Learning about my communication style from Avalon:
I played “Avalon,” a social deception board game with 10 players: 6 good (including me as Merlin) and 4 evil. Evil players know each other’s identities, while good players don’t. As Merlin, I knew one good and one evil player’s identities. The game revolves around forming groups for five missions. Each mission’s participants vote to make it succeed or fail. The good team wants missions to succeed, while the evil team wants them to fail. To win, either team must win three missions, but if the good team reaches three wins, the evil team gets one chance to identify Merlin.
Learning the rules exposed my tendencies for caution and preference for hands-on practice. Though I have played other social deception games, I initially struggled to follow along with the extensive rules and many roles Avalon encapsulates. A few players in my group were familiar with the game, so I followed along quietly as they walked us through the rules, asking questions as I got confused. I found myself very hesitant at the start as I was assigned the role of “Merlin” and allowed to know who a good and a bad character were. I felt stressed by the responsibility and wanted to ensure that I knew the mechanics in and out before using or revealing any of the information I had. With success in Avalon so dependent on paying attention to small details, I wanted to be extra careful to not expose myself to any evil players, while also absorbing any hints or slip-ups evil players might have made. At this point, I turned to the veteran players in the group and followed their lead and suggestions.
At one point during the match, players were arguing about the game and I found that I prefer to diffuse tension, avoiding making divisive statements to prevent making any enemies. The game encourages debate, especially when players have one anothers’ roles mistaken. Players who made extreme statements during the game influenced decisions more but also risked creating grudges. Arguing also arose when putting together groups for different missions, and I was careful to navigate the conversations rationally. Since strategic and careful trust is important for all players in a round of Avalon, I wanted to aim for positive and supportive relationships that would foster such camaraderie with my fellow good players.
As we progressed in the game, I also learned more about my decision-making tendencies. I found that I was more easily influenced by the passion of other students and easily changed sides when a compelling argument was brought up. I discovered I was easily influenced by passionate arguments and would change sides when presented with compelling points. Playing with mostly new acquaintances made it difficult to read mannerisms since I didn’t know their normal behavior. Additionally, I also found myself working with teammates to make my decision; once I determined a player I could trust, quickly came to talk to them and use them to bounce my ideas off of to double check my reasoning. In all, through this game I found that my role within a group was more passive than I had expected. Many times I was hesitant to make a mistake and wanted to double check my assumptions with other people in the group, which was especially compounded by my lack of experience with the game and the setting where I wasn’t acquainted with everyone else playing. However, my conclusions for which other players to trust were largely accurate and I ended up winning the game with the other good characters. The structure of Avalon forces players to foster this trust in order to win—since individuals have to form missions to proceed with the game, camaraderie forms between players who believe that another player is on the same team, and the evil players are working together from the very start.
Answering the Ethics Question:
The ethics question asks if lying in a game constitutes a wrong action—I believe that lying in social deception games does not. As opposed to lying in the day-to-day, lying in a game has low stakes that rarely affect anyone after the game has concluded. Additionally, social deception games like Avalon or Mafia normally place the player in a fantastical scenario far away from their real life, even ensuring that the lies they practice will likely not be applicable to the real world. Such games that rely on bluffing to be played come with the implicit agreement that players are ready to lie and be lied to. If a player was in a game that doesn’t typically welcome deception, however, that would be a different case and be closer to cheating, which is unethical and would constitute a wrong action.
