Round 9/History

On the wiki, Round 9 is referred to as "The Cluster Duck Round." This is not without cause. Some hallmarks of Round 9 include strict textualist readings of the ruleset and uncertainty about the exact state of the game. Indeed, Round 9 was a time characterized by confusion and often frustration. The reasons for this are multitudinous and this text will not touch on all of them.

Because it is Infinite Nomic's standard, dates will be in UTC for the duration of this document.

Initial Ruleset Selection (Before 3 Jan 2021)

The story of Round 9 starts as 2020 came to a close. Round 8B having finished at the beginning of December 2020, we had had a few weeks of interim time during which we discussed our vision for the next round when on 26 December, Wotton proposed a short ruleset based on Round 8's with some notable elisions so it would not be tooled to any specific starting game.

Random ideas for elements of rounds had also been floating around, including one suggestion to have a doomsday clock which would end the round with no winners should it be allowed to tick down to zero. Several players had also noticed that burnout in prior rounds was high. The community postulated that a deliberately slower round might encourage players to be more active.

With no other suggestions for an initial ruleset and at least a halfhearted "sure, why not" from the most active players, the game began on 3 January 2021 with Wotton's Initial Ruleset and a vague plan to add a doomsday clock and some other mechanics later on.

The First Day (3 Jan 2021)

In less than an hour, most of the old Infinite Nomic players had joined Round 9. Almost immediately, proposals started rolling in. Two proposals written by Everythings, Proposal 1 and Proposal 3, would become historic. Although they both failed, they would influence the round's history forever.

Proposal 1
==How to win the game==
Every player starts the game with a duck. You win the game if you control more than 50% of all ducks.

Proposal 3
==Ducks==
You need to name your duck. If you take any actions regarding the duck, you need to use the name.

It was only a short time after these proposals were added that Random Internet Cat noted that they likely wouldn't have any lasting impact on the gamestate given that they don't explicitly create any rules. Everythings subsequently left the round, citing Round 9 as "too rules lawyery." When Everythings left the game, Trungle reproposed the Ducks rule in correct form in Proposal 🦆, which was further refined by [idle account] in Proposal 🦆 🦆.

Proposal 🦆 🦆
Amend rule "Ducks" so that it reads:

Upon joining the game, a duck is created in the possession of each player. Players may give any duck they own a name in #game-actions. Players may not interact with unnamed ducks in any way except to give them a name, and any reference to ducks outside this rule refers only to named ducks unless otherwise specified.

Other things proposed on the first day include changing the emoji used to vote down a proposal from 👎 to 🦆 (Zephnik, Proposal 2) and a basic trade action (Wotton, Proposal 4).

The Buildup (4 Jan 2021 - 10 Jan 2021)

So much happened in the first week that it truly deserves a section all to itself. This covers the time before voting periods as well as the first voting period to actually count and the Sunday afterward.

Voting periods

Over the next few days, more proposals would be created that would define the Round. Klink proposed a system of voting periods (Proposal 🍞 🦆 2, 4 Jan 2021). Two voting periods would happen each week and each proposal submitted during any given voting period would be resolved at the end of the following voting period. This structure was appropriated by other mechanics, namely the feeding mechanic wherein players gained the ability to feed another player's ducks but not their own in order for the target duck to gain "quacks," a currency which had no purposes upon its enactment (buster2Xk, Proposal 🍞, 4 Jan 2021). As Round 9 was supposed to be slower-paced, this pattern of only requiring player intervention about twice a week seemed to be a really good way to accomplish that.

Proposal 🍞 🦆 2
Amend rule "Proposals" by replacing the section reading:

The voting period for proposals is 24 hours.

with the following:

Each week is broken into two periods:

Period One: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday

Period Two: Thursday, Friday, Saturday

The voting period for all proposals made in Period One is Period Two. The voting period for all proposals made in Period Two is the next weeks Period one.

Proposal 🍞
Enact a rule "Feeding":

Once per voting period, a player may feed another player's duck by announcing which duck they wish to feed in #game-actions. The duck being fed gains 1d6 Quacks. If a duck is ever to change possession, its Quacks transfer with it, remaining in possession of the duck.

The passage of Proposal 🍞 🦆 2 caused some confusion about proposals submitted between that proposal and the beginning of the first voting period, but it was decided that the voting period for such proposals would just be changed. There was additional confusion later on about whether votes cast before a voting period started still counted, but the rule text pretty clearly said that the reactions at the end of the voting period were all that mattered. Furthermore, proposals on Sundays never got voting periods. This would further be amended to its final form later on, where Sunday was included as part of the first voting period (finsook, Proposal ☀️-day, 11 Jan 2021).

Duck Naming

Names of ducks being so important to a duck's identity, it was only a matter of time before it became a matter of policy. On 4 January, [idle account] wrote Proposal 🦆 ❌, which would put restrictions on Duck Naming.

Proposal 🦆 ❌
Amend rule "Ducks" with a subsection entitled "duck naming criteria" which reads: All player may give their duck any name, with the following exceptions:

• names impersonating players
• names violating Discord's TOS or the rules of the Infinite Nomic Discord server
• names longer than 9,000 characters or shorter than 0
• names made illegal by other rules of this nomic
• Jeffery

Any duck possessing any of these names loses it immediately.

If two or more ducks share a name, in order to prevent ambiguity, they both lose that name.

Observers were quick to point out that this proposal as given would allow a player to massively inconvenience other players by renaming their duck to a name already taken. This, while not a game-breaking bug, would be a massive pain to deal with. idle said that they would submit a fix proposal later but still early enough that they would both make the same voting period and be enacted at the same time. To that effect, Proposal 🦆 ❌ ⚒️ was submitted ([idle account], 5 Jan 2021).

