Rock Paper Scissors Design Does Nothing

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

So I've been wanting to do a design concept thread for a while but nothing was inspiring me. Until some off hand comment about Rock Paper Scissors.

And I think Rock Paper Scissors type balancing mechanics are basically a plague on TTRPG mechanics.

It's pretty basic.

People introduce some sort of RPS thing. It's usually elemental, but sometimes its "classes" or weapon types or whatever. The number of individual elements varies, its usually neat and symmetrical and altogether very obsessive compulsive (probably the root plague behind this and other game design moments of dumbness). It's almost always a ring with one weakness and one strength interaction for each element. But sometimes people want to draw symetrical stars or some crap. Whatever.

The designer then thinks two things about it "This is a cool fluff concept"... it sort of might be, its pretty subjective... but it's also done to death and frequently done very badly, so they are probably wrong.

And they think also "This is a form of game balance". And that... just isn't the case.

Abilities, individual, by theme, by class, by build by whatever, having things they are strong against and things they are weak against is... a thing.

It does not require a bullshit symmetrical alchemy circle of elements. And RPS overlays onto those sorts of interactions of game options brings nothing beneficial to the table.

Adherents of RPS design will say that the symmetry in the RPS circle/pseudogon guarantees an EQUAL amount of strength and weakness interactions for each option on it.

Which is total bullshit spouted by people who don't understand the first thing about the difference between an RPG rules system and instances of games and campaigns using it.

Fire wizards being weak to the color purple means nothing in a campaign where no purple wizards appear. If you are not prepared to enforce spawn rates of purple wizards your purple vs fire wizardry balancing mechanic might as well not exist, or worse, be totally out of control over powered.

Meanwhile while it might be nice to have tools that allow you to provide strong and weak interactions for your fire wizards... limiting that exclusively to water wizards and wood wizards... is at best totally unnecessary, and at worst intrusively so.

You can have asymmetry in your rules interactions.

Because you WILL have asymmetry in your actual at the table game play interactions.

As long as you don't go over the top and remain within level appropriate design your different wizard elements or sword schools CAN have differing numbers of strength or weakness interactions with each other in a manner that does NOT form a circle or a pentagram and it is FINE.

You would much better spend your design efforts on some advice for GMs on how to use (and not misuse) those strength and weakness interactions that you DO choose to include.

And not for the first time I repeat this piece of game design advice. Symmetry, Completionism, Categories and Lists are obsessive compulsive traps. ALWAYS check if they exist for the sake of anything other than themselves. If you are sorting for no reason then game designer OCD has got you in it's oily stun lock.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Having run Pokemon games for years and attempted to incentivize doing things that AREN'T "hit the red lizard with a blue laser for massive damage", I kind of agree with you. If your RPS system isn't obfuscated enough then people will always pick what they perceive to blast the most ass. If it IS obfuscated enough, then that's annoying because you've gone and hidden gameplay systems that people use to make informed decisions... and in RPS, when you see your opponent picking Rock you always pick Paper. Which is where the obfuscation comes in.

If my whole CLASS is about throwing out Paper at every chance and I can't see if my opponents are about to play Rock or Scissors, my dick is going to feel tiny and soft when I blast a dude and it does nothing because of course he's resistant to Paper, you fucking idiot.
RPS systems are fine in single-player RPGs like Pokemon or Shin Megami Tensei, or even Fire Emblem... but in a co-op game? Where it's 4 vs 1 except the solo player has 4 arms? I'm somewhat less keen on it.
Doesn't mean I can remove it from my Pokemon RPG, though. Oh, well.

[deaddmwalking]

I think literally setting out to create a situation where A is weak to B is weak to C is weak to A isn't great design. That said, different characters should end up with strengths and weaknesses and that's okay. If that's true, there's going to be a certain amount of game space a character struggles in and some where they don't. In 3.x rogues are kinda weak to undead and undead are kinda weak to clerics. In so much as clerics are weak against anyone, it's sneaky guys that they can't see.

It's possible to choose challenges that consistently play to one character's strengths and to another's weakness - even in a classless system. But ultimately it is better to give characters abilities that are on theme and let strengths/weaknesses arise from that.

[Whatever Jr.]

