“Secret Hitler” is a multiplayer tabletop game. It assumes the context of 1932 pre-WWII Germany. This generates a narrative that puts players in a very real position of identifying politically dangerous ideologies and ensuring that democracy wins the day. The game plays out like a real conflict between two opposing views, one with sinister intentions.
5-10 players take on the roles of either liberal or fascist politicians, and one player is given the hidden role of the Secret Hitler. Players do not know each other’s affiliations, but must pass legislation aligned with their faction in order to win. Play progresses in legislative terms. The president for the turn nominates and chancellor to pass a policy. All players vote for this decision and may vote it down, in which case the presidency goes to the next player. The president gives the chancellor two out of three drawn policies to pass. The chancellor then passes a liberal or fascist policy. Liberals win if they can pass five liberal policies. Fascists win if they pass six fascist policies, or if Secret Hitler is elected chancellor after three fascist policies are passed. “Secret Hitler” was designed by Mike Boxleiter, Tommy Maranges, Max Temkin, and Mac Schubert and released in 2016. The game itself consists of cardboard tiles for policies, cards for factions and voting, boards for placing policies, and wooden placards for the president and chancellor. The game doesn’t fit nicely into any of the core archetypes of race, capture, alignment, or construction. The composition of the boards leads to the appearance of a race game in an abstract way, but I would give it the label of a deception game. Most of the action depends on deceiving other players in order to accumulate ‘points,’ being policies. The game’s space is in two-dimensions, as most of the ephemera consists of tiles, cards, and boards to track the progress of the factions. The game comes with separate boards to display this information, and can be exchanged for others to accommodate more players. Generally speaking, the game is confined to a single table or room. The objects that direct play are: 1. Policy tiles are placed on their respective boards when passed by a chancellor. The president draws three tiles, and gives the chancellor the choice of two of them. There are more fascist tiles than liberal tiles, which make it easier to blame the tile stack as a scapegoat for ‘forcing’ one to pass a fascist policy. 2. There is a wooden marker that tracks the success of elections, as if the players vote down three elections in a row, a policy is automatically passed from the stack. 3. Placards denote who are the current chancellor and president for the turn. These placards also have instructions on the back, which is helpful. 4. The cards that show player’s secret factions and identities are hidden in envelopes and can only be uncovered by using a fascist presidential power. 5. Lastly, other cards are used to cast anonymous votes for elections and are returned to the players every turn. The only game resources of any consequence are how many policy tiles have been passed, which functions as a ‘score.’ The multiplayer aspects of “Secret Hitler” are a mix of the team competition and multilateral play styles. Players are on teams corresponding with their factions, however, only the fascists, minus Secret Hitler know who their teammates are, opening opportunities to collaborate and win. The liberals on the other hand are playing a more multilateral game until they figure out whom they can trust. The most significant forms of uncertainty in the game are the order of policy tiles in the stack, and the trustworthiness of other players. Liberals and Secret Hitler have no idea what alignment the other players are and need to carefully determine motives based on observation in order to pass the policies they need. Uncertainty also comes into play when fascists lie about their actions. One is never certain who will believe lies told to divert suspicion. This game relies heavily on skill, rather than chance. One needs to understand how to play their role and perhaps manipulate other players. This skill manifests itself as mental and social ability. Bluffing and persuasion is paramount for success and generally speaking, if you’re able to communicate well, and take advantage of those who cannot then you can get ahead. “Secret Hitler” features a balanced form of asymmetric play. Fascists have an advantage due to their position of knowing the identities of other players and that they only need to pass three of their policies and manage to elect Secret Hitler to win. Whereas liberals need five policies passed. The legislative checks and balances within the game balance this in a literal way. Savvy liberal players can vote down a fascist president or chancellor. Also, liberals can use the powers granted by fascist policies, identifying other players, or even killing Secret Hitler to win. This kind of asymmetry makes this game engaging and strategic. This game’s asymmetry and political content led me to look into it to inform our game “Propaganda Wars.” While we were not able to implement a balanced asymmetry in our game, the insight gleaned from “Secret Hitler” could be helpful with future iterations of the game or variations on the theme.
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With some help from group members, I was able to finish the artwork and layouts for the cards in the game. Using Adobe Illustrator for the first time, I found it made my workflow go much faster than it would be drawing the images by hand, or painting in Photoshop. The paths and vectors allowed for smooth lines with a good variety in quality. While I didn't have the time to create detailed illustrations directly referencing the propaganda imagery for the DPRK, China, or the USSR, I feel like the simplicity of the symbols still fulfills its purpose. The card layout as meant to make it easy to see what actions are available to a player, and the colors definitely differentiate the propaganda cards from the political influence cards. We were able to print out the cards on heavy tagboard using UB's Big Archival Prints lab.
The Guardian has documented a good selection of DPRK propaganda posters. This is a good resource for the stylistic aspects of North Korean propaganda; these aspects will be appropriated into the design of our game. Link Here
The aspect of anti-propaganda is a key part of this game. I find the balloon propaganda campaigns particularly interesting and want to include this idea in the gameplay. This wikipedia article gives a cursory overview of the topic, with sources to specific articles on the topic. Link Here
After two weeks of playtesting an iteration of our game which took inspiration from the land/mana cost-based mechanics of Magic, it has come to our attention that the prospect of making asymmetrically opposed decks using different resources and object relationships that still coincide with our focus is a daunting task. We wanted our game to have the emotional impact that comes with the understanding of how propaganda shapes the reality of those who are forced to consume it, and we found that our first approach lacked that overarching structure - getting lost in mechanical minutia in attempts to balance the three sides. We are going to re-asses the overall structure and the next iteration should be more on-point.
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About BrianMFA Graduate Student working in areas of landscape painting with an emphasis on the impact of game spaces and experience on our perception of the real world. ArchivesCategories |