Rock-Paper-Scissors Variants. What the hell was wrong with Rock-Paper-Scissors as it was?
Absolutely nothing. The real question is...what the hell is wrong with ME? Since there was already a 5-gesture variant using "Spock" and "Lizard" out there, I decided to try and come up with my own version using an unprecedented SEVEN gestures, just for (my definition of) fun. UPDATE 1/3/2005: Today I decided to keep going. These pages are living proof that you literally can find ANYTHING on the internet these days, including a freakin' NINE-GESTURE and mind-blitzkrieging ELEVEN-GESTURE variants of the now comparatively zen-like Rock-Paper-Scissors game.
Whatever joy a player might have from playing these games might be as abstract as the joy I had designing them. Incidentally, you can play any numbered variant using a triad, pentumvirate, and septumvirate (??) RPS - 7. 5/15/2003: What the heck is this, you ask?
It's the classic game, "Rock Paper, Scissors," with the completely unnecessary addition of four additional hand gestures (no, none of them is the BIRD). Just today, I happened upon another variant involving "Spock" and "Lizard" through a link on BoingBoing, one of my favorite blog sites. The really weird thing is that just a couple of days ago I was trying to figure out how to improve on the same exact game using Fire and Water gestures, etc., and now lo and behold, just a few days later, I happen upon that link! So now, inspired by this coincidence, I made RPS-7 (Rock, Paper, Scissors, with 7 gestures). Incidentally, there were 5,040 90 ways (exluding rotations and reflections) of making this diagram, with only one solution.
Here's how you say all the gestures' relationships: You see? ...and in case this isn't weird enough, try RPS-9 next... RPS - 9. RPS - 11. RPS - 15. Here is another Spirographically supra-dimensional web of hand gestures.
And this time out, I skipped RPS-13 and went straight for FIFTEEN gestures. SO by now you may notice the puzzle layout isn't changing; I'm just inserting new symbols into the already established one (allowing the existing RPS-7, 9, and 11 games to still work within RPS-15). This is because I absolutely refuse to rethink a whole new system, one which currently could contain a Trump-humping number of 1,307,674,368,000 866,829,600 permutations (almost a billion), not including rotated and reflected (but otherwise identical) layouts. So what's new this time out? For the grid, I colored the arrows more painstakingly than in the other variants, in order to more easily trace a superior gesture. As usual, I had to sacrifice logic a few times when faced with certain odd relationships during the design phase, such as TREE-(???)
Each gesture beats out seven others, and is beaten by the remaining seven.