Editing Round 9/History (section)

== The Era of Experimentation (11 Jan 2021 - 20 Jan 2021) ==

As we all got our ducks, gameplay began in earnest. The next few weeks of the game carried the community into experimental territory as we tried to shape the ideal future for the round. Some ideas stuck, some didn't. This section explores those ideas. By the end of the Era of Experimentation, fewer massive proposals were being passed as we discussed the next big idea to explore. This section does not talk about that as much.

=== feed4feed ===

With the new week and new mechanics in play, one of the earliest strategies that developed was that of mutual feeding. Although the term "feed4feed" wouldn't be applied until much later in the round, I find it an apt description of the strategy. Ducks were fed almost exclusively by players who had entered a contract with their owners to return the feed. Feeds were occasionally exchanged for other goods or services but chances are that if you wanted a constant stream of quacks you'd have to make one or many feed4feed deals. Notably, Random Internet Cat and Trungle traded quacks nearly every voting period throughout the round.

=== Cooking Ducks ===

One of the first proposals of this period was Proposal 🍗 🦆 🍗, which would allow players to destroy their ducks, turning them into duck meat (finsook, 11 Jan 2021). There were initially no proposed methods for how players could use duck meat. Klink<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/518856008605499402/798019480264900639</ref> and Trungle<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/518856008605499402/798016111018246164</ref> both professed uneasiness about having mechanics which do not plug into the gameplay at all.

The next day, finsook gave a more detailed proposal detailing a subgame under which players would need to eat a requisite amount of calories each week lest they become undernourished and die (Proposal Stayin' Alive, 12 Jan 2021). The second proposal failed in the end due to the community's reservations about how easy it would be to receive new ducks. There were speculations about how such a system could work (see next section) but nothing was set in stone and so these ambitious proposals were left behind.

=== Duck Sex (not clickbait) ===

One prominent part of this period that must be mentioned is that time when we were considering Duck Sex.

It started with Proposal ♂️ ♀️, which would allow players to flip a coin to assign their ducks a sex, either male or female (finsook, 11 Jan 2021). The main draw of this system was detailed in a subgame involving duck reproduction (reproducktion) given by Proposal ❤️ 🦆 ❤️ (Phoenix King, 13 Jan 2021). From the 11th to the 13th there was a considerable amount of discourse about the consequences of what kinds of asymmetrical design could arise from a system of sexed ducks as well as link sharing about actual duck sex<ref>[https://nypost.com/2017/05/06/dont-be-fooled-ducks-are-sadistic-raping-monsters/ Open this link at your own risk]</ref>.

In the end, we decided to go for a simpler system where any duck could lay an egg as a Quack Attack (Veganzombeh, Proposal 🥚 🎲 2). This proposal shall be reproduced in full.

{{Proposal Box
| name=🥚 🎲 2
| text=
Append the following to the end of the "Quack Attacks" subrule of "Ducks":
:* Lay Egg. Cost: N Quacks, where N is positive. Targets: None. Effect: Roll a dN, and if the result is 10 or greater, the attacking duck gains 1 Egg.
:* Hatch Egg. Cost: 1 Egg, 5 Quacks. Targets: None. Effect: A new duck is created in the possession of the attacking duck's owner. The new duck's parent is the attacking duck.
}}

=== Ending the Game ===

One of my favorite stories from this round is about that time we tried to end the game right after it started. After a bit of a slow day, I joked about how the game was dead. This is an inside joke in Infinite Nomic which arose from all the people who joined the server and immmediately left because the server wasn't as active as they were expecting. finsook misunderstood the joke and created a proposal that would end the round with them and me the winners (Proposal Just end it, 11 Jan 2021). Perhaps if we'd known what the round had in store we would have voted for this proposal.

=== Scouting ===

One of the first new ideas that took off and had a more profound effect on gameplay was the Scouting mechanic, written by teod (Proposal Duckscouts, 12 Jan 2021). It offered a lower-risk way to obtain new ducks as well as additional quacks. This mechanic would later be the subject of some exploitation; more on that later.

{{Proposal Box
| name= Duckscouts
| text=
Add a new sub-section called "Scouting"  at the end of the "Ducks" section with the following text:
:During a voting period, a player can send a duck on a scouting mission by rolling a d12 for the duck. When the duck is on the scouting mission, the duck is no longer in possession of the player, thus benefits the duck provides the player are paused. Any upkeep cost of owning the duck is also paused until the duck returns.
:
:The number rolled on the d12  to commence the scouting mission is the potential quacks. If the duck returns, the duck will have this number of potential quacks added to their existing quacks. For a player's duck to return, the player must wait until the end of the voting period the duck was sent on the mission. Then the player can then roll a retrieval d12 roll to attempt to retrieve the duck. If the retrieval roll is greater than or equal to the number of potential quacks determined upon the ducks departure, the duck returns. A player can only attempt to retrieve each scouting duck once per voting period. Upon return, the potential quacks are added to the returning duck's total quacks, benefits and costs the duck provides to the player are unpaused.
}}

=== Duck Words ===

One small proposal that caused a surprising amount of change was Proposal 🗨️ 🦆 (Wotton, 13 Jan 2021). This proposal mandated that all game actions end with either "quack" or "uwu" or be invalid. This would lead to several breakages in the future.