Bed Selection via GRPS

Recently, in a hotel up in Vermont, the 5 members of Darlingside were faced with a difficult choice at the end of a long day: 2 queen-sized beds, 2 double beds, and 1 couch.  The critical question: who’s going to sleep where and/or with or not around whom?  We decided that a game of Group Rock Paper Scissors would be the fairest decision maker for who should sleep where.  As we circled up to play, we realized we had no idea how to play this simple 2-player game with 5 people.  For this reason, we had to invent the rules of GRPS:

1. All players must throw at the same time on “shoot”.
2. Representative hand signals must be clear…none of that crumple-fisted “scissors made out of rock” twaddle.
3. Rock defeats Scissors; Scissors defeats Paper; Paper defeats Rock.
4. Fire cannot be thrown.  This is old school: only Rock, Paper, and Scissors.
5. After all players have thrown on “shoot” it is time to collect points.  Each player looks around the circle and collects 1 point for each person that he/she has defeated.  For instance, if I throw paper, I will collect a point for each rock thrown by other players in the circle.  All players count points in this way.
6. The first player to tally up 5 points wins a round.
7. The winner must win by 2 points.
8. The winner of each round earns the first pick among the remaining beds, and removes himself/herself from the following rounds.
9. Rounds are played until all players have chosen respective beds.
10. Dave is interested in the couch more than the twin beds.
11. Don is wondering if he can strike a deal by choosing a double-bed before the game starts—that way he takes himself out of the running for the queen beds and the couch (what we might call the “extremes”).
12. The answer is no, Don.

And that concludes the rules!  Post and let us know how your own group games go.  As the old adage goes, where two once often tangoed in order to solve small disputes, five certainly had more fun thinking of a new way to allow five to tango, and still bickered about the sleeping situation after the game ended.