In game auctions

[garhkal]

Over on one of my ADND sites, someone was asking about how would one go about running an in game auction, ala the Storage wars show. Where say a bank/church/money lender, had kept some party treasure in a large chest, but they've died, or failed to pay their debt. So he's selling it off, auction style.

They wondered, how would one go about creating a chart or what ever, to determine how many NPC's would be bidding on it, how would you determine their max bids etc..

In one of my games, I had a group of 7 ships up for auction on one imperial planet. I had a list of npcs (19) and how much they'd bid/max they'd go to. Got a few friends, who were briefed, and between us we ran all of them, with another friend running the auctioneer.. PC's who wanted to bid, did..



So if YOU were to do something like that, how would You handle it?
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[KageRyu]

I think charts might be a bit overkill. I would likely just decide a number of bidders, or if needed maybe set a Die Code level of value for the auction and have 1 bidder for each full D plus a couple stragglers.

I would likely hand each round of bidding maybe as a series of Bargain rolls. Wish I had my rulebook handy to consult, but the closeness of the roles determines how high the price gets as well as if the other bidders consider it "too rich for their blood"

Keep it as simple and based in existing rules as possible...

Unless using it directly as a story motivator where either 1) Acquiring a needed item from the trove should not be as easy as buying it, or 2) Acquiring the trove puts the players in possession of something someone else wants and will use dirty tactics to get and for a reason...
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"There's a set way to gain new Force Points and it represents a very nice system, where you're rewarded for heroism, not for being a poor conductor to electricity." ~Jachra

[Dredwulf60]

The way I would run it;

Have a list of NPC buyers.

Assign each NPC buyer a die code based on their wealth/ desire for the item(s).

ie a poor or only casually interested buyer might have 2D.
An interested buyer might have 4D
A financially secure, interested party might have 6D
A wealthy patron seeking the item in question might have 8D or more.





Determine the base value of the item being auctioned, ie an heirloom blaster might have a 1000 cr value.

Difficulty is based on the current highest bid:

Present bid value is 1/2 base value or less: Difficulty 5.
Present bid value is less than base value: Difficulty 10
Present bid value is over base value up to 1.5x base value: Difficulty 15
Present bid is up to 2x base value: difficulty 20
Present bid is up to 4x base value: difficulty 25
Present bid is up to 8x base value: difficulty 30
Present bid is up to 16 x base value: difficulty 35

Have the players make their bid. They don't roll anything; but their bid might raise the difficulty up a level for the NPCs.

Have all NPCs roll their die code against the current difficulty.

If they succeed, they match the bid (and may raise the bid by an amount based on how much they roll over the difficulty; say 1/10th of the item's base value per point over...in the case of the heirloom blaster that's 100cr increase per point.)

If an NPC fail the roll, they stop bidding on the item.


Begin the round again, with the same difficulty if the new bid has not moved into a higher difficulty bracket, or move to the higher difficulty if the bidding has done so. (ie the blaster base value is 1000cr, last round's bid was at 900cr...but now the players have bid 1100cr...which brings the difficulty of the NPCs bidding from 15 to 20.



The players win the auction when all other still active NPCs fail their roll, meaning they no longer wish to bid at that level.

The players can drop out before the start of any new bidding round, meaning the item will be purchased by an NPC.

If desired, you could then roll amongst the remaining NPCs to determine who eventually gets the item, if it is important to the story (ie who they have to track down and confront afterward) for convenience it could be whichever NPC achieved the highest roll.


If you don't want the players bumping up the creditc by just 1 or 2 each time hoping to outlast the NPCs, you can have the auctioneer automatically raise the next bid by regular intervals.

[Whill]

Sure you can crunch it all up like that, but I feel like we are almost back to "How do you know if a character likes the taste of Nerf steak without rolling dice?"

Another option is, you can do it without game mechanics. Just make the NPCs that will bid on the item and determine what each of their max bids will be, and then play out the auction. If the point is to save time and not roleplay something mundane like an auction, then simple opposing bargain rolls should suffice.
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[KageRyu]

[garhkal]