Things are easier to remember when they're in chunks. But the chunks aren't the point.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

If your RPS system isn't obfuscated enough then people will always pick what they perceive to blast the most ass. If it IS obfuscated enough, then that's annoying because you've gone and hidden gameplay systems that people use to make informed decisions... and in RPS, when you see your opponent picking Rock you always pick Paper.

I think obfuscation isn't going to help. At least not how I would imagine the use of the term.

Instead you aim for a balance point that effectively renders the elemental weakness diagram irrelevant.

Do the players have sufficient pokemon to pick a good match for up all/most of the time? Well. They almost certainly do and probably should. So that's your intended game play and you work with that assumption for determining what level of abilities to give out.

I don't do RPS circle bullshit in my RPG but I do give out lots of typed attack bonuses against target defense keywords. And my assumption is that players get those bonuses basically all the time, because why would they pull out and use the option that doesn't apply to the current target?

[JonSetanta]

The opposite to a "cycle" is a Gygaxian arms race, blown out of proportion in Tome, where Unstoppable Force meets Immovable Object, but at X level Y character class gets Z ability that reads "Defeats Invincible Defense" and we hit a dead-end.

For 50 years the only elemental interactions are:
Fire and Ice deal double damage to each other
Lightning does (thing) to Iron targets

I could write an essay about how each character in every group could be equipped with a Rock Ability, a Paper, and a Scissors, and the only difference would be a +2 bonus or so, but my time is better spent actually implementing such a design rather than "offhanding".

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

The opposite to a "cycle" is a Gygaxian arms race

No it isn't.

For clarification, that's a "No it isn't" with the tone of slapping someone in the face and accusing them of suffering from rampant hysteria.

[erik]

I think I can get behind the premise that gimmicky symmetries and oppositions are bad game design *if* that's all you got. If you made the combat minigame like, just 5 different saving throws types with some pentagram of strengths and weaknesses and that was the only way to win combats, then that would be boring as fuck.

I think that DnD (3.x specifically, if it matters) is successful partly because of its complexity. There are a variety of failure states, or conversely, win conditions in combat. They do have 3 saving throws that are kind of similar to the RPS (at least, defensively) where some classes may be weak to one and strong to others, but thankfully that's not all. There's also win conditions from HP damage and those that ignore saving throws and HP damage. Those 5 win conditions categories aren't symmetrical and that creates a lot of complexity in options. Players have lots of different win conditions that they can build for which makes things interesting. A downside if one of them is too good then it can make the other win condition methods feel pretty inferior which is doubly bad if there is no way to synergize and help as a team.

I don't mind gimmicky symmetries being incorporated into a game, so long as that isn't the entirety of the minigame. You need some asymmetry in order to create variety.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

My primary concern with gimmicky RPS symmetry is the seemingly common belief by designers, and even gamers, that introducing it is basically "doing a game balance".

For all I can tell JonSetanta is a poor man's example of this with the apparent belief that for lack of a cycle everything goes to hell in a largely incomprehensible way.

Or more commonly it's more like "I made a core mechanic like classes or wizard types or something do RPS... it makes my game balanced and fair!". So lets go with that as an example of what I see as a bad design belief instead. Because I still can't tell whether JonSatanta likes RPS mechanics or not much less why.

[JonSetanta]

I'm "on defense" with this relatively Frank-lite interrogation, but I'll use the Pokemon comparison as others have earlier.

But consider; rather than supplying a single PC with the capability of just Rock or R/P, give them all three.
In Pokemon this is called a "sweeper", something that has the element diversity to handle multiple situations/encounters.

Another comparison would be to have a single PC act as the equivalent to two or more Pokemon.
Not at the same time, but within action economy limits.


Gygaxian Standard for comparison: Encounter is Rock.
Fighter has only Rock.
Rogue might have two options.
Wizard has RPS, so they "cast Paper" and "Win Encounter".
Repeat for 20 levels.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Jon.

You are speaking almost pure gibberish. I have to steel man your entire post just so it parses... and at that point it looks like a vacuous straw man.

Mostly it's several overlapping irreconcilable contradictions where you both like and hate the same two or three things (none of which are really relevant) and the only discernible difference SEEMS to be that sometimes you are angry at Gygax and other times everything averages to +2.

Gygax or +2 is one of the weirdest false dichotomies I have seen, and it still isn't relevant to the topic at hand.

[JonSetanta]

Welp.

[erik]

*fails confusion save and attacks*

Lemme try a simple explanation.

