So, You Want To Be A Politician?

You ran to change the system. The system changed you.

You begin as an idealistic candidate holding your actual beliefs. You race to win elections while trading those beliefs away for Donors, Votes and Favors. In other political games you buy the politician. Here you ARE the politician: you start with real beliefs and sell them, card by card, on the way to the White House.

2 to 6 players, ages 14+, 30 to 120 minutes.

How Do You Play?

Climb the ladder. Seven tiers carry you from Private Citizen to The Presidency: Local Office, State Office, The Primaries, The General Pivot, The General Election. Most tiers have a gate you must meet to pass: enough votes, a donor, a clean enough record. "Nobody's watching yet. An excellent place to practice lying."

Five shared dice. Each round is one News Cycle. A Headline sets the mood, each player rolls the five Action Dice and spends them to move, fundraise, spin or legislate. Then the Reckoning comes due: donors collect, upkeep is paid, scandals catch up. Higher tiers have custom dice.  You can buy some.  They's expensive.

Your beliefs are the price. You start with five Platform cards, your real policy positions. Platform cards block Donors. Donors give you Wealth. Wealth buys power. Power requires Donors. Every step forward costs you a belief.

The Primaries split the board. At Tier 3 your Platform lean decides your party lane, your cards are revealed, and you fight people who agree with you about almost everything except who should be in charge.

Scandals, opposition research and the press. Opponents hold Opposition Research on you. Scandals are tiered 1 to 5. Diversions suppress them, for a price. Bury your scandals before the press finds them.

Every third round, the Gong. Big scandals get exposed, the platforms get scored, SuperPACs act.

The end. Someone reaches The Presidency, or is the last one standing. The Electoral College decides the placings. "Your vote matters, until it doesn't."

Key Concepts

Platform. Your real beliefs. You start with them and trade them away.

Donors. Money with strings. A Platform card blocks the Donor who disagrees with it.

Votes. What gets you through each gate on the way up the ladder.

Favors. What every donor wants back. Owe enough and they own you.

Scandals. Tiered 1 to 5. Bury them before the press finds them.

The Gong. Every third round: exposure, platform scoring, SuperPACs.

Components

Every game includes:

• The Game Board, a 9 x 18 in bi-fold, the tier ladder
• 30 Space Tiles, laid face up at setup, so the board is different every game
• The mini card decks, in a clear case
• The Archetype Deck, in its own tuck box
• 5 Dice
• Lobbyists, Tier Markers and the Round Marker
• Track cubes and gold cubes, and a 1D6.
• 6 pawns. No red or blue, so no seat reads as a party.
• The dice, cube and pawn bags
• The 40-page Rulebook
• A QR Sheet that links to the print-at-home Player Boards

The Decks

Twelve decks of political failure: Platform, Donor, Event, News Cycle, Scandal, Diversion, Opposition Research, Journalism, Media Empire, Party Platform, Quirk and Super PAC. Your beliefs, your money, your mistakes and everyone who wants to tell the world about them.

Meet The Candidates

Ten Candidates, each with two strengths and two fatal flaws: The Business Person, The Outsider, The Progressive, The Conventional Conservative, The Demagogue, The Populist Firebrand, The Union Boss, The True Believer, The Insurgent and The Crusading Outsider. None of them is a real person. All of them are someone you know.

Expansions

Five expansions: The Prosperity Gospel, Plausibly Deniable, The War Room, Epstein Unredacted and Fruit vs Vegetables. The first four bring more Candidates and more cards for the mini decks.

Fruits vs Vegetables

The fifth expansion, free only with Early Bird (the first 50 backers): a deck of Candidates from the produce aisle. Garlic, Blue Raspberry, a Head of Cabbage, a Banana and the rest of the farm stand, each with a dare you play out at the table. Take off your shoes and socks for the whole game. Blow raspberries at the player taking a turn. Everyone else can add it to any game pledge.

Tiers

Voter. No game, just your vote of confidence. Your name in the Rulebook credits, plus every campaign update.

Early Bird. The Candidate, plus the Fruit vs Vegetables bonus deck. Only 50.

The Candidate. The base game, with 5 purple dice and the Action Dice sticker sheet.

The Incumbent. The base game with 5 custom Action Dice in place of the stickered dice, plus two expansions.

Party Machine. The base game plus The Prosperity Gospel, Plausibly Deniable, The War Room and Epstein Unredacted, 5 custom Action Dice, printed Player Boards, a bigger box that holds every Archetype Card, and a different back on each base Archetype Card. You also get one Custom Archetype Card and Candidate Standee, mailed separately from the box. It is drawn in the box-art style from a photo you send us, and your photo is deleted afterward. Only 50.

The Kingmaker. Two Party Machines: a custom Candidate for you, and one for the friend you give the second copy to. Only 25.

Add-Ons

Add them to any game pledge: Fruit vs Vegetables, Custom Action Dice (a set of 5, they go in the game's dice bag), Candidate Standees for the ten base Candidates, Pandora's Box for your extra cards and dice, and any expansion on its own.

Shipping

United States only for this campaign. Shipping is not charged when you pledge. Each tier shows an estimated shipping range, and the actual shipping and any sales tax are charged after the campaign in our pledge manager, BackerKit, when you fill in your survey.

We are a small game publisher, Dad & Dudes Games in Colorado and nearby. Artists, engineers and suffering Americans much like yourself. We mostly don't play instruments nor can we sing very well, just some screaming, but we can push a few pixels and pound the keyboard and with too much time on our hands, well, here you are. We hope you all find some solace in this game in these... times. As much as you've been led to believe it, we are ALL in this together.

Where we came from

We thought about similar troubling times in our country's past. The 1970s with its hippies, culture-altering music, the 1900s when robber barons pillaged a different kind of populace and the corrupt, morally bankrupt ancient politicians like Boss Tweed of years long past. What could we do with our limited skill sets to effect change? Vote?! Oh for sure, but anything that actually seems effective? They own all the media, our jobs, our health insurance, our perspective. What do we have? What does Dad & Dudes have? Just a bit of creativity and a hodge-podge of technical and artistic skills. Thomas Nast in his modern, box-bound gamified form.

Where the money goes

The goal covers printing the games, Kickstarter and payment fees, and a cushion for the surprises every first print run has. Shipping is charged separately after the campaign. Maybe we'll buy the designers some deodorant.