we should learn something regarding making our position fool-proof from unforseen problems.

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I posit that making our position fool-proof is both virtually impossible and a waste of time. We should take reasonable precautions, but preparing for every eventuality is just too hard.

Is Hazou-pilot making a supremely bad decision and leaving us with the aftermath a predictable failure mode for this situation? I don't think so. I can't recall another instance of it happening before this. The bad decisions are almost always voted in.

 

[Black King]

i.e., last week, we could have gone up to Oro and arranged a vivisection procedure with Tsunade and Naruto watching, in exchange for some cool stuff. Oro's response was much more likely to be "Okay, that sounds like a good deal to me." and we would be over and done with this.

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Nah. I don't see him accepting that nor Tsunade or Naruto allowing this. It sounds insane (because it is) to them, and Orochimaru has no reason to agree to the deal. He has to give up nothing because Hazou is an ant.

 

[Lord Marshal]

I made my post in response to a post from you about how 'it would have worked if factors outside our control were more favourable', which is also a sterile answer, since all failed plans fail because of factors outside their control and so saying that 'it only failed because things didn't go according to plan' adds no useful information over 'the plan was a failure'.

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Well, i disagree. A plan can fail for a myriad of different ways, some more predictable than other. More importantly, my point wasn't a silly "Well, the plan failed because the plan failed", but "The plan failed because what happened was exactly the opposite of what the plan was". If you order people to not scream because they will be shot, and someone scream and gets shot, noting that the failure mode was exactly the thing you wanted to evade is important.
We can agree to disagree, but this is my opinion.

I don't mean to characterize you as idiots as a result of this, I mean to characterize you as wrong. If you wish to see overlap between those two categories, that's up to you but personally I don't see it that way. Everyone here has made inaccurate predictions about the quest before, and all of you are brilliant people and a credit to the quest. It just happened to be this prediction that you were wrong about.

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Sorry, what you're saying is true and implying other people in the quest assumed as such was rude of me. This said, respectfully (even if my position is not a simple "No vivisection") after analyzing the evidence and your argument, i disagree. I don't consider the reasoning the two sides of the arguments wrong. The "Don't poke Oro" side was vindicated in some ways and the "Pro-Vivisection" showed that more active counter-measures(Maybe even including vivisection) could have been useful and possibly resolved this problem.
This is my point. The situation is more complicated than "X is Wrong, Y is Right".
Again, we can agree to disagree, but this is my position.

 

[Noumero]

"We knew this was going to happen" is simply not true? the problem we had was "Oro is maybe interested in us and we should move first", the chapter quite clearly showed that no, Orochimaru was not interested in us.

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Oh, certainly, regarding this the anti-vivisection faction (do we really want to explicitly split ourselves into factions here? oh well) was right, I readily admit that. Oro appears to be a compulsive vivisectionist that doesn't see beyond the boundaries of the Basement.

However, that only means this outcome was even more inevitable. Oro is unstable: he has very patchy knowledge of the world, and an inclination towards reckless, decisive action. This means we don't know what he knows or doesn't know, and can't predict what novel information is going to set him off on a kidnapping spree. And we're a public figure: unless we left Leaf or did nothing important ever, he was always going to hear something interesting about us.

Say, you think the current predicament is the fault of the hivemind (for inviting Oro to the party) and Hazou (for volunteering information), right? But if Oro were just a little bit more attentive, or had a higher opinion of us, or if some random scheme of Kabuto's required it, or if the Snakes had more extensive lore, Oro would've come for us the moment he heard about the Great Seal replica. As it happened, yes, Hazou directly convinced him there was more to it, but the fact that Oro didn't take it seriously to begin with was by no means a given.

And this is just one example. If he didn't already have Sadaharu, he probably would've went after Noburi for the Summon Army. Or he might've heard about Snowflake from an unrelated channel, made some assumptions, went after Kei, and she would've spilled the beans after getting Intimidation-100'd, just like Hazou. Or he might've, I dunno, been walking down a street while Akane and Yuno were sparring on some nearby training ground and noticed that one of them seemed to be absorbing blows as if she had non-ablative armor.

The core issue here is that we don't even know what counts as "poking" Oro, except that it's incredibly easy to poke him.

Basically this repeated 100x. The "don't poke Oro" strategy was working and would have continued to work until Hazoupilot poked him. Everyone saying not to confront him about the GS was just vindicated, Hazou had no business talking to Oro about it in the state he was in.

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You're walking a tightrope suspended over a burning landscape. There are strong wings blowing throughout, messing with your balance. Occasionally, a bird would fly by, and you would lunge for it every time, for you've been walking for days, and are starving.

Eventually, you fall down.

Was that outcome in any way unpredictable?

 

[Lord Marshal]

(do we really want to explicitly split ourselves into factions here? oh well)

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The core issue here is that we don't even know what counts as "poking" Oro, except that it's incredibly easy to poke him.

