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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Anderkent said:
That's fair - but it is our job to make that happen. Not sure if Kei is the person for that job. Noburi? He's been good at family relationships and it grooms him for clan head should anything happen to Hazo.

But I continue to think the core issue is less 'we need to talk more about plans' and more 'we need to talk more about _goals_' (assuming feedback from family could make us change our goals; but even if not, so that they have a better picture of where we're going)
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I feel that this, at the end of the day, is the important thing is this:

Inferno Vulpix said:
The second answer is that the level of effort expected in order to avoid <same chapter with a new chapter number> is prohibitively high and the game was rigged from the start. We all know that the ability to expend mental effort is ruthlessly finite, after all. The limits of mind are no less real than the limits of flesh. It is entirely possible that there is no way to do what is asked of us while retaining enough focus and will to progress our other goals, if the bar is set high enough.
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At the end of the day, like it or not, spoons are finite, and things become even more difficult when we have few days to prepare a plan. Honestly i feel we cannot micromanage Hazou relationships and deal with all the Kaijuu and projects we have, and while i understand that Hazou-pilot/Hivemind agency is a tricky subject, then you end with situation like this, when something that honestly shouldn't have been kept secret (It wasn't under OPSEC, we told Naruto) was just kept secret by apparently everyone, Noburi included.

Unrelated, i feel Hazou is generally too passive, because Hazou-pilot must not say something without our input, so you have updates when Kei says blatantly wrongs things that we talked about and Hazou answer with "I don't know? I guess? I just forgot? maybe?" That honestly is just frustrating as a reader, the answer would be "Write the answers the hivemind talks about in a plan", but that then requires updates and planmaking and it ends in even more spoons, and that is a problematic solution when the problem was a lack of spoons in the first place.
 
I do think enough people don't like Kei and her sisters that I'm not sure this problem can be fixed long term. Also, thinking about it, I'm not sure why Hazoupilot wouldn't have told all the Goketsu about the seance? Ah well;

But, possible solutions. The hivemind has trouble writing short plans, advancing goals, doing punching, maintaining socials, and proactively dealing with disasters all at the same time. However, it kinda only seems like we're actually struggling with the social part?

What if, after stretches of Action or Intrigue, we had dedicated social-only turns that allowed us to address the homefront without risking an Action or Intrigue Doom Clock killing us? A breather liminal time-space where the thread can focus on how we want to deal with social matters.
 
faflec said:
I have no idea why this quote came to my mind, but maybe one of you can figure it out :p
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Do the current rules say what happens if you suddenly have a broken pyramid, for example by Peggy Sue'ing back into a younger body while still keeping your non-physical skills? Do you take XP penalties? Are you required to fix your pyramid before you fix anything else?
 
Spector29 said:
But, possible solutions. The hivemind has trouble writing short plans, advancing goals, doing punching, maintaining socials, and proactively dealing with disasters all at the same time. However, it kinda only seems like we're actually struggling with the social part?
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Nope, we're having trouble with all of those things, we just have too many things to do, but dropping a sealing project doesn't end in Kei screaming at us, so we notice it less.
 
I mean in all fairness Hazō's social issues naturally stem from the fact he's piloted by a quorum of nerds who spend hours on the internet debating what he should do. Let's face it: we're all Rock Lees who want to be good!Orochimarus.
 
Social status: Lurker outside of quest community
[this post really got away from me.]


I'd like to verbalize frustration that the QMs are incentivizing the players to spend *more* wordcount (instead of less) on asking NPCs to authorize / approve of plans. Dropping consecutive updates with more than 13K total words of fairly negative emotional criticism would be the result of major misplay or undue risk-taking in another quest. Here it was because of a small milestone towards an overarching goal. Spending more wordcount on asking permission to do things is a wild pivot away from the exciting updates that took the family to a foreign continent, to the Chakra Caves, and to the weaponization of Elemental Mastery.
This has been discussed by a QM already and I should not have piled on.

[...]

I'd also like to say that I think this chapter featured an unjustified first-strike in social combat by Shard, and that Kei (Prime) owes Hazou an apology. The family's frequent use of Clear Communication no jutsu makes Shard's conversational flowchart here feel like a particularly unfair trap. Hazou has three lines of dialogue in this chapter: "Hi Snowflake" and "Pleased to meet you, Shard...might be letting slip past me while I'm distracted" and "Shard, I'm sorry—". Meanwhile, Shard launches into another excoriation of Hazou, covering much the same ground as the previous conversation with Kei Prime. (In fact, the criticisms escalate to personal attacks, calling autonomous action by Hazou "appalling" and equating them with murder.)

This screed was delivered immediately after her introduction, without giving Hazou the opportunity to develop any of the conversational scaffolding needed to broach the difficult (and recently settled!) topic of the Resurrection Project. He was not aware of Shard's existence for even two minutes before being rhetorically bashed with accusations of murder. Even in the event that he had prepared a list of apologies for Snowflake, that list would apply to Shard imperfectly at best!

