Target audience: Classmates and anyone interested in social deduction games
Game: Avalon
Creator: Don Eskridge
Platform: Tabletop card game, also played through online adaptations
Central Argument
Playing Avalon revealed that my communication style is not fixed. It shifts depending on what role I have and what is at stake. As Morgana, I did not lead. I attached myself to whoever the table trusted most, echoing their reasoning just enough to seem aligned. When suspicion spread after a failed mission, I did not defend myself. I redirected attention by introducing quiet doubt about others, including my own evil teammate. What surprised me was how natural that felt. It did not feel like lying. It felt more like choosing what to say and what to leave out, which made me realize that when things get tense, I manage the situation by controlling information rather than addressing it head on.
As a Loyal Servant of Arthur, my behavior inverted completely. I became precise and deliberate, reasoning out loud and cross-referencing earlier votes to signal consistency. Where Morgana made me quiet and adaptive, the loyal role made me structured and focused. Avalon does not just test one communication style. It tests how you behave when your goals change, and I learned that I adapt more than I realized. Depending on the situation, that adaptation can look like careful reasoning or like strategic concealment.
Analysis, Ethics, and Comparison
As Morgana, my goal was not just to avoid getting caught, but to look genuinely good. Redirecting suspicion toward my own evil teammate made me seem more trustworthy, and the more I performed loyalty, the less anyone questioned me. It was not about lying for own sake. It was about understanding what a trustworthy person looks like and reproducing it convincingly.
One flaw in the game design is that the game disadvantages quieter players. When discussion is open and unstructured, louder players naturally take over, and silence gets read as guilt rather than careful thinking. A simple improvement would be requiring every player to say one sentence before votes are revealed, giving everyone a guaranteed moment to contribute and making reasoning matter more than performance.
Compared to similar games, Avalon stands out in specific ways. The Resistance is its direct predecessor and shares the same core structure of hidden roles, proposals, and mission votes. But without special characters like Merlin and Morgana, The Resistance becomes a simpler pattern-reading exercise. Avalon adds a layer where evil players are not just hiding but actively performing goodness, and good players are not just finding spies but protecting someone they cannot fully confirm. That extra layer makes every conversation feel more personal and exciting. Secret Hitler shares the idea of hidden allegiances but wraps deception inside a visible political structure. Players respond to policy outcomes the whole table can see, which makes the evidence concrete. In Avalon almost nothing is visible, and you are working entirely from how people talk and whether their reasoning holds up. That makes it feel more like a conversation than a board game. Spyfall is essentially one player trying not to get caught by everyone else. There is no coalition building, no repeated cycles of trust. The sustained group negotiation across multiple rounds is what Avalon does better.
That experience also made me think about how people behave in real life. People present themselves differently at work, with friends, and in situations where something is at stake. Avalon gave that a clear structure and made it impossible to ignore. The game did not make me think deception is wrong. It made me realize that the difference between being good and simply appearing good is often smaller than we like to think.
Learning
Using the MDA framework, Avalon is a strong example of how simple mechanics can produce complex human behavior. The rules are minimal, including hidden roles, team proposals, votes, and mission outcomes. But the dynamics that emerge are entirely social. Players argue, form alliances, track contradictions, and apply pressure across multiple rounds. What makes the design interesting is that communication is not just a feature sitting alongside the mechanics. It is the mechanic. Every player has a clear objective, but the only way to reach it is through conversation and observation. The game does not tell people how to feel or what to do. It just puts them in situations where those things happen naturally, which is why the fun stays with players after the game ends.
