Ambiguous Name: Elemental Rock Paper Scissors

Yes, the trope is that there's a system of elemental strengths and weaknesses. But that doesn't mean it has to be a cycle. The RPS system is just one form it can take. The cycle format isn't inherent.

I would very much like to see examples of a strengths and weaknesses the line that doesn't loop around or be an Infinity +1 Element cause that just does not make sense.

Also doesnt make sense when this is a balance based trope.

Edited by Memers on Oct 10th 2019 at 11:23:44 AM

I'd say Pokemon is an example, since every element has a wide variety of strengths, weaknesses, resistances, or immunities. I suppose that if you ignore Dragon and Normal you could make a cycle, but save for some smaller internal cycles, most of it is more complicated than just "X beats Y which beats Z which beats A which beats B which beats X".

And while you could force it into a cycle, that's only if you act like every element has only one weakness, is only strong against one other element, and ignore all of the overlap and variation and duel-typings and special cases (such as Fighting vs Bug).

Pokemon does not cleanly fit into one large cycle. It's far more complex than that. Any cycles are much smaller and, even then, a lot of the elements can be swapped out in these cycles. (Grass/Fire/Water could be Grass/Fire/Ground, Fire/Ice/Ground, Water/Electric/Ground, Ice/Grass/Rock, etc.)

We've had this discussion already. Only Memers still advocates for the trope to require cycle. Can we please leave the matter at that?

[edit] To be clear, I'm not angry at anyone here—just exasperated to be having the same discussion again when a consensus has already been reached.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Oct 10th 2019 at 8:38:29 PM

Pokemon is a huge number of small cycles, With Dragon being an Infinity +1 Element and Typeless being Non-Elemental. Those cycles are simple but with so many it ends up being complex. Its like the perfect example for this.

There are half damage or x2 damage to its same type but otherwise there is always a cycle.

Heck over the generations they added Fairy and changed Bug, Ghost and Steel to eliminate the gaps in the cycles.

Edited by Memers on Oct 10th 2019 at 11:41:06 AM

Please, just stop trying to convince us. Pokemon is a lot of small cycles, but that doesn't mean every match-up fits neatly into a cycle, that these cycles aren't a part of a wider, more complex, thing that doesn't have a neat cycle. It only works if you ignore every other possible, less neatly-organized, match-up.

Besides, Ars is right. The consensus is against you. It's been against you for a while. Please just accept that this trope will not require a cyclical format.

Huh? Elaboration, please? I don't get what you mean by this.

I'd say they're more related but separate tropes. Like, see this entry in Elemental Tiers:

Also, to form tiers, the one at the top need to beat every other elements below it. Even a linear ERPS, for example Fire < Water < Lightning < Earth, still won't be tiers because Earth only beats Lightning, but neutral towards Fire and Water.

True. What's listed there actually is common, though, and I think should be noted. If consensus says to cut it I wouldn't be too bothered, though.

Edited by TrueShadow1 on Oct 10th 2019 at 11:07:10 PM

The sandbox says the following:

To my mind, that suggests that attacks and defences have either varying charge-levels (as in a Charged Attack), or draw on some resource (like Mana). Neither of those are necessarily present in this trope, if I'm not much mistaken. (Although they could potentially be, in some implementations.)

If it's intended to refer to the amount of damage dealt or absorbed as a result of the elemental relationships, then I feel that it's ambiguously phrased.

In addition, either way it seems like a degree of implementation-detail that's superfluous right at the start of the description: I think that the description might be clearer if we start out describing the simplest, most fundamental form of the trope, without details specific to certain implementations.

The following:

Ah, okay—that makes sense. Fair enough then! ^_^

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Oct 11th 2019 at 4:33:24 PM

I've edited ArsThaumaturgis's sandbox page, may revise on the last few paragraphs afterwards. I've also transferred elemental powers analysis from my personal sandbox to there.

Edited by Kindle4Light on Oct 15th 2019 at 11:41:41 PM

For reference, here are the two sandboxes currently being suggested:

1) https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Sandbox/ElementalRockPaperScissors

2) https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Sandbox/ElementalRockPaperScissors2

Any thoughts on these?

I wonder whether the analysis elements might not be better placed on a dedicated analysis page...

[edit] I've made a few edits of my own.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Oct 15th 2019 at 9:00:21 PM

Sandbox 1 works best IMO; keep it short and sweet. There's been a lot of problems with other tropes where too much on-page information has muddled the actual trope description.

To be on the safe side, note that I made a few edits between first posting those links above and your post. Nothing that significantly changes the length of the sandbox, I think—but it's always possible that the changes in wording may affect how palatable a write-up is.

Reads fine to me. The biggest issue is the Linking to an Article Within the Article problem...

Ah, I hadn't realised that that was a problem! I've edited that line to simply use the name, without the wiki-wording. Sorry about that. ^^;

Thank you for letting me know about that!

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Oct 15th 2019 at 9:32:50 PM

Reading it again, Sandbox.Elemental Rock Paper Scissors look good!

x6 You mean like putting it in another sandbox page? If you mean putting at analysis item into the analysis page, I've already planned on doing that. It's just that I'll be doing that after the description page is ready.

Ah right—my mistake, then! I thought at first that you intended to have that as part of the main page. Nevermind, in that case! ^^;

So... Do we run a crowner to determine whether to go with one, the other, or neither of the sandboxes above? Discussion seems to have petered out somewhat, I fear.

That sounds like a good idea. A crowner was used to decide how to change the description for Gratuitous Latin after its name was changed from Altum Videtur.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Oct 19th 2019 at 11:05:18 AM

Before we make a crowner, I would like to confirm the layout:

Q: What should we do to the trope description?

Option 1: Keep it as it is. Option 2: Change to Sandbox 1, including putting the details to the analysis page. Option 3: Change to Sandbox 2.

That sounds good.

OK. Linked: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/crowner.php/PageAction/ElementalRockPaperScissorsDescription?open=all#aoi9aohy

And hollered.

Edited by Kindle4Light on Oct 20th 2019 at 7:44:44 PM

, Thank you for that. ^_^

Um... I see that in the past few days some edits have been made to Sandbox 1 that I'm not a huge fan of. I don't want to start edit-warring the sandbox page, however—and now that we're voting, I feel that the page should be locked down, so that people know what they're voting for.

I'm not sure of what to do here. :/

(For reference, I was happy with the version (admittedly my own) as of the 15/16th, around the time that I posted it above and others weighed in on it.)

[edit] Is there a way to get the page as of a given date? That way we could easily compare the two pages and determine which version is generally preferred...

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Oct 20th 2019 at 4:01:35 PM

I suppose it's the edit before mine on Oct 18? I guess I should've let you know what edits I've made here.

Here are some points on my edits:

• I've combined several paragraphs as I've thought they're connected to each other. Otherwise, they'll be one sentence per paragraph.
• It took me awhile to wrap this around my head:

• Before my edit, the last paragraph is made up of just one sentence:

Any specific reversions? But for now, I won't touch on it. I will focus my edits on the ones under the analysis header.