I just used dnd as an example of something that does not conform to RPS as it has a variety of asymmetric win conditions. Using it as an RPS example makes no sense and furthermore suggests a basic lack of comprehension of the subject.

[deaddmwalking]

It is true that Fighters don't generally have any option other than ablative hit point reduction. Depending on the encounter, the Wizard might have a hard counter. For example, taking away a flying opponents ability to fly may make a difficult encounter easy - an the fighter's ability to deal melee damage might suddenly become meaningful. That doesn't reduce to Fighter is Rock. The 3.x play space is much more complex.

However, that also doesn't mean that Fighter is a paragon of design. Nor does it mean that Wizard is a paragon of design. I think broad agreement here is that a focused spell caster (like Beguiler) is a more focused (and thus better) class than a standard Wizard or Cleric.

Sometimes you'll have an attack that is very effective against a particular enemy (like having fire attacks against cold-creatures) and sometimes you'll have a very ineffective attack (like having fire attacks against fire-creatures). That still isn't a sure-win or sure-lose, but it's an advantage (or disadvantage). Building the campaign and the opposition typically means creating variety so that sometimes one character shines and sometimes another does. Ideally, even when you're at 'reduced effectiveness' you'll feel that you can make a meaningful contribution.

In Rock-Scissors-Paper, you show your attack and it is resolved without question. Even a best of 3 or best of 5 ultimately comes down to whether you chose the right attack at the right time. In a game like Stratego you show your number and the lowest number just wins (with a few exceptions). Neither is a particularly good model for an RPG where dealing with the encounter should involve interacting with the encounter. You can do a very abstract system, and there are people that might enjoy it, but I think that's best left in the realm of board games. In an RPG the conceit is that you are the character and are choosing the actions that the character would make. It's totally possible to decouple the in-game action and the out-of-game resolution; even with Dice, but also with something like playing Jenga as a resolution method. All that said, if playing Jenga is MORE FUN than playing the RPG, you could just do that.

[OgreBattle]

1) Rock Paper Scissors is a game where you choose between Rock, Paper or Scissors every round, and your opponent does too. Neither are locked into one element, the choices changing every round are what make it a game.

2) Pokemon video games have you choose a team of 3-6, and switching between Pokemon is an option to counter opponent's expected attack exploiting your current pokemon's weakness. When Pokemon is a fighting or MOBA game where you only have one Pokemon, they discard elemental weakness / resistance

So Rock Paper Scissors design really really really needs to make RPS the CHOICES part of the game, and not an unchangeable constant thing.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I still don't think you want the RPS stuff to dominate the tactical space. In Pokemon, switching out from one Pokemon to another takes a turn, at which point you will probably start dishing out massive damage and/or tanking resistant hits. Fortunately, Pokemon RPS is complicated enough that "what do I send out to fight against this Charmander" is an answer with a lot of variables, but that decision is almost certainly going to be informed by the elemental weakness system more than most other factors.
The nice thing about tabletop games is that you can explore a system's universe in great depth. In the video games, Pidgey vs Charmander is a knock-down slugfest. In tabletop, that Pidgey can utilize positioning and range to completely dominate the Charmander if it can't reach it, potentially making it as viable an opponent as a Squirtle. To me, that decision is more interesting than the elemental stuff. Elements are a no-brainer, but you can work on the systems surrounding it so the battle choices aren't as blatant as in the Pokemon video game.

[Harshax]

Been playing a lot of Battletech recently and that game has great degrees of RPS. Speed v Range v Initiative.

Surprisingly speed and initiative are not synonymous. Going fast increase evasion. Being steady and firing from a safe place is accurate.

Acting first trumps Speed.

Being fast trumps snipers.

Having long range attacks trumps most weapons.

TBH, I don’t disagree with the OP. RPS leads to however many shades of porn you want to tack on to degrees of RPS. For a purely tactical game, that’s actually great.

But on the other hand, saying RPS has no place in RPG is sort of similar to saying Balut has no place in cooking. It’s a broad and categorically wrong statement to make. Quail embryos are a delicacy in some cuisine and unheard of in others.

For one, RPS worked just fine for Vampire LARPS in the 90s.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

...

How is acting first not a function of speed?

How is having a longer range attack not a form of acting first?

How is having a longer range not a function of speed?

Aren't all three of these things basically just components of threat range and first strike?

How are these things even supposed to be exclusive to each other?

