My group’s concept is a role-based social deduction game where players have the option to exchange voting power for private investigations on others. To do this, our initial vision was to handle the discreet communications with a bag or envelope so that the contents would be concealed to the rest of the table. To investigate the sensory pleasure aspect of our game, I decided to play a game that also used envelopes — Secret Hitler. Secret Hitler was designed by Max Temkin, Mike Boxleiter, and Tommy Maranges. The game is marketed towards teens and young adults, particularly those who have a knack for deduction and are comfortable with confronting the game’s historically-based setting. The game can be played in a group of 5 to 10 people; for my playtest, I played in a group of 7. The game is available as a board game, but it is also available online as a print and play game or via a browser simulator. Overall, I found that Secret Hitler shares a few overarching mechanics with our game, but with slight differences in detail and execution. These small details actually create dynamics that differ significantly from what my group envisioned for our game.
One mechanic that our game shares with Secret Hitler is the exchange of private information that needs to be corroborated. Secret Hitler does this in two ways: the president selecting two of three policies for the chancellor, and the president’s power to investigate someone’s affiliation (unlocked at high fascist policy). The former strictly creates the dynamic where the truth can only be corroborated between president and chancellor. The deception that arises from this mechanic is impenetrable. So the arguments that follow are purely whether you trust the president’s claim or the chancellor’s claim. In figure 1, president Mai claims that she handed chancellor Ryan one liberal and one fascist policy, while chancellor Ryan insists he saw two fascist policies. This dynamic certainly shifts the type of fun from one of challenge (where you could potentially deduce who is lying) to one of fellowship (enjoying the theatrics). In our game, we don’t intend to have an information system that is only accessible by a small subset of the table. We think that being able to verify other people’s claims creates a more persuasive discussion at the table, instead of this he-says/she-says type of argument.
The president’s investigation mechanic is most similar in execution to what we envisioned. In Secret Hitler, the president gets concrete information about the target. This creates a power imbalance dynamic that I think is very interesting. Based on the president’s actions later on in the game, other players can make inferences for what they must have seen during their investigation. Our mechanic would modify this by allowing all players to investigate each other, but obtaining non-concrete information instead. In our version, the power asymmetry is less polarizing (since the information is uncertain) and temporary (until others corroborate your investigation, or your target investigates you back).
Another difference in execution is the way we handle finite resources. In Secret Hitler, this finite resource is global knowledge, being the limited number of liberal policies left in the deck. Since the liberals need to play five out of six liberal policies to win, this creates the dynamic where lying becomes a more powerful weapon in the late game. Any fascist in the president or chancellor seat can discard one of the final liberal cards, and the table must wait until the deck is shuffled before even having the chance to win again. During that time, the fascists can continue to insist that they only saw fascist policies, further adding to the chaos. One weakness of this system is that the final decisions in a close game seems like it comes down to luck — if the president is fascist at the end of the game, it is very difficult for liberals to proceed. The veto mechanic is supposed to combat this, but it doesn’t help because the president still gets to refuse the veto. I feel that this outcome is an unavoidable consequence of the president and chancellor roles, since any alterations to the rules (e.g. letting other players veto) would change the core mechanic of the game. Perhaps the frustration comes from the fact that the role of president is not chosen by the players, when they have the largest amount of power.
In our game, we intend on distributing finite resources to everybody in the form of currency that they can use to either vote or investigate another player. Our game would instead create a dynamic where power is a tradeoff between having knowledge and having the votes to take advantage of that knowledge. The main goal of our mechanic is to let players come up with strategies that are best for the group of people they’re playing with, tapping more into the fun of discovery. We also hope that the varying amount of votes will encourage players to negotiate on how to structure alliances rather than giving absolute power to one person.
Finally, let’s address the envelope pieces that drew me to the game initially. Secret Hitler mainly uses these envelopes to distribute everyone’s initial affiliation and voting cards. Then, throughout the game, the envelope remains static on the table. Our game will also use it for that purpose, but we will also extend it. We think that the sensory pleasure of using an envelope is really fun, so in our game the investigation mechanic is built so that players must frequently move things in and out of envelopes.
