I know people were trying to get more, it was well intentioned. Please update your models of Orochimaru that until we're S Rank any benefits we get from him are at his suffrage or what other S Rank ninjas can get him to agree to (and maybe Asuma, sometimes).
FWIW I wasn't really trying to get more - my primary goal was to make sure that we didn't lose all of the Dragon parts, something we'd ensure by only giving Orochimaru one part at a time. The other part that I cared about was getting him to agree to minimal/no destructive research.
My broad read of the feedback we got is that if the plan had simply been 'okay - please take those two parts and let us know when you want to swap them out for the other parts, and please limit destructive research' we would have been fine. The mismatch was in a) failing to recognize that Orochimaru has palatable, political methods for getting all of the parts (as seen in the update that wasn't) so we have essentially zero leverage, and b) failing to recognize that trying to hash details out with Orochimaru as opposed to simply crossing our fingers and hoping that he would play fair was not an activity with a good ROI because having done that constitutes an insult.
The roll was (largely) to determine whether or not Hazo!Pilot was going to realize that he should ignore part of the plan. My impression was that Pilot existed specifically to interfere in this sort of situation (where we've voted in a crazy and stupid plan due to a lack of contextual knowledge) and thus would have caught this without needing to roll, but apparently not, and we actually got a few interesting/useful tidbits (Orochimaru responded well to us sucking up, apparently Tsunade would be interested in the parts?) out of the experience so I'm pretty happy with how things went, overall.
Hazou noticed something about Oro, and decided placating him was important enough to spend a buncha FP on.
But was Hazou's realization that of having no leverage? Or realizing a trade partner you have leverage over is getting more angry then expected, and judging that you aren't getting enough benefits to justify incurring their anger to be worth it?
Both, I think. These two statements feel functionally identical to me, anyway.
We realized that Orochimaru's disposition, given the amount of leverage we had, made further engagement a Bad Idea.
We realized that the amount of leverage we had, given Orochimaru's disposition, made further engagement a Bad Idea.
If he was kindly-disposed, we could have probably gone through the full specifications we laid out, and he'd have pat us on our head, told us we were being weird, and then cheerfully ignored us and stuck to the original deal. If we had leverage, he would have been pissed but unable to do anything but sit through our nitpicking.
The difference I meant was
For the first. Realizing you don't even have enough leverage to survive the expected minor annoyance of hashing details.
For the second. Still believing you have enough leverage to survive minor annoyances. But noticing Oro was getting significantly more than minorly annoyed.
edit: and also. that even if you have enough leverage to get a positive deal. if Oro getting more than just minorly annoyed, that cuts into the expected profit ratio you can get for example in future deals. or the amount of favors/freebies you can get outside of trades
The difference I meant was
For the first. Realizing you don't even have enough leverage to survive the expected minor annoyance of hashing details.
For the second. Still believing you have enough leverage to survive minor annoyances. But noticing Oro was getting significantly more than minorly annoyed.
edit: and also. that even if you have enough leverage to get a positive deal. if Oro getting more than just minorly annoyed, that cuts into the expected profit ratio you can get for example in future deals. or the amount of favors/freebies you can get outside of trades
IMO what we learned here is that instead of just saying 'you're wasting my time, shut up and take the deal' he would have immediately escalated to a place we didn't want to go.
Given that I expect our future interactions with Orochimaru to be strictly needs-based and therefore transactional (so, similar to this) I think that we learned some useful stuff.
Speed is a priority in negotiations. Nail down anything important immediately and accept that anything less-than-critical is going to have to be left up to chance/his whims.
If he gets bored/tired/upset he will not demonstrate this via a gradual decrease in sociability - he'll just flip modes.
He is only going to work at a high level - trying to work through details is not going to be fruitful.
He finds some quantity of sucking up amusing in a way that de-escalated a situation.
His first offer is probably his only offer. Trying to extend or expand things won't get us anywhere.
He isn't totally nuts - when we raised the issue of destructive research, he gave us a reasonable answer.
Some of those overlap pretty heavily, but I couldn't quite articulate them in a single point.
Also, we have a few good negotiate-with-Orochimaru stories to share with Ami. This means we can amuse her by partaking in the ritual of bonding over a shared, painful experience.
a) failing to recognize that Orochimaru has palatable, political methods for getting all of the parts (as seen in the update that wasn't) so we have essentially zero leverage
Orochimaru is politically palatable at his own convenience, not ours. He could (and would) have probably just taken them all and if we made a big enough fuss just told Asuma "I had thought of important potential military benefits from researching these and was completely ignoring whatever he was saying, sorry about this, here are my research notes." The more elaborate explanation he gave in the alternate version of events was still him being nice.
b) failing to recognize that trying to hash details out with Orochimaru as opposed to simply crossing our fingers and hoping that he would play fair was not an activity with a good ROI because having done that constitutes an insult.
