58 KiB
[RT][FF]Chapter 21 of Lighting Up the Dark, a rational Naruto fanfic
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Author: u/Velorien *
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URL: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9311012/22/Lighting-Up-the-Dark
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Score: 40
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Created: 2015-11-23T13:21:23
Post:
Comments:
u/ZeroNihilist [+27] (35 minutes later)
At this point I distrust Orochimaru in every fanfic. Somebody could write a fanfic called "Orochimaru Saves Orphans" and I would mentally append "For His Own Purposes" without a second thought.
u/None [+18] (2 hours later)
[removed]
u/protagnostic [+14] (5 hours later)
Smart!Orochimaru-centric rationalfic is probably a gold mine, honestly.
u/NineInchNade [+3] (a day later)
This, this so much. He has the character for it, now just give him the tools, tweak around his motivations a bit and the fic should almost write itself.
u/AugSphere [+11] Dark Lord of Corruption (3 hours later)
Must resist temptation to tell you to give in to your temptation.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+2] Champion of Justice and Reason (11 hours later)
maybe you could write it as a companion piece to LUD. Like, the same story but as told from orochimaru's pov. Naturally you'd probably want to wait until LUD was done before posting any of it, since it would undoubtedly contain serious spoilers for LUD...
u/gabbalis [+9] (2 hours later)
...
You know I read this comment to a friend of mine, and out of nowhere he suggested we write an Izaya Orihara x Orochimaru lemon slash fic.
I think there's something wrong with him.
u/scooterboo2 [+7] Tinker 3: Embeded Systems (3 hours later)
You should probably get him repaired. Have you called the manufacturer?
u/protagnostic [+3] (5 hours later)
Does that work? I've never been able to get a response from the developer.
u/abcd_z [+4] (10 hours later)
Manufacturer, not developer. So, his parents.
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+2] Roll the Dice on Fate (6 hours later)
Repairs don't go so well but if you ring up the factory you can sometimes get them to send you a new one.
u/eaglejarl [+6] (a day later)
Suddenly, I so desperately want to write a flash fic with that name.
u/PlaneOfInfiniteCats [+1] (8 days later)
Well, some fanfics do a good job of turning canon inside out. Fuzzy Logic, for example. It's worth reading just for the reinterpretation of literally everyone.
u/FluffyButterBiscuit [+26] (2 hours later)
Don't be a wuss, Sasuke, said the wise snake man.
You're super sketchy, said Sasuke.
Good point, but I'm so sketchy I can afford to be honest.
Dang, he got me.
Anyway, if I was in his shoes, I'd be all for the "pacify the really strong person that can flatten me" route. Double points for it aligning with my previously stated goals.
u/None [+15] (33 minutes later)
[deleted]
u/shashwat986 [+7] (an hour later)
That's only considering that bijuu are always unfriendly. We already have the example of the 8-tails in the canon version, of a counter-example.
u/None [+10] (an hour later)
[deleted]
u/LordSwedish [+3] Q Continuum (3 hours later)
They could just be completely alien and still have just as different personalities. For example, maybe the eight-tails is really mellow (comparatively) and a bit more passive in it's approach which allows Killer B to act with it but it could still be completely unreliable and unpredictable.
It would be a bit of a waste if all the Biju are just murderous lovecraftian monsters.
u/protagnostic [+5] (5 hours later)
Everything's a bit of a waste. Isn't that part of the point of Lovecraft?
u/Transfuturist [+3] Carthago delenda est. (2 hours later)
As well they should be.
u/QWieke [+6] (4 hours later)
why bother with that when he could just kidnap Sasuke anyway and be done with it.
I'm not that familiar with Naruto lore but couldn't there be some kind of ritual or something that requires voluntary cooperation?
u/sir_pirriplin [+7] (5 hours later)
In this fic, they mentioned a "rule of consent" when Naruto and Hinata were discussing the substitution technique.
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+3] Roll the Dice on Fate (6 hours later)
In standard Naruto lore? I mean, there's the Dead Demon Consuming Seal, but I don't think Orochimaru knows it exists and that's more like the spiritual equivalent of a suicide jacket rather than what you're probably thinking of. Mostly though it seems like consent isn't particularly important.
u/None [+2] (12 hours later)
[deleted]
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+5] Roll the Dice on Fate (23 hours later)
I know for a fact that Orochi doesn't know about the Dead Demon Consuming Seal when Hiruzen uses it on him, because he comments about it being an interesting new jutsu and stands still so that the Hokage can use it on him. Out of curiosity. Really, that's just incompetence of the highest order. The God of Shinobi is using a new attack you've never seen before you don't just stand there and take it.
Presumably after the battle he researches the fuck out of it in order to regain his arms and finds the release. Of course, whether or not this Orochimaru knows it is up in the air.
u/Transfuturist [+2] Carthago delenda est. (15 hours later)
No, the Sandaime uses the DDCS to eat Orochimaru's arms. The resurrection jutsu used by Orochimaru and Orochibuto is the Impure World Reincarnation.
u/None [+2] (a day later)
u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)
You need a '#s' to make your spoiler work.
u/None [+1] (2 days later)
oops, my bad
u/AugSphere [+15] Dark Lord of Corruption (an hour later)
If this story were a quest, I would be giving all of my votes to taking Oro-tan's offer as soon as possible and convincing Naruto to come as well (taking Sakura only so that she wouldn't be a pain in the ass with her Yan-Yan tendencies). Orochimaru is like the perfect character to turn in to a rational affable villain. You've done an awesome job so far!
