For those of you who have run the Jewel of Yavin adventure, how did you run the bidder investigation? Did you just have them make the rolls and give them the information or did you play it all out?

I'm thinking of doing a bit of a mixture where I have them make a roll to determine what they will get and then turn that into an encounter where they learn that info.

What have you done? How did it work out?

Well, we didn't play JoY like in the book - I tore out pieces to use in other adventures - but since no one else answered, I'll give you my 2ct:

We did run similar scenes, though and what we did then (and usually do) is, that I have them explain their approach (who they talk to and how they approach them) and then let them roll. If they have good ideas the rolls become easier and people know only so much, so they need to use different avenues. If we ever run this scene, I'll give the players a day or to advance warning so they can do some slicing and legwork to prepare but some info will only be available during the bidding.

When I ran Jewel of Yavin, the bidder investigation was all done with played out scenes. There were so many places to go in Cloud City, and so many distractions that my PCs brought along with them because of their obligations, that it took three sessions before they even got to the gala... and we didn't even have them compete in the cloud car race. Some bidders were just of little interest to my PCs so they ignored them until the gala, then tried to chat with them a little there. For other bidders, I inserted them into locations where the PCs were going anyway, like being at a fancy restaurant and noticing Kaltho at a nearby table. There's a throw-away line in the book about cage fights at the 4.5... one of my players ran with that and wanted to compete. Since that meant the PCs were going to be hanging out at that location for a whole evening, I made sure they noticed some of the prominent NPCs there. One by one, they chose to engage or not with them, as they saw fit. Another PC was a race enthusiast and wanted to go to the cloud car race on a date to watch it. Again, I populated the space with bidders and let the PCs interact with who they wanted. Similarly, shopping in Market Row.