Clive/SecretPartnerships

What?

This is a mechanism that could get built into a game of some sort. I thought of it while thinking about Alex's cryptic references game prototype (at time of writing, described [here], though the URL doesn't feel especially permanent).

Have an even number of players, who are randomly paired off into teams of two. Nobody knows who their teammate is, but the members of each team share a randomly-selected secret.

Why?

I dunno. Maybe they have to be the first team to identify one another, while avoiding outing themselves as a team to anyone else, or similar. Something in the same kind of game-space as Alex's idea or Spyfall.

The simple and boring solution

Prepare a bunch of packets (e.g. card sleeves or zip-lok bags) containing pairs of cards. Choose some packets randomly, open them all, shuffle the cards together, deal.

But if you want a good variety of possible secrets (i.e. the number of cards in something like Codenames or Apples to Apples rather than the 30 or so in Spyfall) that starts getting prohibitive.

So, the actual idea!

Have a deck of secrets. Also have a bunch of "accomplice" cards which have backs identical to secrets cards, but distinctive fronts labelled "A", "B", "C", etc.

For 2N players, shuffle the secrets and draw N of them. Shuffle them together with N accomplice cards. Deal them out. Each player secretly looks at the card they've been given and notes its contents.

Now, the cards are carefully and covertly gathered up. A deck is passed around the table and each person puts their card on the top of the deck if it is a secret and the bottom if it is an accomplice. They don't let other players see which end of the deck they put their card.

The dealer now takes the bottom half of the deck, shuffles it and lays it out face-up on the table. If all is well, it's the complete set of accomplice cards. Now they shuffle the top half and deal one card face-down overlapping each accomplice card.

Now everybody closes their eyes. Accomplice A opens their eyes and inspects the secret placed on their accomplice card, then closes their eyes. Accomplice B does the same. And so on until every accomplice shares a secret with one other player.

Obviously, there's a narrator who orchestrates the eyes-closed phase, in the same way as with Resistance or One Night.