Auctioning Mechanic (Part 2/2)

Please Note: This is the second of two articles on auctioning as a tabletop game mechanic. The first article may be accessed here.

Last week’s article dove into various possible options for implementing an auctioning mechanic into your board or card game. Please comment with your thoughts on auctioning mechanics and how you have used them in the past!

No discussion of tabletop game mechanics is complete without also considering cautions and potential problems to keep in mind when implementing each mechanic, and this article dives into those cautions and considerations with the many auctioning mechanisms that can be utilized.

After looking over these thoughts below, please share your own ideas and breakthroughs with auctioning in games!

Important Considerations with Auctioning

Auctioning is a great way to distribute resources and invite strategic planning in your games. However, after deciding to include auctioning in board and card games, one of the important issues to consider is what to do with the funds that are raised. Many games simply return funds to the bank or stockpile, but there are several other options that will also affect players’ bidding practices, as shown below.

• Some games, including Chicago Express, invest the funds raised into players’ shared train companies as the main source of money they can use to expand throughout the game.
• Other games such as Dealer’s Choice have players auction their own items and keep the funds raised.
• Another option that is sometimes used is to redistribute funds raised among the losing players so that players earn money for future auctions by losing current auctions.

At times, items may be auctioned that players do not want to purchase at the current asking price. Rather than drag out the game or leave unwanted items in the market, some games include some kind of control that decreases or reduces the price of items if no player chooses to bid on it. Other times, reducing the price is built into the auctioning mechanism, as in auctions where the price goes in reverse, from a high price to a low until someone is willing to purchase at the asking price. Blind auctions with no minimum or a low minimum also help ensure that all items are purchased at some price point.

Board and card games that use unconventional auctioning, especially blind auctions, should also have a built-in way to deal with ties and resolve equal bids. This might include taking into account a secondary ranking mechanism, requiring tied players to re-bid, requiring tied players to add to their current bid, or discarding the item and removing it from the game.

As mentioned above, creative approaches can be taken to incentivize strategically losing bids, such as compensating losing players or requiring players to win or lose a specific number of bids. Many other variations can be added to auctions to make them interesting and unique.

Cautions and Tips for Using Auctioning

Care should be taken when using auctioning in games that the auctioning does not extend the game by too much. In some cases, if too many decisions are affected by the auction it can lead to overthinking and detract from other mechanics within the game.

 Related to this, players’ feelings and emotions should be taken into consideration. Some auctions, especially timed auctions and Dutch Auctions (descending price) can bring a lot of tension and stress. Other auctions that do not play a core role in the game might be tedious and off-putting. In either case, such a problem might reflect badly on the game or make it unpleasant to play; while on the other hand, some players might enjoy decisions like that. Because of this, designers should carefully consider what emotions and interactions you hope to encourage for the game, then carefully design and test auctions to match the intended choices and gameplay.

However you decide to include them, auctions can be a great opportunity to engage players in your games. Let me know what new ideas you have seen or tried with board and card game auctions!

What are some concerns you have with auctioning being used as a board or card game mechanic? What are some ways to mitigate any potential problems? Please comment below with your thoughts!

Please Note: This is the second of two articles on auctioning as a tabletop game mechanic. The first article may be accessed here.