Less insult and more wasting his time. He gave us a deal, it was extremely generous and vastly more than we expected to get when we first had the plan to rent/sell him the pieces. The XP loot boxes weren't even in our list of potentials.
I read his offer as being so over the top that he was saying "shut up and get out of my way with this offer that's too good to refuse or waste more time discussing." Out of character, I was also feeling from the QMs that they were saying "this is really more than you deserve, but here are shinies, be happy and now we won't have to write more difficult scenes with Orochimaru being a force you cannot meaningfully influence or interact with because that's not fun for QM or Quester."
My impression was that Pilot existed specifically to interfere in this sort of situation (where we've voted in a crazy and stupid plan due to a lack of contextual knowledge) and thus would have caught this without needing to roll, but apparently not
The issue is the longstanding problem with this sort of interaction between QM and Quester. With our plans we stand in for Hazou, but we can only intervene at end points, and the end points are at the discretion of the QMs. They have done a fantastic job being well intentioned and stopping at points they think we would want to interject or modify events due to new information. Here, that would have been a few sentences in with "and upon saying that, Hazou realized that Orochimaru was getting upset" - and obviously we can't have a Quest when every conversation is like that with the QMs coming back to ask "and how did you respond to that, since that wasn't clearly in your plan?"
I think it's absolutely an appropriate application of Hazoupilot, but I also understand why it feels like a substantial variation of Hazoupilot - usually, Hazoupilot only decides to apply or not apply entire plans or plan segments, here Hazoupilot applied the plan (since it wasn't obviously a bad idea from the beginning, though he probably would now think so in the future) then abandoned the plan midway through once he realized the script wasn't being followed anyway by Orochimaru.
In essence, the plan didn't have a fail condition, and Hazoupilot had to create one, which is pretty different from Hazoupilot identifying in advance that the plan would fail and refuse to implement it at all.
If this is something the QMs want a vote on, I'd be happy to formally give the QMs permission to use Hazoupilot to deal with unspecified fail conditions that invalidate the bulk of a plan/plan segment.
Or realizing a trade partner you have leverage over is getting more angry then expected, and judging that you aren't getting enough benefits to justify incurring their anger to be worth it?
Note that you didn't try to get more. The plan focused on setting up penalty clauses and the length of grace periods, not on anything like "Sure, that deal sounds fine. We'd also be willing to sell you one of the pieces if you're interested...? You are? Cool. There's a bunch of stuff we're interested in, so tell me what's easy for you. <List of things>."
Out of character, I was also feeling from the QMs that they were saying "this is really more than you deserve, but here are shinies, be happy and now we won't have to write more difficult scenes with Orochimaru being a force you cannot meaningfully influence or interact with because that's not fun for QM or Quester."
That's certainly not the message I was intending. I'm fine with y'all interacting with Orochimaru if you want. He's uber powerful, arrogant, and has zero patience; he's the perfect character to build tense, high-value and high-stakes scenes around.
I know people were trying to get more, it was well intentioned. Please update your models of Orochimaru that until we're S Rank any benefits we get from him are at his suffrage or what other S Rank ninjas can get him to agree to (and maybe Asuma, sometimes).
We have no true leverage over him and will not have any leverage over him until that point.
Let these -38 XP be a lesson for the Hivemind and invest the XP in our "Understanding Orochimaru" stunt.
(The absolute values of XP given in character are usable by the Hivemind for the Hive character sheet.)
So, based on the original negotiations, this chapter, and the chapter that never was (TM), it seems that Orochimaru is much more human than he first appeared. He is willing to engage in prosocial behavior, stick to deals, and actually gets upset if people expect him to break those deals.
Not to mention, even when upset by us expecting him to break a deal, he still let us live, and even gave us something in exchange for what he wanted. Admittedly that isn't canon, but it's still the general attitude he probably would have had.
I think it's worth making more deals with him in the future if we can get our hands on more stuff he wants.
Although maybe my take on this is overly positive because I expected him to kill us for making the slightest mistake?
Also, I think that if we had just let Orochimaru continue to do his thing with the dragon part while we hashed out the minor details with Kabuto, things would have gone much better.
Something like "That sounds acceptable in the broad strokes. I do have some minor nitpicks on the deal to hammer out, would you accept having Kabuto finish the negotiation while you continue your investigation of this piece?"
