Paper auction — bid for the prize
Auctions are deceptively simple games of value. Pay too much for a prize and you've won the wrong way. Pay too little and you walk away empty-handed.
From Auction / bidding games (For Sale, High Society).
What it shows a designer
Bidding with a budget that never refills: every token spent now is gone later. It shows how players come to price the same prize differently as their money runs down.
Credits
- Made by
- Made for this tool, after the bidding in games such as For Sale and High Society
What you need
- 30 small paper bits per player (their bidding tokens)
- 5 'prize cards' — pieces of paper marked with values 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
- a small bag or hat
How to play
- Set up. Each player gets 30 paper bits — these are their bidding tokens. Put 5 prize cards in a bag.
- Reveal a prize. Pull one prize card from the bag. Place it in the centre.
- Bid. Each player secretly writes a bid on a slip: any number of their tokens, 0 included. Reveal all at once.
- Highest pays, takes the prize. The highest bidder gives those tokens to the bank and takes the prize. If bids tie, the tied players bid again.
- Repeat for all 5 prizes. After 5 prizes, add up the values of the prizes you took. Most wins; if that ties, more tokens left wins.
After playing, talk about
- When did you overpay?
- Did you read the others' bidding patterns?
- What did the last prize feel like?
Its blocks
Download it as a design (.md)In boardgameBuilder, Open game puts its blocks on the canvas. Changed, the same file can come back here from Propose a game.