Game: Secret Hitler
Platform: https://secret-hitler.online/ (online)
Target Audience: 5 – 10 players
Creators/Designers: Max Temkin, Mike Boxleiter, Tommy Maranges
Secret Hitler is a social deduction game where players are secretly assigned roles, liberal or fascist, with the liberals outweighing the fascists. The liberals win by enacting five liberal policies or assassinating Hitler; the fascists win by enacting six fascist policies or getting Hitler elected Chancellor after three fascist policies are passed. Each round, a President and Chancellor are elected, they draw and discard policy cards in secret and the rest of the table must deduce what actually happened. This is where the most lying happens. One line I heard numerous times from secret-fascists: “Sorry I had all fascist cards.”
The core conflict is informational rather than physical: the asymmetry between what each player knows and what they claim to know and convincing players of what they say is the entire game. The rules and objectives of the game are fairly straight-forward but the space for deception is quite large. There is no proper way to deceive or convince, you simply have to feel that your moves will convince the group of your words. When a fascist is elected Chancellor, I saw that they would often say something along the lines of “I have a liberal card and fascist card. I’m playing the liberal.” This was supposed to convince us of their safe-status (safe means they are deduced to be genuine liberals), but I soon learned this was a common trick. As a fascist, you play the liberal card early on when it’s not as vital, convincing others that you are a liberal like them.
My experience
The first round showed me how I operate under pressure. The first round had started and I was a fascist. The group began voicing their suspicions and deciding who was “safe” or a somewhat-confirmed liberal. I had not truly done anything to earn their trust, but I guess I organically gained their confidence as I was announced “safe” by several players. I hadn’t lied convincingly, nor had I made any calculated moves. I had simply asked a lot of questions (genuinely because I was confused as the newbie), and somehow that read as harmless. The liberals protected me and we won.
My first-round victory:
This moment told me that in unfamiliar group settings, I tend to project openness and curiosity, and people interpret that as honesty. It’s not necessarily a calculated choice by my default. Secret Hitler made it visible that this default can function as social camouflage even when I’m not trying to deceive anyone. The game’s mechanics created a situation where my genuine behavior had strategic value I wasn’t even consciously exploiting.
The second round was not as successful. This time I was a liberal. Midway through the game, I had mentally identified the “safe” liberals and we were one fascist policy away from losing. I argued we should elect the player we had confirmed as liberal. Two more experienced players pushed back, and I backed down. I deferred not because I thought they had better strategy, but because they seemed to know the game better than I did and I did not want to be “wrong.”
They were Hitler and the fascist. We lost.
In this moment, the social cost of being publicly wrong felt higher than anything else – even in a fake game with no real stakes, which provides insight into my decision-making process in groups.
What I like – and dislike
I’ll start by saying that I really enjoyed this game. I think the President to Chancellor card-passing process is perfect. It allows for lots of deceiving and strategy and culminates in a game where you have to analyze every little thing. The public vote is equally well-designed. Every election plays out in front of everyone, which means voting is not only a strategic move but a social performance.
I think the main fault I saw is that the game is so much better with large groups, which means even though I was playing with six people I didn’t feel like I was getting the full experience until we had a seventh player join because that was the threshold for two fascists and one hitler. Before it was one fascist and one hitler, which makes for a less exciting game. I also think the power cards could have been explained better. I had no idea what was going on when a power card came into play. I also didn’t think about the fact that you can lie about power cards, which was especially confusing for me because I didn’t know what power cards existed.
Ethics
Personally, I don’t see lying in a game as a morally wrong action. Lying is normally wrong because it harms another person’s ability to make an informed decision. In Secret Hitler, every player sits down knowing deception is the game. They are consenting to being lied to. This is the essential difference that makes lying okay within the “magic circle.” Lying is an essential part of what contributed to the joy of Secret Hitler. Without lying, there is no game.
