Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
Oh god. You just gave me the mental image of him feeding us water with water whip. WHYYYYYY.
Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
- Start date
-
- Tags
- naruto rationalist romance armageddon is looking better and better damn you kishimoto explosions everywhere explosives solve everyone if in doubt surrender to the mercy of zabuza it seemed like a good idea at the time looks like a really bad case of being a jōnin my god. where does the lore end? precommitting is the winning plan screaming in kagome screw the rules i have explosives something bad might still happen sometimes you gotta sociopath stabby zabby subsection c of paragraph 9 should include we can weaponize this so hard open voting
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Why in the world would you think that "+10 to the roll" meant anything else?
Thank you. Yes, this is the vibe that I've been getting this last week -- lots of blame, lots of passive-aggressive and/or directly aggressive, and very little appreciation. @Velorien can speak for himself on the subject; personally, I've been playing it cool so as not to cause drama, but since you directly bring it up I will comment.
- Location
- The Deep Blue Sea
10L is about this large, apparently, though I don't know the dispensing mechanism
I'm sorry that's been the experience on the other side of the QM screen, and I hope I haven't contributed to it too much. This whole quest has been an amazing ride and I hope it continues for a good long while.
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- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Honestly, yes, I feel much the same way. Not necessarily unappreciated, but at the point when I'm more worried whether a decision will make people angry than whether it's a good decision, something has gone wrong.
Much as in an OSR game, the way this quest is set up makes it very easy for a sense of antagonism to develop between the players and the people running it. That's no one's intention, but it's a danger that has to be avoided.
Okay, let's start making a list of questions to help plan:
1. What is the local terrain like?
2. What engagement distance do we have to work with? How far away are both groups we're trying to avoid?
If it comes to a fight, we should try to take it out onto a body of water like a river or a lake. We know we can all water walk. We don't that that all of our pursuers can water walk. Even if just one can't, that helps the odds. Plus Noburi is better on water.
1. What is the local terrain like?
2. What engagement distance do we have to work with? How far away are both groups we're trying to avoid?
If it comes to a fight, we should try to take it out onto a body of water like a river or a lake. We know we can all water walk. We don't that that all of our pursuers can water walk. Even if just one can't, that helps the odds. Plus Noburi is better on water.
- Location
- The Deep Blue Sea
A few minutes out still. This lets us choose our terrain to engage, if we want to do that instead of focusing on fleeing.
Also, water walking is a basic ninja skill, they wouldn't be out chasing us if they couldn't do it. Agree on water in general though.
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The local terrain is densely forested. The groups are at least a mile away at the moment, one to the south and one to the east. You don't know their precise locations.
- Location
- Switzerland
We already tried to parley. It almost got us killed then, even though we won the roll. I'd rather not repeat the experience.
Hide: our stealth is too low, it won't work.
Fight: our team is wounded and outnumbered. Bad idea.
Run: This seems like the only viable option.
Things we can do to improve our chances of escaping:
- Chakra-boost movement, refill chakra from Nobby, refill Nobby's chakra when near lakes/rivers. It will allow us to outlast our pursuers. I am really unpleasantly surprised that we didn't do this from the start. We should write an operation manual and add there all the little lifehacks we thought of during the gameplay.
- Use PMYF to conceal our trail :
- Go some distance in a direction we don't really intend to travel.
- Bactrack some distance.
- Use PMYF to jump far to the side (like number 2 on this scheme)
- Keep running.
- Or, we can send forward clones instead of backtracking. This is faster, costs more chakra and may be ineffective against scent trackers.
- Leave behind some powerful explosive/implosive traps and/or suicide bomber clones to discourage pursuers.
Now let's consider our actual objectives. We want to escape. What does that mean? It means that we are no longer being pursued either because:
1. Our pursuers have lost the trail
2. Our pursuers are unable to continue
3. Our pursuers are unwilling to continue
Let us consider each scenario in turn.
To make our pursuers lose the trail, we would need to do make them unsure where we are. To make this happen we would need to somehow get out of their awareness for a period of time, then obscure our tracks. Unfortunately we are in a forested area, which makes it difficult to avoid leaving traces and we are in their hearing awareness range. Ideas?
