Warp wrote:
>   This gave me an idea for a small thinking problem:
> 
> - How should two people play rock-paper-scissors in such way that it's
> completely equivalent to rolling a 1d6? Or is it theoretically even
> possible?

Both people show a number of fingers between 0 and N-1, if we're both 
showing the same number I win, otherwise you win.  Then the chance of me 
winning assuming best play is 1/N.  You can easily tweak this to get any 
rational number.

> - How should they play to get the equivalent of throwing multiple dice?
> For example, the equivalent of rolling 2d6? How about 3d6 or 4d6? How
> about even more complicated situations, such as 2d20 or 3d20?

If you use toes as well as fingers, then sure.

> - Would the problem become easier if there were more than two people
> available?

I think it's highly unlikely.

> - Would the problem become easier if a more complicated variant of the
> rock-paper-scissors game would be used (eg. one with five options, each
> option beating two others and being beaten by the remaining two)?

Yup!


The next (and more difficult question) that follows is this:  Given a 
die/dice which we want to mimic, what's the smallest number of options 
that the players can be given in a rock-paper-scissors variant which 
gives the same odds of winning?  I don't have an answer for this offhand.

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