Sasuke enjoyed his manga more than he would ever admit, but he wasn't Naruto, and he knew that there was a solid line between fiction and reality.
Oh, my sweet summer child, what do you know of simulation arguments?
u/None [+8] (an hour later)
[deleted]
u/AugSphere [+12] Dark Lord of Corruption (2 hours later)
To be honest, I like this Orochimaru so much more than Sasuke with his boring "hurr durr I'm avenger, but what if I gave it up and was happy, but that would be betraying myself" routine, that I would be satisfied if he just donated his body to Oro-tan. At least this Orochimaru will do something interesting and useful with it, instead of pointlessly running around trying to find new people to take revenge on.
EDIT: Also, can you imagine /r/rational authors running a Naruto quest? You could DM together with /u/omgimpwned, /u/Wertifloke and /u/eaglejarl (well, /u/Velorien is a given of course). Ah, what a glorious thing that would be…
u/scooterboo2 [+4] Tinker 3: Embeded Systems (3 hours later)
The only thing I want to see is a triple crossover with /u/FuguofAnotherWorld's Roll the Dice on Fate modified to be Choji's brother, Silver Queen's Dreaming of Sunshine, and SixPerfections's Walk on the Moon.
It'd be a triple SI ino-shika-cho power stomp.
u/AugSphere [+6] Dark Lord of Corruption (5 hours later)
No, it wouldn't be. Rei would waste all her time trying to get some returns from useless summons (and becoming unhealthily attached to her little sister), Shikako would spend 5 years going through all the stations-of-canon filler. The only one being any kind of productive there would be Tetsuo, which would mean ditching the ballast.
u/scooterboo2 [+5] Tinker 3: Embeded Systems (7 hours later)
That's the beauty of it. You have three individuals with high intelligence, training since they could crawl, and complete knowledge of what is coming, and all they manage to be is incompetent and loony. Think of the hijinks!
u/Transfuturist [+3] Carthago delenda est. (15 hours later)
rat summons
Why this?
Dom as fuck Reinata
...I know why this.
u/AugSphere [+3] Dark Lord of Corruption (22 hours later)
Why this?
Inexplicable authorial aversion to overwhelming firepower. It's the whole "a proper ninja must be sneaky and backstabby" thing, which somehow manages to miss the fact that Narutoverse "ninja" are not medieval Japanese peasants, but wizardly warrior-gods. The in-story justification boils down to grinding the base stats first before applying power-multipliers, which smells of bullshit, because possession of power-multipliers doesn't lock Rei out of grinding her stats. Happily, everyone who tries to sell her that bullshit has actual reasons to want Rei to remain as weak as possible for as long as possible, so it's not that jarring to read.
Dom as fuck Reinata
I don't expect to see much more of this, actually. Both SB and SV flip out at anything even very remotely resembling sexuality for some reason. If I were writing and people gave me oblique hints in the style of "nice story you have here, be a shame if mods happened to it" every time I wrote anything more edgy than people holding hands, I'd stop writing anything more edgy than people holding hands.
u/Transfuturist [+2] Carthago delenda est. (a day later)
Hurr durr, I'm Rei and I can totally sneak three feet behind a fucking chuunin blindfolded.
The story was already banned on SV, and another chapter has been published since then. If I were writing a totally non-sexual scene involving children and the forum I was posting on erupted into a shitstorm, I wouldn't post on that forum anymore.
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+2] Roll the Dice on Fate (6 hours later)
You flatter me, but I'm not even in the same league as those two. Not yet anyway.
u/eaglejarl [+4] (3 hours later)
Heh. Maybe, but multiple authors is hard to pull off well. Maybe if we took it in turns.
u/None [+7] (a day later)
[deleted]
u/eaglejarl [+4] (a day later)
How exactly does a quest work? I haven't done this before.
u/None [+3] (a day later)
[deleted]
u/eaglejarl [+6] (a day later)
Oh, so it's another name for a play-by-post RPG. (Honestly, why do people keep changing the names? 'emoticons' was a perfectly good name, we didn't have to go to 'emoji' We didn't need the name 'XML', either, since we already had 'mind-crushing source of misery and horror'. Bah! Get off my lawn! waves stick)
I'd be willing to try it, with the proviso that the posts would likely be pretty short to start and I might need to bail out if it ends up taking too much time. If I were doing it on my own I'd set it in the Team_Anko-verse -- it could be a fun way to explore the Republic/Elemental Nations conflict. Although, if other GMs are chiming in we'd probably want to do something different, since locking them into my sandbox seems rude.
/u/omgimpwned, /u/Wertifloke, /u/Velorien, what do you think?
u/None [+3] (a day later)
[removed]
u/eaglejarl [+4] (2 days later)
How about we just start riffing and see where it goes? I can whip out a few hundred words as a kickstart later today, post it top level in /r/rational. If yes, any particular start you'd like to see?
u/AugSphere [+2] Dark Lord of Corruption (2 days later)
OMG itshappening.gif
I was just daydreaming and it's actually happening! You guys are the best.
u/image_linker_bot [+3] (2 days later)
^(Feedback welcome at /r/image_linker_bot | )^(Disable)^( with "ignore me" via reply or PM)
u/eaglejarl [+2] (2 days later)
Well, since you're all excited, you can provide the initial prompt. Where are we starting?
u/AugSphere [+5] Dark Lord of Corruption (2 days later)
Holy shit, sudden responsibility, time to run and hide!
