Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

Discussion in 'Quests' started by eaglejarl, Dec 10, 2015.

  1. Threadmark: Chapter 0: Out of the Mist
    eaglejarl

    eaglejarl

    Location:
    USA

    Read the post below this one as well!​



    The Adventure Begins, by @Velorien


    Three weeks ago, you became a traitor.

    The summons had come out of nowhere. After the series of unfortunate incidents that had you branded "disrespectful of authority", you'd been stuck with one D-rank mission after another, using your finely-honed skills to chop onions and stack boxes while your fellow genin battled brigands and infiltrated criminal associations. So when it seemed like the Powers That Be had finally forgiven you, and wanted you to be part of something important again, you jumped at the chance.

    It was nothing like the missions you were used to. You were one of many genin on the mission, led by several chūnin, and even multiple jōnin. A powerful battle unit that would march into contested territory and end the region’s biggest conflict once and for all. A dream come true for a genin afraid that their career was over before it had even begun.

    But after a week's travel came the night when things went wrong. Raised voices coming from the commander's tent. The ring of steel on steel. Then, before any of you could get close, a brilliant flash of light that could only have been ninjutsu. After a second's silence, Shikigami-sensei emerged from the tent, covered in blood. The commander did not.

    With the entire camp watching, it was too late for damage control, so Shikigami-sensei told you all the truth, and showed you the commander's documents. You discovered that you weren't a heroic strike force. You were a collection of problem ninja - some with histories of insubordination, others whose loyalty had come under question or who had shown excessive ambition... The details didn't matter. What mattered was that you were being led into a battle you couldn't win, your purpose to soften up the enemy before the real squads arrived and completed the mission. Your death sentences were already signed.

    So all of you ran. It was a painful decision. It meant abandoning your friends and family. It meant giving up on countless hopes, ambitions and plans. But your village wanted you dead, and your other choices were to continue with the suicide mission, or to go back and face court martial for abandoning it.

    Now you're a missing-nin. After three weeks on the run, you were able to find a safe place to make a longer-term base, with concealment on the level of a small ninja village. Your perimeter is secure for now, your supplies are adequate, and between your eighteen genin, your six chūnin and your three jōnin, you have a good range of skills and expertise. But your names are in the Bingo Book, and if your village considered you dangerous before, it will stop at nothing to find and destroy you now.

    The clock is ticking. What path will you choose in order to survive?





    Welcome to Marked For Death, an AU Naruto-verse quest by and for the rational fiction crowd. You play as a genin struggling to survive among a group of rogue ninja. The world is against you, hunter-nin are everywhere, and you forgot to bring your teddy bear, dammit.

    For those who, like me, haven't played quests before, here's the deal: everyone controls a single character and you vote on what the character does.

    If you want to play, here's what you need to do:


    • Read the system rules that we made up for this quest.
    • IMPORTANT: Read the voting rules at the bottom of this post!
    • Read the in-universe character knowledge doc so you know what's going on, since this is an AU
    • Vote for the PC character's stats.
    • Vote for which hidden village the PC comes from.
    • Vote for what kind of shelter you guys have found. Cave? Clearing in the woods? Tent city with a wooden palisade? etc.
    Voting closes Saturday, December 12, at 9am Pacific time.

    Staff for this quest are:

    Author: Your humble poster, EagleJarl. I'll be posting every Sunday.
    Author: Velorien. He'll be posting every Thursday.
    Grand High Poobah of Game Mechanics: AugSphere. If you have questions about the game rules, bug him.
    Capable Worldbuilder and General Roustabout: Jackercracks.

    Voting:

    This quest uses approval voting, meaning that you can vote for as many plans as you like; this prevents splitting the vote.
    For example:

    [x] Build a fire
    [x] Build a shelter

    You have now voted for two ways to stay warm. If later on you say...

    [-] Build a shelter
    [x] Climb inside the tauntaun

    ...then you have canceled your vote for shelter-building in favor of getting into your dead mount.

    Please do not retcon your vote. If you change your mind about something, issue a cancel and a new vote. Don't go back and change an earlier post.
     
    Last edited: Mar 9, 2016
    • Like Like x 95
    • Hugs Hugs x 2
    • Informative Informative x 2
  2. Threadmark: Info Post
    eaglejarl

    eaglejarl

    Location:
    USA
    The Story-Only thread: Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest (STORY ONLY)

    There's also a player-created wiki.

