Secret Hitler: Setup & Playing As A Fascist

So you want to play Secret Hitler? Maybe you don't know the rules, maybe you're looking for some tips on how to play, either way, this guide will help the newest players to the more experienced players.

Introduction - Understanding Secret Hitler

Secret Hitler is a dramatic game of political intrigue and betrayal set in 1930's Germany. Players are secretly divided into two teams - liberals and fascists. Known only to each other, the fascists coordinate to sow distrust and install their cold-blooded leader. The liberals must find and stop the Secret Hitler before it’s too late.

Each round, players elect a President and a Chancellor who will work together to enact a law from a random deck. If the government passes a fascist law, players must try to figure out if they were betrayed or simply unlucky. Secret Hitler also features government powers that come into play as fascism advances. The fascists will use those powers to create chaos unless liberals can pull the nation back from the brink of war.

For more information, click here to find out more about Secret Hitler.

Introduction - Gameplay Basics

In every game of Secret Hitler, there will be a team of Liberals and a team of Fascists. Depending on the number of players in each game determines how many fascist members will be in play. In every fascist team, Hitler will be assigned to one of the team members. Again, depending on the number of players in the round determines whether or not Hitler is allowed to know who their fascist teammates are. The fascists aim to win is to pass 6 fascist policies, or after the third fascist policy has been declared, to elect Hitler Chancellor. If any of these conditions are met, Hitler and their team of fascists win the game and the liberals lose.

The liberals aim to win is to pass 5 liberal policies, or to kill Hitler. Unlike the fascists, the liberals do not know who their teammates are, so they have to work off the trust of other players, which the fascists could easily abuse.

As the game moves forward, fascist policies will be passed and players can then palce their judgement on who they believe to be fascists, and if the liberals work together well enough, they could easily wipe out the fascist party.

Each round, a new President is elected and that President selects a Chancellor. The table then vote on whether or not to give these two power. if the vote fails, the Election Tracker goes up by one, but if the vote passes then the game continues as normal.

The President now picks up the top three cards from the top of policy deck. From this, they will now discard one policy and place it face down on the discard pile, while then giving the remaining two policies to their Chancellor. The Chancellor now must discard one policy and play the other. If the Chancellor places down a fascist policy, the table will then ask the Chancellor what policies they were handed. Most of the time, the Chancellor would say they had no choice, which means they were handed two fascist policies and the President may agree if it's true, or they may disagree and tell the table that they handed their Chancellor a liberal policy and a fascist policy.

This game heavily relies on lying. if you are a fascist, especially if you're Hitler, you must try and gain the trust of the other liberals, or you'll be quickly singled out and targetted.

Game Setup

To play Secret Hitler on Tabletop Simulator, the following add-on created by FragaholiC is required.

When you first load up Secret Hitler, you'll be greeted with all the cards lay out so you know where everything is.
To begin, start by turning over the three cards lay next to their corresponding packet and placing them inside it. This means that when someone pulls out their cards, they'll be face down instead of face up, so no one knows their identity. Do this will all the cards and after that, you should just have the packets lay out on the table in their normal position. Now simply combine the fascist policy cards with the liberal cards, give it a quick shuffle and place those cards face down.

Your setup should now resemble the following.
After doing this, make a quick save so you don't have to repeat this process and you're good to start playing!

Tips:

• Something else you could do is flip the discard token over so it's red instead of blue, just makes it more clear to new players on where to put their discarded policies.
  
  
• Lock the liberal and fascist polcy holders so no one can move them around during play.
  
  
• Delete the box, as well as the packets (if you wish) to make the table clearer.

Game Setup - Starting a Game

After your required of players have joined the game, starting the game can go one of two ways depending on how you want to play. You may either elect a Game Master who will whisper to the fascists who their teammates are, or you could make the table turn around while the fascists learn who each other are.

Before you do any of this though, you'll need to lay out the correct fascist policy holder, depending on the number of players you have in your game and you'll also need to add al lthe required packets into the shuffle box, shuffle it and then let everyone draw out a packet. Then take the cards out of the packet, place them into your hand and become familar with who you are. Each packet should contain one identity card, one membership card and two voting cards.

