How To Play

• Shuffle decks. Place character cards face down. Deal 7 cards to each player. 
• Play moves clockwise, with each player taking turns to be the Editor for that round.
• ​The Editor reveals a Character Card, and each player selects which Description Card they feel is the best fit, passing them anonymously to the Editor.
• The Editor reads each card aloud and decides, for any reason, which card wins that round. The winning player gets to keep that Character.
• ​Players replenish their hands from the deck to maintain 7 cards. Whoever has the most Character Cards at the end of play wins! 

​* If no one is familiar with the character, simply go to the next card in the deck. 
* Play the entire deck, or a set number of rounds, or for a specified time — it’s up to you! 
* You can pre-select Characters familiar to children for younger players. 

How Prose & Cons Came About

As an educator, I am always concerned with the mechanisms by which people learn. When we associate content with pleasure, for example, we are more motivated to retain it. But how do we evoke pleasure? What I might find enjoyable and fascinating, others may not; and I can’t force my students to recall details from books, say, if they don’t care about them. 
 
When we play games that require quick responses, wit, and humor, we experience small bursts of dopamine every time we play a turn; our efforts are rewarded if our companions laugh. It is this consistent rush that keeps a game enjoyable, and keeps people wanting to play — and it’s strongly associated with retaining information. 
 
Therefore, I wanted to create a game that allowed my students to study as a by-product of having fun — but specifically with the content I needed them to know. In my literature class, I realized that their understanding of characters was limited by the presumption that only certain stereotypes mattered, and these were terribly dull. What my students needed was a new perspective; a fresh way to think about these characters that forced them to understand them far more deeply than they imagined. 
 
What if, instead of the old descriptions for characters that felt as distant and foreign as dusty relics, they could only use more contemporary pop culture references that resonated with them to describe these literary types? Wouldn’t that allow them to connect on a more personal level? And so I created Prose & Cons — a way to match classic literary figures with entirely new identities, and by so doing, breathe into them new life. 
 
It was a big hit. When we played my prototype in class, students who had previously yawned at canonical literature suddenly came alive, fiercely defending their assertion that such-and-such was a Bridezilla, for example, or that someone else’s very literal interpretation of Hamlet was clearly out of date, given his existential crisis, and that “Come at me, Bro!” was a far better way to describe his mood. I think they were as surprised as I was by how much they actually knew about what they’d read, and the sophistication of their claims went beyond those they had previously demonstrated in their essays. 
 
And so I spent years developing the game, trying new types of descriptions, adding more characters, expanding the range of genres, and play-testing it with different age groups, both in and out of an academic setting. I tried it for Friday Fun Days, and for finals study sessions in school. Out of school, I clearly remember an older woman who had been reluctant to play a new game laughing until she cried over a card she found funny for a reason known only to her. Another time, a pre-dinner game resulted in food being served at 11PM because no-one wanted to stop. 
 
I utilized my students’ help too, when it came to visualizing the cards, collecting questionnaires about what images came to mind when they thought of certain characters. It was important for me to see the game from others’ viewpoints, especially across generations. This is especially true when it came to characters younger people knew from movies, rather than books. 
 
The games I like the most are the ones that are immediately intuitive, and instantly rewarding. They don’t require elaborate rules and can be flexible enough to adapt to different player and circumstances. They are universal enough to last for years, providing a fresh experience each time, and never go out of style. As a bonus, they can be easily expanded with add-ons that always introduce new possibilities for play. Prose & Cons is such a game. ​

Example:

​Which character do these descriptions fit best — Hamlet, Dracula, or Jaws? 

​Identifies as the hero          Is an absolute unit
Menace to society               Is my spirit animal
​Misunderstood                    Still has all their own teeth

Prose & Cons lets you reimagine your favorite literary characters in a whole new light — depending on who’s playing each round’s new editor. Do they like descriptions that fit to a T, or are they likely to go for the funniest card? Every round is full of possibility!