Modest Duck
Welcome to the Modest Duck Compendium, a publicly contributable reference for the vocabulary, mechanics, and history of game design. Every page is a living node in a graph: you arrive by search, by following a cross-reference, or by browsing one of the curated entry points below.
The compendium is not a blog. There are no dates, no posts, no feeds. Each article is an evolving definition that anyone can improve — see [about — unknown] for the project's editorial stance.
How to read it
Articles are organized around concepts rather than authors. A typical entry
opens with a one-paragraph lede, then expands into sections at ## and ###.
Inline cross-references appear in blue: follow them freely. Rock,
Paper, and Scissors are examples of how in-world game terminology is rendered — small mono chips inside flowing prose.
When an entry quotes a real-world source, it uses a blockquote. When it quotes something from inside a game's fiction, it uses a flavor quote:
A good rule is one that is simple to state, hard to break, and quietly profound to obey.
How to contribute
Anyone with a GitHub account can propose an article or an edit. Every page on
this site exposes an Edit link in its toolbar — including this one — that
opens the source .mdx file in the content repository
for direct revision. Commit on a branch, open a pull request, and a maintainer
will review.
A few house rules:
- Sentence case for headings. "Resolving a round," not "Resolving A Round."
- Lead with a definition, not a hook.
- Prefer linking to existing entries over inlining background.
- The
descriptionfield is the single most important line you write — it feeds search engines, link previews, and LLM crawlers.
See the content repo's CONTRIBUTING.md for the full guide.
Where to go next
- The A-Z catalog lists every published article.
- Recent changes tracks what's been edited.
- Contributors credits the people who built this.
- About the project explains the editorial philosophy.