    First of all, MfD is an AU, with some significant changes from canon. Therefore, before you jump into the discussion / start voting, PLEASE do the following three things:
    • Read the quest system rules that we made up for this quest.
    • Read how the voting system works. The information is at the bottom of post #1, which is immediately above this one. IT IS NOT THE SAME AS THE REGULAR SV VOTE SYSTEM. It is important that you read this.
    • Do you want some exposition? Well, fortunately for you, there is some. And it contains information about your character's in-universe knowledge of the world. (Note that this means it may not all be correct.)

    Note about voting: The information in post #1 is all that you actually need to vote, but there is a (long) post that explains the conventions the player base has come up with.

    Staff for this quest are:
    Author: Your humble poster, EagleJarl. I'll be posting every Sunday.
    Author: Velorien. He'll be posting every Thursday.
    Grand High Poobah of Game Mechanics: AugSphere. If you have questions about the game rules, bug him.
    Capable Worldbuilder and General Roustabout: Jackercracks.

    Various important posts:
    Character sheets and other off-site documents:
    Lifting this from @Jackercracks post a few entries down:

    "Be careful relying on OOC knowledge, because we've done a lot of backstory work on this and the specific event you're relying on might never have happened. We've generally kept the broad strokes the same, but be warned that it's AU from this point onwards. We have also tried to make the high level players more competent in their planning."
     
    Last edited: Aug 23, 2016
    • Like Like x 17
    • Informative Informative x 3
  3. Rooster

    Rooster

    Location:
    Poland
    Can I sign up?

    I don't have the time to look through everything yet since I need to get to work, but later I definitely will.
     
    Last edited: Dec 10, 2015
    • Like Like x 1
  4. Manfred

    Manfred

    Location:
    Earth
    I'm sort of confused about the rules with chakra attributes. Is the idea that we buy some water chakra points, and then we have 1337 water ninjutsu 5|<111Z, and so when we say "I want to make a dragon out of water and ride on its back," you're like "okay, that sounds like a water ninjutsu task with difficulty 5, I'll roll one thousand three hundred and thirty seven dice from you, and 5 opposition dice, and the difference between these two rolls will indicate how good your water dragon is." And is our water chakra skill the only thing that contributes, or do we get a bonus if we have good chakra control?

    Similarly, is there any bonus to kicking and punching people if we're really strong, or is that screened off by our taijutsu number?

    Or do chakra attributes function like the base stats? So if we wanted to ride around on a big water dragon, you'd be like "That sounds like an application of the Control Water technique. Since you currently have hella water attributes, your maximum possible Control Water skill is very high, but as you have yet to actually put any skill points into Control Water, you cannot make a sweet water dragon today."
     
    • Like Like x 6
  5. Jackercracks

    Jackercracks In a British accent

    Location:
    England
    Here's some voting options to get you all started. And sure thing @Rooster you're all welcome, just toss in a vote and you're part of the quest.

    Be careful relying on OOC knowledge, because we've done a lot of backstory work on this and the specific event you're relying on might never have happened. We've generally kept the broad strokes the same, but be warned that it's AU from this point onwards. We have also tried to make the high level players more competent in their planning.

    Also, be warned that the world of Naruto is a death world, and we intend to treat it as such. Your creativity and clever thinking may just make the difference.

    What type of Ninja are you? We'll fill in the stats for generic types but if you want something specific you'll have to write in.
    [ ] Heavy Taijutsu, all close range combat all the time.
    [ ] Weapon Specialist, you fill people with metal until they stop moving.
    [ ] Ninjutsu Specialist, you're throwing fire from behind the meatshields. Your elemental affinity is:
    -[ ] Fire
    -[ ] Earth
    -[ ] Wind
    -[ ] Water
    -[ ] Lightning
    [ ] Write in

    What Hidden Village are you from? This will decide which major faction will attempt to hunt you down like dishonourable dogs, as well as influencing how certain other villages will see you. Choosing write in is subject to GM approval. For example, Sound Village doesn't waste good experimental subjects on suicide missions when they could be dissected.
    [ ] Rock
    [ ] Mist
    [ ] Cloud
    [ ] Write in

    Whose territory are you hiding out in? You might have to abandon it if you are discovered, but this will affect who discovers you and how long it takes them.
    [ ] Leaf
    [ ] Rock
    [ ] Mist
    [ ] Cloud
    [ ] Hot Springs
    [ ] Waterfall
    [ ] Grass
    [ ] Write in

    You've made a refuge in the wilderness, what is it like?
    [ ] Clearing in the woods
    [ ] A cave
    [ ] Tents with a rough palisade
    [ ] Write in
     
    Last edited: Dec 10, 2015
    • Like Like x 8
  6. AugSphere

    AugSphere

    Location:
    This. Chakra attributes limit the maximum amount of skill points that can be put into elemental techniques.

