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Roundup of Weird Auction Mechanics

Hello hello.  It’s Friday, and I’m done with work, I figured I’d get this week’s blog post out prior to the last minute.  So I’ve got Meet Me At the Altar blaring and the kettle’s just gone so let’s carry over some momentum!

Giving you a sneak peek here to try and hold myself accountable: I’ve been wanting for a while to do a series of Mechanic Mondays where I take M:tG abilities and spin out what they could look like as the primary mechanic of a standalone board game.  I’ve got just a couple other ideas I want to get through before I kick that off - and I’d like to get a buffer of 2 or 3 of those together to start with, to ensure the idea has legs.  Particularly since I don’t actually play MtG myself (although Strixhaven sure seems like a good entrypoint into playing, considering I haven’t bought Magic cards or built a deck since I was a magical high school student myself).

Anyhow - that’s yet to come.  For the time being, I still want to write a year-end reflection on boardgame mechanical takeaways from my favourite videogames of 2020, and of course, today’s topic: a roundup of all my weird auction mechanics!

So! We’ve got

Oh.  Okay.  Alright, so there weren’t actually that many.  I think that the looseness of my iterating possibilities for each mechanic led me to think that I’d written more mechanics than I had.  But the reality is, that not even all of the mechanics above are auction-related.  Half of them are just mechanics that can be applied to auctions.  You know what I think it is? I’ve got a lot of stuff about drafts, and there are a fair number of auction draft or other draft-related things on there.  But let’s look at what we’ve got anyway! I often think about how many of my orphaned mechanics can be combined - not all of them, or willy-nilly, but there’s definite synergy to be mined.  And I think that the auction mechanics I’ve outlined in my MMs could be standalone games, but would still work well together.  A recurrent theme in the selected posts is the idea of bidding on Lots that contain mechanically different things: Currency, Victory Points, Abilities; I like non-discrete trade because it obscures absolute values, and places more decision-making on the subjective judgment of the players.  When you have to make apples-to-oranges comparisons, it’s harder to settle on the optimal play, and you have to let other considerations guide your choices.  I also just think it’s neat: the idea that instead of just bidding on a painting, you’re bidding on a painting, plus either $20 or an IOU for $50 next week, plus the ability to make next week arrive sooner.  Game-affecting abilities also help each player grow distinct from their peers.

Heh - I’ve just noticed that one of the above posts is from almost exactly a year ago.  I’d just started in my new role at the dayjob and wasn’t sure if I’d like it.  Well, 367 very strange days later, I’m thriving in it, and believe that working simultaneously keeping up on technical writing, creative writing, and the games writing that lies somewhere between those two, is good for all three.  And I’ve written damn near a blog post every week since then.  So here’s to - more of that.

This post, while thinner than I’d thought, does make me think it might be worth coming up with a list of possible player powers to acquire, and rules for the wealth-dependent states, to try combining the mechanics above into one game.  Minus Formalized Cheating, I think - and possibly without Debt Markers, or a watered down version.  Could be fun for a larger project down the line.

Anyhow, we’ll see about that once I clear my current design plate out a little bit.  For the time being - have a good one, and catch you next week.

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