Prosper with Dragons

CREATOR'S NOTE: We are officially sold out of our first printing! Hooray, and thanks for the support! The second printing is now available, and the deck features three new works of art! Follow us on Instagram or Bluesky to keep up with the latest Prosper with Dragons news! 

NEW: Prosper with Dragons RPG Mode (download instructions and character sheets here) adds a thrilling element of chance to the game by using a D20 or standard six-sided die (not included) to determine if you're successful at befriending dragons. It also determines your chances of using special abilities to increase the value of resources, reduce the cost of disasters, or even heal dragons! 

Also available from: Sistah Scifi our first official retailer and my Etsy shop!

Retailer Bundle (total of 6 decks) available as an add-on! 

Prosper with Dragons is a cooperative card game for 2-4 players, ages 10 and up. In a post-apocalyptic world, disasters lurk around every corner and only a combination of human ingenuity and dragon might can fend them off. Players must strategize to use their limited resources to befriend dragons while preparing for inevitable floods, locust swarms, tornadoes, and more. Dragons can aid in dealing with the destruction, but that help might come at a steep price. 

For players to win, they must collectively attract all twelve dragons from the play area into their hands and fend off increasingly destructive disasters before their resources run out. Games of Prosper with Dragons are exciting and nerve-bending and have a length of about 30 minutes.

What's in the Box

• 12 Dragon Cards - Collectively befriend all 12 dragons to win!
• 9 Disaster Cards - Survive these by gathering resources and using dragons' might. 
• 47 Resource Cards - Use these to attract dragons and survive disasters.
• 4 Reference Cards - Rules at a glance
• 1 Instruction Sheet - 5 minutes to learn, develop strategies as you play.

Tired of Meh Game Nights?

How to Play

View the full rulebook here

How to Play Video

Resource Gathering Crash Course

Objective

Work as a team to befriend all 12 dragons in the play area by attracting them to your hands with shared resources while surviving increasingly destructive disasters.

Quick Tips:

• There are 3 card types: resource, disaster, and dragon, all dealt face up.
• Token values appear at the top of resource cards and dragon cards.
• Costs appear at the bottom of disaster cards and dragon cards.
• Players can share resource cards.
• Players cannot share dragon cards.

Game Setup: Draw Decks

Remove the 12 dragon cards and set aside. 

Shuffle resource and disaster cards into three draw decks: Nature (red leaf), Ingenuity (blue gear), and Knowledge (black flame).

Resource cards have tokens of increasing value that can be used to attract dragons or survive disasters. Three red leaves can be used as one blue gear, three blue gears can be used as one black flame, one black flame can be used as three blue gears, and so on.

Resource Token Values:

Game Setup: Play Area

Set up the play area with black-backed deck (face down) and black-backed dragon cards (face up) in the top row, blue backs in the middle row, and red backs in the bottom row.

Deal each player 3 red resource cards face up. Swap out any disaster cards and reshuffle the deck.

How to Play

GATHER RESOURCES

The first player draws 3 cards, each chosen from any deck, to add to their hand face up. The red deck has lower value resources and mild disasters increasing to the black deck with higher value resources and extreme disasters. Choose wisely! 

A resource token appears at the top of each resource card. Players can assemble tokens in any manner, though no change is given if the amount spent is over what is needed. Spent resource cards are permanently discarded.  

BEFRIEND DRAGONS 

During their turn, players can use resource tokens to attract one or more dragons from the play area to add to their hand. The cost to attract a dragon appears at the bottom of the dragon card.

Dragon cards have a token that can help a player attract more dragons or survive a disaster in their own hand once per turn. Dragon tokens cannot be used for disasters in other players’ hands or Play Area Disasters. Rotate the card sideways to note its use, then return upright at the start of the next turn.

DRAWING DISASTERS

If a player draws a disaster, they must remove it before attracting more dragons.

The player can use resource and dragon tokens in their own hand, and other players can share resource cards. Discard resolved disasters. If the player doesn’t have enough tokens, their turn is over until their next draw. 

If a player ever has two or more disasters in hand, keep one and immediately move the rest to anywhere in the play area to be dealt with as a Play Area Disaster. 

REFILL THE PLAY AREA

After the turn is over, refill empty spots on the play area from the same-colored draw deck. Players can draw these resource cards instead of unknown cards from draw decks. Play continues to the left, the next player draws 3 cards, and the actions repeat.

PLAY AREA DISASTERS

If a disaster is dealt to the play area, play stops immediately! Players must remove it using resource cards only, then refill the play area again and continue play. If there aren’t enough resource tokens, pick a non-fledgling dragon to do the job alone, but it’ll need time to recover and is out of the game.

END GAME

If at any time a dragon is needed to remove a second Play Area Disaster, GAME OVER, you all lose. 

After the last resource card has been drawn, players must attract any remaining dragons into their hands between them. There is no set order, and any player can attract a dragon at any time. Dragon tokens can only be used one last time, so strategy is crucial.

If all 12 dragons are in the players’ hands and none are out of the game, the players win! YOU PROSPER!!! With 11 dragons in hand, you survive, and if not…Better luck next time!

The Artwork

We started envisioning this project several years ago with the aim of bringing more Afrofuturistic art into the creative space, specifically art featuring Black kids and dragons. Prosper with Dragons brings this art to life as players interact with an imaginative and immersive world, brought to you by a team of amazing artists. 

*Art and card layouts are not final and are subject to change. All art is copyright of their respective creators. 

Pledge Rewards

Prosper with Dragons Card Game - $27

The Prosper with Dragons Card Game! (Price includes US shipping.) Our Kickstarter was fully funded in February, but we've still got a limited amount of decks available.

Meet the Artists

Without these amazing artists, this card game wouldn't be in existence. We're so thankful to have such an amazing team bringing you some honestly breathtaking work! 

About Us

Nicky Drayden should have been an art director (I mean, have you SEEN the artists we've brought together?) but instead she's been doing her own creative thing, writing delightfully twisted short stories and novels. She's written for Magic the Gathering, Overwatch, and Minecraft, and has also published five (sometimes award-winning) novels of her own, including The Prey of Gods, Temper, the Escaping Exodus series, and is a co-writer for the Deep Austin series. 

Suyi Davies Okungbowa is an award-winning Nigerian author of fantasy, science fiction and general speculative fiction. He has published various novels for adults, including Son of the Storm, The Nameless Republic, and Warrior of the Wind. His debut novel David Mogo, Godhunter won the 2020 Nommo Award for Best Speculative Novel by an African. He has also published works for younger audiences (under Suyi Davies) such as Stranger Things: Lucas on the Line, Minecraft: The Haven Trials, and contributed to the instant #1 NYT bestselling anthology Black Boy Joy.