Hi there,

in the auction scene of the adventure, the PCs only support a certain bidder, but what if the PCs want be bidders, too? How would you determine the Bid Value?

Do the PCs have access to millions of credits?

If so, then they might be able to buy their way into the auction.

Yeah, the adventure specifies the bidders are vetted well in advance. A PC might be able to imitate a bidder (when I ran it, some RP and an extremely good charm check let the PC take the place of a bidder who was getting kicked out), but unless they've made such a name for themselves that they are invited by Grayson weeks beforehand (and so wouldn't even be on the adventure) they're not going to be legitimate.

If the PCs somehow do enter the auction, remember that by default the bid advances 20,000cr each round (more if they do the stuff in the book) if the PC bids more than this increase then they will be told they have the high bid when the droid comes back. Bid Values are for keeping NPCs in the bidding, PCs don't need to have one as it's up to them whether they want to keep going higher or not. As for NPCs dropping out, you can just have them drop out as written until it's just the last NPC and the PC, at which point it should be up to roleplaying.

If you need it, I made an excel spreadsheet to run the auction when I ran it (though all the character names are different, since I reskinned the whole adventure). I could make some tweaks and post it if that would be helpful, there is a lot to keep track of. You could make whatever adjustments you wanted to add the PCs as bidders.

If you need it, I made an excel spreadsheet to run the auction when I ran it (though all the character names are different, since I reskinned the whole adventure). I could make some tweaks and post it if that would be helpful, there is a lot to keep track of. You could make whatever adjustments you wanted to add the PCs as bidders.

This would be awesome!

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9dwD6tEu92-TkdWQVBmaEVhWDA

The grey boxes are the ones you should edit as the encounter moves on. If you want to add in the PCs, I'll leave it to you to deduce your way through how the formulas work. It's rather crude, but so much bidder-specific stuff happens there wasn't much I could do to work around it.

If this is useful to more people, and they have a suggestion for a better thread to put it in, just let me know. I'm happy to keep it on my dropbox forever.

Should I give the PCs just Elaiza's place with 1 Bid Value?

Additional question: Let's say the auction takes place in an old space station (which is basically an underworld haven) between Kessel and the Maw around 6 BBY. The objects they offer are pirate loot lost goods. Some known underworld associates are bidders. Who could be a bidder at this time? (I already have the MF-Crew (Lando, Han, Chewie), Bib Fortuna, Epthant Mon)

I'd say run it without the PCs as a bidder in the system, except that if their bid is higher than the bid in the spreadsheet, THEY are the winning bid. That means they could bid 300k off the bat and just win it since it goes beyond what anyone will pay, but that's how an auction works.

I would use Bids of 5k instead of 20k.

and i still dont understand how the bidding is suppose to work in the adventure.

and i still dont understand how the bidding is suppose to work in the adventure.

If you were more specific I could help. Otherwise, I'd just say I know my work to be correct in the spreadsheet and you can use it as is without needing to worry too much.

and i still dont understand how the bidding is suppose to work in the adventure.

Don´t worry, not only you .

I am going to run the auction in one or two sessions and I will ignore the bidding system and focus on the PCs and what they are doing. In my game, the Jewel of Yavin will be auctioned for 175k unless PCs do something. For each successful interaction with the bidders as proposed in the book (blackmail, love affair, smth else they will come up), they will raise the final bid by 25k with Kaltho the Hutt winning anyway.

That is a simple version of course, one could make that for each successful interaction with a specific bidder, the bid is increased for a different amount because of different wealth of each participants.

and i still dont understand how the bidding is suppose to work in the adventure.

It's basically just an incrementing system. Each bidder has a 'value' that roughly determines how badly they want to win relative to everyone else. Each round, the lowest valued bidder drops out if their value is 10 lower than the next highest value, indicating that the current bid is way outside what they can pay. These 'values' increase by the 'base' value for each bidder each round (Kaltho has the highest at 7, which is why he wins if no one interferes with said values). The amount that the jewel is currently going for starts at 20k, and increases by 20k each round if nothing else interferes. Therefore if the PCs do nothing the ending bid will be Kaltho the Hutt at 220k credits. You can check that by simply advancing the "Round" in the spreadsheet to 11. That's the basics.

The PCs can then influence the bid values of each bidder, by convincing them to bid higher. This has the effect of not only increasing their bid value (potentially keeping them in the bidding for longer, adding 20k to the price for each additional round), but also increasing the amount that the 'high bid' increases by in the round in which they were persuaded by the PCs. There are also 4 unique events which can occur, each of which messes with the system in a unique way.

My spreadsheet has values you can insert for A) which round they are currently in B) How many successful rolls the PCs have made against each bidder, along with how many success/triumph they got, C) trackers for each 'event'. simply change from 0 to the appropriate value depending on how the event resolved. The numbers listed to the right of each line indicate the possibilities written out in the book. Also note the round this was triggered in, as the events have ongoing effects. If you roleplay round by round, updating the values as you advance through the rounds, eventually only one bidder will be left "IN". At this point, the auction ends and the "Current Bid" is the sale price. My PCs managed to get that bad boy up to 310k!

All the complexity mentioned above is wrapped up in the excel sheet (which is linked to in my earlier post), leaving you to simply worry about roleplaying the situations. It's still up to you when/if to trigger any of the events, but the details on that are well covered in the book. Hope this helped!

again.. seems to me based on the spread sheet you just need to manipulate Zekra or Kaltho to increase thier bids and the rest is just Chaff, distraction, and wasted efforts. Which is why i find the auction so confusing and more complex then it needs to be

It may seem like that, but particularly with regards to the lovers quarrel there is opportunity to massively inflate the bid. It is actually far easier to keep Mil Mikkir in the running for a long time than it is to touch Zekra Fol, particularly since directly influencing either her or Kaltho is quite difficult.

On 24 August 2016 at 8:47 PM, Ian2400 said:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9dwD6tEu92-TkdWQVBmaEVhWDA

The grey boxes are the ones you should edit as the encounter moves on. If you want to add in the PCs, I'll leave it to you to deduce your way through how the formulas work. It's rather crude, but so much bidder-specific stuff happens there wasn't much I could do to work around it.

If this is useful to more people, and they have a suggestion for a better thread to put it in, just let me know. I'm happy to keep it on my dropbox forever.

This is awesome, thanks for pulling this together.

The spreadsheet was a massive help when I ran the adventure, not sure how I'd have kept track of it properly without.