Rock, Paper, Scissors Game - what article before rock and paper [closed]

Question

Let's play "Rock, Paper, Scissors" game. If you play "rock", then would you say?

1. I've got a rock
2. I've got rock (without a)?

The first option seems much more natural. On Youglish you can find only examples supporting the first option. For example I got a rock in my shoe.

https://youglish.com/getbyid/87298883/i%20got%20a%20rock/english/us

The doubt weather the first option is correct lays in the lack of "a" before rock in the descriptions of the game. Whenever "rock" is mentioned, it goes without "a". Here are examples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_paper_scissors

In Rock paper scissors, rock is scissors' "Kryptonite", scissors are "what" to rock?

In one fell swoop, I would like to ask the same for scissors and paper. Scissors seem to be plural so I guess "I've got scissors" is a proper form. I am not that sure with paper. Can a native speaker shed a light on this trifle please?

Update after comments. I would like to use this game to engage children in practicing phrases as "I've got ...", "What have you got?" Obviously, the children deserve to be equipped with correct phrases. The focus of the question is in grammar rules, not in the game rules.

Update 2. Changed "I got" to "I've got..." following Edwin Ashworth's comment. Thanks.

Answer 1

Saying "I got a rock" implies that you are holding a physical rock or are pretending to hold a physical rock which is not what is meant when playing the game. You are using a symbol to represent a rock not pretending that you are actually holding one (e.g. the way an actor might pretend to hold and talk on a mobile phone on stage without actually holding one). Another way you could think of it is in comparison to the chinese character for sheep. This character is supposed to physically resemble the drawing of a sheep, but it is a symbol representing a sheep not an actual sheep.

To expand on this you can think about them as specific categories represented by the symbol of rock, paper or scissors e.g. the category of rock, in fact sometimes the game is played with different symbols e.g. elephant, cat, mouse. The rock in the game has become disassociated from an actual rock and is now just a category represented by the word rock and the symbol. This is as lots of people know the game well so think of the game and categories on their own terms instead of in comparison to other things.

I would probably be more likely to say "I chose rock" or "I picked rock". This is because you are talking about your decision to go with rock, paper or scissors, so you want to pick a verb which talks about you making a decision. Using get in the context of decision making implies that you had little choice about what option you got, i.e. 'get' - you passively received the option of rock; 'chose' - you actively chose the option of rock.

Scissors is plural as scissors are considered a pair of scissors and are therefore plural (similar to a pair of shoes). This presumably comes from a pair of scissors having two separate parts and blades which are only joined by a pin. This can seem a bit odd as you never come across a single scissor but it is just a quirk of language.

Answer 2

Let's play "Rock, Paper, Scissors" game.

This is not idiomatic. "Rock, Paper, Scissors" is the name of the game, so you do not need (and nobody says) Rock, Paper, Scissors game.

Because it is a name, "Rock, Paper, Scissors" does not take a determiner.

The correct version is "Let's play Rock, Paper, Scissors"