RPS - 25

RPS-25 POSTERS, SHIRTS & MORE AVAILABLE HERE!

CLICK HERE TO SEE HOW ALL 300 OUTCOMES ARE SPOKEN!

9/25/05: After receiving 100+ letters in the past two weeks (mostly) raving about RPS-15 and including lots of ideas for more gestures, and also with so many requests to incorporate gestures from other popular bastardizations of RPS, I elected to cap this whole nightmarishly ridiculous endeavor with an Earth-swallowing 25-gesture game. This is it...I swear I am done now.
You will notice that there is some branching going on with the arrows in the diagram. Trust me, you wouldn't be able to even get close to reading it otherwise. Thick lines branch out to thinner ones, and I've had to actually go around the outside of the circle for the smaller paths. I will be the first to admit that this game is just too complicated and you might get lost unless you really squint. By playing this game you agree not to hold me responsible for blindness, seizures, or let's face it, madness.
And now, even worse news: after days and days struggling to come up with a web of valid logic, one which has a potential of over 151.48 QUINTILLION layouts (around three and a half times more complex than a Rubik's cube), and which would include all 300 outcomes (non-tie) in a graphically pleasing cyclical layout, I had to reverse one or two outcomes from previous games. This is a rather hideous offense, but I just didn't have the octillion-sized stamina to help it. For example, with the splitting of HUMAN into MAN AND WOMAN, only WOMAN is beaten ("TEMPTED") by DEVIL now; whereas MAN EXORCISES DEVIL. In other words, DEVIL no longer POSSESSES HUMAN here, unless you'd like to say DEVIL POSSESSES KAREN BLACK (instead of WOMAN), and then it'd work OK. If you find any other discrepancies, let me know.
Anyway, many of the ten new symbols are taken from popular sources. Remember the "NUKE-COCKROACH-FOOT" game from "That '70s Show?" Well, it's in here somewhere, where their "foot" symbol is now simply MAN or WOMAN here. A lot of folks remember the "ROCK-PAPER-SCISSORS-SPOCK- LIZARD" pentavirate found here. Well, with the addition of my ALIEN, and swapping "Lizard" for my similar-looking SNAKE, you'll find most of that game in here too. I even added the much-maligned DYNAMITE gesture. So now you can blow up ROCK and SCISSORS all you like, as long as you don't mind being ENCASED by PAPER, and not being able to "cut wick of" SCISSORS as you might have elsewhere. Also, in deference to the extremely hilarious "Monkey Claw" game played here by a certain infamously overthrown tyrant, I stuck in a claw-gestured MONKEY just for fun (and poop flinging)!
All of these hijinx don't even include the SUN and the MOON, and AXE and BOWL which were supplied by a fan of the site (thanx John!). Each gesture beats out twelve gestures, and is beaten by the remaining twelve. And with that, there is now only a 4% chance of a tie, making this the ultimate decision-making game! Well, aside from flipping a coin, I guess.
UPDATE 6/22/2006: I goofed up last year when determining this chart had 15.5 octillion layouts. After dividing by 25 to get rid of the simply rotated possibilities, and then also by 2²⁴ for all the mirror images, and then checking & re-checking, I arrived at a final number equalling a bit over 151 QUINTILLION (that's 151 with 20 zeros) possible ways of putting 25 gestures in a circular layout as shown above. I plan on fixing the poster in my RPS-25 shop to reflect this new number, and hereby offer a refund to any disgruntled customers who already purchased one.
And just for the record, armed with accurate math for a change, I calculated over 4 SEPTQUARDRAGINTILLION possible layouts for a 5,050 outcome RPS-101 game! That's a 4 with 144 zeros, and it should be noted that a googol only has 100. Still think I wanna figure that game out, knowing it's 9.58e+125 (quardragintillion) more complex than a Rubik's cube? Or maybe you'd just like to know where I'm finding the actual names of all these big numbers? :o)
UPDATE 10/6/2006: I rose to the challenge, broke my promise of being done variating Rock-Paper-Scissors, and decided to totally GO FOR BROKE...