Dear Leader (2016)

Overview

Description from the publisher:

Dear Leader is an easy, banter-driven game about making things as hard as possible for Kim Jong-un, dictator of North Korea. Advisors use up the easy, sensible solutions and force Kim Jong-un into ridiculous extremes of problem solving, and while making themselves as troublesome as possible they must be acting as helpful and servile as possible, pleasing the Leader while frustrating him.

Each round begins with the draw of a Policy Card that one player reads aloud. The Policy Card describes a threat to North Korea which upon which Kim Jong-un must render a decision. After each advisor has suggested their own unique solution to the issue at hand, Kim must come up with his own completely novel answer to prove he's smarter than everyone in the room and always knows best. And this, of course, is the correct answer.

The advisors clap with delight over this display of wisdom, whether they like it or not, and then take turns extrapolating Kim’s solution to make it grander and grander. Kim then insults each offering for suggesting that it improves on his wisest of decisions.

Throughout the round Kim continually issues demerits to punish advisors for infractions real and imagined. Demerits have no hard mechanical function in the game but enable Kim Jong-un to harass the other players and create more fun.

At the end of a round, Kim Jong-un awards the Policy Card to whomever pleased him the most for whatever reason. That player becomes the new Kim Jong-un and a new round begins. At the end of the game players read grim factoids off the backs of the Policy Cards they've won, letting them know about the horrors in the real Hermit Kingdom. This is a simple, fun game which tries to use the play of the game to lay bare the real world human rights abuses in North Korea.

Expansions

Dear Leader: Presidentiapocalypse 2017