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Say, you think the current predicament is the fault of the hivemind (for inviting Oro to the party) and Hazou (for volunteering information), right? But if Oro were just a little bit more attentive, or had a higher opinion of us, or if some random scheme of Kabuto's required it, or if the Snakes had more extensive lore, Oro would've come for us the moment he heard about the Great Seal replica. As it happened, yes, Hazou directly convinced him there was more to it, but the fact that Oro didn't take it seriously to begin with was by no means a given.

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These are all fair and insightful points, especially the "Do we really want split ourselves into factions", the arguments were more nuanced and individual than that and Oro is far easier to poke than expected.
On "the current predicament" i feel it's not really the fault of the hivemind(Oro coming was unforseen considering his previous behaviour) or hazou-pilot, but a variety of factors that could or could have not been dealt with more Kagome-type paranoid thinking. But Kagome-style paranoid thinking resolves everything, it's just not sustainable in the long term.
So....eh, it happens, let's see how we can survive it.

 

[Sir Stompy]

However, that only means this outcome was even more inevitable. Oro is unstable: he has very patchy knowledge of the world, and an inclination towards reckless, decisive action. This means we don't know what he knows or doesn't know, and can't predict what novel information is going to set him off on a kidnapping spree. And we're a public figure: unless we left Leaf or did nothing important ever, he was always going to hear something interesting about us.

Say, you think the current predicament is the fault of the hivemind (for inviting Oro to the party) and Hazou (for volunteering information), right? But if Oro were just a little bit more attentive, or had a higher opinion of us, or if some random scheme of Kabuto's required it, or if the Snakes had more extensive lore, Oro would've come for us the moment he heard about the Great Seal replica. As it happened, yes, Hazou directly convinced him there was more to it, but the fact that Oro didn't take it seriously to begin with was by no means a given.

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I actually think this characterization is spot on. I still don't think vivisection was a good option at the time. But going to Tsunade and asking her to defend us from Oro in advance rather than waiting until it came to a head would have been strictly better.

 

[Oneiros]

This is my point. The situation is more complicated than "X is Wrong, Y is Right".
Again, we can agree to disagree, but this is my position.

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Yes this is exactly what the point I am making. We broke apart into two groups when it came to dealing with Oro. The proactive do things and the do nothing. And the problem is the do nothing camp actively hurt coming up with strategies to deal with the problem. Instead of just saying no we need to increase the solution space. If you object to a plan to deal with a problem make another suggestion instead of just shouting it down. We need to be getting on the habit of coming up with more ideas not less!

 

[Lord Marshal]

So, from what i understood of the things we could learn from this discussion, for the future.

-The hivemind should be more pro-active.
-The hivemind should actively try to make it's own plans capable of surviving bad odds and unforseen circumstances
-The hivemind should approve generalized solution in case of disagreements, instead of freezing.
-The hivemind should possibly create multiples idea to deal with problems.
-S-Rankers are bullshit.

 

[Shrooms]

EJ checking in on the thread to write the chapter:

 

[Lord Marshal]

Oro opening Hazou's brain to understand what is going on:

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FTFY

 

[eaglejarl]

In one of the earlier chapters (one of Vel's, iirc), it was mentioned offhand that the wider Leaf populace thought Snowflake was "another example of a long-term social experiment." I made the comment that the line was "interesting, because it implies that the Nara have done social experiments before." If you'd like, I can try to find the exact line.

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No worries, I think I've got the gist.

I don't mean to characterize you as idiots as a result of this, I mean to characterize you as wrong. If you wish to see overlap between those two categories, that's up to you but personally I don't see it that way.

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Sorry, what you're saying is true and implying other people in the quest assumed as such was rude of me.

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Holy shit, we have the best players ever. You are all strongly invested in your positions but there's no mudslinging, there's apologies for an accidental insult, and no one has stomped off in a huff. What did @Velorien and I do to deserve such a great community???

+5 XP for being awesome and making me happy.

EDIT: The two quotes are illustrative, not comprehensive. Everyone is being polite and thoughtful and issue-focused and generally awesome.

 

[faflec]

In one of the earlier chapters (one of Vel's, iirc), it was mentioned offhand that the wider Leaf populace thought Snowflake was "another example of a long-term social experiment." I made the comment that the line was "interesting, because it implies that the Nara have done social experiments before." If you'd like, I can try to find the exact line.

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No worries, I think I've got the gist.

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Keiko shook her head. "For those who are unaware of the… unique relationship between Snowflake and myself, this will accomplish nothing. And even those who are, on the whole, do not understand exactly what is happening, and appear to believe that this is some kind of sophisticated Nara social experiment. The Nara have a reputation for such. No, I believe I should put an end to this before it goes any further."

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blah blah faflec blah

 

[Lord Marshal]

Holy shit, we have the best players ever. You are all strongly invested in your positions but there's no mudslinging, there's apologies for an accidental insult, and no one has stomped off in a huff. What did @Velorien and I do to deserve such a great community???