Is any of that meant to be "doing a balance" and if so how does it actually enforce the balance if it even tries at all? Is it just RPS for no raising?

It's things like this that have made me jaded by all claims of awesome RPS dynamics even in the field of wargames both table top and video game.

It's almost certainly not the case that everyone brings a sniper, a speedster and a... go firster... to every match for the "doing of a balance" and then wrestles for best match ups with every RPS decision somehow mattering but also being non-obvious.

It's also almost certainly not the case that anyone blindly brings 3 snipers and hopes like hell their opponent blindly brought at least 2 out of 3... "most weaponers"... are those the same RPS slot as... "go firsters"...? And then expects that to be the win/lose without further, and probably more important and complex, factors.

I'm not saying wargames don't have trumps and counters. I'm saying they never form a neat circle or a simple symmetry of any kind in any wargame starting from slightly more complex than naughts and crosses.

It probably isn't even the case that purely having a longer range really does beat all opponents with "go first" and/or "most weapons".

In the end, the RPS dynamic, even in a wargame, even in one I have not seen is very very probably nothing but a nice little story the designers tell the players before bed time.

I've seen it so often I'm pretty confident of making the call on an unknown game blind. Kinda like you would in actual rock paper scissors against a guy who only ever throws paper.

[deaddmwalking]

Phonelobster

I don't think you're explaining yourself very well. To me it looks like you're saying that anytime A>B>C>A you have a RPS mechanic and they're all bad. But maybe only if it's a 'hard counter'. If A has advantages over B, but isn't guaranteed a victory and B has advantages over C but isn't guaranteed a victory and C has advantages over A but isn't guaranteed a victory does that count?

There's a video game that I enjoyed in the day: Sun Tzu's Art of War. In the game there were three unit types: Archers, Knights and Barbarians. Archers were very effective against knights, knights were very effective against barbarians and barbarians were very effective against archers. You could create mixed units (if memory serves 14 was the unit maximum [edit I'm right) but that wasn't the only balancing factor. Units could be tired, and some formations were better or worse in some situations. If Archers were good against EVERY unit type and Barbarians were always the weakest, that wouldn't have presented any benefit over the RPS mechanic.

Ultimately, you want your game elements to have places they do well and places they struggle. And if you have rough balance you'll end up with something that looks like RPS. Hard-coding it without thought to game elements is bad, but it CAN be done in a good way.

It's possible that there is a class that is very good against a single enemy (with abilities like Designate) and it's possible there is a class that is very good against mooks (lots of attacks each against a different opponent like whirlwind attack). Throw in a Necromancer with his army of minions and you have a RPS (knight is good against whirling dervish; whirling dervish is good against undead horde; undead horde is good against knight). Those probably aren't your ONLY CLASSES and trying to shoehorn seven more classes into this specific 'cycle' might not work, but it's not automatically bad that cycles of this kind exist; nor is it automatically bad that you considered things like that when designing your game.

[Foxwarrior]

Units could be tired, and some formations were better or worse in some situations.

Right here, it felt like you were about to explain the circumstances where the game doesn't devolve into basic rock paper scissors... And then you immediately moved on to something else instead. Does an extremely poor choice of formation mean you can lose your archers to a smaller force of knights if they get the jump on you?

[Harshax]

Units could be tired, and some formations were better or worse in some situations.

Right here, it felt like you were about to explain the circumstances where the game doesn't devolve into basic rock paper scissors... And then you immediately moved on to something else instead. Does an extremely poor choice of formation mean you can lose your archers to a smaller force of knights if they get the jump on you?

In Battetech, yes. Equally sized forces where someone has brought 4 slow-snipers against 16 fast-skirmishers is very likely to lose if the RNG isn't generous. 4 slow-snipers whose combined weight far exceeds to opposition could still win, but that's still a lot of rounds of combat where you're challenging the RNG to delivers a critical a head-shot.

[deaddmwalking]

Units could be tired, and some formations were better or worse in some situations.

Right here, it felt like you were about to explain the circumstances where the game doesn't devolve into basic rock paper scissors... And then you immediately moved on to something else instead. Does an extremely poor choice of formation mean you can lose your archers to a smaller force of knights if they get the jump on you?

The game is from 1984, and I probably last played it in 1992 or so (but I'm tempted to give it a try for the sake of nostalgia), but yes.