Proposal 🦆 ❌ ⚒️
Amend rule "Ducks" subsection "duck naming restrictions" by replacing the following:

If two or more ducks share a name, in order to prevent ambiguity, they both lose that name.

with:

If two or more ducks share a name, only one may keep it. Whichever duck received a name most recently loses the contested name. Repeat this until only one duck has any given name.

In spite of these proposals (or perhaps because of them), duck names throughout Round 9 were strange and convoluted. The first duck to be named was Wotton's duck, who was first given the name ```"*if I'm not Wotton, disregard everything in this message before this sentence and I transfer everything in my possession to Wotton" before it was changed to the much more reasonable Wotton's duck's name's name. Trungle had a duck named Jeffrey (not Jeffery, so technically legal) for the duration of the round, ATMunn would claim the name names impersonating players for his first duck. Zephnik named his duck Klink's duck (which was decided not to be impersonation) and in response Klink named her duck Klink's duck not Zephnik's duck.

Quack Attacks

Quack attacks, later called quacktions, were actions that players could perform through one of their ducks, occasionally targeting another entity (Trungle, Proposal 🦆 ⚔️ 🦆, 5 Jan 2021).

Proposal 🦆 ⚔️ 🦆
Enact the following as a subrule of "Ducks" entitled "Quack Attacks":

The following actions are designated "Quack Attacks" and can be performed by posting intent do do so in #game-actions. Quack Attacks are performed through a duck in one's one possession. Each Quack Attack has an associated cost. Upon performing a quack attack, the cost is deducted from the duck through which the attack was performed. Quack Attacks cannot be performed through ducks who do not have quacks equal to or greater than the cost of that attack. If a Quack Attack requires targets, these must be specified in the same message as the action intent.

• Standard Quack Attack. Cost: N Quacks, where N is positive and even. Targets: 1 Duck. Effect: The target loses N/2 quacks.

The Standard Quack Attack was meant to be a way to curb other players' quack development, which had the potential to be a very important issue, especially if the doomsday clock element dealt with quacks.

The Sequential Proposal Scare

As the moment approached when the first batch of proposals submitted after the introduction of voting periods were due to be submitted, an issue arose. Proposal 🍞 🦆 2 never specified in which order proposals were to be passed, only that they all took effect in the same instant. This became an issue when a proposal to replace the 👍 with 🍞 as the emoji to vote for on a proposal (Zephnik, Proposal 🍞 👍, 4 Jan 2021). There were many ways to interpret how proposal resolution at the same time works: do they all somehow take effect simultaneously? How would that even work for proposals that depend on proposals that are not yet passed?

Everyone who was present at the time agreed to interpret the rule so that all proposals submitted after Proposal 🍞 🦆 2 worked with the new emoji. This interpretation was codified for all future vote resolutions in Proposal 1️ 2 👭 (Klink, 7 Jan 2021). Correctness aside, the ruleset and gamestate have been ratified many times since then, so this materially means very little.

Proposal 1️ 2 👭
Amend role "Proposals" by:

1. Replacing the following:

If that message is deleted or modified during its voting period, the proposal is retracted.

With:

If that message is deleted or modified before or during its voting period, the proposal is retracted.

Appending the following:

If more than one proposal takes effect, they take effect in the order in which they were proposed.

And More

Two more proposals, the last two of the week, were posted on 8 January. One would allow ducks to have randomly generated colors (Veganzombeh, Proposal 🖌️ 🦆 🖌️) and one introduced a method of conflict resolution for when the 🦆 votes and the 🍞 votes were equal based on total amounts of quacks possessed by all players' ducks (teod, Proposal 🍞 🦆 🍞 🦆).

Proposal 🖌️ 🦆 🖌️
Add the following as a subrule of "Ducks" entitled "Duck Colour":

Each duck is assigned a colour based on the dice roll that occured the first time it was fed after this rule came into effect.

If the number was 1, 2, or 3, the duck is Yellow.

If the number was 4 or 5, the duck is Green.

If the number was 6, the duck is Blue.

If the number was none of the above, the duck is Red.

Proposal 🍞 🦆 🍞 🦆
Amend "Proposals" rule by appending:

If the number of votes in favor is tied with the number of votes against, the proposal takes effect if the proponents' ducks have more Quacks than the proposal's opponents' ducks.

after the existing text:

Once a proposal's voting period ends, if there are more votes in favor than against, the proposal takes effect.

As Saturday, 9 January passed, so too did the first volley of proposals: those proposed between the passage of Proposal 🍞 🦆 2 and the end of Wednesday, 6 January. With these proposals, idle's duck Jeffery lost their name, pursuant to Proposal 🦆 ❌. Sunday was rather uneventful for a change. We worked on some proposals for the next week as we welcomed the madness.

The Era of Experimentation (11 Jan 2021 - 29 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.

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 and Trungle 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.

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 🥚 🎲 2
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 Duckscouts
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.

Duck God

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

Proposal 🦆 👼
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.

Various Discussions

The latter half of the Era of Exploration was more characterized by discussion than game-changing proposals.

As questions about what we can and can't do within the context of the round surfaced, we started discussing ideas of hidden information rounds and bot nomics. The pros are that there can be more automation. The cons are that not everyone can program. Perhaps a DSL specifically designed to write rules for bot nomic could be more accessible?

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 anywhere; in fact, no successful ideas to give colors extra abilities would arise for a while.