Once you guys decide what interpretation of universe you're going to be running the quest in (at least the bare basics as far as tech-levels and the approximate mechanism behind chakra magic go) we can leave the rest to players. Basically, you can just let everyone choose what character and location they want to start with. I'd suggest giving a couple default options and a write-in a-la:
[] You're an orphan. You were just rescued from a burning orphanage by mysterious snake-like gentleman.
[] You're a boring person who didn't choose option one. You'll be playing as some nameless genin mook of a minor village in the arse end of nowhere.
[] Write-in
The traditional way to run a quest is to basically go with the most popular option the players choose (first-past-the-post style). If we're going for a rational-ish Naruto, this may be a bad idea, because everyone will go for a shiny sooner or later and the quest will end in blood and tears. Some people have restricted voting only to a select list of reasonable people, some do not care about the votes, but choose the option with the best presented reasoning and so on. You (we? should I be the designated "takes care of background technical stuff" person for this quest?) should probably decide beforehand what kind of write-in and voting system we're going for and tell the players immediately.
Then we have the game mechanics side of questing. Basically, are you going to be doing skill checks when players decide to try something with uncertain chances of success? For reasons of stupid-monkeyness, giving the players a chance to determine the fate of the character via calls to rng really improves the satisfaction people derive from participating in quests, so you might want to do it. In that case, we should decide what style of system we should go with: there is classic DnD style of opposed checks, there is new and old World of Darkness dicepool stuff, we might actually want some simple homebrew system that's just better.
tl;dr There is technical stuff to figure out first, if we want to run the quest properly. Of course, dealing with this may be just the trivial inconvenience that kills your motivation to run the quest before you can even begin, in which case — fuck it, write the intro the way you want it and we will figure out the exiting (to me) stuff, such as game mechanics, later.
u/eaglejarl [+4] (2 days later)
we? should I be the designated "takes care of background technical stuff" person for this quest?)
Yep. Figure it out, call me when it's time to start writing -- I offer you total trust and leave it all in your hands.
/u/Velorien:
- If you want to weigh in on the fiddly bits, talk to /u/AugSphere. I'm fine with whatever you guys come up with.
- If you want to write the kickoff that's cool, otherwise I'll do it. /u/AugSphere, please talk to Velorien and get his answer. Once the mechanics are worked out, ping whichever one of us is writing the kickoff.
EDIT: As to worldbuilding, my suggestions would be:
- Tech level of medieval Japan. No cell phones or other electronics. Maybe electricity is being experimented with, but it's still at a Leyden jar stage.
- Med-nin understand anatomy at a gross level -- down to the level you can see with a low-power optical microscope -- but do not know DNA exists. Orochimaru and a few other experts might. Note that the Byakugan canonically allows seeing everything down to the size of a dust mite (~ 0.25 mm)
- Seals are a thing and are used to run chakra-based technology. (Refrigerators, ovens, etc) A seal requires that the design be perfect and then a certain amount of chakra be added in order to activate it, but you don't have to add it all at once. Civilians have very low chakra reserves so it takes a long time to energize anything other than a very basic seal. Retired ninja can make good money selling the things, just because they can produce them faster than a civvie.
- Konoha is the largest village, with a population described below. Other major ninja villages are roughly the power level.
- There are multiple ninja school, some better than others. The Academy is the best. (Think Princeton or Oxford, with school quality trailing down to 'no-name diploma mill'.)
The Byakugan is an utter pain in the ass to write because it's so overpowered. I suggest the following definitions, most of which are canon:
- Infrared through UV
- Sees chakra, can identify individual people / animals / seals by their chakra
- Down to 0.25mm resolution
- Range of 50m for genin (e.g. Hinata at Wave Arc) up to 10km for Hiashi
- There's a 5 degree cone out the back of your neck that you can't see. (In canon it's smaller and variable.) Define this as: take the normal of your C4 vertebrae, draw a series of lines at 2.5 degrees off from that normal.
- Has one or more points of focus that they see absolutely everything in, including the insides of objects. Everything else in range is seen as clearly as a normal person sees in the arc 45 degrees off center. (Motion, color, approximate shape, no fine details.) Most users have 1 point of focus that is a sphere ~2m across. Skilled users have multiple and/or larger points of focus.
- Students start school (ninja or civilian) at 6 and go to school for 8 years, so graduates (ninja or civilian) are ~14. Higher education is available for civilians after graduation. Ninja students learn reading, writing, and basic math (up through algebra), but are lacking most civilian education and rarely pursue it further as they have more survival-critical skills to train.
Konoha:
- Total population w/civilians: ~50,000
- Hokage: 1 (Hiruzen Sarutobi as at start of Wave Arc)
- Elite jonin (Kakashi, Gai, Anko, etc): 30
- Other jonin (including special jonin): 100
- Chunin: 400
- Genin: 1600
- Itachi is gone, the Massacre is over, Danzo / Kakashi / Sasuke are the only Sharingan users in Konoha.
- They do more civilian missions (irrigation, wall-building) than military ones -- the money isn't as good but there are more of them and they don't risk valuable assets.
This is 1:25 tooth-to-tail ratio, which is low even for a medieval army so I think it works for a militarized city.
Rules:
- Players are not, I repeat NOT, allowed to have a Sharingan or a friendly bijuu inside them, although they can have an unfriendly one.
- There can be jinchuriki of non-bijuu if people want to do that. Minor animal or nature spirit, ancestor, etc.
