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Mechanic Monday: Hoppy New Year!

Happy 2023 and welcome back to Mechanic Monday! Wow, how long has it been since I did a post that wasn’t RPG-based? No one knows. Will this year be a return to 2020 form? No one cares.
This week, I’ve been thinking about aUction games, especially on the heels of Dan Thurot’s recent interview with Amabel Holland about Watch Out! That’s a Dracula. I’ve always liked auction games (Medici was the first Knizia I put real time into) and I’ve had a lot of auction mechanics on this blog (a roundup of them, even), and I thought I should try and see if I can string some of them together into one game, weird and wild but at least playable. I specifically want this to be a bit hodgepodge and messy, as I think that auction games already tend towards clean and I’d like to fight against that both with complexity and accompanying theme. I’m thinking hidden identities of the bidders, and innate as well as acquired player powers, which led me to think that themewise we could do a cyberpunk auction of enhancements and identities and hacked revenue streams, or a Frameshift Mutation type Weird BioHacker auction of traits and genes, but for the time being, primarily because of the pun name that came to me, we’re going to go with Warlocktion. Warlauction? Nah, Warlocktion.
Perhaps everything - identities, assets, currency, powers, is cards, with a shared cardback, and absolutely everything can be auctioned off or sold (with the possible exception of a revealed identity). There will be player-run auctions as well as house ones; dutch, poker, and snake auctions, hidden bids and hidden prizes; currencies include regular, Trumps, and Victory Points. Hell, let’s throw in my Debt Markers mechanic too since it would seem to fit the theme, and is certainly a way to jumpstart the arms race for currency.
So maybe I’ll grab some blanks and scribble down some things worth bidding for or pretending to be, and see what comes out of my head. Build around that, see if an engine gets running or if there are any obvious stall points. If I recall correctly, Cardboard Edison has a submission contest running through the end of the month; maybe I’ll try to get something together by then; or just take it at my own pace. Wasn’t much of an intro and this isn’t much of an outro but hey! That’s how we do it round here. Til next time!

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