For this critical play, I played the bluffing game Avalon. It is a board game designed by Don Eskridge for teens, young adults, and prolific liars. The thing that sets Avalon’s setup apart from the other bluffing games (e.g. Among Us, Mafia) I’ve played is that there is no killing — only persuasion and democracy. This encourages players to look deep into every action that others do, and incentivizes people to keep conversations going as necessary to further their goals. I believe that this makes it a more fun bluffing game to play with a group with different levels of connection to each other. Personally, by listening to the interactions between the people at the table, I was able to learn a lot about their personality and communication style (e.g. how they bluff, switch up their character as different roles, or play logically vs. chaotically). This game, like other bluffing games, primarily creates fun in the form of fellowship in the form of friendly competition. The way that Avalon encourages discussion dials this mode of fun up to 11/10, which is why I think it’s now one of my favorites in the genre. Playing this game revealed that I am a player that likes to introduce chaos instead of always doing the most logical thing, which can create both fun and frustration at the table.
For all three rounds that I participated in, I played as the Loyal Servant of Arthur, fighting alongside Merlin to defeat the evil Mordred and his minions. The most important detail is that the Loyal Servant is the good character without any special ability. On a whim, I immediately decided to add chaos to the game by proclaiming that “I am evil” at the start. Logically speaking, there is absolutely no reason for an evil person to reveal themselves and alienate themselves to be excluded from questing groups. However, doing this allowed me to look at the facial expressions and reactions from other players at the table and deduce their alignment. What started out as just a humorous bit turned out to have a tactical advantage. Some personalities were also formed on existing relationships and also played for an advantage — Butch bullied Ryan in our first round, voting against him ad hominem as a joke. Then, being evil in round 2, Butch was able to use this expectation to his advantage and discount Ryan again, who ended up being good in the second round.
My experience shows how restraint in the design of roles in Avalon allowed me to find my own type of expression, allowing me to create fun in the form of fantasy and constructing my own “jester” persona. The designers could have added more roles, but that would have only made logical deductions more difficult and tedious. The rules also don’t forbid nonverbal communication or “metagaming”, so I was able to utilize other players’ reactions as extra information. Other players also sometimes cited “playing based on vibes”, either forming subconscious alliances from previous games or using that answer as a deflection tactic. In my view, this exemplifies the idea that having fewer rigid rules allows the game to open itself up for emergent interactions and ways of fun.
However, the amount of information needed to win the game is one of the major weaknesses of Avalon. The quest board is designed such that the good team has a major advantage in quest 1 (since no evil is incentivized to fail and reveal themselves), and quest 4 (since evils need two fails to overrule). The fifth quest is, by contrast, almost impossible for the good team to claim without perfect information. This is especially exacerbated in the board for 7 players, where the fifth quest literally needs all four good players. This led to our 7-player game ending in a unsatisfying premature way since the good team was able to get lucky on quest 3 and win by quest 4. However, I don’t think this is a design flaw of the game; this is a common problem in bluffing games, where a small number of players significantly skews game balance. Among its peers, Avalon is not the most frustrating by far. Playing Among Us or Mafia with 7 people would end games just as fast.
Lying is something that is so central to Avalon and the genre as a whole that it would be ridiculous to tie in-game deception to someone’s moral character. When playing a bluffing game, players are pulled into a magic circle where they embody cunning characters who would say and do anything to achieve their goal. In the context of the game, lying is not a display of malice from player to player, but instead from Mordred to Merlin. In a game’s context, lies exist only to fuel the friendly competition, which builds fellowship and fosters stronger relationships that persist even after the magic circle fades.