- Players who want to be ninja start as genin.
u/Transfuturist [+2] Carthago delenda est. (2 days later)
Anko is actually a special jounin, a rank between chuunin and jounin. Special jounin are like chuunin with jounin-level abilities in a specialized area. In Anko's case, she is also kept below jounin-level because of the Cursed Seal of Heaven and her personal relationship to the S-level missing-nin that gave it to her (I think this might be just fanon, but it makes sense).
^^^^^^...Anko ^^^^^^is ^^^^^^my ^^^^^^favorite ^^^^^^character.
Should there be chakra budgeting? Other stats?
/u/AugSphere, your infatuation with Orochi-chan is adorable.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (2 days later)
Anko is actually a special jounin,
Oh, of course. I promoted her in the first scene of Team Anko, so I wasn't thinking about it.
Should there be chakra budgeting? Other stats?
If we want to do chakra budgeting, I have formulas. They are intentionally fairly restrictive, but could easily be opened up. Also, I would say we should standardizs the henge -- is it physical, illusion, or can it be either at wearer's choice? This is important to determine what happens when someone henges into an object as opposed to s person.
/u/AugSphere, your infatuation with Orochi-chan is adorable.
He's my favorite Team Anko character, since I made him intelligent and non-pedo. Not so keen on the canon idiot, though.
u/AugSphere [+2] Dark Lord of Corruption (2 days later)
We'll probably want to budget chakra inside the game-mechanics stuff.
A simple system that comes to mind is to use dice to represent chakra. So let's say a character has 5 chakra dice and decides to give his taijutsu some additional juice. Suppose he's facing a pretty tough opponent and normally he would have about 20% chance of successful taijutsu engagement (for example one of the players rolls a d100 and has to beat 80). If the players decide that he's enhancing his fighting using chakra, then we'd allow someone to roll additional dice. Then we could take the higher roll of two as a final result. That pushes the probability of success to 36%. If players want to dump even more effort into it, then we allow them to roll one more dice and again take the highest roll. This pushes it to 49%, and so on.
We could make techniques cost some flat start-up amount, like, for example, 4 dice to cast shadow clone jutsu (creating just one clone), and give additional effects for more dice, like a second clone for 3 more dice.
This system has an advantage of being really simple, but the disadvantage that the effects of additional dice are not diminishing, but rather exponentially increasing. So picking one high-risk, high-reward gambit and dumping all the chakra dice into it will be the optimal strategy. Not sure how representative that is of typical Naruto combat.
EDIT:
He's my favorite Team Anko character, since I made him intelligent and non-pedo. Not so keen on the canon idiot, though.
No-one is really keen on the canon idiot. The rational ones are simply fabulous.
EDIT2: Well, the dice don't actually stack exponentially, the pmf just changes from linear to quadratic and so on. The actual success probabilities go as
Dice Success probability 1 0.2 2 0.36 3 0.488 4 0.5904 5 0.6723 6 0.7379 7 0.7903 8 0.8322 9 0.8658 10 0.8926 Which is more or less reasonable as far as diminishing returns go. So, turns out that the simple system is actually pretty good.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (2 days later)
The dice thing seems complicated to me. I'd prefer that everyone has a number of points in their chakra pool and they buy things. So, "shadow clone cost N points to start up, plus 5 per clone" and "you can buy an additional die on your taijutsu for X points". Pools refresh between scenes or when the GM says so.
u/AugSphere [+2] Dark Lord of Corruption (3 days later)
That's what I was proposing, yeah. Should have probably expressed myself better. So a character has some chakra points. He can either use them in a jutsu, or use them to add dice to their basic taijutsu/shurikenjutsu/hoejutsu/whateverelsewashandyjutsu rolls.
Do we allow them to buy dice on top of jutsu? Suppose a player says, "I'm gonna use a fireball for X dice, but I really, really want it to hit, so I'm gonna pump some Y chakra into my legs and position myself properly while doing the hand jive". Then we have him cast the jutsu for X normally, but add extra Y (or Y/2, or whatever going rate we decide on) dice to his attempt to hit with it.
u/eaglejarl [+3] (3 days later)
To keep things simple, how about it costs 5 points to buy a die for anything?
whateverelsewashandyjutsu
This made me laugh. :> For a moment I misread it as 'whateverelsewashhandsjutsu'
u/AugSphere [+2] Dark Lord of Corruption (3 days later)
Yup, seems reasonable. Now we just have to assign the numbers to techniques.
As an aside, do we really need the blind spot for byakugan? It always bugged me, because it was an obvious ugly hack added for the sake of a single fight in canon. Just toss it out, I say. Otherwise all the Hyūga will just constantly fidget around and no other difference will be apparent, but it'll bug me to no end. Compared to the other magic eyes byakugan has a pretty low power ceiling anyway.
Also, what kind of power curve are we going for? If we're aiming for a pretty short wild ride a-la waves arisen, we may want to just leave all the ridiculous stuff in and see how quickly things escalate. Personally, I always get tetchy when things are nerfed, because it feels like stripping the universe of it's flavour, but I'm not writing, so it's up to you and /u/Velorien.
u/eaglejarl [+3] (3 days later)
Just toss it out, I say.
I am totally on board with that. It's a pain in the neck to keep track of and makes basically no difference anyway.