    Attributes determine how good the character could be. Skills tell us how good the character is. This is true for all attributes.
     
    Last edited: Dec 10, 2015
    • Like Like x 4
    • Informative Informative x 2
    • Hugs Hugs x 1
  7. Icehawk78

    Icehawk78

    Location:
    USA
    I'm not certain about specifics, but general ideas/recommendations:

    Bloodlines have always been a defining characteristic of the Narutoverse. Therefore, we should aim for at least one, if not possibly two of those. Possibles ideas:

    • Targeted induced amnesia (ie you forget who I am) - Genjutsu?
    • The ability to not breathe
    • Chakra-vision, similar to Byakugen (balance option: you are also blind and deaf)
    • Neurotic - as a result of hearing many different and conflicting voices in your head, you are naturally proficient at breaking Genjutsu and resisting any other forms of compulsion
     
    • Like Like x 5
    • Funny Funny x 1
  8. Zen

    Zen THE GREAT ENEMY, THE BLACK FOE

    Location:
    Ye Olde England
    [X] Ninjutsu Specialist, you're throwing fire from behind the meatshields. Your elemental affinity is:
    -[X] Wind
    [X] Cloud
    [X] Waterfall
    [X] Clearing in the woods

    Wind is best because wherever we go, it'll be there and easy to use/manipulate. ... Unless we attempt to live underwater or in the vacuum of space.
     
    • Like Like x 5
  9. globalwarmth

    globalwarmth

    Location:
    mexico
    [x]plan global
    [x] She is a Genjutsu (illusions) specialist with an affinity to use kunai and poisons. Knows how to make storage scrolls.
    fleeing from
    [x] Mist
    in the coast of land of fire patrolled by the
    [x] Leaf
    our camp consists of
    [x] Tents with a rough palisade and sentries on the trees. A concealing mist jutsu is constantly being refreshed by chunin to help camouflage it.
     
    Last edited: Dec 10, 2015
    • Like Like x 1
    • Informative Informative x 1
  10. transfuturist

    transfuturist

    Location:
    USA
    Combat:
    [X] Taijutsu, with close-range kunai. Heavy substitution use (flicker would be nicer) (can you substitute with kunai?) for unpredictability and speed. Stealth and Awareness.
    (Emphasized Attributes: Dexterity, Strength, Stamina, Control, Wits, Capacity, Resolve)
    (Emphasized Skills: Taijutsu, Weapons (if hand-to-hand weapon use is included in the skill, and not just throwing weapons), Awareness, Stealth, Substitution)
    (Other Skills: Chakra Adhesion, Dispelling, Resisting Intimidation, Resisting Diplomacy, Tactical Movement)

    From:
    [X] Rock
    [X] primary Earth affinity

    Hiding out in:
    [X] The Land of Iron, southern area, near Waterfall (assuming canon map)

    in a:
    [X] Cave

    Gender:
    [X] Female

    Name: Charles Barkley
     
    Last edited: Dec 10, 2015
    • Like Like x 2
  11. Namefrog

    Namefrog

    Location:
    nowhere
    [X] Ninjutsu Specialist, you're throwing fire from behind the meatshields. Your elemental affinity is:
    -[X] Wind
    [X] Cloud
    [X] Leaf
    [X] A cave
     
    • Like Like x 1
  12. [X] Heavy Taijutsu, all close range combat all the time.
    [X] Rock
    [X] Mist
    [X] A cave
     
