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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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RandomOTP said:
But seriously, can we have a month of interludes or something? The QMs can work on some backlog, the players can decompress, it sounds like a win/win. During 606's voting cycle, 2 (arguably 3) of the 4 tied plans were plans for a wholesome interlude.
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I personally have no objection to this, but past evidence shows that player engagement drops dramatically during consecutive interlude periods, which suggests people don't find it as much fun as one might hope.

Threnodist said:
My clarification question is, did Hazo ever actually announce he was a Jashinite in public or are people simply reading into his actions/association and assuming. I tried to go back over the previous few chapters and the closest I could find was this section in 602 where Hidan publically claim's Hazo is a Jashinite.
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I would say that, in addition to direct claims, a lot of that conversation is Hidan explicitly treating Hazō as a Jashinist, and Hazō carrying on his half as if Hidan is right.

RandomOTP said:
From the very start, there were players who were crying out for Hazou to make the statement ASAP, even if Hidan and Kakuzu were still in Leaf (namely: me). Other players wanted to wait until after Hidan left. We were only told, after the timeline had progressed to the end of day in 604, that Hazou-pilot had found out Hidan was gone, but had done nothing about that opportunity, after the fact.

Unilaterally, the timeline had moved up, with Hazou-pilot not reflecting the Will of the Hivemind.

In 605, the playerbase met with Yuno to (1), correct for an error on Hazou-pilot's fault, and (2), keep her from undermining our message.

606 was declared to be an Interlude, and the hivemind all but begged for something lighthearted and wholesome. A portion of the hivemind tried to progress the plot and have this Jashin discussion sooner, despite knowing it was set to be an interlude.

It seems unfair, then, to be punished for that second day. Interludes are typically in the past, or run "alongside" the active timeline. Very rarely do they progress the story's timeline.

And yet, the Interlude ended up progressing the timeline.This means that Hazou spent that second day on his own, without the playerbase's input.

Our input, had it been a factor, would have had Hazou address these things immediately upon return.

Instead, the timeline was once again unilaterally moved up, and the playerbase finds themselves being lambasted by Kei and Mari for not doing anything about this sooner (despite our efforts to try and do things sooner).

This is well-within your right as the QMs. I can even see how might make the claim that "the playerbase waited one day, that serves as foundational justification to wait another day."

But the playerbase went the Yuno to address a Hazou-pilot error and to keep Yuno from undermining the statement as Hazou was making it. If Hazou made a public statement, and Yuno had been in the crowd, whispering about her Jashinistic Lord of Birth, then no one would have believed it.

It feels more than a little raw, to be punished in-game for things that we either tried to address (re: the Yuno Hunt), or were literally out of our hands (re: Second Day).
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I think you've misunderstood about the second day. The plan for 605 featured both the chakra beast hunt (Day 1) and sealing reseach (Day 2). @eaglejarl's interlude takes place on Day 2, which was already earmarked for sealing research anyway.
 
Noumero said:
  • Point 1: Sure. If something looks completely insane from the IC perspective, it's fine if the story overrides the players even when their decisions would've led to a good result. Indeed, it's more of a...
    • Imagine a sliding scale from "outcome-negative OOC behavior" to "outcome-positive OOC behavior", with "whatever is most in-character for Hazou to do" being the center. The closer you get to an edge, the more OOC it gets.
      • Like: [-.......h.......+].
    • Now imagine a closed interval [A; B] within it, boundinghow OOC Hazou is allowed to act as the result of player choices. A "fair" interval would put A the same distance from the left edge as B is from the right edge. Player decisions can help or hinder to the same degree, and it's up to them to play well.
      • [-...[A....h....B]...+]
    • What I'm arguing for is moving A farther from the left edge. Put a stricter upper bound on how much we're allowed to screw Hazou up.
      • [-......[A.h....B]...+]
    • I'm not arguing for moving B closer to the right edge. I. e.: "if something looks completely insane from the IC perspective, it's fine if the story overrides the players". So post-switch Hazou would still freak out at IR.
  • Point 2: That doesn't seem relevant? "Let's open the portal to the afterlife!" is an external challenge that has nothing to do with how our choices are handled. I'm not arguing that the story's narrative should become putty in our hands; if we decide on an ambitious goal, it should remain simulationistically challenging. (Indeed, that's also the challenge I would relish, and the risks inherent in which I'm conscious of and would accept.)
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The crux of my point is less "this is okay because it is justified: Hazou would be insane to not think the HOWS activation is a sealing failure" (though that is a true and fair assessment), the crux of my point is more "Despite this being a denial of our plan in a way that is purely to our detriment, I derive more enjoyment as a whole from this than if we had merely succeeded due to the nature of the scenario and the intervention."

