Hidden Role Games are any card game that requires the players to hide their role. Either it is because one of the game’s victory condition requires eliminating a specific role, or if you are found out your role becomes much harder to play.
Secret Hitler is a hidden role game where characters are playing as lawmakers in Germany in the 1930’s. And nothing bad happens. The players pass around the role of president which represents the different rounds. The president choses a chancellor, and the rest of the players can vote to accept or reject the chancellor. If the chancellor is elected, the president draws 3 policy cards, hands 2 to the chancellor who then must intentionally select one to pass. The game ends if Hitler is elected chancellor with enough Fascist policies passed, if too many Fascist policies are passed or if Hitler is assassinated.
Because of how the game works and the hidden roles, Fascists know who they are and are working to spread chaos in the game. This means that one of the optimal strategies for the Liberal team is to slow down and discuss strategies and reasons for things, so they can gather as much information as they can so they can figure out who Hitler is.
- This game shows how complex certain situations in game theory can become. The only way for the Liberal team to win is to develop trust and work against the Fascist team together. Since lying is actively encouraged, and Liberals should be telling the truth, everyone is going to be pretending to be Liberal.
- A reminder, humans are reasonable, not rational. When I was playing with some friends, one of them consistently claimed that the best plan was operation assassinate Hitler. This led to him constantly choosing Fascist policies despite being a Liberal and having a Liberal policy that he could pass. Very quickly, the group stopped trusting him because he failed to assassinate Hitler every time he had a chance. His actions show that people will act in suboptimal ways, especially if the optimal way happens at the expense of less fun.
This game is an excellent way to show strategic thinking. It was fairly popular party game couple of years ago, and since it was so popular many people have experience thinking of strategies and how they thought about what they could do. And unlike chess which also gets discussed with game theory, since Secret Hitler is designed to be fairly quick, the strategies can develop faster, and tend to end in only a few end states rather than the multiple end states in chess.
Spencer Hight 