Hollywood 1947: A Movie Making Game with Political Agendas

Emma Hunt
Feb 7, 2024
4 min read

It’s 1947 in Hollywood and you are part of a thriving movie-making industry. However, some of your work mates are communists sliding “Un-Patriotic” messages, themes and props into your movies! Will you be able to figure out who the communists are and stop them?

Hollywood 1947 is a wonderful social deduction party game that plays 1 to 9 players in about 45 minutes.

Setup:

At the start of the games, each player is dealt a loyalty card. This will tell you whether you are a Patriot, a Communist or a rising star (this role only gets dealt out if there are 4 or more players).

Then, players are given a job title which remains face up in front of each player. The job titles that do not get dealt out stay in the middle of the table as some players abilities enable them to switch job roles.

Propaganda cards are then shuffled and 3 are given to each player. These will influence the movie (more on this later). As well as propaganda cards, each player is also given a dice which they must roll before the game starts (more on this in a moment).

Then, the person who suggested to play the game asks everyone to close their eyes. They then ask the players who are communists to open their eyes, look at one another and then close their eyes. Gameplay then begins.

Gameplay:

Each round consists of three phases: Production, Post and Premiere. If the screen-writer job title is in play, they draw two genre posters and pick which one they want to be produced. Movies have Patriot and Communist symbols in the corner and add to the vote totals when influencing a movie. If you’re a communist, you’re going to want to choose a communist movie. If you’re a patriot, you’re going to go for the movie with patriot symbols.

Production:

Starting with the player with the lowest number on their job title card, they go first and then play will proceed clockwise from that player. A player must choose from one of the three following options on their turn:

Perform their job ability on their job title card. Some of these job title abilities have some HUGE benefits but others are a bit meh. When I played this, I was a communist and found it beneficial when myself or my fellow communists had either the Director OR Screenwriter card.
Swap your job with one in the centre. I’m not going to lie, I feel like this is a waste of a turn as you can’t perform your new job title action straight away.
Re-roll your dice. If you rolled a star on your beginning roll, you can play a propaganda card into the movie and influence whether it becomes a communist or patriot movie.

Post:

After everyone has decided what they want to do with their turn, the post phase of the round begins:

Each player that has a star on their dice must add one propaganda card facedown into the movie. If any player was given a token by the director in the round, they may add a card facedown into the movie (even if they don’t have a star on their dice). They then return the token to whoever has the director job title.
Add 1 card from the top of the propaganda deck into the facedown pile of cards.
Shuffle all cards that were played into the movie and discard one at random.

Premiere:

Reveal the cards one by one. The team with the majority of revealed symbols (including the symbol in the bottom corner of that rounds genre movie poster) wins the round.
If the total number of symbols are tied, the communists win the round.
Indicate the winning team for the round by placing the winning team’s filmstrip on top of the movie poster.
Some of the cards that were put in for the vote may have the words ‘Congressional Hearing’ or ‘Shake Up’ at the bottom of them.
If one or more Congressional Hearing cards are revealed, all players need to re-roll their dices.
If one of more Shake Up cards are revealed, job cards need to be collected back in, shuffled and handed out again.
Finally, everyone less than 3 cards should draw back up to three.

Winning the Game:

As soon as either team (Communist or Patriot) has won 4 rounds, that team wins the game and the game is over.

Rising Star Role:

A Rising Star is only used in the game when there is a certain amount of players.
The Rising Star has the hardest role in the game.
They’re not a Patriot or a Communist but, they want to try to get a tie.
If 7 movies are made (meaning after 6 movies the vote is tied with 3 Patriot movies and 3 Communist movies) and in the 7th movie the symbols are either tied, +1 Patriot or +1 Communist, the Rising Star wins.

Impressions:

This is another amazing game from Façade games and they never fail to impress me with their stunning components and illustrations on the cards.
I played an 8 player game and we had the Rising Star role in play. Personally, I’m not a fan of the Rising Star role as I think it makes the game more difficult for the player who is one but I guess it depends on the player!
All the players I played with really enjoyed the game and it was fun when suspicions were being thrown around about who was a Communist!
If you haven’t tried out Hollywood 1947 or any of the Façade book games, I suggest you do. They’re amazing games to play with a group of 6-9 players.