That is to say, I do not think I can use your sliding scale as a measure of what I would find most enjoyable in the story, as the one-dimensional axis of "more OOC/less OOC" does not encapsulate the distinction between "Hazou thinks HOWS make sealing failures if you twist them the wrong way, go figure out how to make radar despite that" and "you just voted in something really insightful, which is why we're giving that insight to Ami while having Hazou being impressed by her intelligence". It's very easy to argue that there is no [A; B] that permits the former and yet denies the other, and that an [A; B] that permits both or denies both each bring suboptimalities of their own. Rather, I can only endorse this sliding scale as a first-pass reduction of the multifaceted topic of the correlation between [is/isn't OOC] and [is/isn't enjoyable as part of the quest].

You can see how this intersects with the rift to the afterlife now: despite it not relating to the IC/OOC behaviour in any way, the structure of the QM decision there (notably, designed to hinder us just as the HOWS ruling hindered us) makes it a positive decision for the engagement and enjoyability of the quest as a whole. Despite not relating to the IC/OOC question, I use it to reinforce the argument in favour of the existence of the mechanism that I describe by which {a QM intervention against wildly OOC behaviour, in a way that is purely to our detriment} can nonetheless be preferable for the enjoyability of the quest.
 
I'm torn. This was predictable, but only by being really pessimistic. I dunno man. This was clearly still on our radar, not like the Kei/Pantsā thing that got completely dropped. We've been voting in plans to manage the situation on the family side of things because we know that Yuno embracing Jashinism is *bad for her and the family*. It's weird to say that it's a diffuse, non pressing issue to Hazō when the *family* side of things, caused by the exact same issues on the public side, is his top priority.


On the other hand yeah it's totally predictable and it's become a hobby of mine to look for lines in chapters that are nearly explicitly "take care of this in your plan or stumble" that get ignored repeatedly. Mari telling us to handle the public denouncement is one of those.
 
Spector29 said:
I'm not the audience that even wants to play Marked For Death in the context of it being a game, because it's difficult and characters I like yell at me or are sad when I'm wrong. Looking at the discussions of some of the plans I've been around to discuss, a lot of the times we'd have to be doing complex literature analysis in order to come up with the perfect plan. As someone who isn't really involved in the Plan stuff and is solely reading this for the story, I would prefer it to be a more cohesive narrative that is occasionally steered by the players. But insofar as opinions can be invalid, I suppose I have the most invalid one of them all.

[X] Training Plan: Noburi Mednin
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Hubris. To think that you, a lurker, could have a more invalid opinion than me, a salt miner-

[X] Training Plan: Noburi Mednin
 
MMKII said:
But at the end of the day I think some measure of realism is needed here. It's been about 600 chapters and almost eight years worth of story and closing in on ten thousand pages of messages going on in this thread. The playerbase has spent a significant portion of that going something to the effect of "Okay and after Insert Current Problem is done, then we can do the cool stuff we've been wanting to do!". But that doesn't really end up materializing much. We are still having chapters where a character essentially berates the PoV character for most of it for something that either went unnoticed or we thought was handled reasonably. At what point do you have to just shrug and go "Okay, well, I don't know what it is, but regardless of the object level reasons why, years of evidence suggests they just aren't going to be able to Get It and stay on top of all of this." when it comes to some of this sociopolitical stuff?
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As someone who occasionally reads but doesn't vote because voting in MfD needs too much investment, I think this is true.
I don't really get why we have so many updates that are just the playerbase being chastised by other characters, when plans in this quest are already super detailed and form a high barrier that blocks off most questers.

