Editing Round 9/History (section)

== The Epoch of Fragility (25 Feb 2021 - 10 Mar 2021) ==

After the Break Age, we began to understand the true nature of the ducks. During this period we realized how fragile the entire ruleset was. As far as I know, the ruleset never broke during this time period but we had quite a few near misses. We started joking about how much we'd ruined the game and about how rarely we actually had a good picture of what the gamestate had become. We had to accept this fate that we'd built for ourselves as we persevered. A hallmark of this period's legislation was patching to fix small perceived ruleset issues rather than broad new mechanics.

=== Cannibalism to Prevent Thievery ===

On 25 February 2021, Wotton noted that after retrieving his ducks, he had the most quacks and the most ducks. This meant that Wotton was the DUCK DUKE, making him vulnerable to attacks. For the first time in the game, the Standard Quack Attack became useful. Wotton had his ducks attack each other, destroying their quacks until he was no longer the DUCK DUKE<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/795369457340907561/814418726367264799</ref>. This put moonroof, who had dropped out of the game a bit earlier, into the place of Duck Lord. This event also alerted the community of how many ducks Wotton had.

=== Ownership vs. Possession ===

Here's another question: is ownership different than possession? One might be inclined to argue that they are the same. They are after all, near synonyms. The opposition might claim, however, that the intent of the passage "[w]hen 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" from the Rule Ducks, Subrule Scouting of the time<ref>https://infinitenomic.miraheze.org/w/index.php?title=Round_9/Ruleset&oldid=721#Scouting</ref> is that the duck is still ''owned'' by the player, but not ''possessed''. What if "ownership" implies only that you own the duck while "possession" grants authority to perform actions with the duck? This interpretation seems to go against the legislative intent of the passage "[u]pon joining the game, a duck is created in the possession of each player" from the un-subruled section of the Rule Ducks in the same revision of the ruleset.

Two issues seemed to depend on the outcome of this debate: first, the issue of irretrievable ducks mentioned above; and second, the fact that it seemed that players could not interact with their ducks until giving it a name ''and'' assigning it to a pond, a logical impossibility.

The official ruling on this matter from Judge Random Internet Cat was that there was "no natural language reason to draw a distinction between [the terms ownership and possession]<ref>[[Round 9/Rulings#Ruling 2]]</ref>". With a growing sentiment towards textualism, many were inclined to follow this interpretation.

It was decided, however, that the relationship between the player and the duck who was on a scouting mission was different, thus ducks could still be retrieved safely<ref>[[Round 9/Rulings#Ruling 3]]</ref>. Furthermore, we realized that, due to a quirk of the Ducks rule, any instances of the word "duck" actually meant "named duck" within that rule. Ponds was a subrule of Ducks. Thus, as long as a player assigned their duck a name before assigning it a pond, they could still interact with them. This was 

This was not, however, the end of the issue. Nyhilo, a newer player at the time and a firm believer in the concept of ownership and possession being separate, began work on a very large proposal to legally separate the two concepts, allowing for a generalized and flexible system. During the last week of February, Nyhilo built and revised this 1500 word proposal. Revisions of this proposal were stored using a HackMD page<ref>https://hackmd.io/Dpp4b8-TSGqpvdpLxynmRA?both=</ref>. In the end, the proposal was dropped as Nyhilo decided that it wasn't actually necessary.

One bit of legislation that came about from this debacle was a proposal to allow players to assign names and ponds to their ducks if either was undefined, which passed without incident (Nyhilo, Proposal Pond Stuck Pond Suck, 2 Mar 2021).

=== Fruits ===

When only part of finsook's fruit proposal passed back in January, one section that stayed in was "[o]nce per voting period, a player may feed another player’s duck by announcing which duck they with to feed in #game-actions, and optionally adding one valid fruit<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/518856008605499402/816446637512589402</ref>." Nyhilo took inspiration from this and began work on a proposal called "Duck Loot" which would give fruits to ducks returning from Scouting Missions. Seeds would act as a granular currency, while grapes, blood oranges and watermelon slices would allow players to perform various game actions on unintended targets or with a modified variable somewhere in the mix. After a few revisions, the proposal was officially created on 3 March 2021.

=== Spending a Quack and Posting ===

On 4 March 2021 after Wotton had attempted to move some of his ducks, Trungle questioned whether the action had worked since Wotton hadn't stated that he was expending a quack to do so<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/518856008605499402/816826026818142208</ref>. This seemed to contradict the Ponds rule, which stated that "Players may move ducks from one pond to another by spending one quack from that duck and posting in #game-actions<ref>https://infinitenomic.miraheze.org/w/index.php?title=Round_9/Ruleset&oldid=750#Ponds</ref>," which seemed to imply that stating the performance of both actions was required. After a bit of conversation nestled between drafting notes for the Fruits proposal, a Ruling was called, which ruled that Trungle's suspicions were indeed valid<ref>[[Round 9/Rulings#Ruling 6]]</ref>.

At first glance this could hold catastrophic consequences for the gamestate: Wotton and others had moved a lot of ducks in the preceding weeks. However, the problematic phrase in the rules only referred to moving a duck that was already in a pond, and it turned out that this had only been attempted three times, all that day<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/795369457340907561/816825640229142578</ref><ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/795369457340907561/816827023007416360</ref>. Thus, this breakage passed with just a little confusion. The second breakage that day, however, would be less clearly cut.