A typical formation for Archers might be a line. You could put your line far forward or far back. If you put your line far forward, you had less time to shoot arrows than if your line was far back. Likewise the knights could be far forward or far back. If they were far forward and your archers were far forward, they'd engage in melee almost immediately, and your archers would be slaughtered.

In mixed units you could do something like have your knights deployed at a middle distance with the archers behind them; against a group of knights ideally your archers would slaughter them before they got close, and if they didn't, your knights would prevent them from closing in on you.

A number of factors influence the outcome of a battle, and elevate the game beyond a simple rock paper scissors strategy. Hunger, distance, terrain, and morale all affect the squads' effectiveness. Care has to be taken when marching troops full speed, or across a series of mountains, to prevent them from arriving at a battle too fatigued to fight. In addition, even the winning side in a battle suffered a slight reduction in the squad's readiness. Troops in very poor condition would fight poorly, might retreat without being ordered to do so, and would even potentially surrender outright if also significantly outnumbered. Hunger was modeled through an abstract 'supply' value per squad; villages and/or forts would slowly replenish the supplies of nearby friendly squads. A squad that was out of supply would lose condition and might be readily be destroyed by what would otherwise be an inferior force.

I think retreating hurt readiness, too.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

There's a video game that I enjoyed in the day: Sun Tzu's Art of War. In the game there were three unit types: Archers, Knights and Barbarians. Archers were very effective against knights, knights were very effective against barbarians and barbarians were very effective against archers. You could create mixed units (if memory serves 14 was the unit maximum [edit I'm right) but that wasn't the only balancing factor. Units could be tired, and some formations were better or worse in some situations. If Archers were good against EVERY unit type and Barbarians were always the weakest, that wouldn't have presented any benefit over the RPS mechanic.

Sounds like Advance Wars. Except even there, Rock is the superior option you should spam most of the time. Sure, anti-air guns are supposed to the Scissors to aircraft's Paper, but really, just throw a hundred tanks rocks at Paper and you'll probably win.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

I think the video game dynamic I'm more familiar with is "archers>spears>cavalry>archers... and swords are also there".

And almost always depending on your preferred tactic and factional specialties you were better off going straight cavalry or straight archers. Because sure the RPS mechanic gave you some bonus damage by unit match up. But cavalry got reliable flanking and archers got range and stronger advantages from height and as long as you went all in on exploiting that you made up for and exceeded type match ups every time.

In multiple games in multiple separate franchises.

They could have, and occasionally did, just give spears a bonus vs charging units.

My point being, once again, the RPS, it did next to nothing. And in terms of its "balance" objective, of trying to encourage you to bring mixed armies to the field and wrestle for match ups... it did nothing at all if not less than nothing.

[deaddmwalking]

My point being, once again, the RPS, it did next to nothing. And in terms of its "balance" objective, of trying to encourage you to bring mixed armies to the field and wrestle for match ups... it did nothing at all if not less than nothing.

You're still complaining about a specific implementation and not the concept.

If Cavalry is always better, full stop, then your design is going to be 'play cavalry, full stop'.

From a design perspective, you want to achieve balance between the characters. Having a profile of where they're strong and where they're weak will tend to yield situations where a match-up is very favorable to one class and very unfavorable to another.

It's possible that there is a class that is very good against a single enemy (with abilities like Designate) and it's possible there is a class that is very good against mooks (lots of attacks each against a different opponent like whirlwind attack). Throw in a Necromancer with his army of minions and you have a RPS (knight is good against whirling dervish; whirling dervish is good against undead horde; undead horde is good against knight). Those probably aren't your ONLY CLASSES and trying to shoehorn seven more classes into this specific 'cycle' might not work, but it's not automatically bad that cycles of this kind exist; nor is it automatically bad that you considered things like that when designing your game.

The above wasn't intended to showcase hard counters, but organically you may end up with an RPS style mechanic. You can add in an Exorcist (who is very good against the Necromancer, weak against the Knight and roughly evenly matched with the Dervish) and a Beastmaster (weak against the Dervish, strong against the Knight, strong against the Exorcist, and weak against the Necromancer [because animals run away from undead]). These still end up resembling an RPS mechanism, but it is because classes have abilities that fit the theme, and some classes have counters to those abilities.

What you definitely don't want is a situation where every class plays exactly the same, there is no mechanical difference between them, and the only fluff difference is what color beam of light they hit you with.