[Characters] Hatake Akane (Genin)

[ArcZero]

Character Image from Midjourney Name: Hatake Akane <== Character Sheet Clan: Hatake (her father, mother is from the Nara clan) Age: 11 Ambition: To find her mother and show that she isn't a traitor to the Nara clan and Konoha as a whole. Drive: Prove worthy of her dual heritage. She's considered smart even for a Nara member a couple years her senior, but she's terrible at planning. And having the grace befitting a Hatake? A pipe dream! So she's told on the one hand how gifted she is and on the other she gets sidelong glances "because of high expectations." Goals: - Gather information on her mother's location. - Get high marks in her initial team training to earn a D-rank mission. - Get clothes that won't fry the next time she shocks herself. - Use the Shadow Possession Jutsu on someone in the field. - Make a friend who isn't from the Akimichi or Yamanaka clans! Fears: - Akane is clumsy and that's inexcusable for one of the Hatake clan! She worries about people noticing her two left feet. - Learning that the rumors are true and her mother has joined the enemy side in the war. - Getting exiled along with her mother and losing access to the Nara archives or learning any more shadow techniques. - Having to practice Taijutsu. Background: Genius (Latent Bloodline Feat for access to Nara Clan Shadow Jutsus) Class: Scout-Nin (Switched away from Ninjutsu Specialist) Token Intended Role: Ranged Control Physical Description: Both her parents are lean of build, so it's no surprise to see Akane be a small fry for her age. Her shock of off-black hair is in stark contrast to her main clan affiliation and is all people talk about when it comes to her family. Despite being self-conscious, she wears her mother's hair color with pride. Both parents' hair types contribute to how much her hair juts out and gets split ends. She often spends up to an hour trying to wrestle her hair into a respectable shape. She likes decorating it with a ribbon or bow to distract from the hot mess she considers it to be. Her lilac-colored eyes are shared with her father and brother, just a few shades darker than their almost perfectly white hair. She has short fingers, a round face and piercing eyes usually accompanied by a pout or glower. The main times she will be caught smiling is when hanging out with Toki, her brother or when she is confident about acing a test. Akane takes pride in wearing combat-ready attire like her male family members, said to increase their speed and allow better conduction of Lightning Chakra. If only it worked for her. Her shoulders are generally exposed between her short, wide-collared robe and long fingerless gloves. Like most Konoha ninja, her toes are bared in the traditional black footwear that stop just above her knees. Personality: Despite her intellect, her proclivity to act impulsively makes her an odd fit with the Nara clan's low energy deliberateness. On the other end, her struggle with Lightning Release and her lack of agility marks her as a dubious candidate for the next generation of the Hatake clan. She puts on a tough exterior to cover up how clumsy and self-conscious she really is! Her quick thinking makes it easy to realize she's done something wrong, but often only after she's already halfway through the mistake. Luckily she has a great work ethic and talent with all the basic aspects of chakra and ninja training that let her blaze through her genin exams. She's only just turned 11, so she's younger than most of her classmates. There is an Uchiha or two and an Uzumaki younger than her and of course no one can keep up with them. The Hyuga clan is the third one that competes the hardest for child prodigies, but their genin are a little older this year. She is quick to anger and frustration, usually thrown off any plan she might try to develop. But she often keeps this frustration to herself, letting it bubble under the surface and only letting friends her here real thoughts. At the same time, she likes blending into the background because when she tries to stand out, things always go wrong. On top of that, the thing she's best at, the Shadow Possession Jutsu, is a big deal. Their elders still don't want her showing off that a half Nara can do it. "Unprecedented. Gifted. A strategic liability," she's overheard her maternal grandfather whispering to her father. Akane doesn't like to plan nearly as much as a Nara should. She takes after her father in this regard. She pursues the goals she can see right in front of her and tries not to worry (unsuccessfully) about the rest. There has been a shift in the Hatake clan of late. A minor family, they have made a big push to contribute to the war effort, driving their children to train as hard as possible. Among barely two dozen members, most develop a Lightning Release very early and so it's become expected to focus on it to the exclusion of everything else. That's a problem for Akane who is fascinated with her mother's