You guys have written this for eight years so I assume you're fine with it, but that's like half a week and a good amount of writing time being wasted - and then the updates after tend to drift off the main plan and focus on damage control. If sticking very hard to the simulationist aspect of the game results in playing out scenes that both the QMs and the players have said they dislike multiple times, maybe the answer is just toning down the former for genres y'all stated you dislike.
 
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PSA: Discussion about chapter 607 is on hold until tomorrow; this weekend will be a wholesome interlude

There have been a lot of questions raised about chapter 607, enough that the QMs are discussing to be sure that we didn't make any mistakes in our background work or timeline. We are all occupied this evening but we'll be having the conversation during the regular QM meeting (tomorrow morning Eastern time). We won't take questions until then but we'll get back to you as soon as possible afterwards.

In addition, so that there's no time pressure: Voting is closed. This update will be a light and fluffy interlude with as little stress as possible.
 
eaglejarl said:
PSA: Discussion about chapter 607 is on hold until tomorrow; this weekend will be a wholesome interlude

There have been a lot of questions raised about chapter 607, enough that the QMs are discussing to be sure that we didn't make any mistakes in our background work or timeline. We are all occupied this evening but we'll be having the conversation during the regular QM meeting (tomorrow morning Eastern time). We won't take questions until then but we'll get back to you as soon as possible afterwards.

In addition, so that there's no time pressure: Voting is closed. This update will be a light and fluffy interlude with as little stress as possible.
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The interlude: A wholesome series of letters between Kagome and his not-girlfriend
 
@Paperclipped @eaglejarl Could we move chapter 606 to be a few days (or weeks, idk) earlier in the timeline? It does neatly fit into the plan for 605, but Earth Infusion's discovery is also something the player's have asked about before, and tried to fit into the end of plans. It's very plausible that Hazou would've figured it out a week into getting ES50, and since he wants to go slowly we go slowly. That way we can immediately buy Earth Infusion after getting the Audit xp without weird timeline things like discovering Primordial Sealing, deciding to go slowly, and the next day having PS 0.

If any of you readers have any opinions please feel free to reply.
 
Noumero said:
  • Point 1: Sure. If something looks completely insane from the IC perspective, it's fine if the story overrides the players even when their decisions would've led to a good result. Indeed, it's more of a...
    • Imagine a sliding scale from "outcome-negative OOC behavior" to "outcome-positive OOC behavior", with "whatever is most in-character for Hazou to do" being the center. The closer you get to an edge, the more OOC it gets.
      • Like: [-.......h.......+].
    • Now imagine a closed interval [A; B] within it, boundinghow OOC Hazou is allowed to act as the result of player choices. A "fair" interval would put A the same distance from the left edge as B is from the right edge. Player decisions can help or hinder to the same degree, and it's up to them to play well.
      • [-...[A....h....B]...+]
    • What I'm arguing for is moving A farther from the left edge. Put a stricter upper bound on how much we're allowed to screw Hazou up.
      • [-......[A.h....B]...+]
    • I'm not arguing for moving B closer to the right edge. I. e.: "if something looks completely insane from the IC perspective, it's fine if the story overrides the players". So post-switch Hazou would still freak out at IR.
  • Point 2: That doesn't seem relevant? "Let's open the portal to the afterlife!" is an external challenge that has nothing to do with how our choices are handled. I'm not arguing that the story's narrative should become putty in our hands; if we decide on an ambitious goal, it should remain simulationistically challenging. (Indeed, that's also the challenge I would relish, and the risks inherent in which I'm conscious of and would accept.)
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Inferno Vulpix said:
The crux of my point is less "this is okay because it is justified: Hazou would be insane to not think the HOWS activation is a sealing failure" (though that is a true and fair assessment), the crux of my point is more "Despite this being a denial of our plan in a way that is purely to our detriment, I derive more enjoyment as a whole from this than if we had merely succeeded due to the nature of the scenario and the intervention."

