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Mechanic Monday: Bidding More Than You Have

Hello hello, and welcome back to an attempt to pull off a Mechanic Monday! Despite being terribly sleepy and having just written a post yesterday! WoooOOOoooOOOooo!

Today I’m going to draw on where I left off; the cousin of ranked-choice voting (and the extrapolated mechanic, 2nd-place prizes), is second-place bids in auctions.  The second-place bid reveals even more of the narrative and the priorities of the bidders of a given lot.  And what the second-place prize is can affect those revelations.

The second-place prize could be:

  • The same as the first-place prize, but in a smaller proportion
  • A generic (from lot to lot) consolation prize
  • A unique (from lot to lot, or entirely unique each time) consolation prize

What does the dance look like if you want the second-place prize even more than you want the first-place prize? What does it look like the further down the line you award (3rd-place, 4th-place, etc)

But what I want to propose for THIS Monday’s Mechanic is: 2nd-place might win, if 1st goes broke.

Bidding More Than You Have

In GREEM, each round is comprised of a series of simultaneous auctions.  Players have a set amount of currency, but may Bid more than they actually have, combined across auctions or even on one Single bid.  Once the round ends, auctions are resolved, starting with the highest winning Bid.  When each winning Bid is announced, that player may Withdraw their Bid, if they are unable or unwilling to pay it.  When a winning Bid is Withdrawn, all the previously losing Bids in that Lot are decreased by 5, and the second-place Bid becomes the new winning Bid.  The process continues until all Lots have been awarded, or until all remaining Lots have no remaining Bids.  The round ends, players count their winnings and their currency, and the next round begins.

I added that “losing bids are all decreased by 5” thing to prevent the possibility that players would just layer astronomically large bids one after the other forever; but I also think it rewards anyone who bids at any point in the auction, and keeps the race for the middlegame of a bidding war interesting.  One possibility is that the winnings of an auction may not be separate from currency; maybe they’re a mix of VP and currency, or VP but VP can be converted to currency (albeit at a lower rate during rounds than between rounds).  You know me, why not both, and throw in Special Abilities as potential winnings as well.  Fuck I love auctions and I love making them weird.

I should do a roundup of my weird auction ideas sometime soon.  That’d be fun, right? It’s midnight almost and I’m so tired.  Til next time!

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