techniques. And what could be more conflicting? The calm and collected approach of a shadow controller and the blitzing boldness of a lightning user. How did her parents ever get along? She has fond memories of them sitting calmly at home to then get very animated at the festivals of Konoha, growing competitive with fair games and the like. The last thing Akane wants to do is cut her hair. Her mother's last words to her before disappearing were, "Akane your hair looks so beautiful pinned up like that!" So naturally she cries every time her father says she needs to cut it or wear it differently. Roleplay Sample The two children of Hatake Boromu stand on a second floor rooftop in Konohagakure on a sleepy afternoon. The sky is heavy with dark clouds but the rain hasn't started yet. A perfect day to practice Lightning release with all this ambient static. Unfortunately the younger sibling has given up before they've even started. Her fingers still hurt from the previous day. She whines, "Why do I have to practice this nature stuff already? My classmates all have the week off! You know, a vacation?! No one else will do this for years... other than those dumb, genius Uchiha!" Indeed, there are a pair of Uchiha on a rooftop to the South clearly within their compound. A parent and child practicing Fire release in much the same way. Shinji snaps his head to his sister with a dry but clear tone that quickly softens, Don't dishonor our allies like that. We're studying it because... it's the pride of our family." He keeps a few parts of his motives for pushing his younger sister to himself and says simply, "Every Hatake can do it." With resignation, she retorts, "Well maybe I'm not a good Hatake then. You're the older one and do so much better with this. Dad and the others like you way more." Shinji grabs her and gives her a hug. "It's not like that and never will be if I can help it!" He charges a little static on his fingertip that zaps her nose in a way that buzzes and tickles. She kicks her legs and yells between giggles, "Stop that!" They play fight for a moment before she wriggles and gets free of the dastardly brother. Her fingers feel scorched, numb and tingly from trying so hard to get Lightning chakra to circulate. She shakes her hand hard and tries to focus on channeling a bit at Shinji from 12 feet away. After some fierce resistance, it starts to build up - fast. Shinji raises an arm in front of his face and admoninishes with genuine concern, "Easy. Eeeeasy! You're building too much nature and not keeping it balanced!" Her synapses light up with pain and her vision starts to swim like she'd hit her head. Frantically, she pushes it away, shouting, "Eat this!" The bolt zags listlessly towards the Anbu team member. He crouches, reflexively bracing as if it's a real threat. He places his left arm straight upwards, ready to redirect the lightning; however, it chaotically diverts to a nearby lampost harmlessly at the last second. Akane's face flips from gritted glee to frustration in mere moments as she kicks at the ground and stubs her toe. She winces and falls in a heap holding her foot. In a weird tone triumphant with her failure, she says to Shinji, "See? I can't. Do it!" The more accomplished 16-year-old just chuckles at his naive baby sister, "That is hilarious, sis. I couldn't manage a blast that size until I was 13." He breathes a bemused sigh and mutters under his breath while getting to his feet, "Granted mine had speed behind it and could actually harm a fly... Okay no more chakra today. The basic steps of molding. One more time from the top then we eat!" The siblings get back to it, smiling. Her brother knows just how to motivate her once she's too tired to disagree. Significant NPCs: Hyuga Toki - Akane is childhood friends with a member of Hyuga's main house. Toki is a delight. She almost never talks but her body language is hilarious. She's very kind and confident in her physical prowess as a traditional dancer and with what she's learned of the gentle fist. The two always got into entirely appropriate trouble like staying up too late playing shogi or coming back with too many items from the family shopping list! Now that they are genin, there will doubtless be talk that a clumsy girl with a traitorous mother has no business being so close to an inheritor of the Hyuga legacy. Akimichi Joran - The poster child for an offspring of the Akimichi clan: obnoxious, tough, rowdy. His main problem is he's always getting crap about not putting on enough calories from his family and others. "Aren't you kind of skinny to be an Akimichi?" "You'd better beef up if you want to use Human Boulder for more than two seconds! So of course he takes it out on Akane. All the more so since he's convinced Akane thinks she's too good to be a part of the usual Ino-Shika-Cho team. He's the bane of her existence most days. Very high Taijutsu marks and decent ninjutsu for a meathead, he burns out a little quickly in the endurance department.

