Secret Hitler is a social deduction game for 5-10 people about finding and stopping the Secret Hitler.
Players are secretly divided into two teams: the Liberals, who have a majority, and the Fascists, who are hidden to everyone but each other. If the Liberals can learn to trust each other, they have enough votes to control the elections and save the day. But the Fascists will say whatever it takes to get elected, advance their agenda, and win the game.
Secret Hitler is available under the Creative Commons (CC SA–BY–NC 4.0), originally created by Goat, Wolf, & Cabbage in 2016, who get all credit for creating the devious game. You can visit their homepage at secrethitler.com (and consider buying a physical copy!)
Full rules can be found here.
The basic game works like this:
Each player finds out their identity on their personal device: Liberal, Fascist, or Hitler. If you are Fascist, you’ll be told who the other Fascists are.
Election: One randomly selected player begins as President. This role rotates each round. The President nominates a Chancellor, and then everyone votes. If the vote is successful, the President and Chancellor move into the Legislative session. If not, the President is out of office and the next player attempts to elect a Chancellor.
If a vote fails, the “failed election” counter goes up. After 3 failed elections, a policy is enacted from the top of the deck.
Legislation: The President draws three policies (labeled either liberal or fascist) from the deck and chooses two of them to the Chancellor. The Chancellor selects one of those two policies to enact, and it is revealed to all players. While selecting policies, the President and Chancellor may not communicate.
Executive Action: If a newly enacted Fascist policy uncovers an Executive Action, the current President must use it before a new round begins.
How game ends:
Liberals win if:
5 liberal policies are enacted
Hitler is assassinated
Fascists win if:
6 fascist policies are enacted
Hitler is elected Chancellor AFTER 3 fascist policies are enacted
Some notes!
Conversation (and lying) is encouraged - ask for details of what players see and why they take certain actions, but know they may not be telling the truth!
There are more Fascist policies in the deck than Liberal policies - 11 Fascist cards and 6 Liberal cards.
Fascists and Hitler want to claim to be Liberal to sow confusion
Generally the Fascists win by electing Hitler as Chancellor after 3 Fascist policies are enacted - not by enacting 6 Fascist policies.
The game was adapted from the original created by Goat, Wolf, & Cabbage in 2016. We've also referenced and adapted assets created by Lee Yingtong Li in 2019, which can be found here: https://yingtongli.me/blog/2019/12/25/secret-hitler.html