=== The First Dice Disaster ===

Since Wotton had been accumulating ducks, he had been using the Dice Maiden bot's multiple die roll functionality to generate potential quack numbers for scouting missions en masse. Problem is that, given the input {{Mono|!roll 11d12}}, the bot would return a sorted list of results, for example {{Mono|Wotton Roll: [10, 8, 8, 8, 8, 7, 5, 5, 4, 3, 1] Result: 67}}. finsook was the first to bring this up<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/518856008605499402/817060272077406230</ref> and a judge ruling confirmed our suspicions<ref>[[Round 9/Rulings#Ruling 7]]</ref>. It was determined that no dice rolls made by this method (of which there had been many) had worked. This thrust the gamestate into uncertainty and we decided to resolve that uncertainty by ratifying the gamestate to a specific state (Wotton, Proposal I give up, 4 Mar 2021). This proposal was passed at the beginning of 8 March 2021. We discovered afterward that we could get unsorted dice by using {{Mono|ul}} as an argument to Dice Maiden's roll command.

=== Targeting the Rich Again ===

Since the thievery quack attack never did much, a new solution to get back at the duck owners was devised: finally cut the duck accumulation benefits of repeatedly sending ducks out on scouting missions. Nyhilo's proposal did this by heightening the requirements to gain a duck from a scouting mission (Proposal Duck Immigration Policies, 2 Mar 2021). This was later fixed so that the final sentence made better sense (Nyhilo, Proposal Duck Immigration Policies (Oops Edition), 7 Mar 2021).

{{Proposal Box
|name=Duck Immigration Policies
|text=
Replace the last sentence of the Scouting rule

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

with the following:

:Upon return, the potential quacks are added to the returning duck's total quacks and benefits and costs the duck provides to the player are unpaused. If the quacks gained from the duck's potential quacks is 12 or higher, the owner of the duck will obtain a new duck along with their existing duck.
}}

{{Proposal Box
|name=Duck Immigration Policies (Oops Edition)
|text=
I uh, proposed this rule change wrong. Oops.

Replace the following sentence of the Scouting Rule

:If the quacks gained from the duck's potential quacks is 12 or higher, the owner of the duck will obtain a new duck along with their existing duck. 

with the following

:If the roll to retrieve the duck is 12 or higher, the owner of the duck will obtain a new duck along with their existing duck. 
}}

The effect this legislation actually had was debatable. By the time this was proposed, Wotton already owned twelve ducks<ref>https://infinitenomic.miraheze.org/w/index.php?title=Round_9/Gamestate&oldid=786</ref>. That's a number that we wouldn't be able to sniff, especially given the aforementioned nerf. On the other hand, accumulating ducks provided no actual advantage other than more places to store quacks. Legislation to encourage high duck counts would likely be unpopular with everyone but Wotton.

=== The Second Dice Disaster ===

More uncertainty was injected into the gamestate when finsook dared to ask the question: is rolling a die a game action<ref>https://discord.com/channels/515560801394753537/518856008605499402/819275399154106408</ref>? If so, then every dice roll ever made had failed. The gamestate had been ratified a week earlier with [[{{FULLPAGENAME}}#The First Dice Disaster|The First Dice Disaster]], so the damage this one would do was not as bad, but a lot had happened after the ratification. Fortunately for the gamestate, it was decided that since the roll of a die doesn't directly effect the gamestate, the wording "A 'game action' is any action a player may take that would alter the gamestate<ref>https://infinitenomic.miraheze.org/w/index.php?title=Round_9/Ruleset&oldid=785#Actions</ref>" protected us and the gamestate from this fate<ref>[[Round 9/Rulings#Ruling 9]]</ref>.

=== Deleting the Duck Words ===

One constant source of frustration had been the duck words. We had experienced more than one near miss with a broken gamestate because of the one mechanic. Every player at the time had had at least one run-in with failure to inclue duck words cancelling one of their actions. It was clearly time for it to go, and Wotton took the initiative. He made a simple proposal that would delete the Duck Words rule (Proposal Enough!!!, 2 Mar 2021). This, however, would not fix the issue since the requirement to end a game action message with a duck word would still be in effect. To this end, idle proposed to delete the wording "with a message ending in a duck word" from the Ducks rule a quarter of an hour later (Proposal Enough!!! 🩹, 2 Mar 2021). These proposals were both set to be resolved at the end of the 7th.

A snag arose, however. Proposal Freer Actions (Random Internet Cat, 25 Feb 2021) passed earlier and revamped the rule defining game actions replacing the text "with a message ending in a duck word." Wotton realized this change as he was applying changes to the ruleset on 7 March and fortunately self-killed Proposal Enough!!! thirty seconds before it was to be adopted.

A bit later, on 9 Mar 2021, Klink proposed the deletion of the duck word verbiage, correctly this time (Proposal Stop Quacking).

{{Proposal Box
|name=Stop Quacking 
|text=
Amend rule Actions by removing the following text

:, and that the message providing for the intent ends in a duck word (possibly followed by punctuation)
}}