I am thinking of setting a scene at an auction, but absent a gunfight and attempted theft of the item (which may happen!) I'm at a bit of a loss to make it interesting.

I remember a scene in a book with an auction (Tatooine Ghost maybe?) which I might have to re-read for inspiration.

Possibilities I have so far are:

Slicing the auction catalog to reduce the price of the item

Switching the item with a fake

Winning the bidding, THEN finding out it's a fake

Now I know there are some really creative people on these boards, so any more ideas?

What is the PCs objective at the auction?

Is it just to win a particular item?

If it's some item that is important to them and it's going up for auction, some ideas might be:

- using Negotiation to bid on the item

- using Coercion, Charm or Negotiation to interfere with others trying to outbid them

- slicing computers to cause a disturbance to interfere with others trying to outbid them

- using some other means to cause a disturbance, like crashing a speeder, programming a droid to do something, etc

I consider bidding in an auction to be much like gambling, so I think that Cool might be the relevant skill to use.

What sort of auction it is also matters...

Is it some high-end auction where antiques and works of art are sold? In those places, security would be high and weapons and armor would be highly prohibited.

Is it more like an episode of Auction Kings? Your party could probably sneak blaster pistol sized weapons into that if they are good. Security would be present but not hardcore.

Is it a Black Market underworld auction with representatives of criminal organizations bidding on WMDs? Everyone will probably have entourages that are armed to the teeth.

I don't want to say too much more guys <whispers>they may well be reading!

But some good general ideas there, cheers all!

I ran an auction as part of the first leg of our campaign.

To make things interesting, I had a list of the bidders in my notes, along with some potentially compromising information for each. One was a wanted man, the other a pawn for a larger organisation, so-on.

The party got the idea to try to take out the bidders, and remove some competition, so they managed to hack up a list of bidders through their mission contact. It took them a whole 4-hour session to track down each bidder and 'convince' them the goods weren't worth the trouble.

And in the end, they were followed/engaged by the bidders when they found out the truth, and realised they were scammed. I still have bounty hunters from one of them still looking for the party.

Made for an interesting encounter (When it could have just been a dull auction).