Secret Hitler
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"When the other Krauts saw him drink water in the Beer Hall they should have known he was not to be trusted."
- – A.J. Liebling
A party game mostly driven by social deduction, in a similar vein as The Resistance or Werewolf or Basilisk or any of the numerous variations, set against the backdrop of the political contentiousness of early 1930's Germany. It was created after a successful Kickstarter campaign with added clout coming from one of the jerkoffs behind Cards Against Humanity. Like CAH, this game is also available as a free version online. Notably, the game's associated marketing material includes a strong political message imploring the player to fight fascism in real life. Right next to the official contact information for the President of the United States, as of this writing. Gee, I wonder why?
The game is designed to be played with five people at the very least, and supports up to 10. At the outset each player is given an envelope. Upon opening the envelope they will reveal their secret allegiance, becoming clandestinely divided (unevenly) into two teams: Liberals and Fascist reptoids. The Liberals will always outnumber the Fascists, but they do not know who is on their side. The Fascists, on the other hand claw, know exactly who is on their side and, also aligned with the Fascists, one player in particular is: SECRET HITLER! (Whether Hitler gets to know who his allied Fascists are depends on the number of players; if there's seven or more players Hitler is also left guessing just like the Liberals, but the Fascists will always know who Hitler is.) Known only to each other, the Fascists must covertly coordinate their actions with the aims of passing pro-Fascist legislation, fermenting distrust, empowering the government, deflecting skepticism and potentially assassinating rivals all with the aims of installing their cold-blooded leader Hitler into power as the Chancellor of the Deutsches Reich. The Liberals must find ways to build consensus, pass rival legislation, and kill or stop dino-Hitler before it’s too late. As an added wrinkle, the former option requires a certain number of Fascist laws to get passed, so it can be used as a last-ditch effort to bail your team out.
Links
- Secret Hitler's website, where you can download the game and rules to print out for free
- Secret Hitler Online where you can play the game in your browser, complete with sweet, privacy-raping voice chat if your browser supports WebRTC. Requires an email address to authenticate your position, but you can always use Mailinator or something.