If we leave all the canon stuff in, the problem is what's available? Do we assume that all non-bloodline jutsu are available to everyone? Most techniques on the wiki are listed as only having a few users. Is that descriptive or proscriptive? /u/Velorien?
u/sir_pirriplin [+2] (3 days later)
For the character that the readers control, I think what specific techniques they learn should be mostly outside of their control.
For example, remember in the Wave Arc after the first time they fight Zabuza, the kids have a chance to recover their strength for a few days and learn tree-walking?
If something similar were to happen during the game, the players should get a choice of roughly what they get to learn, within reason. Perhaps the choice could be something like this:
*Learn a technique to help with evasion and escape
*Learn a technique that helps in close-quarters combat
*Practice one of your old techniques and see if you can master a new application of that technique.
*Work with your team-mates to develop some kind of combination-attack.
*Rest well to be in top shape for the next fight.
The players choose roughly what to focus on but the Game Master always chooses the outcome and what specific techniques the player character learns.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (3 days later)
That works. So, we assume they all start with kawarimi / henge / bunshin and nothing else?
u/sir_pirriplin [+2] (3 days later)
In the show, almost every ninja has some sort of gimmick that makes them unique. All the interesting ones do, anyway.
It would be cool if the player character got some additional weak technique at the start.
u/eaglejarl [+3] (3 days later)
Sure. How about we just say "choose one extra thing. Don't be a jerk and make it super overpowered"?
u/sir_pirriplin [+3] (3 days later)
Definitely. Since the Game Master has veto power on overpowered abilities, that gives players a good reason to try to choose something that is underpowered but has fun and interesting applications.
u/AugSphere [+2] Dark Lord of Corruption (3 days later)
Look at all the S-class people in Naruto: they all have pretty damn huge advantages over the run-of-the-mill shinobi. If we're making the universe rational, then we can draw an implication from that. The player character is not going to be the only ninja to crave power, but the only one to actually achieve serious power-levels without cheats was Hiruzen. We know that the low-hanging fruit isn't enough to become S-class.
Now, on one hand, we might as well use this to make things interesting and give players a perfectly ordinary person to start with. See how long it takes them to bootstrap their way to godhood without some bloodline shortcut.
On the other, we may want to allow people to pick a truly powerful advantage, but make sure they need it by making the antagonists truly challenging. Not to mention that some problems are just not solvable via sufficient firepower. If your goal is to make elemental nations into a peaceful paradise, then your enemy will be the mentality of the people. Can't exactly punch that out.
I'd go for making the antagonists truly powerful, giving people a starting character without any advantages over a median genin, but allowing the players comparatively full freedom to optimise as they see fit, including the ridiculous power-multiplier things like Edo Tensei and stealing some Sharingan from somewhere. We can manage to keep things challenging without forcing people onto the underpowered-jutsu rails.
u/None [+3] (3 days later)
[removed]
u/AugSphere [+2] Dark Lord of Corruption (3 days later)
Yeah, something unique, but not terribly usable at the start of the quest could be good. Something for the players to make suitably epic later down the line with some clever optimisation, perhaps.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (4 days later)
We know that the low-hanging fruit isn't enough to become S-class.
Well, if Hiruzen can do it then in theory anyone can. As I recall he didn't have anything special -- not unusually large chakra reserves or a bloodline or anything. He was just that damn good, yes?
I'm totally fine with characters optimizing as they like. I'll happily hand out Death Stars as it becomes necessary.
One thing that I will say, though: to hell with canon. I'll use the setting, but Danzo isn't going to conveniently have ten Sharingan on his arm for anyone to steal. Anyone complaining that characters and/or events aren't true to canon (too old, too young, can/can't do something they did/didn't do, know/don't know something they should, watever) can take a flying leap out of the game.
u/AugSphere [+2] Dark Lord of Corruption (4 days later)
Well, trying to figure out how Danzō manages to both have a shitload of cheat-codes, half the ANBU subverted, and still can't do anything but fuck things up is nigh impossible. That pile of bullshit doesn't deserve the effort it would take to justify it. As long as setting is recognisably Naruto, we're fine, I think. We could even start in some backwater without a ninja village and chill with some original characters for a while, if you and /u/Velorien want to. Konoha isn't the only place in elemental nations after all.
On that note, what are we going to do about canon power ballance between shinobi and vanilla mortals? Are we going to just chuck the idea that daimyo have any appreciable power and be done with it? Or are we going to try and concoct the reasons why badass wizard master-race serves civilians and not the other way around?
u/eaglejarl [+4] (4 days later)
Hm, actually, a handful of missing-nin trying to build a new village sounds really appealing. Maybe it's a couple of jonin, a handful of chunin, and a bunch of genin, and they need to attract some other ninja and a lot of civilians to do the farming and such. Could be survivors of another village, but I prefer the idea that one chunin missing-nin with only moderate ninja-power but excellent charisma went around convincing other missing-nin to band together and join up. The chunin is in charge, even though the jonin outrank him / her.
Reasons why daimyo might be in power:
- The Daimyos and Kages are co-rulers, with the Daimyo handling the civilian side and the ninja handling the military. Both of them are aware that the Daimyo is dead any time the Kage wants him to be, so the daimyo is second fiddle.
- Same as above, but there is a widely-held belief that the military should be subordinate to the civilian side (e.g. America, every other decent nation on earth) and everyone buys into it.
- Samurai are basically ninja with low chakra reserves. In a fair fight they are not a one-on-one match, but there are a lot more of them.
