Avalon, created by Don Eskridge, is a social deduction game for groups of 5-10 people. The target audience is likely teenagers and older who enjoy strategic social deduction games that involve a lot of bluffing. You play by using these identity cards (Knights of the Round Table themed), mission voting tokens, and a series of missions that you can either pass or fail on (Fig 1). The purpose of the game depends on the side of the game you’re on: for the good team, their job is to pass the majority of the missions while keeping special role players (like Merlin) hidden, for the evil team, their job is to fail the majority of the missions while hiding their own identity and guessing the special character roles of good players. Some special roles (such as Mordred, Oberon) can either be not known to their own team or the opposing team, keeping things more balanced but isolating that player with much more difficulty (Fig 2). The gameplay experience is well-themed and can get very active with discussion. I played this with my friends this week and really evaluated my own style of decision-making and role within this quick-paced game. The game does a great job of making learning the world fun; mechanics provide extensive possibilities to make it more difficult, and asymmetric information makes this truly a game of lively social play [FIX].
Through careful observation of this game experience, I’ve learned that I like to take the lead in discussions and am not afraid to hold my stance regardless of which side I’m on or am defending. This helps me because a frequent sign of an evil player is significantly different gameplay from when you were good in a previous round. I also learned that I’m quite good at maintaining a poker face and identifying other players to team up/echo loyalty with that I know will back me up when I’m accused later – the deceit part is quite fun. This means that my role in the game is very vocal, and when evil especially, I enjoy finding good players and teaming with them for as long as possible (backing them up, side discussions, etc). Reviewer of the game Ars Technica agrees, saying that the game “requires more than a little cunning, treachery, and a willingness to make wild, baseless accusations”. One other thing I realize that Avalon activates in me is my desire to make the discussion as inclusive as possible by stopping and asking for opinions from others, since one downside with Avalon is that it can become a “loud players only” game. The only problem with this is I also tend to overly trust them because I think they are only quiet right now because it’s difficult to join in on the game, but I get fooled by more shy players quite often :’) Finally, for decision making, it’s best to first introduce the mechanics and structure below.
The entire game is based on asymmetric information and hidden roles (Fig 2: examples of hidden roles within and outside of the same team). Missions are proposed by going in a clockwise system to give everyone a chance: the mission card tells you how many people to propose, ie N people need to be on the current mission. There are fewer people needed for the first missions, then more as the missions go on. You are allowed to propose anybody, including yourself, all players vote on whether or not they agree on this mission. If the majority agrees, the mission is approved, and the chosen mission players have mission tokens to decide the success or failure of this mission (hidden to others, evil players may play good to lie). Otherwise, the mission proposal goes to the next player. A mission proposal is allowed to be rejected up to 5 times. If still not passed by then, the current proposal person and N-1 players to their left (clockwise) would be forced into being the mission players by default.
My decision-making style is to understand current rules of the world I’m in, figure out game optimal for each perspective, and watch people act. I heavily leverage the game structure of unbalanced information sharing to spot cracks – when any player exposes a move beyond what’s openly shared, it gives me information.
Example: I use the voting system and mission player proposals to decide player alliances, and accusations to decide team oppositions (unless Oberon is included, which is difficult). When information is completely nil at the beginning, the average player begins by likely proposing the next couple of players in a line. This immediately sets off other players with more information eager to shift the mission one way or another. Players with more information would randomly propose players that skip a person or two – this often reveals they know more about those than others.
A mission with ALL upvotes is never good for the good team, because that means both sides want it to go through, ie the evil have a desire to push it through. Given that fewer people are in the beginning missions, evil players have incentives to lie to gain favor. Unlike Midnight Werewolf, there is no player elimination, so evil players need to hide throughout the game while keeping track of special roled players to guess in the end for one final chance of winning.
Within the magic circle of this game, you are indeed allowed to lie and deceive your friends, but it’s because you step into the role of either a loyal servant of Arthur or a Minion of Mordred, and your job is to get your faction to win the game. The game gives you a character and a world to defend your actions, and the fantasy part of the fun is to allow you to do such things. I don’t think it challenged my understanding of lying. I still believe you shouldn’t lie, but I think for the purpose of staying in character (much like actors in a play), you are permitted to step into world and do what it takes to achieve your hidden mission.