"Lord Orochimaru is quite wealthy," Kabuto said. "Although, sir?" he said, speaking to Orochimaru, "Perhaps it would be wise to—" He stopped talking instantly when the Snake Sannin glanced over his shoulder with narrowed eyes. It was only for a moment before going back to his food-based impromptu experiments, but Kabuto still had to take a moment to visibly gather spit back into his mouth before he could continue.
Small thing from before I want to look at after this chapter. Frankly I don't think Orochimaru's capable of or interested in the kind of play that is "subordinate talks up the offer as over generous" I'll take Kabuto's assessment of "slightly generous" at face value.
Anyway onto the chapter at hand, never done this before so if I need to hide it in a giant spoiler just tell me.
"Yes, yes," Orochimaru said, waving dismissively and not looking away from what he was doing. He had lifted the claw fragment up with a mix of chakra adhesion and repulsion that kept it balanced an inch from his skin. He was turning it back and forth and his forked tongue was extended a foot and a half, tasting the air around the Sageforsaken object.
Orochimaru froze for a moment, then dropped the claw back into the box, stood up, and turned to face Hazō. He stepped forward, standing at the precise distance that would be threatening if he were an inch closer.
"Speak."
Hazō resisted the urge to step back so that he didn't have to crane his neck to look at the much taller shinobi.
"Sir, I'm grateful for your offer and glad to—"
Orochimaru made a cutting gesture with one hand.
"Right, sorry. I want to be able to work with you in the future and that means being sure we both have the same understanding. You're giving us these"—he held up the papers—"and we're giving you exclusive access to all Dragon parts that we own, one at a time, for two weeks each. We'll deliver them anywhere you want, which presumably is your estate. Yes?"
"Yes, obviously." He spun one finger in the universal gesture for 'move it along'.
I agree, scared of fiddling with the terms ending up souring the situation. Signaling knowledge seeking came to mind, but happy with what's been presented, ultimately. Which is a happy Orochimaru.
"We are making a deal as men, sir. That—" Halfway through the sentence his brain caught up to the tone of Orochimaru's words. Alarm bells clanged furiously in the back of his mind and he forced himself to smile in the friendliest way he could manage as he desperately sought to verbally swerve onto safer ground. "—is why I want to make sure we don't misinterpret anything and leave you feeling aggrieved, or disrupt your studies by mistake. You're the best person in Leaf, possibly in the world, to study these items. We want you to be able to investigate them and we want to have a good relationship with you going forward. We also want the rest of Leaf's experts to be able to look at them. That's all."
And we stick the landing! Oro's not immune to emotion or anything. He just has a get out of social free card which he's abused so much he hasn't got much development or patience.
"Hm." Orochimaru looked away, lips pursed in thought. "Reasonable, although I may need to take a few small shavings, and I intend to use some acids that may cause discoloration or slight pitting of a small area. Acceptable?"
Orochimaru glanced down at the papers in Hazō's hand, the ones that contained a massive fortune and that he had so casually tossed on the table. "You have your payment. Unless there's anything else...?"
Perfectly polite, if he thinks we're being reasonable. The second we look like we're wasting time or pulling a fast one or anything he'll be on us like flies on shit. Straightforward good-faith stuff should work. As long as we're certain that he's interested in whatever we're bringing to him.
Frankly I'd put iron nerve surgery on the table, if Snuncle can provide an accurate telling of the risks. I'd check that against Tsunade, since arrogance means he might honestly fuck it up, "ME? MESS UP ON THE SURGICAL TABLE? AN INSULT!" screamed the snakemanchild. Frankly we're lucky that we have a person we can reasonably have check his assessment and have it not be a ginormous insult.
"But, end of the day, that did go pretty well. We got a lot and we gave up very little. We were going to let people investigate the Dragon parts no matter what. Orochimaru just paid us a ton of ryō plus a treasure trove of arcane knowledge for something that he could have had most of for nothing. Good afternoon."
Hazō knew Koson's story because Mari had taught him that knowledge was power and knowledge of personal histories was greater power than any jutsu. He had made a point of getting at least a basic briefing on every key person in the administration.
"Don't forget to tell the desk attendant that Lord Gōketsu said to say that the document shows Lord Gōketsu cleaning out one of Lord Orochimaru's accounts," Hazō said, amused. "Need to make sure there's a solid paper trail so no one here gets in trouble if it turns out that I was crazy enough to try to steal from the Snake Sannin. Oh, and show them the paper. Better if they see it instead of just hearing about it."
The genin's eyes went very big. She glanced at Koson for direction; he nodded and made a 'scoot along' gesture. She vanished out the door.
