Hi All! I'm looking for some help with an auction game. I have no experience with auction games and am trying to get a starting point. The general idea of my game will be to have players bid on a set of 4 items up for auction. The 4 items are all hidden and each player can peek at one of the items. Some items will be worth money some will be just junk but the players are bidding on the entire set of 4. The player with the winning bid wins all 4 items. Then the game goes into a Market phase where players can sell 1 item to the"Bank" for its full worth and sell or trade any amount of items between players. Then the game goes onto another auction of 4 items. The items come from a deck and the game ends when the deck is exhausted and all items have been auctioned off. The winning condition is to have the most money at the end.
Each player will play a different character that gives different abilities. Such as swiping off money from the others or getting an extra peek at the items. Also each character will have an item type that they favor and can sell to the bank for even more than its worth.
I'm having trouble figuring out if the players should all start off with the same starting amount or varying amounts. Also since the players can sell to the "bank", I want to prevent one character from easily running away with the game.
I need any and all ideas. Also when I have a working game engine, I'd like to offer the game as a print-n-play for playtesting purposes before making the final product.
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@ilta: yes i can playtest ad nauseum but it makes no sense for me to try to figure out how to do the auction mechanic if many other games have figured it out already. What I'm looking for is a starting point that I can then build upon and then adjust numbers.
@treyalsup: Very astute! Yes indeed I am trying to emulate the feel of those shows. As far as letting the players liquidate immediately, they are limited to only selling one item at a time to the bank. Perhaps maybe it should be that if they sell to the bank they only get half price unless it is their favored item type? So the items will have a max value but the only way to get full price for an item is to sell a favored item to the bank. (i.e. The Antique Dealer sells Antiques at full price to bank but only makes half price with everything else.) Thereby perhaps encouraging players to sell items amongst themselves to try to get a better price than they would from the bank. So a player that would normally make half price from antiques could try to sell it to the Antique Dealer player for more than they could from the bank.
You mentioned having an inventory. I'm not sure what you mean. I also want to point out that I'm aiming for this game to have as few components as possible. Optimally just a deck of cards and money. I'm aiming for it to be small, affordable and portable. Also trying to be fairly casual like a party game. Also what did you mean by "collections"? I do have an idea for a "Collector" character than can sell multiple matching item types to the bank. Thank you for your input it is really helping out.