Playing Secret Hitler

The game that I played was Secret Hitler, a hidden identity game for 5–10 players developed by Max Temkin, Mike Boxleiter and Tommy Maranges. Usually, the game would be played with a physical board, cards, and pieces, but since our quarter is entirely online, I played it online with four friends also in CS 247g. Unfortunately, we only had time to play one round.

Disclaimer: I was the only one out of the five players who had actually played this game before. In fact, I first played it in Fall 2016, very soon after the game was launched. I chose to play this game because I had played all the other games listed (except for Inhuman Conditions, but I couldn’t play it since it was only for two players, and we agreed to all play together…).

Target Audience

From my experience in playing, Secret Hitler is a party game for young millennial liberals or older Gen Z liberals. Like other hidden role games such as Mafia or One Night Ultimate Werewolf, players can have either the innocent role (liberal) and the evildoer role (fascist and/or Hitler). The role of Hitler and the fascists as the evildoers in the game imply that the game is meant for people who believe Hitler was evil. Although the online version of the game did not have images accompanying the role cards, in the physical version, the fascist role cards handed out at the beginning of the game have sinister-looking lizard people, whereas the liberal role cards have regular human people.

Hitler and the fascists portrayed as lizard people, but liberals portrayed as human people.

In 2017, after Donald Trump was elected president, the makers of Secret Hitler also released an expansion pack of role cards featuring Trump and his then-cabinet. These cards would be substituting the lizard people fascist cards, further implying that the game was created by and for young liberals.

Trump and his initial cabinet, released as an expansion pack in 2017.

Formal Elements

As mentioned already, the game hands players a hidden role, either liberal or fascist (or Hitler, the head fascist). Liberals do not know other players’ hidden identities, but Hitler and the fascists know each other. No matter the number of players, there are always more liberals than fascists.

Examples of what fascist players see vs. what liberal players see in the online version of Secret Hitler. (I was Hitler)

The game procedure goes as follows: the title of President is passed in a circle around the group. The President nominates a Chancellor, and everyone votes “Ja!” or “Nein!” on the President-Chancellor ticket. If a majority votes “Ja!”, the ticket passes and the Chancellor is elected. Liberals are incentivized to vote “Nein!” if they suspect either the President or Chancellor of being a fascist.

If the ticket passes, the President takes the top three policies from the stack of policy cards and discards one of their choosing. The President hands the remaining two to the Chancellor, who chooses one to play on the board. Policies are either liberal or fascist.

If the ticket does not pass three times in a row, then the top policy in the stack is flipped and played, no matter whether it is liberal or fascist.

There are no added bonuses when liberal policies are passed, but when fascist policies are passed, the person who is President at the time may have the ability to take an action. For example, after three fascist policies were passed in our game, the President could peek at the next three policies in the pile. After four fascist policies were passed, the President could “execute” someone, eliminating them from the game.

Left: Policies from the physical board game; Right: The President’s view before discarding a card in our virtual game.

The objective of the game is different for the two groups. In our game of five people, the liberals’ goal was to pass five liberal policies and the fascists’s goal was to pass six fascist policies. After three fascist policies had been passed, liberals could also have won if they executed Hitler. However, in our game, Hitler was elected Chancellor after three fascist policies, resulting in a fascist win.

Hitler was elected Chancellor after 4 fascist policies had already been passed.

My favorite part of the game are the conflicts which arise when there is distrust among players. Although fascists need to blend in with liberals, they still need to do their best to play fascist policies, or else the game will be boring. The most boring game of Secret Hitler that I have ever played was one where all the policies that were passed were liberal; the fascists played it too safe and so the liberals won without a fight. For this reason, Secret Hitler’s designers purposely included more fascist policies than liberal policies. It’s very possible to draw three fascist cards, forcing even a liberal President to pass two fascist cards to the Chancellor, casting suspicion on themself. A fascist President could also very easily discard a liberal policy, leaving two fascist policy, and claim “There was nothing I could do…” as they pass the two fascist cards to the Chancellor. The greatest moments of tension/fun come when deciding who to elect as Chancellor or who to execute after three fascist policies have been passed. These are the moments that can cause either team to insta-win.

Fun Metrics

Secret Hitler is not meant to be a relaxing game. I don’t think it is a game for complete strangers to play either. It wouldn’t be fun if tensions in the game continue into interpersonal relationships afterwards. Secret Hitler is a heart-pumping game full of suspense and suspicion, meant for people who sort of know each other to grow closer. I think I grew closer to the people that I was playing with.

Epic Gamer Moments and Epic Fails

In our game of Secret Hitler, I was Hitler and my friend Lucy was my fellow fascist. The five players were in a group chat/call together on Discord, but Lucy and I were also DMing privately on the side. If we were playing in real life, we would not be able to communicate as such, but since we were playing virtually, such scheming was possible. Especially since Lucy was a beginner at the game, the ability to DM her instructions was helpful.

One epic fail moment came when Lucy looked at the top three cards of the policy pile and lied, saying they were three fascist cards. Our friend Melody was the next President, and immediately saw through Lucy’s lie when there were two fascist policies and one liberal policy. Fortunately for us, though, Melody accidentally discarded the liberal policy instead of choosing it (Melody blames it on the website’s confusing interface… I blame it on Melody). Since the cards that Melody handed to the Chancellor were both fascist, it looked like Lucy wasn’t lying and Melody was the liar.

Another epic gamer moment/epic fail came when four fascist policies were already on the board. If you remember, the fascists win if Hitler is elected Chancellor at this point, and the liberals will win if they execute Hitler. The liberals, all new players to the game, were so focused on killing Hitler that they forgot that electing Hitler would cause the fascists to win. So they elected me, thinking that even if I passed another fascist policy, they could just turn around and kill me, winning the game. Imagine the shock when they elected me and automatically lost the game. Lucy and I won in a stupid way, but we still won. It was an epic gamer moment for me, but an epic fail for the liberals.

Critiques

In my opinion, Secret Hitler is a perfect game. I have no qualms with it and cannot think of anything to make this game better. However, I recognize that the rules and procedures are quite complicated for first-time players. The fascist team and I only won because the liberals were unfamiliar with the rules. I think that there is no avoiding this problem though. I think that players could make the game better for themselves by playing more rounds fo Secret Hitler and getting familiar with it.