Editing Round 9/History (section)

== The Age of Fracture (21 Jan 2021 - 10 Feb 2021) ==

Starting with a burst of energy bringing the community back from a short hiatus in late January, this period overlaps a bit with the next one. "Age of Fracture" is meant to imply that the round was beginning to break but hadn't utterly shattered yet as it would later on. Instead of describing its own period, this section instead focuses on the proposals that would lead the ruleset to fracture, making way for the Break Ages. Within this time frame we experienced a rise in textualism and the first instances of duck hoarding.

=== {{Sc|Duck God}} ===

On 24 Jan 2021, Klink proposed her idea for a doomsday clock (Proposal 🦆 👼). This took the form of the {{Sc|Duck God}}, an entity which would accrue items called God Eggs each week and, upon reaching 12, end the game entirely.

{{Proposal Box
| name=🦆 👼
| text=
Create a new rule that reads the following:

Duck God: 
:There is an entity called Duck God.  On 0000 UTC every Sunday, the Duck God gains one God Egg. If the Duck God possesses 12 or more God Eggs at one time, all players lose the round.
Append the following to the "Quack Attacks" subrule of "Ducks":
:*Divine Scrambler. Cost: N Quacks, where N is a multiple of 20. Targets: Duck God. Effect: The target loses N/20 God Eggs. This cannot bring the targets God Eggs below 0. 
}}

=== The Coloring Crisis ===

Now that most ducks had colors, we wanted to give that a meaning. Veganzombeh wrote a proposal to that effect (Proposal 🦆 🧬, 21 Jan 2021), and so did moonroof (Proposal Power Colors, 24 Jan 2021). Neither proposal went very far. A week later, however, moonroof returned with an expansive proposal that I and various others supported<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/518856008605499402/805217178407403520</ref>.

I won't copy the proposal in full; instead I will try to give a basic rundown. There are a number of orchards, the gates of which can only be entered by a certain color of duck at any given moment. Each orchard grows a different kind of fruit, which ducks may pick and bring back. Players can use these fruits when feeding to add different effects.

This proposal was large enough that it took three discord messages to post in its entirety. After a bit of tweaking, this proposal was submitted as Proposal Fruit on 1 February. In a tragic but somewhat comical twist, the sequential posting of this message meant that the proposal became three different proposals, one of which debatably did nothing<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/790679592494039080/805814519309402134</ref>. This hardly mattered, however, since only the first one had a high enough for/against ratio to pass though the fact that parts of the proposal passed meant we had some rules text that didn't actually do anything.

=== Updates to Scouting ===

Since Proposal Duckscouts, there had been a few modifications to the mechanism of scouting. The first came with a proposal that would add additional incentive to scouting, other than quacks (teod, Proposal Duckscoutier, 17 Jan 2021). The second came in response to some players having very high thresholds to get through if they wanted to retrieve their ducks (Klink, Proposal Cutting losses but this time you can't create infinite ducks, 1 Feb 2021).

{{Proposal Box
|name=Duckscoutier
|text=
Amend the text in Scouting from the existing text
: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. 
to
: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,  and the owner of the duck will obtain a new duck along with their existing duck.
}}

{{Proposal Box
|name=Cutting losses but this time you can't create infinite ducks
|text=
Amend rule Ducks subrule Scouting by:

Adding the following:
:If a player's duck's potential quacks exceeds 9, the player may choose to cut their losses by posting their intent in #game-actions . The duck's potential quacks become 1, and the duck returns without requiring a retrieval roll.
before sentence
:A player can only attempt to retrieve each scouting duck once per voting period.

Amend the following:
:the owner of the duck will obtain a new duck along with their existing duck.
To
:as long as they have not cut their losses, the owner of the duck will obtain a new duck along with their existing duck.
}}

The first players to use these features were moonroof<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/795369457340907561/801483649828651059</ref> and Wotton<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/795369457340907561/803370661912510505</ref>. By February, Wotton had four ducks and moonroof had three<ref>https://infinitenomic.miraheze.org/w/index.php?title=Round_9/Gamestate&oldid=651</ref>.

