Anyone remember me? I used to be fairly active here but aside from a little lurking, I've been away from the site for about year.
Anyway, I've come up with an interesting mechanic. An auction where the final bid amount is paid to the second highest bidder. This creates some hard decisions like do you bid again when it's higher than you want to pay hoping to be outbid so you get some profit.
I've made it into a cheapass style game, one basic mechanic. It works and it's about as much fun as a typical cheapass game (not much). I'm hoping someone here will have suggestions or comments. (Is Seth still around? He was very good at that).
That's basically the same game I came up with, except mine was an archeological theme, you're all members of the same team finding artifacts and bidding to see who gets to keep them.
Items would have to have different victory point values, so saving family members would be difficult...how much is a wife worth vs a daughter?
That's a good idea. Then, of course, there's a whole game in what to do with the items you've bid on.
This would be simpler than Jpwoo's suggestion (and there for much more likely I'd make a viable game out of it ;)). With Scurra's hidden goal idea, I'm a long way towards having a game outline. I also think it would be good to deal each player a few cards for free face down to have a bit more variation in what the cards are worth to different players.
I'd say we definately haven't. How about a 2-player variant where player one names a price, then player two can choose to either accept this amount from or pay this amount to player one for the item.
In reading that, I realized I'd heard about the idea a while ago. It was still an interesting read.
James Ernst has a lot of brilliant mechanics and not a lot of good games. I started a fairly long thread here ages ago when I tried to use his auction mechanic from the Big Cheese in a richer game. I ended up with something very similar to Fifth Avenue (this was long before Fifth Avenue came out), except the auction mechanic just didn't work. Fifth Avenue is basically the same game I had with a different auction mechanic that also just doesn't work :).
I do buy most cheapass games, they're usually worth the price just for the entertainment of reading the rules and bits, and sometimes do offer inspiration. I also very rarely play any of the games.
The winning bidder pays *their* bid amount to the second place bidder, not the second place bid amount, sorry if this was unclear.
For example, player one bids $10, player two bids $15, and the auction ends. Then player two must pay $15 to player one.
I suppose I will need a degenerate case (no second bidder means the money is evenly divided among all the other players could work).