I love playing Avalon which is a team-based game that has a “good” team and an “evil” team, and I think its MDA flows perfectly which makes Avalon so enjoyable. In short, all Avalon player are split into two teams – good and evil – and the good won’t know each other but the evil do. There are at most 5 quests, and people who got chosen to go on the quest can choose to pass or fail the mission. The main goal of the good team is to pass 3 quests (best of 5) and the evil team to fail 3 quests.
Mechanics: There can be 5-10 players, and for each number of players there is a corresponding number of evil people (ex: 2 evil players for 5 total players). These numbers are all carefully designed since the evil people will be able to see each other at night so the game limits the bad people count to be strictly less than half of the total player number to ensure fairness. For specific quests, there is also different numbers of total players on a mission and the failing count that can lead to a mission failure.
Dynamics: From the mechanics, Avalon is set to be an intriguing discussion-heavy team-based game and since there is a relatively balanced number of each team, it can make the discussion more intense and engaging. For each mission, bringing the “right” people really matters because due to the number of fails one mission can tolerate, there isn’t a lot of room of error (error meaning bringing the “wrong” people – people from opposing teams).
Aesthetics: The story uses the storyline of Merlin and Morgana which engages players more with role-play. The game is decently challenging as well and it depends on who plays with you, so it’s hard to get bored of the game.