I think a mundane person who overindulged in alcohol and restarted a fight would be no less culpable than Kei Prime is for Shard's premature return to an already settled set of grievances. Kei Prime brought Shard into existence with "sharp edges", and Shard cites a thought from Kei Prime as part of her motivation for laying into Hazou. Shard also describes her "literal raison d'être" as explaining herself, which is to say explaining a branch of Kei's thoughts.

Suppose we stipulate that Shard has separate standing to raise grievances (and separate grievances to raise) with Hazou. Shard was still brought into existence only recently, and by Kei Prime. Recruiting (or creating) an allied agent whose primary goal is to demand concessions from Hazou is a bad-faith adversarial tactic, not a conciliatory one.
 
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Zampano said:
Social status: Lurker outside of quest community
[this post really got away from me.]


I'd like to verbalize frustration that the QMs are incentivizing the players to spend *more* wordcount (instead of less) on asking NPCs to authorize / approve of plans. Dropping consecutive updates with more than 13K total words of fairly negative emotional criticism would be the result of major misplay or undue risk-taking in another quest. Here it was because of a small milestone towards an overarching goal. Spending more wordcount on asking permission to do things is a wild pivot away from the exciting updates that took the family to a foreign continent, to the Chakra Caves, and to the weaponization of Elemental Mastery.
This has been discussed by a QM already and I should not have piled on.

[...]

I'd also like to say that I think this chapter featured an unjustified first-strike in social combat by Shard, and that Kei (Prime) owes Hazou an apology. The family's frequent use of Clear Communication no jutsu makes Shard's conversational flowchart here feel like a particularly unfair trap. Hazou has three lines of dialogue in this chapter: "Hi Snowflake" and "Pleased to meet you, Shard...might be letting slip past me while I'm distracted" and "Shard, I'm sorry—". Meanwhile, Shard launches into another excoriation of Hazou, covering much the same ground as the previous conversation with Kei Prime. (In fact, the criticisms escalate to personal attacks, calling autonomous action by Hazou "appalling" and equating them with murder.)

This screed was delivered immediately after her introduction, without giving Hazou the opportunity to develop any of the conversational scaffolding needed to broach the difficult (and recently settled!) topic of the Resurrection Project. He was not aware of Shard's existence for even two minutes before being rhetorically bashed with accusations of murder. Even in the event that he had prepared a list of apologies for Snowflake, that list would apply to Shard imperfectly at best!

I think a mundane person who overindulged in alcohol and restarted a fight would be no less culpable than Kei Prime is for Shard's premature return to an already settled set of grievances. Kei Prime brought Shard into existence with "sharp edges", and Shard cites a thought from Kei Prime as part of her motivation for laying into Hazou. Shard also describes her "literal raison d'être" as explaining herself, which is to say explaining a branch of Kei's thoughts.

Suppose we stipulate that Shard has separate standing to raise grievances (and separate grievances to raise) with Hazou. Shard was still brought into existence only recently, and by Kei Prime. Recruiting (or creating) an allied agent whose primary goal is to demand concessions from Hazou is a bad-faith adversarial tactic, not a conciliatory one.
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Velorien said:
The intent of this chapter was "Hazō hurt two people, one of whom was Kei and one of whom was Kei-without-the-cognitive-limits-of-her-bloodline, aka Snowflake." Given the similarities between these people, they were obviously going to have very similar or identical reactions, so it's not surprising you're going to have very similar or identical conversations with the two of them.

(Important sidebar: All of Kei's shadow clones are Snowflake wearing different hats. Snowflake cares a lot about having an identity distinct from her progenitor and Winterlight, Shard, Crystal, etc are all experiments in finding ways to form that new identity. That said, if you have spoken to one of the clone sisters about an issue then it's safe to assume that you have spoken to all future iterations of the clone sisters. If an apology is due then you only need to make it to one sister, not to every sister.)
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Shrooms said:
[X] I Like Your Funny Words, Snake Man
Word Count: 297

  • Kei:
    • Kei may trust Ami absolutely, but you don't. If Ami's informed, it wouldn't only let her optimize our plans to mutual benefit; it'd let her improve the outcome according to her preferences at our preferences' expense.
    • Your uncertainty over Ami's preferences, combined with her sheer power to optimize for them, is enough that, by default, you would not inform her — perhaps until much later. If Kei informs her unilaterally, you'd consider that a breach of trust.
    • However, you agree there's mutual benefits to be gained. Thus, a preferred condition:
    • Ami commits to only use information shared in a way that doesn't disadvantage you compared to the counterfactual world in which you opted not to actively involve Ami. This condition is waived once the project reaches a state where uninformed!Ami would've learned of it "naturally". (If we go public with Jiraiya's resurrection, Ami's free to start acting in her own interests.)
      • Implicitly, Ami also commits not to scheme to artificially speed up the waiving of this condition, such as by suggesting a strategy that would, as an unnecessary side-effect, make the project visible to uninformed!Ami.
      • For minor matters, Ami's free to use her model of you. For bigger moves, she gives you an opportunity to veto.
  • Arachnid
    • Hazou arranged for a Snake to come to Arachnid a while ago, and Orochimaru agreed to look at the Great Seal. Skip to this happening.
    • The Aburame agreed to apply their glass/optics expertise to produce the Goketsu a telescope a few months ago after receiving R&D payment from Hazou. If necessary, Declare they finished a prototype for Kagome to use.
    • Check out the Great Seal with your Uncles without getting eaten.
  • Other (Offscreen)
    • Sealing
    • Complete research on Minato's next seal in the chain.
    • Visit Mareo.
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Do we know how far the telescope will work? We know that a dragon almost ended Hazo's life a mile away.
 