=== Stealing from the Rich ===

As duck accumulation grew, the community passed a proposal to allow the less rich players to perform a Quacktion to curb rich players' duck accumulation (finsook, Proposal Robbing Wotton, 4 Feb 2021). Later, we passed a second proposal iterating on this system ([idle account], Proposal 🦆 👑, 5 Feb 2021).

{{Proposal Box
| name=Robbing Wotton
|text=
Add the following attack to "Quack Attacks" in the ruleset:
:* Steal Duck. Cost: Quacks of the target. Targets: Ducks of the player(s) with the most ducks ('rich player'). Effect: The targeted duck is removed from the rich player's possession and become the possession of the attacking duck's player.
}}

{{Proposal Box
| name=🦆 👑
|text=
Add a subrule titled "Duck Royalty" under the rule "Ducks" which reads the following:

:The entity possessing the most ducks in total is the Duck King. The entity possessing the most quacks among all their owned ducks is the Duck Lord. In the case of a tie, the corresponding title is left vacant. If there exists a Duck King who is also a Duck Lord, then that player is also the DUCK DUKE. The Duck King, Duck Lord, and DUCK DUKE are all Duck Royalty.
If it exists, modify the description of the quack attack "Steal Duck" so that it reads the following:
:Cost: All quacks possessed by the target duck. Targets: One named duck belonging to the DUCK DUKE with more than ten Quacks. Effect: Possession of the target is transferred from the DUCK DUKE to the attacker. This attack may not be performed by Duck Royalty.
}}

While the latter proposal made the mechanic more thematically relevant and allowed us to write more actions dealing with the Duck King and the Duck Lord, it seriously restricted the circumstances under which players could actually steal a duck; furthermore, we did not end up creating any actions targeting the Duck King or the Duck Lord. While there was always guaranteed to be a player with the most ducks that player's ducks didn't by necessity own the most quacks. This would soon be irrelevant, however, since players exploiting this loophole would be unable to access their ducks.

=== The Judge ===

Reflecting the recent trend toward more textualist interpretations of the rules, the official position of Judge was created with the goal of centralizing and officializing legal interpretation. Random Internet Cat wrote the proposal (Proposal Duck Judy, 9 Feb 2021) and took up the position<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/795369457340907561/812849254254903336</ref>. The Judge's rulings are stored on the wiki at [[Round 9/Rulings]].

{{Proposal Box
 | name=Duck Judy
 | text=
Enact a rule entitled Judges:

:There shall be a sole Judge, responsible for resolving rules disputes. If there is no Judge, any player can appoint themself Judge with the assent of two other players. An incumbent Judge can be removed with the assent of two players, but they should not be removed except for abuse of office. A person can cease being the Judge by publicly stating so.
:
:A request for justice shall take the form of a question or statement. The proper response to a question is an answer to that question, and the proper response to a statement is the truth value of that statement.
:
:Upon formal request by a person other than themself, the Judge shall, as quickly as possible, issue a response to the request. This response shall be binding only to the extent that it reasonably directly pertains to the request, and only to the extent that it does not blatantly and obviously contradict rules text.
:
:Judges may make rulings on the Metaruleset, but those rulings shall only be effective within the bounds of the round.
:
:Judge rulings can be overturned within 4 days of being made by a public vote of confidence; they are overturned if strictly more players vote in favor of overturning than affirming. An overturned ruling shall have no bearing on the interpretation of the rules or of the gamestate.
}}

Something notable about this proposal is the line "If there is no Judge, any player can appoint themself Judge,... but they should not be removed except for abuse of office." As it turns out, the appointed Judge was Random Internet Cat, an Agoran who was decidedly textualist when giving interpretations. Many people disagreed with this style of judgement, but there was no way to replace a judge for the purpose of shaking things up. This line had a profound impact on how the round continued on. It did not change the way we interpreted the rules wholesale, but it certainly accelerated our progression toward reading the rules as they were written.