- The ninja have tried taking things over in the past, but the people don't want to be ruled by ninja. Military resistance doesn't work, but passive resistance does -- farmers don't farm efficiently, merchants don't merchant efficiently, etc. The ninja can make people do things by standing over them, but there aren't enough of them to do that. Given the fatalist view of the population, punishment raids are not effective. There are some collaborators, but in general it's just easier for the ninja to be a detached military force whom the civilians are happy to work with.
u/AugSphere [+2] Dark Lord of Corruption (4 days later)
The ninja have tried taking things over in the past, but the people don't want to be ruled by ninja. Military resistance doesn't work, but passive resistance does -- farmers don't farm efficiently, merchants don't merchant efficiently, etc. The ninja can make people do things by standing over them, but there aren't enough of them to do that. Given the fatalist view of the population, punishment raids are not effective. There are some collaborators, but in general it's just easier for the ninja to be a detached military force whom the civilians are happy to work with.
The problem with that argument is one of delegation. Let's treat the daimyo as a supreme ruler in a feudal system for a second. There is no way the very top of feudal power hierarchy would refuse to serve a ninja, they are just too few and too easy to hunt down. Holding their families hostage would be trivial for ninjas as well. So we have a ninja at the top. That kind of reasoning gives us at least a couple of top levels of a hierarchy in the hands of ninja (perhaps retired ones, who still crave power), with the lower levels, who handle the actual interactions with peasants, being vanilla mortals. Would peasants really care about who their daimyo is, even if they still deal with the same people? I think not. At least not enough to slack off more than they already do. Plus, I've never actually got a sense that ninja have any scarcity, at least as far as shelter and food go. There are few enough of them that they could comfortably tax a small number of civilians and live carefree lives of routine murder.
Should the daimyo just be subordinates who deal with the administration of civilian population without any ability to order ninja around? I doubt any shinobi would find that kind of work terribly appealing, so a trusted civilian would naturally fill the position. Remote areas away from big ninja villages could have their own governance structures of course.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (4 days later)
Should the daimyo just be subordinates, who deal with the administration of civilian population without any ability to order ninja around? I doubt any shinobi would find that kind of work terribly appealing, so a trusted civilian would naturally fill the position. Remote areas away from big ninja villages could have their own governance structures of course.
Yeah, that's probably easiest. As you say, it's a hard thing to justify.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (6 days later)
So...where do we stand on this?
u/AugSphere [+2] Dark Lord of Corruption (6 days later)
Don't know yet. Looks like /u/Velorien is away somewhere. I suggest the three of us have a quick discussion in #rational over on freenode IRC once he surfaces again. Or I could set up a server for mumble, if you prefer voice chat.
For what it's worth, I don't think using feudal japan tech levels with seals for semi-modern stuff will be terribly controversial. Nerfing the power of daimyo should be alright as well, judging by past discussion with /u/Velorien.
u/None [+3] (6 days later)
[removed]
u/AugSphere [+2] Dark Lord of Corruption (6 days later)
It's not just you. Looks like the whole freenode IRC is down for some reason. What exquisitely annoying timing.
Alright, time to find a newer alternative. Let's try this hipchat app google tells me is pretty good. Looks like the sign-up is hassle-free (just choosing a nick and entering an email) and I've already created the channel for us. Web 2.0 for the win, I guess. /u/eaglejarl, I invite you to try and connect as well just to see if everything works.
EDIT: I may have to invite you specifically, so send me a message with your chosen email here on reddit once you've signed up.
u/AugSphere [+1] Dark Lord of Corruption (4 days later)
Well, if Hiruzen can do it then in theory anyone can. As I recall he didn't have anything special -- not unusually large chakra reserves or a bloodline or anything. He was just that damn good, yes?
Wiki says he was a prodigy (which is a code for "above 99% of his peers in every relevant art with zero effort" in narutoverse) and was personally trained by the second Hokage, but otherwise yes, no extra advantages.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (4 days later)
Ah. Well, yes. That would be the case, then.
u/AugSphere [+2] Dark Lord of Corruption (3 days later)
Let me be a voice of dissent on this. We're targeting /r/rational audience with this, people will crave optimisation. And people know that some techniques are miles ahead of others in usefulness. We could make their sensei an asshole, who refuses to let them know the specifics of what he'll teach them, or something, but that would simply be an obstacle to be overcome on the path to power. Sooner or later people will manoeuvre the character into a position, where there is no justification to deny them full information about what they could learn other than 'DM fiat'. Just outright taking the ability of players to choose optimal path of development is huge dick move. If we're gonna restrict players that much, might as well give up on the whole quest and just write a collaboration fanfic.
That said, we probably shouldn't just allow people to freely use their meta knowledge. If they don't know about the specifics of shadow clone technique in-character, then there will be no reason for them to obsessively try to acquire the technique and we could disallow it.
In short, attempts to curb power levelling should be done via controlling the information the character has, or just by making the world hostile and not at all obliging to power-levelling. If the players have invested in-character time to look for specifics of some technique, we may as well let them have it.
u/Transfuturist [+2] Carthago delenda est. (3 days later)
He's my favorite Team Anko character
On first read I took this to mean he was a member of the team.
non-pedo
I might be making something that will disappoint you in future.
(Also, he isn't a pedo in canon. He just wants the name of Sasuke's skin lotion.)
u/omgimpwned [+3] Sunshine Regiment (a day later)
I'd honestly love to as it sounds like great fun and I have a long and treasured past with online RP communities, but as I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, my current time constraints won't really allow it. My answer would probably be very different in four to five months (I'm taking a sabbatical year or two around then if I can get away with it), but I can't right now.