Last cycle, I had a bad feeling about the plans on offer and thought it might be a good idea to give them some more time. I ignored this feeling, and well, the winning plan did have a moderately significant oversight. I have the same feeling this cycle—none of the plans really seem great, there hasn't been a lot of discussion of them, and turnout is low so far. I think it would be a good idea to give ourselves more time and vote for an interlude. Might I suggest:
[X] Interlude: The New Genin Teams
 
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acidshill said:
Last cycle, I had a bad feeling about the plans on offer and thought it might be a good idea to give them some more time. I ignored this feeling, and well, the winning plan did have a moderately significant oversight. I have the same feeling this cycle—none of the plans really seem great, there hasn't been a lot of discussion of them, and turnout is low so far. I think it would be a good idea to give ourselves more time and vote for an interlude. Might I suggest [X] Interlude: The New Genin Teams
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[X] Interlude: The New Genin Teams

This is a good idea imo, but you should make sure to put your vote at the start of a line so it gets counted by the tally.
 
To prevent the forcing of an interlude

[X] I Like Your Funny Words, Snake Man


I wonder if we can vote something in once, to cover social stuff like this without it being on screen. Or maybe even each time. Like "Handle social issues." Or 'Be a Chad." I like the second one better but it's also a lot more game changing.

Like imagine this with Hazou being like "you done? I don't care. I have important things to handle like...sealing and not dying. You may leave."
 
Shrooms said:
[X] I Like Your Funny Words, Snake Man
Word Count: 297

  • Kei:
    • Kei may trust Ami absolutely, but you don't. If Ami's informed, it wouldn't only let her optimize our plans to mutual benefit; it'd let her improve the outcome according to her preferences at our preferences' expense.
    • Your uncertainty over Ami's preferences, combined with her sheer power to optimize for them, is enough that, by default, you would not inform her — perhaps until much later. If Kei informs her unilaterally, you'd consider that a breach of trust.
    • However, you agree there's mutual benefits to be gained. Thus, a preferred condition:
    • Ami commits to only use information shared in a way that doesn't disadvantage you compared to the counterfactual world in which you opted not to actively involve Ami. This condition is waived once the project reaches a state where uninformed!Ami would've learned of it "naturally". (If we go public with Jiraiya's resurrection, Ami's free to start acting in her own interests.)
      • Implicitly, Ami also commits not to scheme to artificially speed up the waiving of this condition, such as by suggesting a strategy that would, as an unnecessary side-effect, make the project visible to uninformed!Ami.
      • For minor matters, Ami's free to use her model of you. For bigger moves, she gives you an opportunity to veto.
  • Arachnid
    • Hazou arranged for a Snake to come to Arachnid a while ago, and Orochimaru agreed to look at the Great Seal. Skip to this happening.
    • The Aburame agreed to apply their glass/optics expertise to produce the Goketsu a telescope a few months ago after receiving R&D payment from Hazou. If necessary, Declare they finished a prototype for Kagome to use.
    • Check out the Great Seal with your Uncles without getting eaten.
  • Other (Offscreen)
    • Sealing
      • Complete research on Minato's next seal in the chain.
    • Visit Mareo.
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Here is the current plan btw
 
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[X] I Like Your Funny Words, Snake Man

I'm not a huge fan of this plan but it's def something active so gets my support over burning another cycle on a do nothing plan or interlude
 
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Shrooms said:
Hey, I resent that!
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Off the top of my head, I have two misgivings with your plan: (1) we don't know how much time 'Skip to this happening.' will skip, (2) any interaction with Orochimaru is a risk, doubly so when Kagome is also involved, so it would be a good idea to discuss this with Mari, Kei, and Kagome, at least, and figure out how to do this great seal trip with minimal risk. If nothing goes horribly wrong, I do think it would be a great scene. I'm also vaguely worried that this plan might be missing something important, because lately I haven't been closely tracking all of the things that need to happen. Maybe that's just me.

Also, it seems like some people don't want to do an interlude because they regard it as filler or a waste of time or something along those lines. And I agree that interludes are often filler, but in this case, I think we need the information at some point—Mari and Yuno having genin teams, and who those teams are, is pretty relevant.
 
I personally don't really see the point of having Uncle Oro look at the GS. We're better than him so he shouldn't have any insight we don't have as well
 
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