To make our pursuers unable to continue, we would have to fight them and injure at least some of them badly enough that the others are unwilling to continue. We can talk ambush ideas if it comes to that.
To make them unwilling to continue, we would have to go somewhere they will not willingly go. I don't know where that would be, other than a large group of ninja from a hostile nation or the lair of a very fearsome chakra beast. Ideas?
Or we could always see if one group or another is accepting surrenders. They would probably want to interrogate us before execution, so that buys more time at least. Not that it's a great position to be in, but I bring it up for completeness.
1. Our pursuers have lost the trail
2. Our pursuers are unable to continue
3. Our pursuers are unwilling to continue
Let us consider each scenario in turn.
To make our pursuers lose the trail, we would need to do make them unsure where we are. To make this happen we would need to somehow get out of their awareness for a period of time, then obscure our tracks. Unfortunately we are in a forested area, which makes it difficult to avoid leaving traces and we are in their hearing awareness range. Ideas?
To make our pursuers unable to continue, we would have to fight them and injure at least some of them badly enough that the others are unwilling to continue. We can talk ambush ideas if it comes to that.
To make them unwilling to continue, we would have to go somewhere they will not willingly go. I don't know where that would be, other than a large group of ninja from a hostile nation or the lair of a very fearsome chakra beast. Ideas?
Or we could always see if one group or another is accepting surrenders. They would probably want to interrogate us before execution, so that buys more time at least. Not that it's a great position to be in, but I bring it up for completeness.
I still don't understand how it makes any sense to chakra boost long distance movement. Chakra boosts seem to last for a few seconds at best. How does that even work?
- Location
- Yes.
I believed they're called standard operating procedures in military lingo. We players have been going through this fairly unsystematically.
Maybe it's time to start doing this quest systematically.
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- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You make a fair point. Do you think that long-distance chakra boosts should be removed from the game?
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
I feel like it makes perfect sense. It's certainly not the same as short-distance boosts -- much more spread out, and increases your top speed rather than giving a burst of it -- but it makes sense to me.
- Location
- Switzerland
I think long-term chakra boosts make perfect sense.
Take, for example, all the ninja tree-hopping fast-travel in Naruto canon. There is just no way ninjas can do this rapid hops without chakra reinforcement.
Take, for example, all the ninja tree-hopping fast-travel in Naruto canon. There is just no way ninjas can do this rapid hops without chakra reinforcement.
Ninja are already under a constant low level chakra boost without spending any chakra points. That's why they're stronger and faster than normal humans. What we call "chakra boost" is flooding the system with a lot of reserves for a few instants of far additional power. Makes sense that's a short term thing.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
And long distance chakra moving is flooding the system with a small, consistent amount of it over time, which amounts to the same mechanical bonus of +whatever dice. Not sure what the issue is?
- Location
- Switzerland
So, you accept that spending minuscule amounts of chakra to get a constant weak power-up is possible.
You accept that spending lots of chakra for short-lived but very strong power-up is possible.
But you don't accept that spending medium amounts of chakra over few hours to get medium-size power-up is possible?
Your skepticism seems rather arbitrary to me.
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I think there's no particular reason to think it's possible. You can sprint or you can run, but you don't sprint just a little bit to make your long runs faster.
It also opens up a lot of questions mechanically that are maybe better left closed, because logically now we're linking chakra use to distance instead of action. How much chakra do you need to use to boost for 100 miles? 200 miles? How does adding dice translate when you don't really know what distance the roll will be covering. Bleh. Simpler to declare it not possible.
- Location
- The Deep Blue Sea
Assuming they're not tracking via scent or byakugan bullshit, could we not make clones to continue running, and then henge into rocks/logs? There's no way that traveling at maximum velocity in a crowded forest, having already identified your targets, anybody would inspect one of the thousands of identical looking logs they'd speed past to the degree that they'd pierce a henge.
Even if one party does have scent tracking, we'd likely lose the other. If we split up and send another batch of clones in another direction before this, even the scent-tracking party has even odds of missing us.
Even if one party does have scent tracking, we'd likely lose the other. If we split up and send another batch of clones in another direction before this, even the scent-tracking party has even odds of missing us.
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