In Development:
“A hugely horrible game for hugely horrible people in a really very bigly way.”
Play a famous dictator from history or an aspiring one in modern day! Build up your Industry and Military! Score Victory Points for accumulating Opulence while watching your Subjects starve! Score more Victory Points by committing Atrocities against your Undesirables! But having all this much fun has its consequences… Keep your Civil Unrest in check or you’ll face assassination! Run PR campaigns to lower your International Notoriety and keep the UN from invading your kingdom!
DicTaters is a fact-based game with hugely amounts of historical information spread throughout. Cards resemble actions commonly taken by dictators and those who oppose them. Players will learn how dictators operate and recognize the behaviors of today’s politicians and political parties who wish to become the same. Humor destroys walls, facts are sobering.
Quotes
“What Were They Thinking!?! Games exhibits the very heart of my vision of games to be, centuries after I died.”
- Gameritus Maximus, Icon Guiding Prophet revered by the South Jersey Disbarred Rules Lawyers Association. (Psychic transmission allegedly received by the SJDRLA sometime in 2022.)
“That was the craziest game I’ve ever played!”
- A playtester at PAX Unplugged, UnPub room, 2025
“You know? I should've chosen Hitler (to play as)!”
- A playtester at PAX Unplugged, Freeplay area, 2024
“These are really important things young people should know, but if I were to teach any of it I would get fired.” (paraphrased)
- A middle school history teacher after playtesting, UnPub Convention, 2023
Tour Dates
PAX Unplugged 2026, UnPub room, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia, PA
PAX Unplugged 2025, UnPub room, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia, PA
PDK Nine Boardgame Cafe, Feb. 2025, Mount Laurel, NJ
PAX Unplugged 2024, UnPub room, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia, PA
PAX Unplugged 2023, UnPub room, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia, PA
Gencon 2023, Open Gaming room, JW Hotel, Indianapolis, IN
Unpub: Unpublished Games Festival 2023, Hunt Valley, MD
PAX Unplugged 2022, UnPub room, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia, PA
PAX Unplugged 2021, UnPub room, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia, PA
Let’s subjugate the world together!
Supreme Overlord: Sean Benjamin
Email: whatweretheythinkinggames@gmail.com
Facebook Group: DicTaters - Watch the game's evolution!
Discord: norseofcourse
BoardgameGeek:
BGG User: sean_benjamin
DicTaters
What Were They Thinking!?! Games