Black Spot Cards Game Rules*

Preface: All cards are marked with a letter on the cyan/fill-in-the-blank side corresponding with the Dark Triad themes of Machiavellianism (M), Narcissism (N), and Psychopathy (P). These letters indicate what theme the black/answer side of the card falls into.

To begin, a dealer is chosen from among the players for his/her enunciation and oratory skills. The dealer shuffles the deck with the black/answer sides facing down.

Everyone is dealt 6 cards from the deck, and a cyan/fill-in-the-blank-side card is taken from the top of the deck and played.

The Dealer reads the fill-in-the-blank card aloud, and everyone responds with a face-up black/answer card from their hand.

The Dealer collects the responses and reads each aloud in place of the blank spot on the cyan-side card. If a word here and there between the cards needs to be changed for grammatical reasons, feel free to change it. (ex. Cyan: I can't understand why _____ is like that. Black: The clowns. You can say, "I don't understand why the clowns are like that.")

A vote is then called by the Dealer where everyone picks the most entertaining/horrible card played, and whoever played it wins the round. Relative majority vote rules (i.e. whichever individual gets the most votes).

Feel free to discuss or try to win over votes for one card or another, however, making deals or voting in bad faith solely to impact the winner of the game is discouraged. It’s about having fun and learning about yourselves, not politicking.

If there’s a deadlock in voting even after a discussion takes place the Dealer will declare the round skipped and no one wins the round.

Whoever wins the round takes their winning black card and puts it in front of them to keep score.

The Dealer selects one of the losing cards at random, flips it to the cyan/fill-in-the-blank side, and that card is used for the next round. All other losing cards are returned to the bottom of the deck.

Continue once the Dealer refills everyone’s hand to 6 cards.

Once any single player has 5 winning cards they have the Black Spot and are metaphorically marked for their misdeeds/win.

Reading the results: If you’re the winner, you’re likely the worst person in the group and whichever of the Triad you have more of in your winning cards likely reflects what type you are. The same method works for less wins, but it’s less data so we can’t be sure.

If you didn’t win, congratulations! You might be a good person. But you’re also a loser, which is arguably worse.

*Treat these rules like guidelines. If you want to alter things a bit to better work for you, go ahead. We can't stop you.

For People With No Friends (Single Player)

Separate the 90 cards in the deck by their Dark Triad themes noted by the letters on the cyan sides, to get three 30-card decks. Place the decks in front of you, black/answer sides facing down.

Take the top fill-in-the-blank card from one of the decks at random and play it. Take the top cards from the other two decks and remove them from play, to give all decks 29 cards.

Draw one card from each deck and pick one of the three that you think best answers the fill-in-the-blank card. Put the chosen card into a winning card pile, and take one of the remaining two to play as the next fill-in-the-blank card. Discard the remaining cards in play.

Continue this until you have gone through the three decks. Take the winning card pile and count out how many of the three Dark Triad traits you have. The proportion breakdown of the traits should reflect your personality, or at least your sense of humor.

Pick a Hill Game Rules

To start, everyone sits in a circle with the newly-shuffled deck in the middle, with the top covered by the designated "Cover Card."

Whoever is shortest begins as "The Hill" and will lift the Cover Card to take the top card from the deck (remember to put the Cover Card back).

The two players to The Hill's left then become active players, and The Hill decides which of the two active players will argue the "Goofy" or "Crazy" statement (see informative graphic on back of Cover Card).

The two active players then read aloud their previously designated statements.

Each active player will take a turn making an argument to convince the inactive players and The Hill of the truth of their statement, lasting roughly 30-40 seconds.

Once both active players are finished, all inactive players (including The Hill) will vote for which argument they liked best (note: to prevent stalemates, The Hill's vote counts as 1.1 votes).

Whoever wins retains the card to keep score.

The player to The Hill's left then becomes the new Hill, and the game continues.

One round is completed once the player to the right of the original Hill completes their turn as The Hill.

Complete as many rounds as you like in a game; we recommend multiples of 3.

The winner is the one with the most points/cards in the end.

If there's a stalemate you can knock out the player with the least points at the end of each round; they'll only participate as an inactive player (can still vote, but not play) until someone's successfully claimed all of the remaining opponent's scalps, or whatever.