I love that, when trying to talk Hazou down from sacrificing himself to Orochimaru via vivisection, Kei's appeal to emotion didn't work (because we were determined to protect her), but Ami used logic and reason to explain to Hazou how unlikely it would be to work.
Ami knew what Hazou was feeling, and was able to reach him when Kei couldn't.
Also, I think that if we had just let Orochimaru continue to do his thing with the dragon part while we hashed out the minor details with Kabuto, things would have gone much better.
For the minor details sure. But if Oro had a different view of whether destructive research was acceptable. Or whether he would get the parts all at once or one at time. Kabuto surprising him with the details would make an angry Oro for Kabuto and us
Edit: although plausibly oro already told Kabuto the details of what he wanted in the deal
You do not need to, no. And thank you for doing it -- as an author, reaction posts feel great and also provide helpful feedback about which specific elements landed or didn't.
The plan that I came up with, @Veedrac scooped me on, and Hazō is going to propose in my next update unless I completely crunk on spoons, is to create elevated roads using the MARI jutsu. This is a default thing, so it's not essential to vote it in, but y'all can choose to vote it down or offer implementation details if so desired. This vote will be separate from the plan vote and will run from now until my next update. See options at the bottom and please be sure to use the options shown. Write-ins are not available, as this is in part an experiment to see what happens when voting is simple and doesn't require people to follow the fast-moving discussion. (I'm also going to edit this into the latest threadmark so people don't miss it.)
Options must have at least 3 votes in order to be considered, so if voter turnout is extremely low then it's the same as no one voting.
It must be cast on stone/soil/etc, not on metal, wood, a skytower, etc. It always creates a granite wall that is (a) straight, (b) vertical, and (c) 3m above ground, 5m below ground, and 1m wide. You can't stack it on top of itself but you can stack it horizontally, in which case each casting merges together and becomes a single chunk of granite. Put three of these side by side and you have a flat stone road 3m wide with a surface 3m above the ground with no paving-stone joints to roughen the ride. You aren't dealing with bad terrain anymore, so you can move fast across it on foot or using wheeled carts, meaning that civilians can transport cargo quickly and relatively safely. You need to add ramps at both ends to get the carts on and off but that's straightforward. MARI has a 40 CP startup cost and then 1CP / meter of length. A chūnin with 300 CP can therefore create a wall 260 m long per day, which averages out to ~86.7 m/day/ninja. It's roughly 70km to the nearest city (Otafuku Gai), meaning about 804 ninja-days of effort to get there.
On Discord, @MMKII pointed out that you could charge a toll for using this road. That's included in the options below.
There are several polls involved here. If "(roads) Do not build roads" wins then the other polls will be ignored. Once again, please note the absence of write-in options.
Poll #1: Whether or not to do it.
[] (roads) Build roads
[] (roads) Do not build roads
Poll #2: How do to it.
[] (roads)(costs) Use a few casters, do not involve Noburi
[] (roads)(costs) Use many casters, do not involve Noburi
[] (roads)(costs) Use a few casters, involve Noburi
[] (roads)(costs) Use many casters, involve Noburi
Building the road will involve hiring civilians with Force Wall saws and ninja guards to cut and clear trees, then one or more ninja casters to actually make the road. 'involving Noburi' means that you'll be buying chakra in order to fuel the road building process. It's safe to assume that this will be done in a way and to a degree that won't cause issues with OPSEC, break the bank, interfere with FOOM, disgruntle the administration, etc. In particular, it might need to wait several weeks until AMITY is in effect and Asuma is comfortable with till'n'fill missions resuming.
'many casters' means hiring as many MARI-casting ninja as possible without it becoming a financial problem. The only restriction is that if you vote for many casters+Noburi then you won't be able to run extremely expensive projects while this is in play, so if you want to start e.g. another infrastructure project or buy huge amounts of land then you'll need to delay or put road building on hold.
Poll #3: Whether or not to have a toll
[] (roads)(toll) Charge a toll
[] (roads)(toll) Do not charge a toll
If '(roads)(toll) Charge a toll' wins then Hazō will have the appropriate people figure out an appropriate toll. That's not something you need to be involved in.
EDIT: Note that players in Discord are raising issues that I, and therefore Hazō, had not considered, such as potential ecological impact. I'm almost reluctant to post this bit because I'm afraid it's going to result in people voting "Don't build the roads and instead have countless meetings about ecological studies" but I feel that it would be unfair for me to have the poll and then have it cause problems later on without pointing out the potential for issues. Obviously, the QMs have no current intent for the project to cause issues but now that the issue has been pointed out to us there's a possibility that it could. Also note that this is an idea that I had and I'm posting it on my own without talking to @Velorien first.
