Skip to main content

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  When a winning Bid is Withdrawn, all the previously losing Bids in that Lot are decreased by 5, and the second-place Bid becomes the new winning Bid.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!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TTRPG Tuesday: Three Means Of Resolving

Hi it’s another TTRPG Tuesday! First of the year.  Let’s get right into it. Saw a challenge on Twitter to make some resolution mechanics.  I can do those! Here we go: Hand to Hand The player performing the action and the person running the game or otherwise opposing the action both put their dominant fists toward one another, bounce them three times to get a rhythm, and reveal a number with their fingers, 0-5.  Sum the two numbers, and if the number is greater than 5, subtract six, so that the final number is always between 0 and 5.  On a 0, the action fails catastrophically, on a 1-2 it fails, 3-4 it succeeds, on a 5 it succeeds spectacularly.  The player taking the action starts the game with all five fingers up on their non-dominant hand; after an attempt, they may lower fingers on that hand to add to the sum of the attempt. Ex. Alice attempts to seduce Cat’s character over to the coup conspirators.  They put their dominant hands together (right for ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Building My First Deck in Tabletop Simulator

Well well, a new week.  How original.  I had an idea for a possible Mechanic Monday but it turned out to just be Stratego.  C’est la vie! (Although maybe it could still work if the forces weren’t all set in stone, and player’s had a limited number of reserve forces that they could secretly commit prior to each combat, and also instead of larger forces wiping out smaller ones, they would deal the difference in force sizes as damage) (Also note to self: Each player starts with a different hidden amount of VP/Currency that they have to pay (plus interest) at game’s end, as a way to truly hide who’s in the lead.) Anyway it’s Wednesday, so there’s no time for any of THAT stuff.  Today, I’m going to kvetch informatively about Tabletop Simulator. So, TTS is, near as I can tell, an incredibly powerful and useful tool.  It’s also absolute ass to parse, as someone coming to it cold.  The official guides are largely unhelpful for the designers whose experience is limi...
Post a Comment
Read more

TTRPG Tuesday: The Secret Calendar

Welcome back to TTRPG Tuesday! Have I done any this year? Looks like no! On pace to be a pretty low-posting year I guess. Today I actually have a full-fledged one pager TTRPG to share.  I was listening to a Ludology with Camilla Zamboni as the guest and was inspired by her collection Roll for Learning.  The Secret Calendar came to me pretty much fully formed as I walked and listened to the episode, though I do want to acquire RfL to get layout inspo. Anyhow, the first draft can be found HERE .  I think this could be a fun activity for students (was also thinking of Wolfenoot) and maybe I’ll publish it or submit it at some point. Okay I’m out of practice so that's it buh bye!
Post a Comment
Read more