CHALLENGE: How To Draw Hidden Starting Hands

Rather than deal the role card randomly and distribute the remaining cards, try this:

A designated dealer places all role cards face down on the table, then deals the appropriate starting cards into each pile.
-- At this time, there is one pile per role on the table, and each pile contains the role card and its starting cards.
-- Only the dealer knows which piles are where.

The dealer then turns his/her back.

The remaining players, in clockwise order, take 1 pile and blindly re-order the rest.

After all other players have taken their piles, the dealer turns around and takes a pile.

The dealer reinserts the remaining cards into the deck without looking at them and shuffles.

Would that work?

+1, definitely!

well that doesnt sound like a great idea
imagine player A is a researcher and player B is a politician

in the first scenario player A passes a "officer" card, to player B . Now player B knows something about player A namely that he is not an "officer"

now imagine the following, player B already has one of the two politician cards, player A passes a politician card to player B, and player B passes the other item card to another player.
Now player B has both the items and does not need to swap anymore, thus giving player A all the information he needs to figure out that player B is a politician

i prefer the idea with one dealer looking away

wouldnt it be easier to print the items on the character cards, or are they going to be exchanged?

Once any players have accepted their cards, everyone will have much more information about the remaining players.

Say player A receives both of his in the initial dealing. If he never passes them, the other players may never know anything about who might have them - if each other player retains 1 card and gets their final card soon. On the other hand, the players who each pass 1 card on will find out quickly where that card stops - unless you can pass cards that were yours in order to plant false information. But...

Once you get close to the end, say players A, B, and C all have their cards, and the one remaining card of player D goes all the way around the table before getting to D - everyone knows who player D is. Similar problems if both A and B have their cards, and C and D don't.

I like the idea of giving players a little information, but don't see how this method will work.

The first method I think will work, and doesn't even require the dealer to keep his back turned for more than a minute - after the cards are dealt out, the dealer can turn around for a moment, allowing another player to mix the stacks, and then the dealer can turn back and each player can take a stack.

That is a great idea, but might get a little complicated in the design process.

Let's say we need enough cards for seven players to each have two cards ... 14 cards total.
The number of 2-card "hands" is (14 choose 2) = 91. A table with 91 entries ??

Let's make half the deck "roles" and half the deck "items". With 7 players, there would be 49 combinations. Still a lot, but you could easily have a 7x2 grid with all the roles and item functions listed for easy reference.

If the mechanic is ALSO dealt the wrench (1/7 chance), then that could boost a stat or give a special ability. Not sure if this is a good fit for the game, but I much prefer a table that is
(#of players)*(#number of cards per player) than anything involving factorials. The numbers get high quickly!

The simplest solution is to put the Mechanic card and the Wrench card in an envelope. All envelopes look the same.

Let's say the Painter gets two cards: the brush and the canvas.
If you want everyone to also have the same number of cards, you can give the Mechanic two cards: Wrench and a blank card.

The envelope definitely seems the most practicable method as the game is currently described...and it's a really neat component for spy/investigation/secrets flavour. I always loved the envelope in Clue.

Personally I like the items make the role option, but it has the downside of not showing the role after initial cards are traded, and would probably require slimming the cards to categories like weapon/tool/key/information/social which would only require 15 possible roles. If you wanted to keep unique items, you could just make each role single item related (if you draw the toolbox OR the locker key during the 'role draw' you're the Mechanic).

Really we need a lot more specifics on the game, especially the target dynamics and aesthetics, if you want us to give educated feedback. A mechanic in a vacuum is useless. Why do players want to trade? How often? Why do they want to keep information secret? How are the role cards used if you can't reveal them? Is this role assignment once in a long game, or do you have to do it multiple times across short games/rounds? What's the theme? All of these answers will help us provide better advice.

From what I'm hearing right now, you might want to look at the Battlestar Galactica game's method: roles are public, and dictate what general kind/proportion of cards you draw. When you play cards in to defeat a challenge, once they are flipped up you get some information but it's sketchy. Obviously some card types are more likely to have come from specific players, but you can rarely be certain, and even then you have to decide whether they deliberately messed things up or just didn't have better cards...