    • Like Like x 1
  13. Combat:
    [] Taijutsu, with close-range kunai. Heavy substitution use (flicker would be nicer) (can you substitute with kunai?) for unpredictability and speed. Stealth and Awareness.
    (Emphasized Attributes: Dexterity, Strength, Stamina, Control, Wits, Capacity, Resolve)
    (Emphasized Skills: Taijutsu, Weapons (if hand-to-hand weapon use is included in the skill, and not just throwing weapons), Awareness, Stealth, Substitution)
    (Other Skills: Chakra Adhesion, Dispelling, Resisting Intimidation, Resisting Diplomacy, Tactical Movement)

    From:
    [] Rock
    [] primary Earth affinity

    Hiding out in:
    [] The Land of Iron, southern area, near Waterfall (assuming canon map)

    in a:
    [] Cave

    Edit: Potential Vote Change
     
    Last edited: Dec 10, 2015
    • Like Like x 1
  14. Velorien

    Velorien

    Location:
    UK
    You can't have two bloodlines, for three reasons.
    • Nobody that valuable would ever be sent on a suicide mission.
    • You'd be severely crippled, with only 17% of your attribute points left to spend on actual attributes.
    • The rules say so.
    Way too powerful. You'd be an unstoppable infiltrator/saboteur. Your village might keep you permanently out on missions if they didn't trust you, but they wouldn't deliberately sacrifice such a valuable asset.

    Perfect. Unique, useful, but ultimately no more valuable to the village than a well-developed skill.

    Either incredibly OP/valuable or utterly crippling. Also probably not fun to play in a written format.

    A ninja with inner voices intense enough to break through genjutsu is going to have serious concentration problems and probably won't live long. If you're fine with that, you can have it. (though it's pretty weird for neurosis to be a Bloodline Limit)
     
    • Like Like x 5
    • Informative Informative x 1
  15. Jackercracks

    Jackercracks In a British accent

    Location:
    England
    Velorian already covered it but just to expand on Neurotic, if you want to spend 30 points to become insane then you are allowed to do that, but you're going to spend an awful lot of time talking to people who aren't there when you should be sneaking and dodging attacks that never existed. It would be a short life.
     
    Last edited: Dec 10, 2015
    • Funny Funny x 2
    • Like Like x 1
  16. Bloodlines potentially useful for Taijutsu:

    Steel Skeleton: You might have a distant Kaguya ancestor. A bastardized, low level variant of the Shikotsumyako that only allows you to harden your bones without manipulating them whatsoever. <- Not very useful for the village by itself, combat boost for "hard" style taijutsu, potentially thin bloodrelation to one of the bullshit divine clans. And hey, never having to deal with broken bones!

    Poison Claw: Your clan has somehow gotten glands capable of producing a variety of poisons attached to their fingertips, just beneath their sharpened fingernails. <- Cheap access to poison, but nothing a dedicated specialist can't do at least as well.

    Mindcloud Grasp: Bad Touch effect that makes people more and more dizzy the longer you hold skin contact, eventually knocking them out. <- Ninja can usually do that faster with other measures, but some synergy with a grappling focused style, might have growth potential with more chakra control?
     
    Last edited: Dec 10, 2015
    • Like Like x 5
  17. I think instead of just voting for fun, we should look for interesting synergies to build characters around.

    Tanjetsu plus medical plus electrical and we can use medical info to deliver targeted and efficient shocks in combat to critical locations.

    Ranged weapons plus air is good targetting and defense, and a good reason to buy seals and eventually explosive tags.

    Weapons plus lightning and we can do electrified ninja wirre.

    Can we do cool things with weapons and earth?

    In general, what is something that looks awkward to start and has growth potential? I will note that getting all stats to 2 eats half the points. If we want to pull off clever tricks, I expect we will want unusually high int too.
     
    • Like Like x 3
  18. Icehawk78

    Icehawk78

    Location:
    USA
    Would this be the case if it's a Genjutsu-based ability (ie Dispellable), with restrictions such as one target at a time, and only lasts as long as you are focusing on them/the effect?

    (That's fine if so, just verifying that what o was thinking of made sense)

    The concept I was going for was the posters' votes here, even the non-winning ones, would be possibly represented and influencing factors, such as if one poster had a crackpot idea that she saw a weird pattern that actually matched what was happening, then the character would think/hear it.

    As you said, not necessarily great, but it seemed thematic.
     
    • Like Like x 2
    • Insightful Insightful x 1
  19. Earth seems to be a shoe in for Taijutsu. Earth armor, using the Underground Projection jutsu to close to melee range, control footwork by controlling the makeup of the battleground. That sort of stuff.
     
