| The game of Bark was taught to me many years ago by a dear, if distant, friend of mine. He and his father held a deep distaste for the game of Mao, for those unaware, Mao is a game in which you do not know the rules and must follow them regardless. Bark was made in rebellion of this. |
| Bark's premise is quite simple, there are no rules, and you must make them up along the way, this is slightly misleading as there are rules to there being no rules, but I digress. I would recommend a maximum of 4 players, with 3 being ideal, but as long as there are enough cards, any number of people can play. In Bark, each player is dealt 7 cards, and the object of the game is to have no cards in your hand. To begin play, the cards are dealt as specified and the remaining cards are placed in a stack, creating the *bank*, the top card of the bank is then flipped over next to this stack, creating the *teller*. Starting with the tallest player and going counter-clockwise, each player places a card face up from their hand onto the *teller* and announces their rule. This rule can neither automatically lead to the victory of a player nor can it specifically target certain players, thus, all players must work within the same ruleset. |
| Once the first player has played their card and made their rule, all players must follow all stated rules. In the event a player is unable to place a card that follows the rules or otherwise violates a rule, they must draw two cards, their turn is skipped, and they are unable to make a rule this turn. In the event that all players, including the one who made the rule, are unable or unwilling to follow the rule in the turn immediately after the rule is made, the rule is struck from the record and thus is no longer being applied. Additionally, the player who originally made the rule must pick up two additional cards. Play continues like this until either all but one player's hands are empty, thus the game ends, and the order in which players emptied their hands decides the ranking, the player with cards remaining losing, or the bank runs out of cards. Once the bank runs out of cards, the top card is removed from the teller, and all other cards are shuffled and become the bank. In the instance where there is only one card left, all players with cards in their hands count their remaining cards, the player with the most cards loses, and the game ends. Victory or loss should bring nothing to the player other than a sense of pride or shame, respectively. |
| The number of rules can become staggering, and I recommend playing without any record of the stated rules, thus making the game almost as much about memory and charisma as it is about making clever rules. |