[ArcZero]

Equipment Self     Item Bulk Value Katana 2 40 Ryo Combat Jacket 6 200 Ryo Shinobi Waist Bag +5 Bulk 0 75 Ryo Leg Pouch +2 Bulk 0 - Ration Case 0 5 Ryo Commoner's Clothes 0 - Empty Book   - Hand-me-down Bingo Book   - Blank Jutsu Scroll   - Writing Utensils   - Compass   - Thermos   - Max Bulk 8/10   Containers Shinobi Waist Bag     Item Bulk Value Armorsmith Kit (5 ch) 2 200 Ryo Weaponsmith Kit (5 ch) 2 200 Ryo Max Bulk 4/5   Shinobi Leg Pouch     Item Bulk Value Kunai Stack 1 10 Ryo Paper Bomb 1 25 Ryo Max Bulk 2/2   Ration Case     Item Bulk Value Rations (7) 7 35 Ryo Max Bulk 7/7   Home (My room in Hatake Boromu's home)     Item Bulk Value Mount     Item Bulk Value Valuable   Type Amount Ryo 20 Exquisite Painting of Wodine (5000 Ryo) 0 Note Captain's Pack (Value 400 Ryo) contains one Toolkit (Weaponsmith), Commoner's clothes, an empty book, writing utensils, 7 days of field rations, a compass, shinobi leg pouch and a thermos.

[wodine]

My only question with your sheet is your inventory, where did you get the combat jacket from?

Never mind I was looking at the wrong class.

[wodine]

You can't think of any trio of important women in Konoha's past or present.

[wodine]

Water walking comes to mind, but you suspect that the constant moving sand will make it hard, even if water walking worked.

Also if anyone was strong enough and good enough at CHAKRA LEAPING they might be able to make the jump in one.

[ArcZero]

Yes chakra leaping sounds perfect but I didn't see anything about that when I read the book.

[wodine]

Oh it's a jutsu.

It should be in the the jutsu compendium. It's basically the jump spell.

[ArcZero]

Oh I did see that actually. Doubling a few feet isn't super impressive though with her 10 strength

Also, I'm very interested in learning the Debilitating Needles jutsu once she gets a bit more training and fighting kind of like Haku. Akane has the throwing fighting style after all. Only issue is that senbon don't have finesse for some reason and thus can only be thrown strength-based, which I find really bizarre. I can make do with kunai, but would you be opposed to me using senbon with finesse?

They also lack the light property, but I suppose that's because you have to be really careful not to hurt yourself with them. But that sounds even more like a finesse weapon!

[wodine]

If a weapon has the thrown property, you can throw the weapon to make a ranged attack using your Strength instead of Dexterity for Attack and Damage rolls.

[ArcZero]

Originally Posted by wodine

If a weapon has the thrown property, you can throw the weapon to make a ranged attack using your Strength instead of Dexterity for Attack and Damage rolls.

Right! And if a weapon has both thrown and finesse, you can make weapon attacks (ranged or melee) with strength or dex. Just to be clear, you'd rather I don't use senbon with finesse? It has identical properties to kunai other than finesse (and light).

[wodine]

Perhaps I misunderstood, you want to stab someone with the senbon instead of using it as a ranged attack? I imagine they aren't finesse weapons for melee because they don't have any handles, it'd be like punching someone with a sewing needle, its going to go back into your own hand too.

[ArcZero]

Hmm yeah a bit of confusion here. I'm talking about using senbon as ranged weapons like kunai. Kunai have finesse but senbon don't, so I just thought it was odd, since I agree you can't put a ton of force behind senbon or they stab you back. They inherently seem like finesse (dex) weapons.

