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Auction paddles
Every player gets a numbered paddle and a points budget. Going once, going twice, sold.
Made by the PaperCarnival team · Updated
Type the lots in the Lots tab
0points
Tap a paddle as each bid comes in.
Points to start with
Players
No players yet. Type a name and press Add.
Everybody gets a numbered paddle, in the order they are listed.
Names stay in this browser. They are never put in a link, and every tool with players reads the same list.
Up to 20 lots of 48 characters. They are kept in this browser and never put into a link.
How the bidding runs
The increment
Out loud, a paddle a person cannot afford the next bid on is greyed rather than merely refused, so nobody is caught out. Sealed, a bid above what somebody has left is turned back.
Sound
A click on each bid, a knock on going once and twice, and the gavel on sold. Everything is written on screen either way.
Space going once, going twice, sold
No signup · No accounts · Free forever
What an auction adds to a game
An auction is the cleanest way ever invented to find out how much somebody actually wants something, which is why board games keep reaching for one. It works because the budget is finite: winning the first lot cheaply matters precisely as much as the last lot you can no longer afford. Remove the budget and you have a shouting contest; keep it and you have a game where every bid costs something later.
The awkward part in practice is the bookkeeping. Somebody has to remember what everybody has left, whether that bid was legal, and who won the third lot. That is all this page does: paddles with the numbers on them, budgets that come down on their own, and a list underneath of who has won what so far.
The names come from the same shared list as every tool here with players, so the order they are in is the order the paddles are numbered. If a lot needs a clock, the countdown timer is the page to put beside it, and the scoreboard is where a longer game's points belong once the auction is over.
Kept in this browser under pph.auction.lots, pph.auction.state, pph.auction.muted and pph.players, and nowhere else. Nothing is wagered and nothing of value is won. Accounts, printing, storage and what the page loads are answered on the FAQ.
Questions
- Is any money involved?
- None at all. Every budget on this page is points, invented at the start of the game and gone at the end of it. There is nothing to pay in, nothing to win of any value, and no way to enter a real amount. It is an auction the way a board game has an auction.
- How do sealed bids work?
- Each person takes the device in turn, sees how many points they have left, writes one number and seals it. Nothing opens until everybody has bid, and then the highest takes the lot. A tie at the top is announced as a tie and the room runs that lot again between the tied bidders.
- What happens when somebody runs out of points?
- Their paddle greys out as soon as they cannot afford the next bid, so nobody is embarrassed by bidding on something they cannot pay for. In sealed mode a bid above what they have left is turned back before it is sealed, with a note saying why.
- Can I run several lots in a row?
- Yes. Type them one per line in the Lots tab and Next lot moves on with the budgets carried over, which is the point of an auction game: what you spend on the first lot is what you do not have for the last one. The list of who won what builds up underneath.
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