Posted June 14, 2013
Some of you have wondered what the duck in Stonekeep is all about. Others have drawn a connection between it and a similar mention of ducks in Fallout. However, I think I know where it all started. The following is what a former interplay employee posted at the Talk page for the Wikipedia article about Battle Chess:
Ahhhhh, the duck! The true story about the duck: It originated at Interplay before Battle Chess. It was a running joke that our Electronic Arts producer - who was fond of meddling while simultaneously being clueless about game design - needed to have his ego stroked by being channeled into harmless changes that made him feel empowered. There was no actual duck originally - that was just a metaphor for anything that could be used as a red herring to keep him distracted. Battle Chess never needed a duck since we jettisoned EA specifically because of the aforementioned (but not named) producer unintentionally convincing Interplay to go independent of EA (there were no outside influences to that needed subtle manipulation). But the duck lore had started and it remained something we constantly joked about and eventually began sneaking into the games. Why a duck? Hey, if it was good enough for Groucho and Chico...Two-Tonic Knight (talk) 18:32, 28 May 2010 (UTC)