If you don't wish to use a Game Master, the only other way is to make the table turn around. Announce to everyone in the game after they've had time to look at their cards to turn away from the table and to zoom in on their cursor. They should only be able to see the background and their own cursor. Then announce to the players that whoever drew Hitler, to go back to the table, to place their Hitler card out in front of their hand and to then to face away from the table. If you're playing with less than 6 players, Hitler and the fascist are allowed to know who each other are, so at this point, you'd just tell both Hitler and the fascist to return to the table so they know who each other are. But if you're playing with more than 6, you'll now ask the fascists to return to the table, so they can see who one another are and more importantly, to see who Hitler is. It's important that if you're playing with more than 6 people that Hitler does not know who t heir fascist teammates are. Give the fascists a few seconds to do this and make sure you ask the fascists to move Hitler's card back into their hand so no liberals know who Hitler is. After giving them some time to do all of this, ask all the players to return to the table and the game is ready to begin!

Tip:

• Ask all players to put all their cards except their identity card back into their packet. This means that if Hitler's card was put back in the wrong position, someone wouldn't notice because there would only be one card in everyone's hand anyway. After the setup stage is done, everyone can then take their cards back out their packets and back into their hands.

The Policies & Consequences

Placing liberal policies gives off no consequences, it just allows the liberals to be one stop closer away from victory. However, if a fascist policy is passed and falls onto one of the four selections, it will cause the liberals (maybe even the fascists) a problem.

I don't feel like I need to explain each power since they're self-explanatory, so I'll move on.

How to Play as a Fascist/Hitler

Ah yes, you've been selected to help Hitler set up his quest for World Domination. So how do you do this, do you announce to the chat that you're a fascist, play only fascist cards or even play only liberal cards? Quite simply, yes and no.

Being a fascist is all about mind games and manipulating the trust of the fellow liberals around you. If you can become the most trusted player on the board while being a fascist, then you've guaranteed victory. A lot of the time with Secret Hitler, you'll have to think on your feet, liberals may be keeping notes on past policy draws and if you slip up with a lie, everything could come crashing down around you.

Straight up, if you are Hitler, play like you are a liberal. One of the ways to win as Hitler is to be elected Chancellor (after the third fascist policy is in place). So when the time comes for when the third fascist policy is placed down, you would be one of the trusted players to be picked as Chancellor. The problem with this tactic is everyone knows about it and everyone does it, but players who constantly play liberal cards are usually the most trusted on the board.

Another way you can mix things up for the liberals is straight up lying. Target one liberal on the table when you're president, make them your Chancellor, give them two fascist policies and declare you gave them a choice between a fascist policy and a liberal policy. The problem with this approach is if you do it early on, you and your target will not be trusted for a long time and your target can easily clear themselves by constantly playing liberal policies.

But you can use the fascist policy consequences to heavily help your team. For example, say you're the president and a fascist policy was just placed down on the "Investigation" power. This allows you to pick any player on the board and look at their membership card. Now, you can target a liberal and declare to the other table that they are a fascist, but of course, there could be backlash with doing that. But if you are trusted on the table and if you're not Hitler, you could take Hitler's membership card and announce to the chat that he is indeed a liberal. But then it's up to whoever Hitler is to enforce that by playing as liberal as possible and hoping to get the Chancellor win.

Going back to the power plays, execution can be an extremely helpful tool in helping you win the game. If you are the president, this allows you to kill any player on the board, which could shake up the game massively.

So say for one scenario, you have your fascist teammate who is a known fascist to the liberals and no one trusts him, kill them. By doing this, you will gain a lot of trust between players because you in their eyes just killed a fascist and you will be heavily trusted for doing so. Just make sure the fascist you're shooting is not Hitler, trust me, it's happened.

Another scenario could be tied in with lying. As President, select a liberal and give them two fascist policies. By placing down the fascist policy, it unlocks the execution power, but you could announce to everyone that you gave them a choice. Now this is really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ risky, because it could easily show that you're a fascist by saying you gave them a choice, the victim saying he had no choice and you just end up killing them, Do it depending on the type of players you're with, if they're generally new, they probably wouldn't bat an eye, but experienced Secret Hitler players will instantly doubt you for it.

There is a lot of different ways you can be a fascist, but as said before, you have to think on your feet a lot. The examples I've given should hopefully give you a few ideas, if you're ever caught up in a situation that you're not sure on how to handle.

Conclusion

Before playing Secret Hitler, I highly recommend watching a video on YouTube of a game so you can get a grip on how it works, and it's generally easy to learn. This is the video I watched, yes I know it's long. but it lays it all out so you should quickly understand how it's played.

Thanks for reading, if anything new sticks itself out at me, I'll update this guide, but other than that, I think you're good to start playing. Thanks again to FragaholiC for creating this in Tabletop Simulator and allowing everyone to enjoy playing this game.