If '(roads)(toll) Charge a toll' wins then Hazō will have the appropriate people figure out an appropriate toll. That's not something you need to be involved in.
Can we assume this is done in a sane fashion for upkeep purposes/ROI so that its not just an overly burdensome thing and something most people have to deal with?
(I.e. can we just charge 5$ for someone with a cart of stuff to take an on/off ramp from one of the major Leaf urban areas instead of making LoF into Central New Fucking Jersey )
[X] (roads)(costs) Use many casters, do not involve Noburi
[X] (roads)(costs) Use a few casters, involve Noburi
[X] (roads)(costs) Use many casters, involve Noburi
Can we assume this is done in a sane fashion for upkeep purposes so that its not just an overly burdensome thing and something most people have to deal with?
I don't completely understand the question, but you can generally assume that smart people will be involved and will do things in ways that make sense and don't cause obvious issues. I edited in a thing based on your points about ecological impact which amounts to "hey, look, players are pointing out that there might be other issues which EJ hadn't considered and therefore there might be negative effects down the line although the QMs do not currently have plans for that."
[X] (roads) Do not build roads
I was discussing it and we can make a seal variant that would be both faster, this is basically making a high wall and having people wal on to of it. Ots slow to connect fire and our chunin have to speedrun combat power since the war nuked our jounin population.
Cautious and safe: we go with "[] (roads)(costs) Use a few casters, do not involve Noburi" so as to avoid over-committing to the project, we let it progress slowly in the background and scale up efforts if our first run goes well.
Fast and flashy: we go all in, "[] (roads)(costs) Use many casters, involve Noburi", with the intention of getting the road done fast so we can say things like "A road stretching all the way from Konoha to Tanzaku Gai, built in just a couple of weeks" or such.
If we go with a toll we should be aware that some travelers won't be able to afford the toll, and so we shouldn't disrupt the existing roads that they might still want to use. We'll also probably want on and off-ramps periodically along the way (perhaps at the toll stations?) so that, like, if something falls off the side you can retrieve it without going all the way to an end of the line first.
Overall, I'm leaning Fast and Flashy. Not sure where I stand on the tolls.
[X] (roads)(costs) Use many casters, involve Noburi
The only restriction is that if you vote for many casters+Noburi then you won't be able to run extremely expensive projects while this is in play, so if you want to start e.g. another infrastructure project or buy huge amounts of land then you'll need to delay or put road building on hold.
Does the project have an approximate duration? Would we start by building a single road to Otafuki Gai?
Also, can you confirm (see last paragraph) that this project would be undertaken carefully enough that Hazo would not wind up needing to play traffic cop and/or that he'd run it by Shika/Kei/someone who possesses remarkable foresight first?
[X] (roads) Build roads
Yes, I want to do this.
[X] (roads)(costs) Use a few casters, involve Noburi
[X] (roads)(costs) Use many casters, involve Noburi
If we're going to do this, we might as well work fast.
[X] (roads)(toll) Do not charge a toll
I go back and forth here. My ideal would be that for the first road, we charge no toll. We use that to convince people of the value of the road and to work out the kinks. As the network expands, we establish a toll system. Charging a toll also starts us off with implied liability - if something goes wrong on a free road, well, them's breaks, but as soon as we've charged you five ryo for the privilege of using the road, anything bad that happens on it is our fault. We can also add a toll once people see the value. If we remove one, people are going to be wary it comes back.
I think that this comes with the pretty significant possibility of headaches but I'm trusting that the QMs not not want Hazo to play traffic cop and will therefore include smart ideas at the beginning like 'before you're allowed on the road carts are measured to ensure they're less than 1.5 meters wide' and 'guard rails will be added at some point so no one plummets 3 meters in a particularly rough storm, causing them to blame us for their misfortune'.
I think I'm going to side with the toll in the end because, well, we know by now that many of the bigwigs in Konoha don't really get all this economy stuff, and if we just put up the road without any direct income from it they'll probably just figure it's a waste of time. If we have a toll system in place, they can go 'well I don't see how the tolls make this project worth it, but I can wait and see if it pays off for them' and then they'll withhold judgement long enough for us to track the actual metrics of how much the road boosts Fire's economy as a whole.
edit: got persuaded on discord
[X] (roads)(toll) Do not charge a toll
Also, can you confirm (see last paragraph) that this project would be undertaken carefully enough that Hazo would not wind up needing to play traffic cop and/or that he'd run it by Shika/Kei/someone who possesses remarkable foresight first?
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