The sporadic writing time I do these days generally goes towards IFF. Even that isn't much, at the time. (Yes, I still work on it. No, it's not abandoned, and it won't be. It'll just take... time. Life keeps me busy. Sorry.)
Anyways, for what my opinion is worth, I'd agree with regards to not putting it in any one author's own universe.
I'd have a similar impulse to setting it within the IFF-verse, because I know the rules there and have spent ages trying to make them consistent. It's very different from your 'verse, though, and most of the other rationalist takes on Naruto I've seen. I'd also necessarily have to divulge some pretty heavy world-building spoilers.
Regardless of whether you guys are going to go ahead with this before my own completely unreasonably long (and unreasonably uncertain) time schedule of basically half a year, then I'd suggest some proper rational and well-defined setting is found that doesn't have a cornucopia of easily exploitable powers defined as an integral part of canon (I'm looking at you, Naruto).
Perhaps a shared creation would be interesting. Even the idea of a shared Naruto-verse might have some strong merits. We've all spent a very long time thinking about how to have that make sense and not break down instantly, after all.
Just airing ideas, here.
u/Transfuturist [+1] Carthago delenda est. (2 days later)
We've all spent a very long time thinking about how to have that make sense and not break down instantly, after all.
And exactly everyone involved has come up with extremely different self-consistent systems...
u/Transfuturist [+1] Carthago delenda est. (2 days later)
Emoji refers to the images and unicode codepoints. Emoticons are the sideways text faces. Kaomoji are the Japanese-style upright symbol faces, like lenny.
No arguments on XML, though.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (2 days later)
Huh. TIL. Thank you.
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+2] Roll the Dice on Fate (6 hours later)
I'm just imagining furious arguments about creative control and such.
u/omgimpwned [+3] Sunshine Regiment (6 hours later)
If only I had the time for something like that :P
u/JackStargazer [+6] Primordial Apologist (5 hours later)
Oh, my sweet summer child, what do you know of simulation arguments?
It gets better, because we can see that he is in a simulation (story).
u/Transfuturist [+5] Carthago delenda est. (2 hours later)
If only Sakura were a yandere. Then Kishimoto could have done something actually interesting with her.
u/AugSphere [+5] Dark Lord of Corruption (2 hours later)
Well, she was clingy and persistent enough for it. If only she had a dose of quickening insanity and the ability to murder other characters to go with it. It's tough to be a proper yandere when everyone is more than capable of kicking your ass, should you go all axe-murderous on them.
u/Transfuturist [+8] Carthago delenda est. (3 hours later)
Yuno is love, Yuno is life.
u/None [+9] (4 hours later)
[removed]
u/Transfuturist [+2] Carthago delenda est. (7 hours later)
...
That was sublime.
u/None [+11] (a day later)
Ok, take this:
- Fact: Bijuu are supercomputing killing machines.
- Fact: In canon, the Sharingan can control the Bijuu.
- Fact: One of the most badass ninja in the world is asking a twelve year old for help.
- Fact: said twelve year old is the only accessible Sharingan user.
Hipothesis-1: Like in canon, the Sharingan has the possibility to control the Bijuu.
Hipothesis-2: Seeing the recurring AI theme of rational fiction, my idea is that the Sharingan has the power to forcfully update the Bijuu/AI optimization preferences.
u/Subrosian_Smithy [+9] Nudist Beach (12 hours later)
I do not view myself as evil, my dear Sasuke. It is not something people often do. I have seen the face of true evil – Akatsuki contained little else – and the crucial difference is in one's motivations. Mine have only ever been humanitarian.
Unsure if humanist or cannibal. Probably both.
u/ianstlawrence [+5] (5 hours later)
So, I don't think there is any evidence to trust Orochimaru, and this kinda holds true for any rational naruto fanfic. This does have some assumptions, mainly two:
- Orochimaru in your rational fanfic is rational himself, and is actually really good at it.
- We don't know what Orochimaru knows.
Here's the problem. The reassurances that Orochimaru in this fanfiction, and many others, boils down to: "I could use force, but I am not, therefore, believe that I am being honest." And that's fine, and that's true, but it also means nothing because, just like we are looking at this conversation from, in this fanfiction, Sasuke's view, and going, "well that seems reasonable", no one is looking at Orochimaru's view.
Here is what I assume Orochimaru is thinking, "If I can convince this kid, with only words and no hard evidence, to do what I want willingly, that's great. If he offers any resistance though, I will go with my well thought out and personally well-liked plan of brainwashing this motherfucker."
Like, to me, any evidence we assume showing that Orochimaru is being "truthful" or "nice" or "makes sense" is just as easily evidence for Orochimaru being smart and wanting to manipulate people into being willing allies, which is pretty much always better than having to spend time and resources brainwashing, forcing, or manipulating on some more obvious level.