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So, i was thinking about an economic attack to Cloud, how is the economic and trade model of the entire EN?

Some jokes are too evil even for me.

 

[faflec]

So, i was thinking about an economic attack to Cloud, how is the economic and trade model of the entire EN?

Some jokes are too evil even for me.

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But in all seriousness, just have Mist put an economic squeeze on Cloud through Hot Springs and the fact that they pretty much are the eastern trade network.

 

[Shrooms]

On the topic of swords of damocles, what else is hanging over our heads? The Scrip crisis was another extremely preventable situation that could've resulted in Hazou's death. "I judge you guilty of economic sabotage, goodbye." People were pitching ideas and pointing out the risk but nothing was ultimately done. I'll even admit I argued that hazou already pointed out the risk to Mari so she surely was taking it seriously, but it turned out to not really be true. Stuff with consequences that high that are directly aimed back at us need countermeasures even if we're reasonably certain nothing bad will actually come of it.

The ones that remain that come to mind at the moment:
- Letter to F
- Itachi or especially Hidan coming back

 

[Paperclipped]

What did @Velorien and I do to deserve such a great community???

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Hmm... MfD rules dictate that I must answer with bullet points.

• Wrote a really amazing story:
  • Every aspect of the worldbuilding seems to have incredibly well thought out.
    • The setting itself is fascinating -- I don't know how much of this is skilled authorship versus skilled worldbuilding, but the setting of MfD has definitely influenced every game I GM, every story I write, and just the way I think about worldbuilding, conflict, stable states, and dozens of other things.
    • Despite the occasional stunning revelation, the process of learning about the setting feels very organic and simulationist, slowly piecing together information until we come to an uncertain, yet logical conclusion.
    • The Deep Lore is well hidden yet internally consistent, inspiring rabid factions.
  • The characterization both has immense depth and is almost-pathologically gripping.
    • As evidenced by all the recent debates about characters.
    • Or perhaps by the various character analyses that are regularly created.
  • Inspires incredible amounts of attention.
    • At a guess, with ~20 regulars, each of which spends ~2 hours reading updates, ~5 hours engaging with the community, and a comparable amount of time passively thinking about situations outside of that per week, the quest creates about ~240 hours of highly-engaged time per week.
• Did so for now nearly six years
  • With bi-weekly updates, that amounts to ~612 updates. Checking the Threadmarks, we see 642 total updates.
    • The QMs never miss an update in expectation
    • They also somehow produce extra content from the void.
  • In addition, continued to stay engaged with the community in various ways, despite the long-running nature of the project.
• Somehow, did all that for free.
  • This is perhaps the most surprising to me, as the QMs' prose reveals them both as very talented writers with clever wordplay and an ability to draw drama and tension from any situation.

Actually, I'm getting long-winded, so scratch all that. I'm sure it was just dumb luck, EJ.

 

[Noumero]

"Until now, I've painstakingly avoided a confrontation between the Tower and Orochimaru. The Final Gift Programme was a blessing from the Deva Path, and I'd sincerely hoped that between that and the occasional missing-nin, we could keep Orochimaru in his Basement long enough for Leaf to stop needing him. That is still my objective, because every day Orochimaru goes without clearing his name or being punished for his crimes is a day that this village drifts further from the Will of Fire."

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Wait a moment.

The Final Gift Programme was a blessing from the Deva Path

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Deva Path

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masterminded by Ami

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Ami Mori

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The Mori Voice

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Deva

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Kei closed her eyes and began to recite by rote. "The Mori Clan was established by the man we know as Mori, one of the greatest warriors to fight by the Sage's side during mankind's earliest days. During the great battle with the last primordial monsters of this world, he sacrificed himself to protect the Sage from a lethal wound. Though the Sage sought to resurrect him, part of Mori's mind had already crossed to the Deva Path to receive its just reward. When Mori returned, the Sage wept, for the man who had saved his life was like unto a puppet, lacking all free will."

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The Final Gift Programme was a blessing from the Mori Voice

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HE KNOWS.

 

[faflec]

On the topic of swords of damocles, what else is hanging over our heads? The Scrip crisis was another extremely preventable situation that could've resulted in Hazou's death. "I judge you guilty of economic sabotage, goodbye." People were pitching ideas and pointing out the risk but nothing was ultimately done. I'll even admit I argued that hazou already pointed out the risk to Mari so she surely was taking it seriously, but it turned out to not really be true. Stuff with consequences that high that are directly aimed back at us need countermeasures even if we're reasonably certain nothing bad will actually come of it.

The ones that remain that come to mind at the moment:
- Letter to F
- Itachi or especially Hidan coming back

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-Mari killing that Leaf patrol way back when
-Cold Stone Killers resulting in Hot Springs joining in with Cloud/breaking with Mist
-Mayor Emiya giving up on waiting for Mari's apology
-Us being the ones who nabbed Arikada
-Pangolin/Condor War
-Dragonwar
-Yakuza retaliation
-Mochiaki's revenge

I'm sure there are more.