That is to say, I do not think I can use your sliding scale as a measure of what I would find most enjoyable in the story, as the one-dimensional axis of "more OOC/less OOC" does not encapsulate the distinction between "Hazou thinks HOWS make sealing failures if you twist them the wrong way, go figure out how to make radar despite that" and "you just voted in something really insightful, which is why we're giving that insight to Ami while having Hazou being impressed by her intelligence". It's very easy to argue that there is no [A; B] that permits the former and yet denies the other, and that an [A; B] that permits both or denies both each bring suboptimalities of their own. Rather, I can only endorse this sliding scale as a first-pass reduction of the multifaceted topic of the correlation between [is/isn't OOC] and [is/isn't enjoyable as part of the quest].

You can see how this intersects with the rift to the afterlife now: despite it not relating to the IC/OOC behaviour in any way, the structure of the QM decision there (notably, designed to hinder us just as the HOWS ruling hindered us) makes it a positive decision for the engagement and enjoyability of the quest as a whole. Despite not relating to the IC/OOC question, I use it to reinforce the argument in favour of the existence of the mechanism that I describe by which {a QM intervention against wildly OOC behaviour, in a way that is purely to our detriment} can nonetheless be preferable for the enjoyability of the quest.
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I think the explicit construction here is certainly not one that encapsulates the reality with any sort of accuracy but I think it serves excellently as a pointer if you remove some of the dressings:

"It is okay if the baseline is that Hazou + Player Input means the lower bounds for outcomes are strictly closer to the theoretical mean than the upper bounds are."

I think this is fine and quite sensible and does not meaningfully change the state of affairs from a game balance perspective. In most of the high stakes situations, a merely mediocre result is going to net you an outcome that is as bad as utterly horrifying failure anyway.
 
Thank you QMs I really appreciate this and all the time, effort, and love you put into the quest ❤️
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
Rather, I can only endorse this sliding scale as a first-pass reduction of the multifaceted topic of the correlation between [is/isn't OOC] and [is/isn't enjoyable as part of the quest].
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Sure. Imagine the "sliding 'scale'" as an n-dimensional space, with axes for "social behavior", "Sealing-related behavior", "intelligence", etc., and the "OOC interval" being an n-dimensional object as well. That allows a non-uniform deformation of [A;B], such that the new shape may allow some of the past e. g. Sealing mishaps but fewer of the social ones.

Or something. This metaphor is probably getting unduly overcomplicated.
MMKII said:
I think the explicit construction here is certainly not one that encapsulates the reality with any sort of accuracy
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Inferno Vulpix said:
Rather, I can only endorse this sliding scale as a first-pass reduction of the multifaceted topic of the correlation
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I see you're both nonbelievers in the power of boiling down complicated issues to ℤ¹, hm? Tch.
 
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eaglejarl said:
PSA: Discussion about chapter 607 is on hold until tomorrow; this weekend will be a wholesome interlude

There have been a lot of questions raised about chapter 607, enough that the QMs are discussing to be sure that we didn't make any mistakes in our background work or timeline. We are all occupied this evening but we'll be having the conversation during the regular QM meeting (tomorrow morning Eastern time). We won't take questions until then but we'll get back to you as soon as possible afterwards.

In addition, so that there's no time pressure: Voting is closed. This update will be a light and fluffy interlude with as little stress as possible.
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Suggestions on what to write are greatly appreciated!
 