    Last edited: Dec 10, 2015
    • Like Like x 2
  20. Jackercracks

    Jackercracks In a British accent

    Location:
    England
    Steel Skeleton, Poison Claw and Mindcloud Grasp all seem reasonable, though Velorian or Eagle might countermand that later.
    Just an ominous hint right here: we have made plans for what to do if your character dies, and they don't include ending the quest. So try to choose smartly the first time around.
     
    • Informative Informative x 3
  21. Suggestion: Some kind of atypical vision, like tetrachromacy or protanopia. Genjutsu will be easy to spot because they will immediately make all the colours look like how a normal person would see them. Red/green colourblindness and green-focussed tetrachromacy would also allow us to instantly see through green camoflauge.
     
    • Insightful Insightful x 3
    • Like Like x 2
  22. Manfred

    Manfred

    Location:
    Earth
    Since it looks like there's plenty of GM discretion to keep us from finding anything too overpowered to do, we should do whatever's fun. And fun, to me, means being a medieval japanese wizard. The rest of the post will be with this in mind, but it's also totally okay if we build a fighter or a all-rounder ninja instead.

    I'm not sold on wind. Sure, it's omnipresent, but it's not like lightning users can't make lightning, or fire users make fire. I want an element with lots of creative wizarding possiblities. One other option is to eschew elemental techniques and use vanilla yin/yang techniques like most ninja (shadow manipulation, becoming bigger/stronger, turning into a dog, swapping minds with other people, animating objects, basically all of Genjutsu, the Rasengan, etc). In fact, the possibilities there are so diverse that I don't think it's worthwhile to invest deeply into the elements.

    Thinking about elements in terms of what they can do that vanilla ninjutsu can't:
    Earth: manipulation of earth, both large scale and for personal offense/defense. Sensing things through the earth?
    Water: like Earth, but wetter. Better when fighting on a lake, worse when fighting on land.
    Fire: burning things, potentially many things at once. Fire immunity?
    Air: sound manipulation, guiding projectiles, cutting things slightly better. Flying?
    Lightning: zapping things, getting in decisive hits even through defenses.

    If we're doing a wizard, our decisive offensive attacks should be spells (compared to speccing Earth Armor and Earth Manipulation and then just punching people). If these spells are not neutral, like Shadow Imitation or Rasengan, then they need to be elemental. So maybe Lightning? Or maybe Earth supporting Genjutsu?
     
    Last edited: Dec 10, 2015
    • Insightful Insightful x 4
    • Like Like x 3
    • Funny Funny x 1
  23. xeliffo

    xeliffo

    Location:
    italy
    So little mechanics info... Are the basic three as powerful as in lighting up the dark or maybe we need high level in their individual skills?
    I would prefer something with area of effect attacks since most defense in naruto is basically dodging...
    And a focus on dodging for the same reason
    The choice of village and location are sorta random as we cannot use OOC knowledge
    A cave leaves no options for a secondary exit in case of attack (but of course it depends on the cave), and a palisade is not going to stop enemy ninja. I would prefer not to leave any sort of permanent trace of our passage, just in case of ninjas.
     
    • Like Like x 1
  24. Okay, i have two general concepts i'd like to run by the thread:

    Steel Skeleton plus heavy Taijutsu focus with an Earth affinity. Focus first on physical abilities, mental and chakra secondary, Social dumpstat. Focus on getting that Earth Armor Jutsu up. Straightforward tank, hopefully able to survive what the world can throw at him, with the ability to run away underground added to our repertoire shortly.

    That Bloodline that keeps people from breathing as a Ninjutsu specialist with an Earth focus. Codename: Mole. Sitting underground all day everyday because breathing is for loosers. Needs to figure out how to sense things from beneath the earth, but after that he should be golden. Ninjas can't catch me because i am underground.
     
    Last edited: Dec 10, 2015
    • Like Like x 3
  25. There's a genjutsu that puts people to sleep: Temple of Nirvana Technique

    Apparently easy to resist (although that might just be because canon genjutsu are useless unless you have a sharingan), but might be useful against hordes of low level enemies. Could also serve as a very good opening move when ambushing enemy ninja.

    We should look into similar insta-win techniques for other fighting styles if we don't plan to use genjutsu.
     
    • Like Like x 2
Hoyr Internal Ad System Quest