There were three conversations happening in a group of seven players, everyone’s voice a little elevated in order to be heard. I’m not sure everyone even knew whose turn it was anymore, because this had been going on for a couple of minutes. I pulled myself back from the melee for a second to smile in appreciation of how into it everyone was. We were all (mostly) on the same team, despite the appearance from the shouting, and everyone had their own excited ideas about the best next play.

Since three of our group members weren’t going to be able to attend our weekly office D&D game last night, we planned instead on playing other board games. In part because of the number of people that ended up coming, we settled on Shadows Over Camelot, an Arthurian legend themed cooperative board game, including possibly one traitor who wins if everyone else loses, in which each player takes on the role of a knight of Camelot and completes quests.

This game does not get easier, necessarily, as you add players. On each player’s turn, there is first a “Progression of Evil” phase, in which the knight must choose something bad to happen. This means that an ineffective player who cannot balance this out with a strong play on their turn harms the group by their presence in the game. So you really can’t afford any dead weight.

This leads to a temptation, as with many cooperative games, to dictate to other players what they should do with their turn and to seek advice from them on your own. The game has a vaguely defined rule against telling other players any specifics about the cards in your hand, but this is understandably not always followed in spirit; without the presence of an (open) antagonist, it’s easy for the group to allow loose interpretations of the rules if it means mutual victory. Although I’m usually pretty good about withholding information to keep the game challenging, resisting the temptation to tell others how to play their turn was a challenge, both as someone who commonly leads/is pushy, and as the only one at the table who had played the game before.

That made my moment of stepping back and observing everyone else all the more important to take. I saw it as similar to those moments as a DM when I can let my players play out a scene in character between themselves without any direction, nor prodding, nor provocation, and I didn’t want to miss it. It reminded me too of the noisy classroom that may appear to be in chaos but is filled with productive if cacophonous conversations.

Ben, my neighbor/gamer friend along with his fiancée Lizzy, turned out to be the traitor, which I called him out on about three quarters of the way through the game. He had played it very subtly, enough that when I had asked Lizzy in a whisper whether she thought Ben was the traitor, she had dismissed it out of hand. This is where I confess that my accusation was slightly unintentional. I said to Ben, “Look me in the eye and declare your loyalty.” This was meant to be an opportunity for me to read his response and firm up my conviction that he was the traitor. He took it however as my formal accusation. He responded, “I will not,” and revealed himself to be the traitor, something you can (and must) do only when formally accused by a fellow knight as that knight’s action on their turn. I was fairly certain already that he was the traitor, and it may have been in my favor not to accuse him yet, so I’m not sure whom this benefitted.

The knights do get a reward when they identify the traitor, but it was not enough to win us the game, and we ended up losing when too many siege engines surrounded Camelot, which always seems to be the way the game is lost. But it was a long, hard fought, and very close game. Perfect.