Paperclipped said:
Suggestions on what to write are greatly appreciated!
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- A Day in the Life of Yamanaka Ino

- The Sealmaster who tested Hazou for special jonin reflects on Hazou

- Harumitsu meets Honoka for the first time, and she imperiously demands that he call her "auntie," since she is Kagome's student, whereas Harumitsu is "merely" the student of Kagome's student

- Ino and Snowflake hang out

- Hazou describes Snow's mountaintop views to Ino, who is enthralled

- Hazou wrestles Dog Summons on the seventh path

- Mareo comforts Hazou after Akane's death

- Hazou helps Harumitsu out with some bit of sealing, and Harumitsu's asks Hazou for dating advice (Harumitsu has noticed a girl... or, more accurately, the girl has finally managed to draw Harumitsu's attention. Like sensei, like Student).

- Harumitsu pokes Hazou towards realizing Snowflake's feelings.

- Harumitsu meets the Goketsu Family, and they all (metaphorically) adopt him after one quick glance at the poor boy
 
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Paperclipped said:
Suggestions on what to write are greatly appreciated!
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Honoka Honoka Honoka Honoka. She saves a civilian kid from a ninja kid by being gutsy and then follows them home and does a Kagome and opens a storage seal of food.

Or Kagome telling her parents that we're formally adopting them.

Or a few vignettes of ninja using the Team Akane Seal Bank and the impacts. The uses can both be asking for seals and donating seals and money back after surviving their missions.

Or a Hagoromo getting really mad at another Hagoromo for not being appropriately ashamed that whatsherface betrayed the Will of Fire.

Or what Gaku does with the pile of money we'd better be paying him, I assume there's some charitable work there.

Or just go to a random village and show us Uplift actually working - like, a town council meeting about what the hell they're going to do with the extra resources they now have.

Just show us something happening that's good in uncomplicated ways.
 
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faflec said:
[X] Chapter 3β
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[X] Chapter 1γ, the timeline where Hazou goes back in time to the Swamp of Death but also voted for [X] Armageddon Initiative

edit: I mean, we have our 'best timeline' omake series, why not accompany it with a 'worst timeline' series? Instead of trying to save as much of Hidden Swamp as we can, we make sure they all die!
 
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[X] Chapter 1γ, the timeline where Hazou goes back in time to the Swamp of Death but also voted for [X] Armageddon Initiative
 
Spector29 said:
I actually am appreciating the meta-narrative discussion about player-vs-QM expectations of the story. It distracts me from my general reaction of, "Oh cool, another three updates of this again." Which happens whenever someone yells at us. Except this will probably be five if we're counting from when the Yuno thing started? Anyway;

If there were a vote to turn the slider from Game to Story, I'd definitely be interested. Plan-making is intense, difficult, and honestly feels fully out of the question for a medium-casual lurker like me. I'm not the audience that even wants to play Marked For Death in the context of it being a game, because it's difficult and characters I like yell at me or are sad when I'm wrong. Looking at the discussions of some of the plans I've been around to discuss, a lot of the times we'd have to be doing complex literature analysis in order to come up with the perfect plan. As someone who isn't really involved in the Plan stuff and is solely reading this for the story, I would prefer it to be a more cohesive narrative that is occasionally steered by the players. But insofar as opinions can be invalid, I suppose I have the most invalid one of them all.

[X] Training Plan: Noburi Mednin
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I'm pretty much in the exact same boat. I've voted and replied a few times here and in the Discord, but that's maybe a total of 5 times in the 3 years I've been reading. I absolutely love it and the thread discussions, don't get me wrong, but I am personally interested in skewing closer to story than game.

Anyways, stan Ami, miss Jiraiya, WE'RE ALL GONNA DIEEEE

[J] PROJECT OMNICULE
[X] Training Plan: Noburi Mednin

Edit: Wah just read this page of the thread and saw voting closed. Former points still stand. Thank you for all of the hard work and dedication to bith the QMs and active players. This is legitimately one of my favorite stories I've ever read. I dearly love the entire fully extended family (sans Snuncle), and always am excited to see an update in my feed.
 
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