Secret Hitler

Secret Hitler is a dramatic game of political intrigue and betrayal set in 1930's Germany. Players are secretly divided into two teams - liberals and fascists. Known only to each other, the fascists coordinate to sow distrust and install their cold-blooded leader. The liberals must find and stop the Secret Hitler before it's too late. Secret Hitler introduces new mechanics to the hidden-identity game genre. The first is the element of randomness. When laws are passed, the President draws three policies, passes two to the Chancellor, and the Chancellor enacts one. Only the enacted policy is revealed, so players have to rely on the President and Chancellor's word to know what got discarded. The deck has a known initial composition (11 Fascist policies, 6 Liberal policies), and players can roughly track deck contents based on what the President and Chancellor report, though someone might have lied about what was discarded. That means players can form reasonable expectations and plan around probability, but they can also manipulate future probabilities and expectations in a way that benefits their team. The second new mechanic is the "Hitler" identity: If Hitler is elected as Chancellor after the third fascist policy has already been enacted, the game ends immediately and the fascists win. This means Hitler will spend most of the game playing as a liberal to gain players' trust. Once the third fascist policy is enacted, anyone who has helped the group becomes immediately suspect; if the liberals make a wrong move at this point, they lose immediately. This creates incredible moments of tension and relief in the game.