So I was asking if you're okay with homebrewing that senbon would have finesse since using them with strength makes little sense. Finesse technically works for melee or ranged but my desire would be to mostly throw them. You're saying you don't see them as melee weapons at all? I agree overall, they would be very hard to hold as a weapon, so that points to me that they should be dex based since it's about accuracy, not pushing them in with all your strength.

[ArcZero]

Hey I'm having a great time with the game other than Daichi obviously putting us through the ringer lol. Looking forward to where things go from here!

I want to say, I'm very used to art classes and constructive criticism and I've been a DM for almost 15 years, myself, so I don't mean anything bad with this. It could be a big area for growth! The main thing that became apparent to me over this mission is that you have a rather abrupt manner of stopping posts right when I feel like I want to hear what the NPCs do or say next, then my next post winds up largely finding a way to reiterate my desire to hear what I wanted to hear from them in the previous post. Especially in a once-a-week game, this can throw off the pace. These three posts are where I felt this most poignantly, but I felt the clipping of posts on many of the interactions with the sand pillar and Ishi as well.
https://www.rpgcrossing.com/showthre...94#post9700894
https://www.rpgcrossing.com/showthre...67#post9702667
https://www.rpgcrossing.com/showthre...90#post9710390

My preference is for slightly longer DM posts and more juicy details, but obviously that takes energy and time from you, so unless the others feel the same way I don't want to twist your arm . So as much as longer posts might alleviate this, it's also possibly a player agency thing.

I can see the benefit in writing this way in dangerous or stealth situations, since it gives us absolute control before deciding to talk to someone, trigger a trap, enter a maze, etc. Like how your post ended with us outside the perfume shop just looking in and the following one was us inside but not talking to anyone or getting the introduction over with, or approaching the sand pillar or now talking to Game-chan on the rock with us having little idea what she's doing on there, her mood, etc.

So if we were in disguises and didn't want to blow our cover or had a big lie we were keeping secret, letting us decide how to engage would be a key tool. But when the stakes are low and we want to gain intel, waiting to get basic details and introductions in a following post can be frustrating. Specifically for this last post, I think it would've been handy if you were going to end it before we introduce ourselves to give us a little more on what she's doing. Should we be apprehensive? Do we need to search for traps? I think more calls to action on rolls could be helpful, like "if we want to jump across the gap, it's this distance and will take an athletics (specific DC optional)." Obviously that's on our mind, but with the way the scene's set up, I see it being a few posts until we're actually rolling any of that.

Again, your current approach has the strength of putting the focus on our creativity and not pidgeonholing us into one solution. I think it can be selectively applied though with some interactions being made more obvious and some parts laid out in detail, like if we enter an evil lair and look for traps, that's much more productive than over analyzing the perfume shop when we could be getting on with it.

Also I think rather than seeing calls to action (on being explicit about what it will take to scale the sand pillar or jump to this rock island) as taking away choice or making the game too easy, it's just a starting point. Then we can ask more questions, look for ways to make the jump easier, etc. If your goal is to maximize player creativity, I think you can preemptively give us options to accelerate things while making it clear there are other things we can do or look for to change the situation.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[wodine]

I understand your point and I think some of the trouble is mine because I'm used to 1) larger parties, my IRL game has six players and my other major game on site, The Founding, has seven. So there's usually a lot more actions for me to deal with and to progress, 2) I have been accused to not giving players enough choices in the past so I try not to force anything, and 3) I'm trying to let you all be a bit more investigative since this isn't a combat based mission.

I suppose I could try to advance things a little faster and be little less open ended, I just don't want to foil someone's plan by moving past something they were planning on doing because I didn't think of it - especially considering how much more powerful shinobi are than level 1 or 2 PCs in DnD.

I appreciate the feedback and will try to incorporate more into my posting in the future.

Edit: As requested I tried to add a little more guidance to my post.

[ArcZero]

Thank you, I really dig the new post! It gives us lots to go off of with Game-chan and this way we know there are some things we can do and clear events to respond to. And I can't speak for the others, but if there's something I want to do like getting ice cream, using my shadow jutsu or looking forward to a shot at summoning (totally fine with it being rare and not 100%), I'll definitely say something