Secret Hitler: Tyranny

December 8, 2018

Secret Hitler: Tyranny (SHT) is a modified ruleset of the popular game Secret Hitler by Blackbox Games. Secret Hitler was a favorite of social deduction games amongst my friends but over time, the game began to become stale with games playing out similarly. We decided to make a legacy version of the game with each match changing the rules as well as the story of the struggle between the liberals and fascists. This is an unofficial fan ruleset that requires the base game to play.

A lot of the inspiration for SHT came from other popular legacy games like Ultimate Werewolf Legacy. However, a lot of our legacy game experiences lacked a meaningful progression through each match we played. Our focus in designing legacy mechanics for SHT revolved around creating a story of a nation’s shifting political climate through the results and actions of each game. New laws and policies affect each match throughout the 16-game campaign and self-balance the game around the decisions made by players. Some players just aren’t as good in the fascist role so the group may want to enforce new in-game policies to help the fascists in future games. We wanted players to be able to shift the play style of the deception game’s mechanics to fit their group’s favorite parts of play.

The team: Luke Brockmann, Kevin Garcia, and David Rathaus