Any ideas to incentivize a protagonist to play RSP?

[mugenjohncel]

Long story short... I've been working on this side-project we'll temporarily call "RSP - Rock, Scissors, Paper... I know, lame name"

viewtopic.php?f=43&t=44832#p459712

Thanks to a breakthrough provided by Renpytom, I was finally able to get out of a technical deadlock that I was stuck in for a long time and managed to reach a point where I now am in a good position to start filling in the story... basically, the very meat content of any Visual Novel... but there was a problem... in the original RSP Game made by LVUER, the player has a huge incentive to engage in RSP fights because the protagonist gets to see naked girls... back then, games of this type is OK but we now live in a Politically Correct world and I don't think I'll get away with it if I went the same path...

I'd rather be honest up front... I'm not exactly gifted as a writer and creative thinker and I could use some ideas and possible suggestions to give my protagonist (who conveniently happened to be a Japanese high School student in a Japanese High School setting) some convincing reason (and expand it to a plot) to engage in a rather crazy RSP battles where you and everybody else actively cheats on each other...

"POOF" (Disappears)

[Scribbles]

Possibly as part of a tournament? Where the characters want to win for some kind of prize or title. It could be run by the school, and would probably benefit from some over-the-top humor to take advantage of the unique premise. You could even make it crazier and make it part of a detention death game (if detention is over full the students have to play rock paper scissors to see who dies), or they could compete to see who gets out of detention. I think the key would be to create a fun and campy environment and treat the subject as being perfectly natural in it's setting. (Like in the world you create this happens all of the time and is perfectly normal)

Hope that gives you some ideas! Good luck with your game it looks really cool

[papillon]

Long story short... I've been working on this side-project we'll temporarily call "RSP - Rock, Scissors, Paper... I know, lame name"

viewtopic.php?f=43&t=44832#p459712

Thanks to a breakthrough provided by Renpytom, I was finally able to get out of a technical deadlock that I was stuck in for a long time and managed to reach a point where I now am in a good position to start filling in the story... basically, the very meat content of any Visual Novel... but there was a problem... in the original RSP Game made by LVUER, the player has a huge incentive to engage in RSP fights because the protagonist gets to see naked girls... back then, games of this type is OK but we now live in a Politically Correct world and I don't think I'll get away with it if I went the same path...

This statement makes no sense to me, as we have a lot MORE games with naked girls being much more mainstream these days. In 2017 you could dump "Strip Rock Paper Scissors" on steam with the 'naked' pictures being lingerie and a patch for full nudity, and sell it just like that, no problems. It's now much EASIER to distribute naked content.

I mean if you don't want nudity that's one thing but blaming it on the current world seems very silly.

[Graff]

Maybe have them all be ninjas but instead of handsigns, it's RSP. Lol

As Scribbles said, a tournament seems logical. Maybe the protagonist lacks the talent to participate in a skill-based competition and wants to prove his or herself with something...entry-level. XD

[Qwxlea]

Depending on the kind of game, you could let them play for money. Working in games gets boring real fast, and being able to make some (or a lot of) extra money playing RPS would be the logical thing to do.

As an extra incentive, you could do a 'Marty McFly' (from back to the Future): just call out your player and call him a chicken if he doesn't play. After he looses an NPC can show him how to cheat, and get back at the horrible person that just (took most of) his money. Any time the player refuses to play you just call him (her?) a chicken

You could,make it a status symbol in the game, all the really cool kids are good at RPS. If the hero wants to get anywhere (with his/her romantic interst...) he *must* play.

It could be used as the normal way of fighting in the school. There are cameras everywhere nowadays, so hitting somebody in the face is impossible, disputes are solved by RPS.

The school could be an experimental school based on the Ayn Rand selfish capitalism ideas: instead of grades and good deeds you get school-dollars. These can be used in the school for food, to get out of detention or to but your final grades. Your protagonist needs to graduate with honors but doesn't like to study... RPS is a great way to earn school-dollars from other students.

The RPS demo looks great. Looking forward to more of your stuff

[Taleweaver]

In Kaiji, the protagonist gets dragged into a series of increasingly sadistic games, one of which is a variation on RPS played with cards instead of the hand signs. Losers become slaves for the rest of their lives. So I suppose "win your freedom" also works.

Actually, any motivation works in the right kind of setting.

[Sleepy]

It depends on what kind of tone you want? I think something like Kaiji or even Kakegurui, since it's based on making seemingly mundane games really intense. Or you could take the opposite track and go parody mode, like in ProZD's "Tic-Tac-Toe as an Anime" skit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxCukwjjhhg.

Another question is audience and where you plan on distrubuting it. Like, if you want the audience who are into the MC doing it to see naked girls, there's technically nothing really stopping you from doing it since it's not the first concept to have "non-politically correct" content.

[PMscenarios]

Could do a twist on the original idea and have the protag join for the possibility of naked girls (strip RPS?) but end up becoming engaged in the competitive aspect of the whole thing.


I really liked Qwxlea's Ayn Rand idea, that sounds fascinating!

[Katy133]

Idea 1) You could take "Rock-Paper-Scissors" and translate it to "Fire-Water-Earth", similar to games like Pokémon and Pocket Mortys. This structure is known as "Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors." Each of the three Elemental Powers (or whatever you choose to change RSP into) have different strengths and weaknesses against other the elements. It's basically RSP re-skinned to look like a battle between two people/creatures/etc. That way, it'll look like an exciting Battle Royale-style plotline.

Idea 2) You could make this into an anime-inspired world where RSP is treated as Serious Business (similar to anime like Yu-Gi-Oh!, Beyblade, and Bakugan). If you do this, you can go really out-there in terms of parodying the typical character stereotypes/archetypes commonly seen in game anime (the plucky everyman hero; the love interest; the hero's younger sister; the old, grumpy mentor; the jerk rival, etc). Sleepy already mentioned it, but ProZD's Tic-Tac-Toe anime skit totally illustrates this idea. If UNO Was an Anime also does this.

[Lesleigh63]

You die if you don't play.

[Winston_Nguyen]

You die if you don't play.

GENIUS!

[Graff]

You die if you don't play.

Saw beats paper.

[Imperf3kt]

You die if you don't play.

So, Danganronpa, but with a classic hand game?

[timepatches]

You die if you don't play.

So, Danganronpa, but with a classic hand game?

What if you die (or something horrible happens to you) if you don't play, but the consequences of playing itself get steadily higher and higher as you progress?
Something happening to your opponent if they lose when the stakes are higher, for example - or it costs the player something/ they have to sacrifice something from their own life in order to earn the right to play?
Could be a nice way to ratchet up the tension a little~

[hoihoisoi]

I really like how Kakegurui (The gambling manga thinger ber jig) does it by incorporating a culture of gambling in the school as a premise of why they gamble in the first place. Taking that concept and extrapolating it with RPS is a way I see how it can probably be done with little issue. But in this case you need to find an incentive to play (such as obtaining free meal vouchers from such challenges, a competition to select the next student council president, sporting event, not getting kicked out of school, etc.). Overall, I think wacky/comedy is probably the way to go with the script if RPS is the main focal point of it.

Good luck man!