Intransitive Combat Relationships

Plain old everyday transitive combat relationships are what you see in almost all games. If my gun is bigger than your gun, and your gun is bigger than Joe's gun, then my gun can really whomp on Joe's gun. This means that bigger is always better, and the guy with the biggest gun will beat everybody else. It seems perfectly natural and reasonable, but it's often not very fun, especially if you're the guy with the little gun.

Intransitive combat relationships are weird: My gun can beat your gun, and your gun can beat Joe's gun, but Joe's gun can beat my gun! You might recognize this as just the rock-scissors-paper relationship. It's so weird that most game designers have steered clear of it, which is a shame, because I think that a whole slew of games could be built using different intransitive combat relationships systems.

For Siboot, I designed the following combat system: Each player began the game with some random number of each of the set rock, scissors, paper. I didn't call them that. In Siboot, they were the three auras: tanaga, shial, and katsin. So one player might begin the game with three tanagas, six shials, and three katsins, while another player might have four tanagas, three shials, and five katsins. The goal of the game was to amass an equal number of each of the three auras. Players gained and lost auras in dream combat, during which each player chose an aura from his collection and matched it against his opponent's aura, with tanaga beating shial, shial beating katsin, and katsin beating tanaga. Now, if you knew how many auras a player possessed, you could pretty well guess which aura he'd play, and then you could beat him. So the game really boiled down to acquiring information on other people's auras information that could be gained only in trade with others.

The result is a much more interesting game. Regular rock-scissors-paper is boring because it's completely arbitrary. You have no way of knowing which piece your opponent will play, so it's just a wild guess. But this variation allows you to make reasonable predictions as to what another player might do if you know enough about him. If your knowledge is incomplete, then you have to make guesses. And you also have to guess whether an opponent knows your aura set well enough to anticipate your moves. All in all, it's a fascinating combat system because it integrates logic with intuition.

Intransitive combat relationships can be extended in many different directions. You could provide variable numbers of each piece, but make one piece rarer (and therefore more valuable) than the others. You could have them reverse their relationships at specified times or conditions, so that the player with lots of scissors might suddenly find himself running from the paper people. Or you could extend the number of dimensions in use. A four-way intransitive circle offers lots of fascinating possibilities. If A beats B, B beats C, C beats D, and D beats A, what does B do to D, and what does A do to C? You could have them stand off, or you could have them switch. In other words, if A plays against B, then the owner of A captures the B, but if A plays against C, then the owner of C gets the A and the owner of A gets the C.

You could extend to five, six, or even seven dimensions, but it would get very messy. Figure 23.1 shows why.

23.1. Intransitive relationships get complicated with more dimensions.

Another trick would be to have, in effect, armies of rocks, scissors, and papers. This was actually done back in 1984 in The Ancient Art of War. Infantry was rock, cavalry was paper, and archers were scissors. You could extend the system by creating three types of terrain, in each of which one type of unit is invulnerable or perhaps very strong. Combining terrain with a four-dimensional system could produce fascinating gameplay.