The QMs have made and repeatedly delivered on a staggering commitment to simulationism. They've also always been incredibly fair. They don't twist the story to suit what they want or find convenient.
I think the least we can do is to extend them the benefit of the doubt, and I do mean the least. Plausible explanations exist, including 'Asuma provided Shikamaru with the information pulled from the mind of the Isanese, and they mutually decided that there was nothing obviously relevant and that history would not be kind to the people who provided Goketsu Hazo with information he didn't need'.
Yes, I agree that that the QMs do quite a lot and are very dedicated to simulationism. But I think your interpretation is being uncharitable in some ways, and is also missing that what I (and other posters) are saying is that
this is a breakdown of simulationism. Here is my understanding of the sequence of events and the situation as it stands:
We want lore. The line between the voting group and Hazo's motivations are (deliberately) blurry, so Hazo wants lore. We caused/ended up in a situation where we could get decent lore by pretty much a couple minutes of conversation during one of our many meetings with the Hokage. The questgoers were widely aware of this, they unanimously wanted lore, it was frequently on their minds.
Why, then, was this not reflected in the questgoers plans, and by extension Hazo's actions via the one approved OOC-IC communication channel? Because the QMs asked nicely for time to gather their spoons. That's perfectly reasonable, and so no one pushed. No one added 'ask Asuma about the lore again' to their plans, no one made compelling arguments after Asuma hypothetically turned us down, etc.
And then Asuma dies. Alright, simulation's a simulation; this happens. Much time passes, until finally we get the report
now, for specifically OOC reasons; the QMs only finished it now, and they could hardly delay the entire quest until they finished it, nor did they want to nor would they enjoy doing that. Fair enough, gotta organize the spoons drawer.
And the report is incomplete. Again, a little disappointing but fair, that's why we want to ask Asuma in person, and why we would probably want to ask Asuma in person in the hypothetical where we got the report while he was alive. Of course, we can't do that now, but on occasion timey-wimey stuff crops up. The solution varies, but often we spend a fate point to declare that we actually did something in the past that we could've reasonable done, but couldn't decide to do until now (but Hazo could).
So, someone asks:
wonder if we could spend a FP so that hazou asked asuma for the name before he died.
And a QM replies:
Hazō suspects that Asuma didn't want to put certain details in print and would (might?) have been willing to fill them in verbally. It's unfortunate that the report wasn't delivered to you until after Asuma's death. Some discrete inquiries lead you to believe that the redacted information is not available anymore and likely never will be.
(OOC: Yes, your proposal is a good one. Thanks.)
That's not a literal
no, but the reply responds to everything except the FP proposal. So I'm interpreting that as a 'no'.
If it turns out the QMs are, infact, okay with having us spend a FP to have retroactively talked to Asuma and gotten more information, that addresses my concerns and I no longer have any particular issue with the situation. And if indeed that's the correct interpretation, I apologize for misinterpreting it and turning this into a
Thing.
But, going with the interpretation that that's a
no, the next reply to this points out "Hey this seems to me like a violation of simulationism and just kinda not cool":
Asuma gathered the lore (for us!) around January 30. We asked Asuma for the lore in person on February 8. He died on March 15. This was literally one of our (and his!) top priorities and the only reason we weren't repeatedly asking for it in-character was because you told us you needed time to figure out what it was.
It feels really unfair that as a result of that we are permalocked out of the information.
And the QM reply to this is a dismissal:
I'm sorry you feel that way.
Which isn't
bad. I wouldn't call it rude or unkind or anything. It's a perfectly reasonable stock response that comes up sometimes, more-or-less, whenever someone has a opinion about something but it's just a opinion - "I don't like X happened", to which the response is "I'm genuinely sorry you feel that way, but this quest is strictly simulationist, and that's how things played out".
So I wouldn't fault the QM for saying that, that'd be silly. But I also wouldn't fault the players for disagreeing, and making a point that this is actually a breakdown of simulationism.
(I also wouldn't consider this a 'arguing with the QM about the facts' thing. QMs can be fallible or change their minds, and everyone is being civil here!)
To the rest of your post: I don't expect this one document to hand us all the lore on a silver platter. I don't have issue that it's a limited source, I have issue that it's
more limited than it should be for OOC reasons that are being treated as IC. Also frankly it's been like a decade at this point so I don't expect any detailed lore until we get Omnikage Hazo or we die and the quest ends.
