Note: As I have an America's Foundation retheme of this game, the relevant game terms will reflect said theme. These term changes are also useful for avoiding any political stuff to get worse.
A constant favorite game for parties is Werewolf/Mafia. It's easy to explain, easy to prepare and play, and it's always fun to see people question each other. While the basic game is pretty good, people want more of that murder, mystery, treachery and secrecy, so a lot of games of the Werewolf/Mafia type have been made.
Secret Hitler is one of the more well-known Werewolf/Mafia type games, along with The Resistance and its add-ons. The rules and some materials are available online, but you can make these materials from scratch without the need to print. The basic idea is a parliament voting over electing officials and legislating laws.
In the original theme, it's Liberals versus Fascists headed by Hitler, but for this retheme, it's Democratic Republicans against Federalists headed by Alexander Hamilton. The Democratic Republicans win if they pass five Dem. Rep. policies or kick Hamilton out; Federalists win if they pass six Federalist policies or elect Hamilton as the secretary of the treasury after three Federalist policies have been passed. The "good" guys always have a majority.
After distributing the relevant number of cards in envelopes, players close their eyes, the Federalists open their eyes, and depending on the number of players, Hamilton either knows his fellow Federalists or not. Federalists always know who Hamilton is.
A President is randomly selected, who then picks his Secretary of the Treasury. After this choice, players then vote whether to elect them or not: a strict majority of yes votes is needed to be elected.
Three policies are drawn, the president passing two to the secretary, who then passes one as law. Four failed elections force a policy to pass.
Passing some specific Fed. laws will trigger a power that must be used by the President (assuming Hamilton hasn't been elected Secretary of the Treasury), which ranges from peeks to removal of a player from the game (dead men can't vote).
This quick rundown doesn't cover all the situations, but this might be enough to give you an idea of how Secret Hitler works as a Werewolf/Mafia game.
Games of this type have an inherent feature of some players having incomplete information. Usually the forces considered antagonistic know who each other are, but in this game, sometimes the secret leader doesn't know who his cohorts are.
Note that the enemy leader is still considered a member of the team, albeit a key one that's vulnerable. A man who does not know who his friends or foes but must keep himself alive to be elected and so has the task of being both worthy of being right-hand man while avoiding being someone you just want to shoot.
Different goals mean different strategies. The good guys want to know each other while the bad guys want to plant their leader, who has no clue who's who. Every way to know a player's identity is always unsure and every deduction is always an assumption (having separate party ID's is genius when you think about it).
The powers that reveal information are important as those who acquire such information (elected presidents) have an edge with their decisions during gameplay.
The smallest crowd that can play this game is of five people, but the downside is that at five or six people mechanics that are unusual and the play will seem rather weak. No one will complain about an upper limit of 10 people, so let's not go there.
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