At this point, without really knowing anything about Orochimaru (we all have a bunch of assumptions from the manga) we really KNOW nothing, nothing at all. We have no information, at all.
u/protagnostic [+6] (5 hours later)
I think there's another layer to it, which is "I have all of the information and have thought about this much more than you have, so I could almost certainly manipulate you into believing whatever I want. Therefore, you may as well just take my word for this and save yourself the wasted effort of trying to second-guess me. Either I'm lying, and you'll never figure it out, or I'm telling the truth, and you're wasting your time trying to figure it out."
u/biomatter [+3] (a day later)
Oh jeez. I love how succinctly you worded that argument. Kudos. I'm saving that for future rhetoric.
u/protagnostic [+5] (a day later)
blushes
u/protagnostic [+6] (5 hours later)
I found this very enjoyable! However, I did not quite understand the foreword - is the implication that the Eye of the Moon Plan was not revealed in the anime by that time, and therefore was not included in your planning?
u/None [+4] (5 hours later)
[removed]
u/Transfuturist [+6] Carthago delenda est. (7 hours later)
Good, because the main arc kind of sucks.
u/AugSphere [+5] Dark Lord of Corruption (2 hours later)
I wonder if this could be one big fake-out to test Sasuke's loyalty to Leaf. I wouldn't put it past Danzō or Hiruzen to make some Yamanaka mind-read blackmail material from leaf grunts and have Anko impersonate Orochimaru. In any case, all of this ought to be much easier to organise for Leaf leadership than for Oro-tan, unless he's extremely competent (in which case, why isn't he already ruling the elemental nations?).
u/None [+3] (a day later)
in which case, why isn't he already ruling the elemental nations?
Because if you give the villain the Death Star, the heroes' allies must at least be strong in the Force.
u/Jiro_T [+4] (3 hours later)
Just the fact that the deal requires betraying his country is Bayseian evidence that the deal is bad, since villains would frequently want people to betray their country and actual beneficial plans would be no more likely to contain the feature of betraying one's country than any other feature. Likewise, the fact that Orochimaru is giving him seriously incomplete information about the plan is Bayseian evidence that Orochimaru is trying to deceive him, even though it's possible that genuinely good plans cannot be revealed. Also the fact that he can't safely talk about the plan to anyone else.
Also, plans which too conveniently fit with one's predilections are Bayseian evidence for the plan being bad, for similar reasons. (See also this, where a plan that fits with one's predilections would be equivalent to a marketing world.)
And his statement that evil consists of having a bad motivation is a seriously incomplete description of evil. If your motivation is to kill all Jews, you're evil, but what if your motivation is just to help all Aryans, and killing the Jews just falls out of your plan rather than being your actual motivation? And whether something is a motivation is partly arbitrary, anyway--for instance, you could argue that in the latter example, killing Jews is in fact a motivation.
u/AugSphere [+5] Dark Lord of Corruption (4 hours later)
To be fair, all of that is pretty weak:
Just the fact that the deal requires betraying his country is Bayseian evidence that the deal is bad
Simply transferring to Orochimaru is impossible, so generally Sasuke would have to defect to get some optimal training. That is pretty much true regardless of Oro's intentions, hence weak evidence.
Likewise, the fact that Orochimaru is giving him seriously incomplete information about the plan is Bayseian evidence that Orochimaru is trying to deceive him. Also the fact that he can't safely talk about the plan to anyone else.
That's a bit more concerning, but what could he actually tell him? The fact that his eyes could be used to control the bijū. But he could have just as well avoided telling him because he doesn't want Sasuke to give himself away and is otherwise acting in good faith. Not getting Sasuke put under guard would be a goal regardless. Again weak.
u/Jiro_T [+3] (4 hours later)
That's a bit more concerning, but what could he actually tell him?
It may be simultaneously true that 1) what Orochimaru told him is evidence for the deal being bad, and 2) the deal is actually good and Orochimaru couldn't have told him anything better.
Then Orochimaru would simply have gotten very unlucky--by pure chance this good deal looks very much like a bad one from the outside. And it would still be logical for Sasuke to treat it as a bad deal; Sasuke would just be unlucky in that he is turning down a good deal that has a lot of evidence for it being bad.
u/AugSphere [+5] Dark Lord of Corruption (4 hours later)
It may be simultaneously true that 1) what Orochimaru told him is evidence for the deal being bad, and 2) the deal is actually good and Orochimaru couldn't have told him anything better.
We're probably just misunderstanding each other, but Bayessian evidence exists when there is a difference in some indicator depending on some fact. In other words, if Orochimaru couldn't have done anything differently, even if he was being honest, then what he did constitutes no evidence towards his dishonesty.
Then Orochimaru would simply have gotten very unlucky--by pure chance this good deal looks very much like a bad one from the outside. And it would still be logical for Sasuke to treat it as a bad deal; Sasuke would just be unlucky in that he is turning down a good deal that has a lot of evidence for it being bad.
That's the fate of all non-omniscient beings. It's on Orochimaru to present enough guarantees of trustworthiness that the prior suspicion is overcome. I would like Sasuke to take the deal, because I predict I'll enjoy that development more that the alternatives. But I'm not sure I'd take it, if I were Sasuke (but then, I'm not a revenge-obsessed idiot, so what would I know?).
u/Jiro_T [+6] (5 hours later)
if Orochimaru couldn't have done anything differently, even if he was being honest, then what he did constitutes no evidence towards his dishonesty.
Sasuke might not necessarily be aware that Orochimaru couldn't have done anything differently. Based on Sasuke's limited knowledge, the fact that the deal has many features common to scams is Bayseian evidence that it is a scam, even if it would not be such evidence if Sasuke had full knowledge.
u/AugSphere [+3] Dark Lord of Corruption (5 hours later)
Ah, finally got ya. Yes, from his point of view the deal doesn't look so hot, I agree. But then, his alternative of staying in Konoha isn't that great either. The only thing he has is Naruto going "it's gonna be good, trust me". So far the village didn't do much to help with the revenge thing.